# What does popularity actually indicate?



## mmsbls

We’ve had many threads where people have discussed the popularity of works or composers, and in some cases, there may be an implication that popularity is an indicator of quality. Mozart is more popular than Haas; therefore, Mozart is better than Haas. Often people respond saying that popularity does not equate to quality; otherwise, Justin Bieber (and most popular music) would have to be considered better than Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven. 

I’d like to restrict the concept of popularity and ask what the restricted concept indicates about the music. Most people would not compare The Marriage of Figaro to a Toyota Prius. Both are wonderful but at vastly different things. So I would use the concept of popularity not among all music and all listeners but rather among music that is similar and listeners that have particular backgrounds. Of course one must decide how restrictive to make the class of musical works and listeners. For now, maybe we say music from the same classical music era and listeners with reasonable experience listening to such music. Defining exactly what “reasonable experience” might mean can be a task for the thread if necessary.

So the question then becomes, “What does it mean about the music (and listeners) when a group of moderately experienced listeners indicates a strong preference for one composer or work over another from a particular classical music era?” 

Incidentally, the modern/contemporary era likely would require greater restrictions (maybe minimalism, serialism, aleatoric, spectralism, etc.)

There are undefined concepts here, but I wanted the OP to have fewer than 20 pages.


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## Guest

Terms in need of definition marked with a *

I think popularity is an indicator of distinct combination of accessibility* and successful marketing*. I see no correlation with quality.


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## Epilogue

Immediate popularity means something, but only relative to other contemporary artists. (Specifically, it means somebody, somewhere in the process is probably doing something right; and, if the critics are calling you inaccessible even though the general public likes you, it means it's probably time for them to shut up.)

Immediate or enduring unpopularity doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Enduring popularity means you're good enough that people don't get entirely sick of you even after hearing you a hundred times.


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## isorhythm

I'd say quality and popularity are pretty strongly correlated within sets of works that are pursuing similar artistic ends, and consequently attracting similar audiences.


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## norman bates

isorhythm said:


> I'd say quality and popularity are pretty strongly correlated within sets of works that are pursuing similar artistic ends, and consequently attracting similar audiences.


you are forgetting that even there an artist can be very popular and unpopular in another period. Van Gogh sold just one painting in his life, and now he's one of the most famous painters in the world. Bach was considered by some "mediocre" in his life and now he's revered as a genius. Other composers were incredibly popular in their lifetime and now they are forgotten.


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## Richannes Wrahms

I really don't know. I don't know how the Große Fuge is praised or even the heavy, dissonant, strange and silly Turangalîla is loved by a good portion of the public but Schoenberg is not.


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## isorhythm

norman bates said:


> you are forgetting that even there an artist can be very popular and unpopular in another period. Van Gogh sold just one painting in his life, and now he's one of the most famous painters in the world. Bach was considered by some "mediocre" in his life and now he's revered as a genius. Other composers were incredibly popular in their lifetime and now they are forgotten.


As in any question of statistics - the larger the sample size, the more trustworthy the result.

The more time passes, the larger the audience becomes, and so the stronger the correlation.

I'm being glib here on purpose, but I do want to push back pretty hard against the idea that there's _no_ relationship between popularity and quality.


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## Guest

norman bates said:


> you are forgetting that even there an artist can be very popular and unpopular in another period. Van Gogh sold just one painting in his life, and now he's one of the most famous painters in the world. Bach was considered by some "mediocre" in his life and now he's revered as a genius. Other composers were incredibly popular in their lifetime and now they are forgotten.


I've thought about this one a lot before, too. Popularity does, in fact, fluctuate. My idea of musical quality is not one that fluctuates. This is also a counter to the phrase "well, x has stood the test of time." Does that mean La Boheme does not become a great work of art until a certain number of years passes? Ideally, one would address this by focusing on a single value for popularity... say, a "peak value" or a "final value"... problem with that is, it requires us to know the future.

No... too many logical holes for me.


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## isorhythm

nathan

Who is the most popular composer of the late 18th century, and has been continuously since he was alive?

Who is the best?

Do you think this is pure coincidence?


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## Guest

isorhythm said:


> nathan
> 
> Who is the most popular composer of the late 18th century, and has been continuously since he was alive?
> 
> Who is the best?
> 
> Do you think this is pure coincidence?


Question 1: Probably Mozart

Question 2: I don't know. I probably like Mozart the best, but I certainly find a good bit of friction with folks on this forum who claim absolute knowledge in such areas.

Pure coincidence? Well... no. I'll give it to you. There is a correlation. I suppose my argument would be better worded as...:

...There is a correlation, but it is such a complex function, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, sometimes real, sometimes imaginary, etc... that no universal meaning can be extrapolated from it. In this particular case, one might assume that the correlation came out positive...


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## mmsbls

nathanb said:


> Terms in need of definition marked with a *
> 
> I think popularity is an indicator of distinct combination of accessibility* and successful marketing*. I see no correlation with quality.


So if we look at highly ranked works from our post-1950 list, there are works that I believe are both popular (among the participants) and of high quality. Do you think they are popular due to accessibility and marketing? I suspect that those who voted for them have sampled a relatively large number of recent works and found those good/enjoyable but not because they are accessible or well marketed. I realize that you could have a somewhat different definition of those terms than I'm using.

I would agree that accessibility and marketing might have a greater impact on more "casual listeners", but I think there are listeners who are vastly less moved by those things.


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## mmsbls

Epilogue said:


> Immediate or enduring unpopularity doesn't necessarily mean anything.


Even if a work or composer is unpopular among highly knowledgeable listeners over a long period?


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## Epilogue

Yes, in theory and practice (e.g. Monteverdi).


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> So if we look at highly ranked works from our post-1950 list, there are works that I believe are both popular (among the participants) and of high quality. Do you think they are popular due to accessibility and marketing? I suspect that those who voted for them have sampled a relatively large number of recent works and found those good/enjoyable but not because they are accessible or well marketed. I realize that you could have a somewhat different definition of those terms than I'm using.
> 
> I would agree that accessibility and marketing might have a greater impact on more "casual listeners", but I think there are listeners who are vastly less moved by those things.


In terms of sample groups like post-1950 works of classical music, the terms become rather different, yes. But the two factors are consistent, I think. The idea of "marketing", for instance, shifts from "raking in 2 million a night on the world tour" to "has managed to get a work recorded by DG". The idea of "accessibility" likewise becomes "relative accessibility". Nevertheless, I think the main ideas behind those two terms remains consistent, yes.

I get the sense that you think those two terms are somehow derogatory. Well, in terms of J. Biebs, sure, yeah, they kind of are. In terms of most things, I intend them as neutral. And I think we're closer to determining something objective regarding both of those terms than we are regarding quality.


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## mmsbls

isorhythm said:


> I'm being glib here on purpose, but I do want to push back pretty hard against the idea that there's _no_ relationship between popularity and quality.


I also feel there is some relationship between popularity and something we can very generally equate with quality. I'm not sure I would equate quality with "being better than" many other works. Better can be definied in too many ways. But if a group of people _who strongly wish to hear works of the kind being considered_ strongly prefer one over the other, then I think it's reasonable to say the prefered work has qualities that resonate more strongly with that group. Those qualities which resonate perhaps can be a marker for a high quality work.


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## Chordalrock

mmsbls said:


> So the question then becomes, "What does it mean about the music (and listeners) when a group of moderately experienced listeners indicates a strong preference for one composer or work over another from a particular classical music era?"


It's a complex topic, but people insist on arguing about it in simplistic ways, ensuring that there will never be any sort of consensus on it (or understanding for that matter).

Anyway, some thoughts:

I think better works are unfailingly more characterful than lesser music, you could say more unique. They carve out a space for themselves that can't easily be filled by anything else.

I can sit on the piano and improvise all sorts of things easily, but I would never value such music highly - it comes too easy, and it sounds like it comes too easy. It's too common and it sounds like it's too common. It's like if gold was as common as dirt, no one would value it highly. (Its very glimmer might become annoying after a while. I'm sure there are personal differences that make some people able to enjoy the same thing over and over again while others get bored and want new.)

Certainly one thing that experienced listeners have in common is knowing what is dirt and what is gold, I mean simply that they know what is common and what is uncommon.

I'd like to think that great pieces of music also have a certain sound to them, a structure that is, in some sense, a beautiful thing regardless of whether there is anyone to perceive it. To appreciate it, would simply require perceiving it properly - hearing all the voices, hearing the harmony of it, the melodiousness of it (hearing the sound waves well), mentally grouping the notes according to rhythm, and so on.

But so far we've been assuming there is consensus about the great pieces within a genre. Perhaps there is, to a great extent, but there are also many people who'd disagree. I'd propose to explain this as a result of different mental associations and/or basic psychology.

Obviously, people have their own mental associations (about passages of music) that go beyond recognising uncommonness. It seems that people who discovered classical music, and music as a whole, in their childhood usually have a more lively engagement with it - their imaginations and emotions more easily stimulated by it. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems so from what I can tell. I doubt it's just lack of listening experience. I think it has something to do with how the brain is more malleable, imagination more active, and perception more magical as a child, and the synaptic connections that are or are not created in childhood. Some sort of associations. I suspect these can also become genetic to some extent.

Anyway, too much sensitivity to music can lead to over-appreciation of rather trite music (I mean music like unknown Baroque and Classical period composers that have been somewhat recorded in recent years). I don't mean that it's a bad thing for the person experiencing it, but it does kind of explain the popularity - in their times - of mediocre but easily accessible composers. I believe it can lead to such contentment that striving to appreciate more difficult music or unusual music is abandoned. Think of the Paris of Berlioz. Not a place and time where a contemporary music lover would want to live in, but one you can understand as being similar in spirit as the masses of pop consumers today - all immediate gratification, no self-improvement.

There's also different kinds of people in terms of their basic psychology, or the psychology they start with. I don't know what it is, but some nations seem more interested in melancholy music than others, for example.

So, I think there's clearly a relatively objective side to music appreciation: recognising how original the music is. There's also a subjective side: mental associations, sensitivity, and basic psychology.

P.S. There's also the component of attitude or framing, which can determine some of the associations that are made active when listening to a piece of music. Explains why movie-goers can appreciate atonal serialist music to some extent when watching a horror movie, but not on its own. (Personally, I find that watching images sometimes helps me to enjoy more the music I'm listening to, regardless of what kind of music it is.) Obviously, there's a tension between trying to enjoy a piece of music and trying to judge it properly. I guess the temptation for the listener in the modern world is to suspend all critical faculty and engage all methods of increasing the enjoyment of music when listening to it.


