Miley Cyrus’s vulgar VMA antics recently evoked ardent criticisms from what seems like all bloggers, moms, and journalists alike. Despite some disparity between accusations, there seems to be a consensus that her performance was bad, and not just bad, but wrong.

Could this widespread repulsion to Miley’s display point to something we know inherently about what music ought to be and do?

Great thinkers have often called music the most spiritual of the arts. Beginning with Pythagoras’s discovery of the arithmetical relationships between harmonic intervals, music assumed sacred societal significance because of its participation in this “heavenly harmony.”

Espousing Pythagoras and Plato, 6th century Christian philosopher, Boethius, said

music is related not only to speculation, but to morality as well, for nothing is more consistent with human nature than to be soothed by sweet modes and disturbed by their opposites. Thus we can begin to understand the apt doctrine of Plato, which holds that the whole of the universe is united by a musical concord. For when we compare that which is coherently and harmoniously joined together within our own being with that which is coherently and harmoniously joined together in sound—that is, that which gives us pleasure— so we come to recognize that we ourselves are united according to the same principle of similarity.

Boethius’s text prevailed as the primary musical theory text for 1400 years until moderns began heralding “self expression” and “technicality” as music’s high values. Yet given the classical, sacred nature of music, Miley’s rebellious performance seems to almost desecrate something naturally sacred.

Roger Scruton argues, “The current habit of desecrating beauty suggests that people are as aware as they ever were of the presence of sacred things. Desecration is a kind of defense against the sacred, an attempt to destroy its claims. In the presence of sacred things, our lives are judged, and to escape that judgment, we destroy the thing that seems to accuse us.”

Sure, Miley’s performance intentionally indulges in egotistical self-expression, advocates a carless relativistic morality, attempts to provoke base emotions, and falls drastically short of beauty. However, this failure bears witness to something profound. Failure to be Good, True and Beautiful, can only exist in reference to the Good, True and Beautiful. Miley’s musical performance was unarguably bad, but it was bad because it fails to be good. Thus in its badness it gives testimony to that-which-it-fails-to-be, namely Good, who is God.