Art & Creativity Quote by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Goethe draws a bright border around music that modern ears might find almost scandalously strict: sacred or secular, dignity or cheer. But the severity is the point. He is writing from a late-Enlightenment mindset that wanted art to have a moral temperature, not just a mood. The sacred, in his framing, is not merely religious repertoire; it is music aligned with a sense of human elevation, order, and seriousness. Calling it “dignity” turns music into ethical architecture, something that can shape conduct and inner life, not just decorate it. That is why he claims its “greatest effect on life” and insists this power is stable “through all ages and epochs.” He’s arguing for a kind of permanent human wiring: certain sounds and structures reliably raise us toward reflection, restraint, and awe.

The secular side is treated more narrowly: it “should be cheerful throughout.” That “should” is doing cultural policing. Goethe’s subtext is anxiety about art that blurs categories - entertainment that pretends to profundity, or worldly music that imports sacred gravitas without the responsibilities of it. In an era when public concerts, salons, and bourgeois leisure were transforming music into a mass social force, he’s trying to keep the social contract clear: sacred music carries the weight of collective meaning; secular music keeps the room humane, light, and sociable.

It’s also a rhetorical move of control. By giving the sacred timeless authority and relegating the secular to cheer, Goethe protects a hierarchy of value - and reveals how seriously his culture feared pleasure that didn’t know its place.