Creators of the musical spirit, or the spiritual perspective of music

In ancient times, music was conceived solely as an attribute of prayer, temple action, sublime perception, and, in this sense, it protected the human spirit from excessive enthusiasm for its own nature. However, closed in on its own self, on the eve of the Modern Period, the human soul longed for music to please its senses. In the 20th century this position resulted in the usual dominance of entertainment music over the centuries-old spiritual and secular classical musical tradition. In parallel, the philosophical and theological understanding of music is developing anew. A. Schnittke, for example, believed that musical hits are a direct manifestation of evil in art, which manifests itself in the multiplying stereotypes of thoughts and sensations, and saw as a counterweight the structure and orderliness of being, amenable to expression with the help of music. The author of this article traces the main lines of understanding the structure and meaning of music by Russian composers, philosophers and theologians, and comes to the conclusion that both church and high secular music in the 21st century are talking about the same thing - the search for the spiritual source of all creativity.