Religion in a Secular Age Enlightenment is man s leaving his self-caused immaturity.
Immaturity is the incapacity to use one s intelligence without the guidance of another.
The Enlightenment saw the entrenchment of a growing belief that art was not primarily a religious phenomenon. Most composers wrote their Masses and motets in a more or less operatic style, with a few passages set in accordance with tradition in strict counterpoint, as a concession to the stile antico of earlier religious music. The legacy of music written for the protestant tradition at this time is slight. The protestant churches based their appeal on the power of the spoken word and in this growing age of reason there now was little place for music outside the devotional hymn. With the rise of Methodism in England, however, the English Hymn has its heyday.