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## science

I don't think there is any objective "greatness" in the worlds of arts. It's all taste, IMO, but sometimes many people's taste-values overlap a bit and we can agree about what we like (overlapping subjectivities) and if a lot of "us" (some group, any group) really like it we can call it "great."

So there are people whose tastes overlap with mine, and when they say something is "great," I take it as a hint that I might enjoy it too. If I don't, I will probably give it multiple chances, trusting that I will enjoy it if I can share their insights.

When the issue of objective greatness, the implicit issue is the idea that some people's tastes are better than others. On that, here is something I wrote a long time ago that I still agree with:



science said:


> Regarding excellence of taste - as far as I can see, there are two separate things we need to distinguish: awareness, and preference. Let's use literature because it's easier for me to illustrate the difference.
> 
> I do not enjoy _1984_, _Brave New World_, or _Fahrenheit 451_ very much because too many details are meaningless, too much of the dialogue is unnatural, no symbolism is extensively developed, the moral of the story is too obvious, there is not much intertextuality, and the wordplay is not clever. They all have a lot of insight into the modern world and effectively call attention to extremely important problems, but those aspects of the novels are not so important to me. A different person with a similar awareness of literary devices could enjoy them enormously, simply by having different preferences. For example, I'd guess that Isaac Asimov was at least as well aware as I am of the flaws of _The Mists of Avalon_, and that I'm roughly as familiar with its virtues as he was, but he enjoyed it and I didn't, because that work's particular set of virtues pushed his buttons and not mine, while its particular set of flaws pushed mine and not his.
> 
> As an example in the other direction, _The Lord of the Flies_ has a number of problems that I recognize - constant violations of the laws of nature - but I like it very much because it is loaded with extensively developed symbolism - even allegory! - constant allusions to _Paradise Lost_, relatively few insignificant details, and the moral of the story is easily missed unless you read fairly carefully. Readers who demand physical plausibility and moral clarity will not enjoy it as much as I do, even if they have exactly the same awareness.
> 
> So there are four really good, maybe even great works of literature. If someone is about as aware of such things as I am, we can disagree about the novels, enjoy them differentially, and have very rewarding conversations about them. I mention those four because I have had such conversations with people whose insight into literature is at least as penetrating as mine: we generally see the same stuff, but we feel differently about it. We have _different_ tastes, but no one's tastes are superior or inferior. Great conversations, the world moves along swimmingly.
> 
> I can imagine a reader with a strong dislike of vulgar humor and moral ambiguity, who really loves stories about reasonable characters who overcome their emotions and behave rationally, or stories where an unambiguously good character defeats an unambiguously bad character; a reader indifferent to symbolism and puns, who doesn't enjoy comparing and contrasting scenes or characters to each other, or puzzling out political/religious implications of a story, or analyzing scenes from minor characters' points of view. Such a reader could understand Shakespeare as well as I do, and yet not enjoy his most famous works. I haven't met such a person yet, but I can imagine one. Her awareness could be equal to or greater than mine, but we'd have very different tastes.
> 
> But I've often talked to people who read _Catcher in the Rye_ without being aware of, say, the fact that Holden losing the foils in the subway probably signifies something, or who like _Chronicle of a Death Foretold_ without being aware that the fallibility of memory is a major theme. It's not that they don't like the kind of thing that Salinger or Garcia Marquez are doing in the books; they're just unaware of them. They have a right to their opinion, and I won't try to convert them, but I'm not going to seek them out for conversations about literature, because I see that they don't have a lot to offer. (Of course if I somehow met my younger self, I wouldn't talk to him about literature either, unless he were in a mood to listen relatively quietly.) Even when they like the books, I suppose it's good that they got some pleasure, but clearly I enjoyed them at a deeper level.
> 
> When someone reads, unaware of the kinds of things I've been discussing, we could be critical of that person's reading ability, whether they agree with me or not - though it wouldn't be polite conversation, and I wouldn't expect people to like me if I made a point of doing so. So there can be greater and lesser insights into works of art, but matters of taste are a different issue.
> 
> It would be bad enough to publicly flaunt my awareness of literary devices and language, visibly "turning my nose up" at people who for whatever reason haven't been able to educate themselves about such things; it would be even worse to pretend that my particular, arbitrary preferences are inherently superior to anyone who disagrees with me about the merits of a work.
> 
> In other words: having greater insight into a work of art is admirable, and though it is undeniable that some people don't have as much insight as others, it's not good conversation and anyone who makes a habit of pointing out their superior insight (even if they actually do have it) should expect to make enemies rather than friends. And insulting someone merely for having different tastes is even worse.
> 
> All this translates fairly straightforwardly into the realm of music. I'm not aware that the drummer hasn't played a measure exactly the same way all night, someone else is: he undeniably has insight that I don't. Two people both aware of that, one who thinks it's amazing and another who thinks it's excessive showboating: different preferences. Neither of them are wrong.
> 
> Unless they start insulting each other over it: then both of them are wrong.
> 
> Fortunately, that's uncommon in my experience. Like probably many people on this site, I'm blessed to have a fair number of friends who are professional musicians, composers, scholars, or work in the music industry. They all know far, far more than I do about music. They sometimes tell me about something that they think (usually correctly) that I haven't heard in the music, but they've never insulted me (and I certainly haven't insulted them) for liking something they didn't, or not liking something that they did.
> 
> I'm trying to think of the last time that happened to me in real life (as opposed to the internet). Not as good-natured teasing, but as actual personal condemnation for different musical tastes. I really can't remember any specific instance, but I'm sure it must have happened sometimes in early high school. The grunge rock guys, the rap guys, the country music guys, the top-40 guys - someone must have said something sometime about the Christian rock I was into back then. By my third or fourth year, I remember when I first got into Yanni, and a few of my friends were visibly skeptical, but none of them took an insulting tone about it, and at least one converted.
> 
> But for some reason it happens on the internet all the time.


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## SeptimalTritone

Okay this thread reminded me of this post I made earlier:



SeptimalTritone said:


> No, they actually are [coughing during preformances] on purpose.
> 
> When I was at the San Francisco Symphony, I went to a chamber music concert with members of the symphony as performers.
> 
> They had the Dutilleux string quartet and Schubert string quintet.
> 
> The Dutilleux was extremely well played. Very energetic, well balanced, in tune. And yet because it was a modern work, the audience coughed SO MUCH during the piece. The applause at the end was modest.
> 
> On the other hand, the Schubert was not well played. The first violinist was often (and I'm serious: often) out of tune when playing in the highest violin octave. And there was also intonation and dynamic balance issues in the 3 middle voices. Yet, the audience was basically silent and were rapt with attention. The applause at the end was thunderous.


(I probably should take back the statement that audience coughers are coughing because they are intentionally booing. I should have said that the audience is just simply uncomfortable with the Dutilleux.)

Anyway, my little trip to the symphony for a quartet concert disturbed me for the following reason:

I see two possibilities. Possibility 1: Dutilleux is inherently less expressive and beautiful to human beings in general (or classical music fans in general), as demonstrated by it's lack of connection with the audience, and therefore it has inherently less quality, and speaks less to people and isn't as universal, powerful, and deep. Or possibility 2: The audience didn't put in a reasonable amount of attention and focus into their listening, and weren't equipped to appreciate Dutilleux, and should have done a better job listening, or perhaps should have removed their preconceived prejudice against modern music from both an artistic and theoretical standpoint.

It's really hard for me to accept either possibility 1 or possibility 2. I feel like I either have to "blame" Dutilleux for not writing sensible music or I have to "blame" the audience for not listening properly (or perhaps "blame" the anti-modernist propaganda that pervades classical music culture). But I can't put the blame on either. I don't want to blame Dutilleux, because that would be compromising my genuine admiration for contemporary avant-garde, but I don't want to blame the audience, because that would be pretentious...


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## Guest

SeptimalTritone said:


> Okay this thread reminded me of this post I made earlier:
> 
> (I probably should take back the statement that audience coughers are coughing because they are intentionally booing. I should have said that the audience is just simply uncomfortable with the Dutilleux.)
> 
> Anyway, my little trip to the symphony for a quartet concert disturbed me for the following reason:
> 
> I see two possibilities. Possibility 1: Dutilleux is inherently less expressive and beautiful to human beings in general (or classical music fans in general), as demonstrated by it's lack of connection with the audience, and therefore it has inherently less quality, and speaks less to people and isn't as universal, powerful, and deep. Or possibility 2: The audience didn't put in a reasonable amount of attention and focus into their listening, and weren't equipped to appreciate Dutilleux, and should have done a better job listening, or perhaps should have removed their preconceived prejudice against modern music from both an artistic and theoretical standpoint.
> 
> It's really hard for me to accept either possibility 1 or possibility 2. I feel like I either have to "blame" Dutilleux for not writing sensible music or I have to "blame" the audience for not listening properly (or perhaps "blame" the anti-modernist propaganda that pervades classical music culture). But I can't put the blame on either. I don't want to blame Dutilleux, because that would be compromising my genuine admiration for contemporary avant-garde, but I don't want to blame the audience, because that would be pretentious...


And then you have to remember to blame yourself for liking the wrong music. It's terribly tedious, this game of disparagement, isn't it?


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## mmsbls

nathanb said:


> In terms of sample groups like post-1950 works of classical music, the terms become rather different, yes. But the two factors are consistent, I think. The idea of "marketing", for instance, shifts from "raking in 2 million a night on the world tour" to "has managed to get a work recorded by DG". The idea of "accessibility" likewise becomes "relative accessibility". Nevertheless, I think the main ideas behind those two terms remains consistent, yes.
> 
> I get the sense that you think those two terms are somehow derogatory. Well, in terms of J. Biebs, sure, yeah, they kind of are. In terms of most things, I intend them as neutral. And I think we're closer to determining something objective regarding both of those terms than we are regarding quality.


I don't think the terms are necessarily derogatory. I would agree that one has to have a work recorded; otherwise, almost no listeners will ever hear it. I think we're trying to determine quality among works that have been recorded and can be heard by all of us relatively easily.

I'm not sure exactly how you would define accessible. One could define it as, "The more one likes it, the more accessible it is." I don't think you're defining it that way. If you define it the way most on TC do - something resembling familiarity (i.e. Stocjhausen is less accessible than Mozart), I think many voting for that list find many such works assessible.


