Musical Creativity is Hard to Sustain, Apparently

As I was sitting in church recently, I wondered why the worship music I was hearing did not strike me as powerfully as some of the contemporary Christian worship music from the 1995 to 2015 period or thereabouts. 

Some might point to such examples such as::

• Hillsong (Darlene Zschech's "Shout to the Lord," 1993, then the broader Hillsong output through the 2000s)

• Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, David Crowder — the "worship pastor as recording artist" era

• Michael W. Smith, Paul Baloche, Tim Hughes

These songs, from that era, crossed denominational lines, being sung in Catholic parishes, black Baptist churches, and Anglican cathedrals alongside evangelical megachurches.

More recently, I admit I hear few newer compositions that seem to have that same resonance, and just wondered whether bursts of musical creation have happened before. 

Maybe the creative cycles are inevitable, though. You might note that some of your favorite musical groups or singers in general also are not equally commercially successful throughout their careers.

Some might argue the history of music is actually full of concentrated creative bursts followed by relative fallow periods:

The Viennese Classical Period (~1770–1800) Haydn, Mozart, and the early Beethoven produced a staggering concentration of the foundational classical repertoire in roughly 30 years. The generation immediately after struggled to define itself in that shadow. 

The Florentine Camerata and Early Opera (1590s–1640s) The invention of opera produced a creative explosion — Monteverdi, Peri, Caccini. Then a relative consolidation period before the Baroque opera seria fully matured.

Tin Pan Alley's Golden Era (~1920s–1950s) Gershwin, Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Berlin, Arlen — a concentrated burst of the "Great American Songbook." The late 1950s saw it run dry just before rock replaced it entirely.

The British Invasion / Classic Rock Peak (~1965–1975) An almost absurdly dense decade of canonical output. By the late 1970s, critics were already writing "rock is dead" pieces.

Bebop and Hard Bop Jazz (~1945–1965) Miles, Coltrane, Monk, Parker — followed by fusion, which many felt diluted rather than advanced the tradition.

Scholars of creativity point to a common structure:

• A new platform or technology opens up (the printing press for Luther, the concert hall for Vienna, recording for Tin Pan Alley, the megachurch and Christian radio for the worship era)

• A small, networked community of talented people cross-pollinate intensely

• There's a genuine felt need the music meets — social, spiritual, political

• Then institutionalization sets in, the pioneers age or scatter, and the field fills with imitators.

The worship music burst fits this template almost perfectly, some might argue. 

“Paradoxically, it was the success of Christian music that led to its failure,” says Derek Walker, writing for Christianity Today. “The industrialisation that managed people’s demands for Christian music ended up being the cause of its own demise.”

In the 90s, sales of Christian music albums exceeded those of classical, jazz and new age music. Supply could not keep up with demand. Record companies had to keep signing bands, just to keep the machinery of business going, feeding the playlists of Christian radio stations in the USA with new material. 

Lower quality was the result, he argues. The market was saturated with undistinguished material. Streaming might have fragmented the audience, while formats became clichéd, he says. 

That might be less directly true for liturgical music, rather than contemporary Christian music. But I still do not hear new compositions of great power.