Truth, beauty, and goodness are "Trancendentals", or qualities inherent in the Creator and therefore in Creation. There is objective truth and objective goodness (some things are always true, some things always evil.) It would seem then that there is objective beauty (some things are beautiful, others are not; it's not just a matter of personal taste.) Is it wrong then to listen to "unbeautiful" or perhaps unskillful music? How do we define objective beauty when it comes to music? As humans, we have an innate sense of what sounds good and what doesn't (based on the fact that we are made in the image of God.) Is this all we have to go on when determining what is beautiful music? Can we say that certain person's "music tastes" are objectively wrong? I have personally come to the conclusion that there is some standard for music, but that we can't make many dogmatic statements about what that standard is because of a lack of Biblical direction on it. When it comes to truth and goodness, Scripture gives us direct commands on what is right or not. When it comes to music, we essentially just have the fact that we are made in the image of God and he understands what is beautiful music, so we have some innate guidelines. I welcome any other thoughts or conclusions.
(Just to clarify, I'm not talking about music that is bad because of immoral lyrics. That should be rejected on the basis of objective goodness. I'm talking about beauty inherent in the musical notes.)
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