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## Strange Magic

I take what some might consider an extreme position on "quality",' "greatness", etc. in the arts: I banish the concepts completely, and consider that I only know what pleases and displeases me, or fails to interest me at all. Aside from accurately stating a work's creator, its dates, its genre, its place in relation to other works by its creator or other creators, the "objective" part of the discussion ends there. From that point onward, it's about what you like vs. what I like. This approach causes some to tremble with rage-- they know that X is far, far better than Y. But no one I have ever met ever agrees when a critic tells them that a work they love, they really should not love.


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## SeptimalTritone

nathanb said:


> And then you have to remember to blame yourself for liking the wrong music. It's terribly tedious, this game of disparagement, isn't it?


Believe me man, I've blamed myself a lot for liking the wrong music a bit too much, and liking the right music a bit too little.

For example, I love Beethoven's drama, angular harmonic shifts, form, development, motifs, dissonance... but of course this love for Beethoven is shallow high-testosterone whiny fist-shaking obviousness! Damn! I actually have tried to "train" myself to not like Beethoven.

Or as another example, I'm not able to enjoy Karkowski and Merzbow very much. Their music is texturally thin, simple, not developed in time in an interesting way, and not very viscerally gripping. But of course, the high connoisseurs love him! I have similarly tried to "train" myself to like them, but I just can't do it. I've tried "trying", I've tried "not trying", I've tried "letting it wash over", I've tried "listening carefully and attentively", I've tried "being in the moment", I've tried "dropping preconceptions" and I still don't like it.

But honestly, we on TC as a whole disparage beginners all the time for thinking Schoenberg is "random and unnatural" or for thinking Cage is "a pseudo-philosophical non-musician". In fact, I'm guilty of disparaging beginners too! It's clear to me that disparagement in myself or in others will never leave...


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I'm not sure exactly how you would define accessible. One could define it as, "The more one likes it, the more accessible it is." I don't think you're defining it that way. If you define it the way most on TC do - something resembling familiarity (i.e. Stocjhausen is less accessible than Mozart), I think many voting for that list find many such works assessible.


Interestingly, this is where I find Strange Magic's post from the other thread that caused a bit of trouble... this is where I find that sort of stuff applicable. The reason I took issue with that post was not because I intended to dispute the evidence. I agree that there are psychological effects of various successive frequency combinations and whatnot. The reason I took issue with the original post was because, at the time, I saw it as an attempt to equate these psychological effects with _quality_. No... I associate them with _accessibility_, and nothing more. So when I say accessibility, I'm referring to a broad umbrella of possibilities. Whether we are born with it or conditioned to it by culture, people in Western culture are certainly more responsive on average to certain forms and sounds that lend themselves to memorability. What I am saying is not that this is false... merely that it would be a mistake to merge this train of thought with the notion of "quality"... only mere "accessibility".


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## mmsbls

Chordalrock said:


> Obviously, people have their own mental associations (about passages of music) that go beyond recognising uncommonness. It seems that people who discovered classical music, and music as a whole, in their childhood usually have a more lively engagement with it - their imaginations and emotions more easily stimulated by it. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems so from what I can tell. I doubt it's just lack of listening experience. I think it has something to do with how the brain is more malleable, imagination more active, aI suspect these can also become genetic to some extent.nd perception more magical as a child, and the synaptic connections that are or are not created in childhood. Some sort of associations.


I'm not sure to what extent this idea is true, but I think it's a very interesting possibility.


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## KenOC

We've discussed this before -- well, what _haven't _we discussed before?  My view is unchanged. Popularity is something that can be measured. "Greatness" is a label that we attach to music per current fashion, depending on whether enough people consider a piece "great," regardless of how that might be defined.

So "greatness" is a fashion, nothing more. It's mutable and can (and does) change. If enough people suddenly enthused over Raff, he'd be "great" again, just as he was during his lifetime. And most of us would believe that couldn't ever change.


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## science

SeptimalTritone said:


> It's clear to me that disparagement in myself or in others will never leave...


You're right, and this is just one more reason that life basically sucks. Fortunately there are some good things - music among them - to compensate for the evil of the human heart.


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## science

SeptimalTritone said:


> I'm not able to enjoy Karkowski and Merzbow very much.


I'm really surprised that anyone of your knowledge would admit that! It's interesting what we're "supposed" to like.

I enjoy them about as much as I enjoy Beethoven. But my tastes in music are terrible - I don't like them because I've got some kind of aesthetic genius, just because I enjoy just about everything that isn't too sappy.

Edit: However, I don't care so much about my own enjoyment. I just want to know what I'm supposed to know!


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## ArtMusic

We cannot apply strict semantics and scientific concepts of definition and proof to art. It goes nowhere. Pure and simple.

Popularity is a measure of greatness, there is no doubt about that. But popularity is *one of* a number of factors. In particular, it is the consistency *over time that when popularity is maintained that is the quintessential difference*.

Justin Bieber might be enormously popular today but it is a fatal flaw to assume he is therefore great because his popularity is unlikely to stretch over centuries. That is the most pure and simplest difference.


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## KenOC

ArtMusic said:


> Justin Bieber might be enormously popular today but it is a fatal flaw to assume he is therefore great because his popularity is unlikely to stretch over centuries. That is the most pure and simplest difference.


If Brahms (say) were to fade from the scene during the next thousand years, would he still be "great"? Could we say that he was ever "great"?


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## Art Rock

science said:


> I don't think there is any objective "greatness" in the worlds of arts. It's all taste, IMO, but sometimes many people's taste-values overlap a bit and we can agree about what we like (overlapping subjectivities) and if a lot of "us" (some group, any group) really like it we can call it "great."


This. Even within a limited sub-group of classical music listeners, or an even more limited group if we focus on a certain period, you will not find consensus about whether a work is (objectively) great. If a lot of people love a certain work, and I do not, why would I be forced to say it is great? Popular, yes, that's clear, but not (objectively) great. And that so many others love it will not change my personal opinion about that work.

And of course there is a semantics game going on, whether one likes it or not. If you state that popularity and standing the test of time determine greatness, then popularity and standing the test of time determine greatness (for you).


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## science

KenOC said:


> If Brahms (say) were to fade from the scene during the next thousand years, would he still be "great"? Could we say that he was ever "great"?


Why Brahms? Why not use Machaut or Josquin - someone who was once considered "great" that has been essentially forgotten.


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## ArtMusic

KenOC said:


> If Brahms (say) were to fade from the scene during the next thousand years, would he still be "great"? Could we say that he was ever "great"?


My answer to that is given he has always been popular for nearly two centuries and the continued culturing of Brahms' music at music schools, it is extremely unlikely he will fade.


----------



## KenOC

ArtMusic said:


> My answer to that is given he has always been popular for nearly two centuries and the continued culturing of Brahms' music at music schools, it is extremely unlikely he will fade.


Not a very satisfying answer! Brahms has been considered "great" (by some) for about a century and a half. Maybe he's approaching his "best used by" date. How would any of us know?


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## arpeggio

I have had many experiences not only here but also with the various groups I have been involved with concerning this issue. I apologize for being redundant.

I really do not know what constitutes great music. 

I have found that the popularity rhetoric is a bogus argument used be people to discredit music they dislike. I recently had a discussion with a board member of a group that I play with. Instead of popularity she used the term "audience" music.


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## science

arpeggio said:


> I have found that the popularity rhetoric is a bogus argument used be people to discredit music they dislike.


It works both ways: something might be supposed to be good because it's popular, or it might be supposed to be bad because it's popular. The latter is probably more common here.


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## senza sordino

I too really don't know what constitutes great music. What I like might be neither great nor popular. I know what I like. 

I don't know the answer to the opening post. I don't know what popularity actually indicates. Maybe it only means lots of people like it.


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## science

ArtMusic said:


> My answer to that is given he has always been popular for nearly two centuries and the continued culturing of Brahms' music at music schools, it is extremely unlikely he will fade.


Consider Machaut and Josquin. Or Francesco Landini. Or John Dunstable. Or Leonel Power. Or Gilles Binchois. Guillaume Dufay. Giulio Caccini. Or any number of other "great" composers who've been essentially forgotten.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> Consider Machaut and Josquin. Or Francesco Landini. Or John Dunstable. Or Leonel Power. Or Gilles Binchois. Guillaume Dufay. Giulio Caccini. Or any number of other "great" composers who've been essentially forgotten.


These had greatness attributed to them by mistake. Pure and simple.


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## KenOC

dogen said:


> These had greatness attributed to them by mistake. Pure and simple.


"Some are born to greatness. Others have greatness thrust upon them. Still others achieve greatness through the opinions of idiots." Eh?


----------



## SeptimalTritone

arpeggio said:


> I recently had a discussion with a board member of a group that I play with. Instead of popularity she used the term "audience" music.


OOOOH I love this term! "Audience music" 

Unfortunately, that term is somewhat pejorative of the audience...

I wonder if it's possible to:

1. Believe in the greatness of the contemporary avant-garde
2. Not be pejorative towards the general audience's lack of receptivity

I want to do both at the same time, but I don't know how!!! Is it even possible?

I've always felt that the Mickey Mouse "like the music you want to like it's all taste" is sort of a politically correct white lie. We talk about the intellectual merits of classical music and it's various composers and pieces all the time. If one doesn't like the correct music, isn't one, well... less intellectually and emotionally intelligent?

I mean, I personally can't accept it myself when I can't bring myself to like the right music! Of course, I'm a nice goody two-shoes so I tell everybody else the white lie of "like the music you want to like it's all taste", but deep down, I know that there is a collection of both old and contemporary classical that one really should like if he truly were intellectually and emotionally intelligent. And unfortunately, I'm not there...


----------



## mmsbls

SeptimalTritone said:


> It's really hard for me to accept either possibility 1 or possibility 2. I feel like I either have to "blame" Dutilleux for not writing sensible music or I have to "blame" the audience for not listening properly (or perhaps "blame" the anti-modernist propaganda that pervades classical music culture). But I can't put the blame on either. I don't want to blame Dutilleux, because that would be compromising my genuine admiration for contemporary avant-garde, but I don't want to blame the audience, because that would be pretentious...


I'm assuming you know this, but there's no reason to blame anyone. Dutilleux studied, practiced, and ultimately wrote interesting music that some quite enjoy. Good for him. The vast majority in your audience enjoy a wide variety of wonderful music but do not enjoy Dutilleux (or presumably many other modern composers). Like most of us they would have to listen carefully to Dutilleux and perhaps other modern composers for some significant amount of time to gradually learn to understand the "language" and enjoy the music. They have not chosen to do so. They have plenty of wonderful music to enjoy plus a world of other things to do. There's no reason to blame them either.

