Sybarite, of course it doesn't really matter, I'm simply fond of an orderly world, "where everything was in its place, under the last dust" - Samuel Beckett. Music will never reach a perfect description of anything except emotion and interest personified. If you wish for an accurate description of traffic, go stand on the freeway, and even if you tried to explain it musically it becomes trapped in 'concrete' music, or 'absolute music' the moment it has taken shape into a composition, no amount of honking horns can change that.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I'd have to disagree. As I said earlier, no two live performances of any piece are ever the same. And even when cast in the 'concrete' of a recording, a listener will hear different things every time that they approach a work. I would also suggest that even those pieces of music that are accorded common aclaim rely on a subjective response particularly from the new listener and particularly if that new listener has not been told that this is A Great Work.
If a work was cast in concrete from the moment that it was committed to paper, then it would be nonsensical for any of us to own more than one recording of a work, since they would all be identical. But interpretation (only one aspect of the fluidity of music) ensures that many of us have more than one version of some works.
Christ in many ways is quite mysterious as to what exactly his crucifixion means, as he himself admited that he had spoken figurativaly with his parables. Examples of Religious music such as the ones you mentioned, and the greats of the church modes show excellent examples of a type of prefection coming from things of the beyond. Religious music is divine, fortunately it becomes just as 'concrete' once put on paper.
Religious music was often the only way that a composer could compose via patronage. It was the same with the visual arts.
I'm sure that you're not suggesting that a piece of music, if of a religious nature, is automatically superior to a piece of secular work or that, for instance, Beethoven was 'divinely inspired' for some works but less so for others particularly ones that could be viewed as rather more the product of rational thought and politics, such as the third and ninth symphonies. And if a mass was inspired then what brought into being, say, a secular sympony of piano concerto?
I would also suggest that any music is only "divine" (in a religious sense) in the mind of the listener.
As I noted on another thread yesterday, I was listening to
Also Sprach Zarathustra and, in the second movement, had an intensely emotional response to the music. I could describe it as 'divine' (not religiously), but if we allow religious music some sort of special inspiration, then it leaves us foundering to explain secular music and the response of listeners to that.
And finally, I would disagree again with your assertion about any work (religious or otherwise) becoming "concrete". Every new performance will reinvent it. No two performances will ever be identical and no two listeners will ever hear the same thing.
