a friend yesterday sent me a post on reddit (he is very scrupulous and likes to research the lives of composers and writers to make sure they are safe) because this post was from a satanic community on reddit, from a guy asking for song recommendations occultists and one person nominated Dvorak and Beethoven which I found strange because Dvorak was a devout Catholic and Beethoven apparently was not an occultist, but what scared me is that the other composers he nominated were occultists and even Satanists, does anyone know anything if these two composers were occultist
I'll second MiracleOfTheSun here- I don't recall hearing anything regarding Dvorak and Beethoven that indicated satanic influences. Beethoven's Enlightenment-oriented ideas are important to be aware of, but don't in any way prohibit a Catholic from listening to his works. For what it's worth, Bishop Williamson is a big proponent of studying Beethoven's works both to appreciate their musical greatness as well as clinically assess how those Enlightenment ideas contributed to the situation in the modern world.
In fact, the vast majority of other "big name" classical composers (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Pachelbel, Hayden, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, etc.) as well as scores of lesser known ones don't have anything in their works that might be considered occult. It is definitely worth it to look into the composer's life as well as the underlying "theme" of the music to understand influences, but most of the works are fine. Sometimes you do find references to Greco-Roman mythology, but this was a component of the Catholic "Classical Education" for years. As long as it is properly understood and in it's proper place it shouldn't be harmful. A few composers like Mozart are known to have been Freemasons, which is also important to be aware of, but in most cases it doesn't appear to have affected the character of the music itself.
Another aspect to keep in mind about that Reddit "nomination": it is very common for those of dubious morals, false religion, or the occult to grab great Western cultural items of the past and claim them as their own (or line them up alongside their own work), even if these cultural items contain no relevance at all to their flawed belief systems. I recalled a choir director stating that Gregorio Allegri's Good Friday work
Miserere, which has nothing occult about it at all, was used as a soundtrack in a vampire movie. The reason? The movie makers wanted something "haunting" or "mournful". And there are countless other examples of horror films "stealing" snatches of classical music and then using them out of context. As a result, "lists" like that on Reddit may have no relevance to the meaning of the musical work itself. They probably picked Beethoven and Dvorak because they sounded "cool" or "mysterious" or "spiritual", not because the works contained any occult content.
Topic: dvorak and beethoven satanism? (Read 2855 times)