You and I like both Dutilleux and quantum mechanics. We are in a very small minority, and that's both OK and understandable.



SeptimalTritone said:


> But honestly, we on TC as a whole disparage beginners all the time for thinking Schoenberg is "random and unnatural" or for thinking Cage is "a pseudo-philosophical non-musician". In fact, I'm guilty of disparaging beginners too! It's clear to me that disparagement in myself or in others will never leave...


It's apparently quite common for people to grow up listening to tonal music and later to find Schoenberg's music rather odd and Cage downright bizarre. Why disparage that? It's a bit like disparaging people for not knowing the principles of accounting. Most people don't. Many can learn if they wish, but it may not be easy.

Sure, I understand that some are frustrated that others don't put in the effort necessary to overcome certain limitations. Many simply don't feel that need or desire to do so.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

science said:


> Consider Machaut and Josquin. Or Francesco Landini. Or John Dunstable. Or Leonel Power. Or Gilles Binchois. Guillaume Dufay. Giulio Caccini. Or any number of other "great" composers who've been essentially forgotten.


Who *had* been essentially forgotten, still ignored by an audience who goes to *concert halls* and considers the Baroque to be the start of classical music, all since Mendelssohn invented 'lets play old music' and revived Bach. Places with strong choral traditions still sang some of them.

You could still say they lived on in the contrapunctal devices they introduced and developed. 20th century unearthing and study of pre-common practice music got to squeeze even more tricks out of them, to many modern composers amusement and admiration.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

mmsbls said:


> I'm assuming you know this, but there's no reason to blame anyone. Dutilleux studied, practiced, and ultimately wrote interesting music that some quite enjoy. Good for him. The vast majority in your audience enjoy a wide variety of wonderful music but do not enjoy Dutilleux (or presumably many other modern composers). Like most of us they would have to listen carefully to Dutilleux and perhaps other modern composers for some significant amount of time to gradually learn to understand the "language" and enjoy the music. They have not chosen to do so. They have plenty of wonderful music to enjoy plus a world of other things to do. There's no reason to blame them either.
> 
> You and I like both Dutilleux and quantum mechanics. We are in a very small minority, and that's both OK and understandable.
> 
> It's apparently quite common for people to grow up listening to tonal music and later to find Schoenberg's music rather odd and Cage downright bizarre. Why disparage that? It's a bit like disparaging people for not knowing the principles of accounting. Most people don't. Many can learn if they wish, but it may not be easy.
> 
> Sure, I understand that some are frustrated that others don't put in the effort necessary to overcome certain limitations. Many simply don't feel that need or desire to do so.


OK I see your point.

Getting into modern music is like learning how to do chess, or sudoku, or quantum mechanics, or speak Japanese, or meditation. It's a worthwhile thing to do that's not easy at first, but becomes rewarding after some getting used to. And it's generally much easier than physics or other topics, because one just has to listen and be alert.

And yes, it's not for everyone. It will, generally speaking, tend to be less popular by virtue of its adventurousness which takes people out of their comfort zone. Unless a huge cultural shift throughout humanity occurs that really really values going out of your comfort zone to a much starker degree, it will always be less popular. But, of course, that doesn't change its inherent qualities.

I guess I tend to be bothered by the "Modern composers have abandoned their audience by writing unnatural music" sort of opinion. That sort of opinion, in a way, puts a lot of unjustified blame on composers by making a judgement call.


----------



## arpeggio

SeptimalTritone said:


> OOOOH I love this term! "Audience music"
> 
> Unfortunately, that term is somewhat pejorative of the audience...


Clarification. The term can work both ways. I was not the one who used the term "audience" music to be critical of the audience. Within the context of our discussion, the board member used it as a pejorative remark directed at the members of the group who liked to perform contemporary music. It was another way of accusing us of being elitist snobs.


----------



## Sloe

SeptimalTritone said:


> Okay this thread reminded me of this post I made earlier:
> 
> (I probably should take back the statement that audience coughers are coughing because they are intentionally booing. I should have said that the audience is just simply uncomfortable with the Dutilleux.)
> 
> Anyway, my little trip to the symphony for a quartet concert disturbed me for the following reason:
> 
> I see two possibilities. Possibility 1: Dutilleux is inherently less expressive and beautiful to human beings in general (or classical music fans in general), as demonstrated by it's lack of connection with the audience, and therefore it has inherently less quality, and speaks less to people and isn't as universal, powerful, and deep. Or possibility 2: The audience didn't put in a reasonable amount of attention and focus into their listening, and weren't equipped to appreciate Dutilleux, and should have done a better job listening, or perhaps should have removed their preconceived prejudice against modern music from both an artistic and theoretical standpoint.
> 
> It's really hard for me to accept either possibility 1 or possibility 2. I feel like I either have to "blame" Dutilleux for not writing sensible music or I have to "blame" the audience for not listening properly (or perhaps "blame" the anti-modernist propaganda that pervades classical music culture). But I can't put the blame on either. I don't want to blame Dutilleux, because that would be compromising my genuine admiration for contemporary avant-garde, but I don't want to blame the audience, because that would be pretentious...


I think all string quartets sounds a bit harsch and don´t hear that much difference between a string quartet from Schubert´s time and our own time at least not in accessibility it is different when it come to other kinds of music.


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## Dim7

I guess Justin Bieber's popularity doesn't matter because he's liked by the "wrong people". The "quality" of the audience matters as well it seems.


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## KenOC

Bingo. Perhaps we're concerned about these topics of longevity, greatness, etc., while our entire mud puddle is drying up. That would be ironic, would it not?


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## Dim7

ArtMusic said:


> We cannot apply strict semantics and scientific concepts of definition and proof to art. It goes nowhere. Pure and simple.
> 
> Popularity is a measure of greatness, there is no doubt about that. But popularity is *one of* a number of factors. In particular, it is the consistency *over time that when popularity is maintained that is the quintessential difference*.
> 
> Justin Bieber might be enormously popular today but it is a fatal flaw to assume he is therefore great because his popularity is unlikely to stretch over centuries. That is the most pure and simplest difference.


You make actually a good point about lasting popularity but repeating the mantra "pure and simple" does not add anything to it - and I would even say it makes people less likely to agree with you.


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## Dim7

KenOC said:


> Bingo. Perhaps we're concerned about these topics of longevity, greatness, etc., while our entire mud puddle is drying up. That would be ironic, would it not?


Now we're talking about mud puddles?? I'm confused.


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## Richannes Wrahms

KenOC said:


> Bingo. Perhaps we're concerned about these topics of longevity, greatness, etc., while our entire mud puddle is drying up. That would be ironic, would it not?


At worst it will go back to be like high art used to be since ever. Then you can shame their 'elitism' or whatever. As long as I can buy their recordings I don't care.


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## SeptimalTritone

Ken is saying that classical music as a whole is declining in popularity i.e. our mud puddle is drying up.

There are composers who write in a triadic, orchestral, accessible style that is, in fact, complex and interesting. I'm particularly partial to Hans Abrahamsen amongst this crew.

If in fact classical music is declining in popularity, I don't think it's because of composers. Sure there's the avant-garde forefront, but there are a good amount of more "tonal" composers out there...


----------



## KenOC

Dim7 said:


> Now we're talking about mud puddles?? I'm confused.


I'm speaking of the entire expanse of what we call "classical music." Maybe that mud puddle has already dried up. Maybe Beethoven's symphonies are no different from Rembrandt's paintings -- something we admire and wonder at, but that have no connection to our lives today. Is it possible?

Perhaps the tradition we treasure is no longer being continued. If that's the case, what future can we face except to wander, endlessly, our museum?


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## Epilogue

Dim7 said:


> Now we're talking about mud puddles??


It's classical music. We're always talking about a mud puddle. (Or, as KenOC notes, maybe even less than that.)


----------



## mmsbls

SeptimalTritone said:


> I guess I tend to be bothered by the "Modern composers have abandoned their audience by writing unnatural music" sort of opinion. That sort of opinion, in a way, puts a lot of unjustified blame on composers by making a judgement call.


It is unfortunate that some blame composers. I've never blamed composers, but I understand the feelings of those who do. There's so much classical music that's beautiful, but new music doesn't just sound bad like maybe country music (just an example). It sounds so horrible that no one could possibly like it. What on earth are those composers thinking? Why would they compose awful sounding music? In their world, that view does make sense. In our world, it seriously misunderstands what composers and moderm music lovers are like.


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## Epilogue

SeptimalTritone said:


> There are composers who write in a triadic, orchestral, accessible style that is, in fact, complex and interesting. I'm particularly partial to Hans Abrahamsen amongst this crew.
> 
> If in fact classical music is declining in popularity, I don't think it's because of composers. Sure there's the avant-garde forefront, but there are a good amount of more "tonal" composers out there...


Well, just because a composer writes triadic music doesn't mean it isn't his fault that he isn't popular.

(And for that matter, _Wozzeck_ mattered to a bigger proportion of the population in 1920s Germany than any new classical piece, tonal or not, in any major country today.)


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## SeptimalTritone

Epilogue said:


> Well, just because a composer writes triadic music doesn't mean it isn't his fault that he isn't popular.
> 
> (And for that matter, _Wozzeck_ mattered to a bigger proportion of the population in 1920s Germany than any new classical piece, tonal or not, in any major country today.)


Whether triadic or nontriadic, tonal or atonal: there are a good number of composers today (often those premiered at the BBC proms) that really do care about a larger audience and write to be accessible. Hans Abrahamsen, both John Adams, Magnus Lindberg, Philip Glass, John Corigliano... (I know there are a lot more I just can't think of them right now.)

Now, if you think those guys are just not good still, the only thing then would be to turn back to common practice tonality.

Some experts might call this "pastiche", but honestly, I've changed my opinion about this one. I think some common practice tonality composition might be okay, so long as it doesn't exclude the avant garde. I think that if enough composers or musicologists nowadays feel an inspiration to return to Beethoven, then it's okay. I'm being serious: I know the experts don't like this idea but I think that if enough people, both composers and laymen, want it, then they should consider it and then do it. If this would save classical music, then it should be done (as long as Ferneyhough, Barrett, and Billone can still exist and do their thing).


