it seems rather conspicuous that the vast majority of musical compositions have a religious bias. it seems rather contrived to assume that spirituality/religion/god provides the best possible motivation for creativity .. from my limited knowledge of modern artistic creations it seems that this is not a pre-requisite and quite a substantial number of compositions are non-religious. why then is the overwhelming majority of creative work in the medieval ages purely religious -- this is not a geographically localized observation .. indian music, western renaissance painting etc have a significant bias towards religious themes. one possible explanation is that the support for the creative arts requires "leisure" in the true sense of the word and unquestioned financial support from someone which is most likely to be the religious/political heads of the time given that they also controlled most of the economies -- the religious heads had an obvious immediate incentive to publicize themselves the political heads naturally used the divine right theory to perpetuate their hegemony and hence also leaned towards religious themes to avoid conflicts with the clergy. art seems like a natural ally to religion .. it enables the
public to swallow the stories with little objection .. in the process get entertained. reminds me of the mary poppins song "a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down in the most delightful way" and the gecko ad where the gecko says that the aim is to fool the people into a sense that they are being entertained when they are actually being sold something.
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While the support from nAyaks and marAThas were certainly instrumental in popularizing music in tanjAvUr, the trinity who had maximum impact on carnatic music were not royally supported ( except dIkShitar for some part of his life ). Saint tyAgarAja is said to have lived by begging ( and refused support from the king - nidhi cAlA sukhamA ) while shyAma shAstri is said to have had enough ancestral wealth already to sustain himself. dIkShitar
lived in utter poverty until his stint at eTTayapuram, and is even said to have composed a piece in honour of the king there. However, most of dIkShitar's masterpieces were written prior to this incident, and I can't think of any motivation other than spirituality that could have elicited all those wonderful compositions.
Of course, this doesn't strictly rule out the possibility that there were other composers who were equally good/better but did not have a lineage of decent disciples to propagate their songs; or, for that matter, peoples' "contrived" notions about religion being instrumental in giving superstar status to the trinity. However all these would at best be random speculations.
it seems rather contrived to assume that spirituality/religion/god provides the best possible motivation for creativity
I guess neither you nor I can have a reasonable idea of the psychology/disposition of someone who has genuine faith in God and sincerely considers realizing God as the ultimate aim in life. For others life might seem a purposeless and random exercise but not for these people.
kupamanduka .. actually when i was referring to royal patronage i tended to think of the medieval european artists..
in retrospect one thing i missed is the artists perspective .. to leave the longest-lasting impact it makes sense to pick themes that are likely to have more everlasting in which case religion seems like the obvious choice .. picking more temporally restricted themes would definitely limit the appeal/popularity of the work of art over time.
how about the fact that art requires education - of a basic sort atleast so people dont worry only about their painful lives at work and at home and think "higher" thoughts - and the only people who had access to it in the period you are considering were the clergy or those who held their shirttails(in the indian case these were the brahmins and in the european context, people attached to the monasteries or the courts). of course i am just expanding on what you meant by "leisure" and including a more immediate cause "education". i think {money <= luxury <= leisure <= education(decadence) <= art/science(waste)} is a pretty good (anti)causal chain with the possibility of a loop or two to complicate matters. this kind of explains the existence of a dikshitar or a tyagaraja as education is more immediate than money for art and the earlier links "money <= .. <= education," i feel, are valid too as they were never as poor as the vast majority of people in their time.
and of course the religious emphasis becomes either a reflection of the only environment these artists were accustomed to or a means to put into artistic form ideas that had to be propagated as necessary for the religion or for their personal glory(as being an important member of an important movement). i suppose this theory explains the object of artistic expression and the conditions necessary to create the need for it in all times equally well.
madatadam: your point about the correlation between education and religion in the medieval times is well-made .. nevertheless this only accounts for the creators having a religious background i would expect creations to have more diversity. e.g. most scientific advancements in these times came from priest-philosophers too so it can be argued that these folks did not spend their time exclusively on religious subjects
the point is art is imitation and the only thing they knew was religion.. science is innovation and even in that these scientists were either trying to prove God's work if they were religious or to reconcile the intellect with the Bible(or the Vedas) - that was as close to being religious as a scientist could come
any group whose members didn't have a rational basis to belong to it, that was interested in keeping its members, would need to create an "emotional bonding". music is highly emotive.
this might explain why religion needs music, it doesn't explain why most music is religious. actually, i'm not even sure if that is true.
btw, i was wondering what other such groups could be ..nationality seemed to be close(think anthems, patriotic songs)
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