The Importance of Tradition
If you want to get more satisfaction out of playing (and listening to) music, it is helpful to study music theory and music history. To know why Beethoven wrote the way he did, you should know what came before him – in the music of Mozart and Hayden. If you want to know why Miles Davis played jazz the way he did, it would be wise to study the music of Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker. Artistic style is often a response to something that came before it.
Likewise, if you want to better understand your Christian faith, you should learn the history of Christianity. To know why Christians, 2000 years after Jesus, believe certain things or do certain things you should take the time to learn about things like: the development of the Bible, Christianity being illegal during the second and third centuries, the origins of the papacy, and the lives of certain remarkable Christian people.
Christian bookstores can be an embarrasment sometimes. If you are looking for any information about Christian history between the years 100 and 1500 you are out of luck. That is about 3/4 of the entire Christian era. But many of these stores have a primarily Fundamentalist Evangelical customer base, and the history of Christianity between the writing of the Bible and Martin Luther does not appeal to that group.
People forget about music history too. We forget a) that there was music before the record was invented and b) that popular, commercial music is not the best that we can do as a culture.
Music today is a flower blooming on the end of the branches of history just like Christianity is a flower on the branches of the Christians who came before us. Learning the traditions of both is important in having your life and your art bloom more beautifully in the world.
Recommendations for Studying Music History:
The History of Classical Music
A History of American Folk Music
A History of Southern Gospel Music
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