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## Epilogue

SeptimalTritone said:


> Now, if you think those guys are just not good still, the only thing then would be to turn back to common practice tonality.


I didn't say they weren't good. (Well, John C. Adams and Corigliano aren't good.) But except for Philip Glass, they aren't popular. And even Glass is only popular in the same sense as, say, Yanni, not in the sense that Michael Jackson was or Taylor Swift is.

And I think any composer who tries to revive common practice tonality will be even _less_ popular than Glass. (Heck, less popular than Arvo Pärt or Steve Reich.) She'll certainly be further from the vernacular.


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## SeptimalTritone

Epilogue said:


> I didn't say they weren't good. (Well, John C. Adams and Corigliano aren't good.) But except for Philip Glass, they aren't popular. And even Glass is only popular in the same sense as, say, Yanni, not in the sense that Michael Jackson was or Taylor Swift is.
> 
> And I think any composer who tries to revive common practice tonality will be even _less_ popular than Glass. (Heck, less popular than Arvo Pärt or Steve Reich.) She'll certainly be further from the vernacular.


Well... I perhaps agree.

What should we do then? (We being either the composers, the concert programmers, or the public, or anyone else pertinent.) Do you or Ken have any ideas?

Or is perhaps a small mud puddle an inevitable thing? And isn't it sort of "hovering" at a small percentage? (i.e. not declining, but merely hovering?)


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## Epilogue

Epilogue said:


> And even Glass is only popular in the same sense as, say, Yanni, not in the sense that Michael Jackson was or Taylor Swift is.


Or, if that's expecting too much, not even in the sense that Kanye West or Hans Zimmer is. Probably not even in the sense that St. Vincent is.


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## Epilogue

[I've replaced this comment with a revised version below.]


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## Headphone Hermit

KenOC said:


> Maybe Beethoven's symphonies are no different from Rembrandt's paintings -- something we admire and wonder at, but that have no connection to our lives today. Is it possible?


Put simply - no.

The last time I saw a Rembrandt (a real one, not a reproduction) it shouted at me across a crowded room and demanded my attention. It connected to me in as visceral manner as some recent pieces of art. Similarly, when I hear a lot of Beethoven, I get an immediate sense of connection


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## Epilogue

You aren't we. (KenOC and I aren't we either.)


----------



## Epilogue

SeptimalTritone said:


> What should we do then? (We being either the composers, the concert programmers, or the public, or anyone else pertinent.) Do you or Ken have any ideas?


Well, the problem isn't just with classical music, but with all the high arts. So the classical music community - musicians, presenters, and listeners - alone probably can't solve it.

It couldn't hurt if the price of a decent seat at a first rate performance were consistently competitive with movie ticket prices (of course movies are in trouble too, now, but I guess it's still a decent metric) - but to discuss how to do that, we'd have to get into politics.

I'm more concerned with my inability to find anything that strikes me as especially _original_ in today's classical music. I mean, not all that many people attended performances of Stockhausen's music in the '50s and '60s, but everybody ended up hearing some of his innovations second hand. The same goes, maybe to a lesser extent, for La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich. Boulez admittedly didn't influence anything popular, but he at least wrote music about which I can say (about which I hope I would have said at the time) "This is giving you something great that you won't get from the Beatles - not necessarily better, but different - and so you should take some time to listen to it." Maybe the same goes for Gérard Grisey.

But now? I mean, I enjoy and duly respect Abrahamsen, but is he doing anything so good that somebody whose experience with contemporary music is limited to (good) popular musicians is really missing out? I don't think so.

And again, this isn't just a problem in classical music, but in all the high arts.

Maybe there's some hope in the obeisance of (especially American) classical music to indie rock/pop/folk. I mean, of the considerable quantity of recent classical music I've heard that imitates indie popular music in some way, literally all of it is dumb as a bag of hammers (far dumber than some of the music it's imitating) (let's be nice and not name names). But maybe by begging for the attention of that moderately livelier art, the classical musicians will turn _its_ practitioners onto a way out of their own creative rut. And maybe something similar will happen in the other arts.

In the meantime, if there is going to be a renaissance, maybe we can somewhat hasten its coming, simply by refusing to sedate ourselves with comforting lies. On which note, for composers:

1. Extended techniques aren't going to overthrow capitalism/patriarchy/whatever.

2. Just intonation isn't going to overthrown capitalism/patriarchy/whatever.

3. Incorporating jazz isn't edgy any more and hasn't been for half a century.

For presenters:

1. Programming John Williams is not going to make people come back for more Beethoven.


----------



## Vesteralen

*"And if occasionally he'd ponder
What makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great.
Him I could love 'til I die."*

Meredith Willson "My White Knight" from "The Music Man"

So, were Shakespeare and Beethoven great? I think so. Perfect, no. But "great" at what they did - yes. Contrary to what you might expect, I have no real objection to the use of the term "great" in certain contexts.

And, I don't think popularity has anything to do with it in the most basic sense. As has already been pointed out, Bach was great before he was popular. He was just as great when he wasn't famous.

My objections to the use of the word "great" has more to do with the way we use it and the reasons we use it.

In short - most of us use it without any real personal or meaningful evaluation. And, we tend to use it not so much to express appreciation for something admirable, but rather to legitimize our own prejudices toward our favorites, and even worse, to marginalize those composers we don't like (they're not "great" composers).

Pardon my typical reductiveness, but I see posters on this forum (as well as any other music forum) falling into one of three basic categories - those capable of analyzing a score, those (like myself) who can follow a score but can't analyze it, and those who can do neither. But, no matter which category we fit into, we all somehow feel it is our privilege to assess greatness.

How can we assess greatness when we don't have the ability to analyze what we're assessing? All we can really do is say what we like and don't like. When it comes to the matter of greatness, what we usually do is parrot something we've heard or read.

Case in point - if I look back far enough on this forum, I'm sure I can find a time when I jumped on the bandwagon of "poking fun at Vivaldi". Why? Because it was popular to say 'Vivaldi composed the same piece three hundred times". But, how did I know that? How many pieces by Vivaldi had I actually heard? Maybe a dozen at most. And, frankly, those dozen didn't sound much more alike than any dozen pieces by Telemann or even Mozart to me. But, it was just so darned clever to say it.

When I finally realized what I was doing, I actually started listening to Vivaldi more and liking it very much.

But, this type of thing is more common than most of us realize. It's what's behind most of the carping about composers and compositions of any era, including the present day. I don't mean that there is a guarantee that we are going to like anything if only we listen to it enough times. I just would like people to be intellectually honest and admit when they are speaking from prejudice rather than knowledge.

Contrary to popular opinion, few things in the evaluation of music and music history are "pure and simple".

(Great thread, by the way)


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## Epilogue

Vesteralen said:


> How can we assess greatness when we don't have the ability to analyze what we're assessing? All we can really do is say what we like and don't like. When it comes to the matter of greatness, what we usually do is parrot something we've heard or read.


Well, maybe, but the ability to analyze a score certainly doesn't stop people from doing that.


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## Blancrocher

Epilogue said:


> Well, maybe, but the ability to analyze a score certainly doesn't stop people from doing that.


I suppose we need another thread to assess what makes a qualitative assessment of a piece of music great?


----------



## Nereffid

I'm pretty sure that I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said on this thread, but I'll just throw my thoughts together here anyway.

Is "greatness" an actual thing? I don't think music can be good or bad in any truly objective sense - such qualities can't be "scientifically" measured. And yet there is substantial agreement about whether certain things are good or bad or great, so is such assessment truly subjective either? The answer for me lies in between, arising from shared neurology and shared culture. Because of those factors, there will be significant overlap among many listeners as to which music "hits the right buttons". We all have our own unique set of buttons, but each button is not unique. 
Then the identity of the audience comes into play too. Different audiences see greatness in different places. Partly it's due to familiarity, but partly it's to do with what the audience wants. Ultimately if something is liked by the right audience (ie, the ones who for whatever reason get to be "tastemakers"), then it gets the right to be called "great" among the wider audience.
If your set of buttons overlaps significantly with those of people who are impressed by this music, then chances are you'll be impressed too. 
So in that sense, popularity is an indicator of quality. But ultimately the whole process is so heavily dependent on context (and, more importantly, on neurological factors we don't understand) that the equation is too crude to be used widely, and certainly can't apply on an individual level.


----------



## Vesteralen

Blancrocher said:


> I suppose we need another thread to assess what makes a qualitative assessment of a piece of music great?


No, please. Not another thread! 

Unfortunately, the aforesaid intellectual honesty is too much to hope for, I'm afraid. So we are no doubt doomed to the continuation of prejudice masking itself as critical judgment.

C'est la vie.


----------



## Vesteralen

Nereffid said:


> Is "greatness" an actual thing? I don't think music can be good or bad in any truly objective sense - such qualities can't be "scientifically" measured. And yet there is substantial agreement about whether certain things are good or bad or great, so is such assessment truly subjective either? The answer for me lies in between, arising from shared neurology and shared culture. Because of those factors, there will be significant overlap among many listeners as to which music "hits the right buttons". We all have our own unique set of buttons, but each button is not unique.


You make some good points, Nereffid (as always). I guess I only differ from you slightly in that I'm willing to concede "greatness" in certain special cases because I feel that in those particular instances (for me, Beethoven and Bach) there seem to be enough people, both experienced musicians and the general public, whose 'buttons have been pushed' by their works and their influence on subsequent generations of composers is undeniable.

That doesn't make either of them fall in my own personal top ten favorites, but I can see the point being successfully argued. I only concede to the point, and don't object to it in these cases. I don't endorse it because, as I said above, the whole concept of greatness is subject to such misuse.


----------



## Truckload

I have been engrossed with this topic ever since 1971 when I entered college to major in music. I believe that one measure of the viability of any endeavor is the willingness of the participants to engage in self-examination. So personally, I find this type of discussion enormously healthy for art music.

In the 19th century many very famous composers said horrible things about other very famous composers. The animosity of the Wagner vs. Brahms factions was never ending, and most of the participants probably went to their graves denying themselves the pleasure of enjoying music from the "enemy" camp. Did all of the anger and insults make music better, worse, or was it just like the insults hurled about in an American "wrestling" show; simply to pump up the ratings.

But on the subject of "greatness" I propose that one useful criteria is the consensus judgment of knowledgeable participants that persists over more than one generation. By that criteria the most universally "great" would include Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and perhaps a few others. But after those three, the amount of debate would begin to increase significantly.

