At some point in the last few centuries, some of us got this idea in our heads that music should be worshipped. We started by worshipping musicians, especially composers like Handel, the first composer to be famous for being famous (he has remained famous because he’s great, by the way). Then, because music notation improved, we began to worship pieces like Beethoven’s late String Quartets.
As the recording industry developed, we even started worshipping performances: legendary captured events like Robert Johnson’s first blues recordings, Duke Ellington’s performance at the Newport Festival, and then manufactured performances done with the help of the studio, from “Stairway to Heaven” to Glenn Gould’s wonderful Frankenstein-monster recordings. A cappella choral, popular, “ethnic” music that used to be seen as “not serious” began to be worshipped too. Is all of this okay?