Imagine a contest to determine the "greatest" bricklayer. Who should be the judges? The general public? Other very experienced bricklayers? Perhaps architects or design consultants? Once we have our panel of judges, what will be the criteria for the best bricklayer? Should the winner be the one who can lay the most bricks in a given time, or the one who achieves the most exact straightness and even layer of mortar. Perhaps the beauty of a design with bricks turned in different directions in the wall. What about selection of brick colors, or mortar colors, etc, etc, etc.

All of these factors are in some measure arbitrary, (who says a straight wall is better than a crooked wall) and opinions will vary (I like a wall with multiple brick colors, you like a wall with just one color of brick) but the next time you want a brick wall built, it would be a great help to the bricklayer if you can communicate your expectations.


----------



## Vesteralen

Truckload said:


> The animosity of the Wagner vs. Brahms factions was never ending, and most of the participants probably went to their graves denying themselves the pleasure of enjoying music from the "enemy" camp.


The wastefulness and general immaturity of the whole thing is overwhelming sometimes.


----------



## Truckload

mmsbls said:


> We've had many threads where people have discussed the popularity of works or composers, and in some cases, there may be an implication that popularity is an indicator of quality. Mozart is more popular than Haas; therefore, Mozart is better than Haas. Often people respond saying that popularity does not equate to quality; otherwise, Justin Bieber (and most popular music) would have to be considered better than Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven.
> 
> I'd like to restrict the concept of popularity and ask what the restricted concept indicates about the music. Most people would not compare The Marriage of Figaro to a Toyota Prius. Both are wonderful but at vastly different things. So I would use the concept of popularity not among all music and all listeners but rather among music that is similar and listeners that have particular backgrounds. Of course one must decide how restrictive to make the class of musical works and listeners. For now, maybe we say music from the same classical music era and listeners with reasonable experience listening to such music. Defining exactly what "reasonable experience" might mean can be a task for the thread if necessary.
> 
> So the question then becomes, "What does it mean about the music (and listeners) when a group of moderately experienced listeners indicates a strong preference for one composer or work over another from a particular classical music era?"
> 
> Incidentally, the modern/contemporary era likely would require greater restrictions (maybe minimalism, serialism, aleatoric, spectralism, etc.)
> 
> There are undefined concepts here, but I wanted the OP to have fewer than 20 pages.


It seems that your thread may have been diverted to a discussion other than the one you might have intended. In response to your specific question, I think we can narrow things down quite a bit. For example, if we assume that we are discussing music of the common practice era, the interests of the listener will play a significant role in determining what they enjoy and what they consider great.

A fan of great orchestration is likely to prefer the works of Rimsky-Korsakov to the works of Brahms. For that person the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" by Dukas could be their very favorite and thus considered by them the greatest. That person might not listen to string quartets and solo piano music at all. For someone whose primary interest is musical form and structure, Beethoven and Brahms might be the absolute monarchs of music. Melody, perhaps Tchaikovsky.

So in answer to your specific question, the preference for one composer over another could simply indicate the primary interest of the listener. It becomes even more interesting however to go on to the next layer of reasoning. If the music of Tchaikovsky is preferred over Bruckner by a majority of listeners that say that melody is an important criteria for them, what is it about the melodies composed by Tchaikovsky that make them better, or more liked?

It is all very interesting to me, and my guess is that if we finally have an absolute factual answer, and no mysteries remain to be solved, we might just all lose interest in the subject. My suspicion is that the physics of music, the biology of the human ear, mechanics of the human brain, and the psychology of the listener all contribute to our responses to music.


----------



## Vesteralen

mmsbls said:


> So the question then becomes, "What does it mean about the music (and listeners) when a group of moderately experienced listeners indicates a strong preference for one composer or work over another from a particular classical music era?"


Good point, Truckload. We have strayed a bit.

I would like to suggest that, in reference to the question above, the answer is - "a possibility that concert programmers and record producers will green-light more performances of said composers or works". And, essentially, that's all it means.

I have no problem with that from the standpoint of recordings. I don't need forty different recorded versions of Nielsen's symphonies. Four or five is enough for me. 

From a concert performance perspective, though, I can see a problem. A concert featuring the music of Nielsen, Barber or Harbison will be more likely to motivate me to move my lazy frame to the concert hall and spend the hard-earned than yet another performance of Beethoven's Fifth.

As far as lists of "greatest" composers go, I have learned to pay no attention. If current popularity throws Tchaikovsky into the Top Ten and throws Dvorak out, I can rest assured the mix will change in another ten years or so. All I can be pretty sure of is that Beethoven and Bach will remain.


----------



## isorhythm

I don't see why we need to choose between embracing total relativism and ranking composers by objectively measured Greatness Points. Neither approach accurately describes the actual relationship people have with art.


----------



## Strange Magic

As far as I can tell, popularity is (only) a function of how well any given work fits under the center of the bell curve of that particular audience's expectations. It has no artistic/esthetic significance beyond that, but may interest concert program planners, advertisers, demographers, etc. It's like which toothpaste sells more. Dylan shows up at the Newport Folk Festival as the Next Big Thing; the audience is throbbing with expectation. Out comes the electric gear, and the audience is Not Happy. Clearly wrong audience. There are reasons why some musics are inherently more popular than others (have larger audiences), but popularity is relative and it is about getting under that curve--Milton Babbitt's music will wow a Milton Babbitt audience, as it certainly should.


----------



## Woodduck

In the simplest possible terms: popularity (the number of people who enjoy a work of music) is not a proof of excellence. It merely tends to be influenced by it, subject to many factors: knowledge, exposure, temperament, prejudice. 

In saying this I assume that artistic excellence actually exists and affects people's preferences. The denial of this, or the inability to recognize it, often seems to me to be rooted in the wish for a "democratization" of human life - less charitably, a leveling - which ends in the elevation of trivia and absurdity to positions of prominence in our artistic life. There's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art - I watch television (occasionally!) - but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.

I was amused a while back to see Josquin Desprez referred to as "once considered great" and "essentially forgotten" in support of the idea that objective greatness doesn't exist. All the relative unpopularity of Josquin proves is that cultural sensibilities change and that music of his time is less meaningful to ours. To those in our time able to hear and relish the creative power of Josquin, he is still great and for that very reason unforgotten, even as we recognize his voice as one from a world no longer our own. And so it is with all the great art of the past.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> To those in our time able to hear and relish the creative power of Josquin, he is still great....


Why wouldn't this apply to every single composer, ever?

After all, the popularity argument under implicit discussion here is "Schoenberg and Cage aren't as popular as Mozart or Beethoven, and therefore they aren't great." The response, "Machaut and Josquin aren't as popular as Schoenberg and Cage" reveals the problem with the argument.


----------



## science

Reposting this, because I think its relevance was missed before:

Regarding excellence of taste - as far as I can see, there are two separate things we need to distinguish: awareness, and preference. Let's use literature because it's easier for me to illustrate the difference.

I do not enjoy _1984_, _Brave New World_, or _Fahrenheit 451_ very much because too many details are meaningless, too much of the dialogue is unnatural, no symbolism is extensively developed, the moral of the story is too obvious, there is not much intertextuality, and the wordplay is not clever. They all have a lot of insight into the modern world and effectively call attention to extremely important problems, but those aspects of the novels are not so important to me. A different person with a similar awareness of literary devices could enjoy them enormously, simply by having different preferences. For example, I'd guess that Isaac Asimov was at least as well aware as I am of the flaws of _The Mists of Avalon_, and that I'm roughly as familiar with its virtues as he was, but he enjoyed it and I didn't, because that work's particular set of virtues pushed his buttons and not mine, while its particular set of flaws pushed mine and not his.

As an example in the other direction, _The Lord of the Flies_ has a number of problems that I recognize - constant violations of the laws of nature - but I like it very much because it is loaded with extensively developed symbolism - even allegory! - constant allusions to Paradise Lost, relatively few insignificant details, and the moral of the story is easily missed unless you read fairly carefully. Readers who demand physical plausibility and moral clarity will not enjoy it as much as I do, even if they have exactly the same awareness.

So there are four really good, maybe even great works of literature. If someone is about as aware of such things as I am, we can disagree about the novels, enjoy them differentially, and have very rewarding conversations about them. I mention those four because I have had such conversations with people whose insight into literature is at least as penetrating as mine: we generally see the same stuff, but we feel differently about it. We have different tastes, but no one's tastes are superior or inferior. Great conversations, the world moves along swimmingly.

I can imagine a reader with a strong dislike of vulgar humor and moral ambiguity, who really loves stories about reasonable characters who overcome their emotions and behave rationally, or stories where an unambiguously good character defeats an unambiguously bad character; a reader indifferent to symbolism and puns, who doesn't enjoy comparing and contrasting scenes or characters to each other, or puzzling out political/religious implications of a story, or analyzing scenes from minor characters' points of view. Such a reader could understand Shakespeare as well as I do, and yet not enjoy his most famous works. I haven't met such a person yet, but I can imagine one. Her awareness could be equal to or greater than mine, but we'd have very different tastes.

But I've often talked to people who read _The Catcher in the Rye_ without being aware of, say, the fact that Holden losing the foils in the subway probably signifies something, or who like _Chronicle of a Death Foretold_ without being aware that the fallibility of memory is a major theme. It's not that they don't like the kind of thing that Salinger or Garcia Marquez are doing in the books; they're just unaware of them. They have a right to their opinion, and I won't try to convert them, but I'm not going to seek them out for conversations about literature, because I see that they don't have a lot to offer. (Of course if I somehow met my younger self, I wouldn't talk to him about literature either, unless he were in a mood to listen relatively quietly.) Even when they like the books, I suppose it's good that they got some pleasure, but clearly I enjoyed them at a deeper level.

Of course a lot of people who say things like "Shakespeare is great" and "Garcia Marquez is great" cannot actually understand what makes Shakespeare or Garcia Marquez great. When someone reads unaware of the kinds of things I've been discussing, we could be critical of that person's reading ability - though it wouldn't be polite conversation, and I wouldn't expect people to like me if I made a point of doing so.

So there can be greater and lesser insights into works of art, but matters of taste are a different issue.

All this translates fairly straightforwardly into music, although I don't have the knowledge to give such detailed examples.

Let's say six people listen to a work of music.

Two of them analyze the score in depth and they find many interesting elements to discuss. They agree about their analysis, listen to each other's insights with appreciation, but in the end one of them thinks it is a great work of music and the other thinks it's just ok. If they're online, they'll probably start insulting each other, but in real life they're able to go on being friends and they've probably had a really good time discussing it with each other. These guys are awesome.

Two other people listen to the work of music without the education necessary to do any analysis. One of them likes it for whatever reason, and one doesn't. That's also fine. They might even enjoy listening to the first two discuss the work, and perhaps they'll achieve a better understanding of what they liked or didn't like about the music, but their fundamental tastes probably aren't going to change. If they're online, they'll probably start insulting each other, but in real life they're able to go on being friends.

Finally, two more people listen to the work of music without the education necessary to do any analysis. One of them says he likes it because he thinks that's what he's supposed to say. Perhaps it's Dutilleux and he's right; perhaps it's Whitacre and he's wrong; whatever. One of them says she doesn't like it because she thinks that's what she's supposed to say. Perhaps it's Dutilleux and she's wrong; perhaps its Whitacre and she's right; whatever. If they're online, they'll probably start insulting each other, but in real life they're able to go on being friends. In a perfect world, we wouldn't even scorn these guys, and we'd realize that to some degree, the first four were doing the same thing, however unconsciously.


----------



## bharbeke

Popularity means that a great quantity of people like something about something or somebody enough to seek it or them out more than once. What people like and the number of people who share that taste will change over time, although I would bet there are some constants or near-constants.

Analyzing the trends and commonalities is hard, and it can be the subject of multiple threads.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> Why wouldn't this apply to every single composer, ever?
> 
> After all, the popularity argument under implicit discussion here is "Schoenberg and Cage aren't as popular as Mozart or Beethoven, and therefore they aren't great." The response, "Machaut and Josquin aren't as popular as Schoenberg and Cage" reveals the problem with the argument.


The argument that "Schoenberg and Cage aren't as popular as Mozart or Beethoven and therefore they aren't [as] great" is wrong. The problem is with the "therefore." Whether Schoenberg and Cage are actually as "great" as the other two is still a question, as is what we mean by "great." I merely contend that these are not meaningless questions, and that excellence in art, and the ability to perceive it, is not the equivalent of a preference for chocolate or vanilla.


----------



## Nereffid

Woodduck said:


> In the simplest possible terms: popularity (the number of people who enjoy a work of music) is not a proof of excellence. It merely tends to be influenced by it, subject to many factors: knowledge, exposure, temperament, prejudice.
> 
> In saying this I assume that artistic excellence actually exists and affects people's preferences. The denial of this, or the inability to recognize it, often seems to me to be rooted in the wish for a "democratization" of human life - less charitably, a leveling - which ends in the elevation of trivia and absurdity to positions of prominence in our artistic life. There's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art - I watch television (occasionally!) - but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.


The fact that you refer to television as "inferior art" simply reinforces my own feeling that such "democratization" is a noble endeavour. What was it you were saying about "knowledge, exposure, temperament, prejudice"?

Presumably if "we can't tell the difference", then we need to be _told_? And who gets to do the telling?


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## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> I assume that artistic excellence actually exists and affects people's preferences. The denial of this, or the inability to recognize it, often seems to me to be rooted in the wish for a "democratization" of human life - less charitably, a leveling - which ends in the elevation of trivia and absurdity to positions of prominence in our artistic life. There's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art - I watch television (occasionally!) - but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.
> 
> .


An assumption. I wish also to believe in "artistic excellence" as something real out there; that Mark Rothko's paintings are better than my dream picture of Jesus and Elvis together in Heaven, on black velvet. But where is the evidence?


----------



## Epilogue

Evidence is overrated.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> In saying this I assume that artistic excellence actually exists and affects people's preferences.


That is not something that can just be assumed. People are going to be judged according to whether their preferences match yours or not. Assuming that your preferences are objectively right is prejudicial in the same sense as racism or any other arbitrary discrimination.

So before condemning the mass of humanity to a lesser status and elevating you and your peers to a higher one, I demand proof.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> I merely contend that... excellence in art, and the ability to perceive it, is not the equivalent of a preference for chocolate or vanilla.


Prove it.

Let's take the case of _The Lord of the Flies_ vs _Fahrenheit 451_ from my long post (#78).


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## Truckload

Science - I am totally confused.

Why not make an easier comparison. Fahrenheit 451 vs 50 Shades of Gray.


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## science

Truckload said:


> Science - I am totally confused.
> 
> Why not make an easier comparison. Fahrenheit 451 vs 50 Shades of Gray.


Because in that case it's easy (edit: easier) just to parrot prejudice.

By the way, I'd be happy to see a musical example discussed. How about Godowski's _Passacaglia_ and Palestrina's _Missa Aeterna Christi munera_?


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## Polyphemus

But beware the greatest boon to popularity, 'The Kings New Clothes'


----------



## Epilogue

Truckload said:


> Why not make an easier comparison. Fahrenheit 451 vs 50 Shades of Gray.


But those books both suck.

How about _Fahrenheit 451_ versus _Twilight_? (_Twilight_ is better.)


----------



## Truckload

Fahrenheit 451 and Lord of the Flies are both really, really exemplary works of fiction. Well written in terms of grammar and syntax, with extensive vocabulary, containing important themes that have the potential to expand our understanding of what it means to be a human being and possibly to improve the human condition. So what does that mean in relation to appreciation of exemplary works of music? These two works of fiction seem to be very good evidence for excellence in the writing of fiction. Excellence in art. Is that your point?


----------



## Vesteralen

Woodduck said:


> There's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.


Leaving out the television comment, I think I actually agree with this in principle. Whether we set out to do it or not, I think we all have an internal understanding of basic distinctions when it comes to artistic value.

The very reason why PDQ Bach is funny is that we can do an internal comparison with JS Bach and the other composers he takes off on. If there was absolutely no such thing as excellence, we would not see the joke.

But, I object to the way the concept is used by many people. To say that JS Bach is a great composer is much different than saying that Wagner is greater than Schumann or that Mozart is greater than Mendelssohn or that Varese is greater than Cage.
These judgments are largely a matter of taste, but they are often made to masquerade as matters of fact.


----------



## science

Truckload said:


> Fahrenheit 451 and Lord of the Flies are both really, really exemplary works of fiction. Well written in terms of grammar and syntax, with extensive vocabulary, containing important themes that have the potential to expand our understanding of what it means to be a human being and possibly to improve the human condition. So what does that mean in relation to appreciation of exemplary works of music? These two works of fiction seem to be very good evidence for excellence in the writing of fiction. Excellence in art. Is that your point?


Are they well written in terms of grammar and syntax? I'd assume _50 Shades_ is as well.

I do not agree that extensive vocabulary is a legitimate metric in analyzing the quality of a work of fiction. _A Farewell to Arms_ and _The Catcher in the Rye_ have an almost impoverished vocabulary compared to, say, _The Coral Island_ or _Treasure Island_, but I can argue (if you'd like) that the former are much better literature.

As for "themes that have the potential to expand our understanding of what it means to be a human being and possibly to improve the human condition," that's a problematic category for me. I'm not sure it's essential to great literature. I'm also not sure literature can improve the human condition. I suspect that the idea that literature can elevate us has more to do with old class prejudice against the illiterate workers than with anything that is actually in any texts.

As for the actual texts, I do not enjoy _Fahrenheit 451_ very much because too many details are meaningless, too much of the dialogue is unnatural, no symbolism is extensively developed, the moral of the story is too obvious, there is not much intertextuality, and the wordplay is not clever. It has a lot of insight into the modern world and effectively calls attention to extremely important problems, but those aspects of novels are not so important to me. A different person with a similar awareness of literary devices could enjoy _Fahrenheit 451_ enormously, simply by having different preferences.

_The Lord of the Flies_ has a number of problems that I recognize - constant violations of the laws of nature, a physically impossible initial situation - but I like it very much because it is loaded with extensively developed symbolism - even allegory! - constant and clever allusions to _Paradise Lost_ and Christian mythology, as well as to other works of fiction (_The Coral Island_ in particular), relatively few insignificant details, and the moral of the story is easily missed unless you read fairly carefully. Readers who demand physical plausibility and moral clarity will not enjoy it as much as I do, even if they have exactly the same awareness.

So, now we're into some real discussion. Is extensive vocabulary a legitimate metric for greatness? How about physical realism? How about natural dialogue? Moral subtlety? Allegory? Intertextuality?

Edit: This is meant to be analogous to musical discussion, and I want to make that more explicit. Truckload says that "Fahrenheit 451 [is a] really, really exemplary [work] of fiction." I say it's just pretty good. We have started to go into details, into real discussion. Are we going to arrive at an objective estimate of how "great" it is? Or are we going to be discussion our own tastes and values in relation to the texts. I suspect the latter, and as I expected this discussion appears to be going in that direction. But people such as Woodduck who argue that there is an objective truth about how great a work of art is might be able to demonstrate objectively which of our values matter and how much, and evaluate the texts objectively in relation to those objective truths. If so, then in principle they could do that with musical texts and performances as well. Let's see!


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Nereffid said:


> The fact that you refer to television as "inferior art" simply reinforces my own feeling that such "democratization" is a noble endeavour. What was it you were saying about "knowledge, exposure, temperament, prejudice"?
> 
> Presumably if "we can't tell the difference", then we need to be _told_? And who gets to do the telling?


How is 'democratization' a means of arriving at truth to begin with?

Was the howling blockhead mob right to sentence two of Western Civilization's most representative men to death?

'Who's' mob? 'Which' rationality?- the Greek mob against Socrates or the Roman one against Jesus?


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> That is not something that can just be assumed. People are going to be judged according to whether their preferences match yours or not. Assuming that your preferences are objectively right is prejudicial in the same sense as racism or any other arbitrary discrimination.
> 
> So before condemning the mass of humanity to a lesser status and elevating you and your peers to a higher one, I demand proof.


What sort of proof do you want? Not everything is science, science! 

I don't equate quality with my preferences. My preferences can limit my ability to distinguish excellence, but I can learn to expand those limits, and those preferences along with them. There are always things to aspire to, things presently beyond us. I have never understood why people are afraid of this.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> That is not something that can just be assumed. People are going to be judged according to whether their preferences match yours or not. Assuming that your preferences are objectively right is prejudicial in the same sense as racism or any other arbitrary discrimination.
> 
> So before condemning the mass of humanity to a lesser status and elevating you and your peers to a higher one, I demand proof.


Now I've heard it all:

'An aesthetically-informed opinion is tantamount to racism."

Talk about balderdashery that should be shamelessly derided.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> What sort of proof do you want? Not everything is science, science!
> 
> I don't equate quality with my preferences. My preferences can limit my ability to distinguish excellence, but I can learn to expand those limits, and those preferences along with them. There are always things to aspire to, things presently beyond us. I have never understood why people are afraid of this.


I'm going to need pretty good proof before I agree to adopt your prejudices about people who have different preferences.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Now I've heard it all:
> 
> 'An aesthetically-informed opinion is tantamount to racism."
> 
> Talk about balderdashery that should be shamelessly derided.


Of course that is not at all what I wrote. What should be shamelessly derided is intentionally distorting thoughtful ideas into parodies of themselves rather than attempting to disagree with them rationally.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Of course that is not at all what I wrote. What should be shamelessly derided is intentionally distorting thoughtful ideas into parodies of themselves rather than attempting to disagree with them rationally.


It happens to me all the time.


----------



## Epilogue

Marschallin Blair said:


> How is 'democratization' a means of arriving at truth to begin with?
> 
> Was the howling blockhead mob right to sentence two of Western Civilization's most representative men to death?
> 
> 'Who's' mob? 'Which' rationality?- the Greek mob against Socrates or the Roman one against Jesus?


So it was the "howling blockhead mob" who sentenced Jesus to death, and not the Roman governor, appointed by the Roman emperor?


----------



## Truckload

Science - Thanks for the elaboration. Yes, I find that extensive vocabulary is an indicator of the quality of a work of fiction, but I suppose I shouldn't expect any agreement on that or anything else. I don't really think I am competent to debate with any depth the characteristics of great literature. And I am doubtful that doing so would move the conversation forward in regards to music.

I despair that things that I believe to be self-evident, seem to no longer be self-evident to a lot of people. I would like to think it is just the internet. But I don't think that is all there is to it. I would have thought that on a forum dedicated to Classical Music, we could all agree that art has intrinsic value for humanity and that great art has great value. But there is no great, right? And what does value mean? And who cares about the future of humanity anyway, right?

Shared values, a common ground of core beliefs, all gone.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Epilogue said:


> So it was the "howling blockhead mob" who sentenced Jesus to death, and not the Roman governor, appointed by the Roman emperor?


Last time I checked, Pilate merely washed his hands of the matter.

He green-lighted whatever the mob wanted.


----------



## Nereffid

Marschallin Blair said:


> How is 'democratization' a means of arriving at truth to begin with?
> 
> Was the howling blockhead mob right to sentence two of Western Civilization's most representative men to death?
> 
> 'Who's' mob? 'Which' rationality?- the Greek mob against Socrates or the Roman one against Jesus?


Okaayyyy... not sure how you got from "let's not call television an inferior art" to "let's kill Jesus".


----------



## Epilogue

Truckload said:


> Shared values, a common ground of core beliefs, all gone.


True, of course, and of course this is a problem, but then, when it comes to looking for a solution - _whose_ values exactly are we all supposed to share now?

I mean, I'm fine with everybody sharing my values, but everybody else probably isn't.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Nereffid said:


> Okaayyyy... not sure how you got from "let's not call television an inferior art" to "let's kill Jesus".


It's called 'mobocracy.'

You know: the tyranny of the majority- something republics were never founded on.


----------



## Epilogue

No, "republics" are generally founded on the principle of an oligarchy _retaining_ its tyranny _over_ the majority.


----------



## science

Truckload said:


> Science - Thanks for the elaboration. Yes, I find that extensive vocabulary is an indicator of the quality of a work of fiction, but I suppose I shouldn't expect any agreement on that or anything else. I don't really think I am competent to debate with any depth the characteristics of great literature. And I am doubtful that doing so would move the conversation forward in regards to music.
> 
> I despair that things that I believe to be self-evident, seem to no longer be self-evident to a lot of people. I would like to think it is just the internet. But I don't think that is all there is to it. I would have thought that on a forum dedicated to Classical Music, we could all agree that art has intrinsic value for humanity and that great art has great value. But there is no great, right? And what does value mean? And who cares about the future of humanity anyway, right?
> 
> Shared values, a common ground of core beliefs, all gone.


Well, we never actually had a common ground of core beliefs. There has always been conflict over these things. The past was always more complex than our reconstructions of it.

But I think there's a redemption here. Once we accept that what we took to be objective truths are actually our own values, we can celebrate our values with as much joy as we ever celebrated our supposedly objective truths. I love classical music, you love classical music - why should we care if the universe is indifferent? Let's love what we love. We're here together, and even though we won't agree about everything, we have some values in common.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Epilogue said:


> No, "republics" are generally founded on the principle of an oligarchy _retaining_ its tyranny _over_ the majority.


Government per se is founded on violence or the threat of it- true.


----------



## science

Epilogue said:


> True, of course, and of course this is a problem, but then, when it comes to looking for a solution - _whose_ values exactly are we all supposed to share now?
> 
> I mean, I'm fine with everybody sharing my values, but everybody else probably isn't.


We'll share whatever values we happen to share!

It'll be a good time.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> I'm going to need pretty good proof before I agree to adopt your prejudices about people who have different preferences.


What prejudices about people? I have no prejudices about people who love Mozart passionately, even though I haven't much interest in his music. I can tell that Mozart is one of the greatest of composers, regardless of my degree of preference for him.

Prejudices about people and aesthetic discrimination are entirely different things. Your statement, "Assuming that your preferences are objectively right is prejudicial in the same sense as racism or any other arbitrary discrimination" is off the mark.


----------



## Truckload

Epilogue said:


> True, of course, and of course this is a problem, but then, when it comes to looking for a solution - _whose_ values exactly are we all supposed to share now?
> 
> I mean, I'm fine with everybody sharing my values, but everybody else probably isn't.


Well that says all that needs to be said. But you seem to be agreeing with me, so you might want to rethink that comment.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Government per se is founded on violence or the threat of it- true.


It seems that you don't like this conversation, and so I suspect you're turning to politics in order to get the thread locked.


----------



## Epilogue

science said:


> We'll share whatever values we happen to share!
> 
> It'll be a good time.


Okay, but we've already been doing that for about 50 years and it isn't working very well.


----------



## Epilogue

Truckload said:


> Well that says all that needs to be said. But you seem to be agreeing with me, so you might want to rethink that comment.


I don't "seem to be agreeing with" you, I _am_ agreeing with you. But again, it's one thing to diagnose the problem, another to solve it. Or do you just have no aspirations to solve it?


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> What prejudices about people? I have no prejudices about people who love Mozart passionately, even though I haven't much interest in his music. I can tell that Mozart is one of the greatest of composers, regardless of my degree of "preference" for him.
> 
> Prejudices about people and aesthetic discrimination are entirely different things. Your statement, "Assuming that your preferences are objectively right is prejudicial in the same sense as racism or any other arbitrary discrimination" is off the mark.


No, because when you dismiss, for example, television, as an inferior art, you're dismissing people who enjoy it as inferior.

Maybe you've got more than prejudice to back you up. Let's see! For my part, some of the most intelligent, educated people I know enjoy some television shows. _The Simpsons_, for example, gets very high praise. Now how are you going to prove to me that those people's tastes (and thus, they) are inferior to yours (and thus, you)?


----------



## Nereffid

Truckload said:


> I despair that things that I believe to be self-evident, seem to no longer be self-evident to a lot of people. I would like to think it is just the internet. But I don't think that is all there is to it. I would have thought that on a forum dedicated to Classical Music, we could all agree that art has intrinsic value for humanity and that great art has great value. But there is no great, right? And what does value mean? And who cares about the future of humanity anyway, right?
> 
> Shared values, a common ground of core beliefs, all gone.


I don't think anyone here is disagreeing that art has value.
_My_ point is that saying "great art has great value" is somewhat tautological: if enough of the "right" people (I referred to them as "tastemakers" earlier) find some art to be of great value, they get to call it "great". There's nothing inherent in a work of art that makes it great.
If we're talking about "self-evident", I think we can all accept that here on TC certain composers are regarded as self-evidently "great" by some people, and self-evidently "not great" by others. Once that particular cat is out of the bag, my preferred option is to steer clear of "great" altogether.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> It seems that you don't like this conversation, and so I suspect you're turning to politics in order to get the thread locked.


There you go again: switching contexts in order to smear.

- I was answering a post directed at me regarding the nature of republics _infra_ at #106.

You decline to mention that.

Therefore you may direct your impetuous comments to Epilogue.


----------



## Vesteralen

Truckload said:


> I despair that things that I believe to be self-evident, seem to no longer be self-evident to a lot of people. I would like to think it is just the internet. But I don't think that is all there is to it. I would have thought that on a forum dedicated to Classical Music, we could all agree that art has intrinsic value for humanity and that great art has great value. But there is no great, right? And what does value mean? And who cares about the future of humanity anyway, right?
> 
> Shared values, a common ground of core beliefs, all gone.


I reached the conclusion long ago that when it comes to the impact of art there is no use looking for the universal. People are much too different. So many people have no inclination to even suspend their resistance to the idiom long enough to break through the wall, so to speak. And, even for those who have made the journey to the other side, there are many little walls still in place.

However, I don't think there is reason to despair. If there is any joy in interaction of the sort we find here, it's in finding where our interests and feelings intersect with others'. Even the angles of departure can be intriguing.


----------



## Nereffid

Marschallin Blair said:


> It's called 'mobocracy.'
> 
> You know: the tyranny of the majority- something republics were never founded on.


Honestly, I have no idea what you think I'm saying, other than that it's not what I'm saying.


----------



## Epilogue

Let it be noted that _The Simpsons_ is a greater work of art than any classical music composed during its prime years (1989-1997).


----------



## science

Epilogue said:


> Okay, but we've already been doing that for about 50 years and it isn't working very well.


I think it's going great. Just look at all the music there is out there. There has never been more!

Literature is going great too. And just about every other art.

The one thing that isn't happening is that we're no longer getting many of the working class sort of people to agree that our "art" is superior to their "entertainment." That's the only sort of decline that anyone can point to. But I don't care about that, and no one else should either.


----------



## science

Vesteralen said:


> I reached the conclusion long ago that when it comes to the impact of art there is no use looking for the universal. People are much too different. So many people have no inclination to even suspend their resistance to the idiom long enough to break through the wall, so to speak. And, even for those who have made the journey to the other side, there are many little walls still in place.
> 
> However, I don't think there is reason to despair. If there is any joy in interaction of the sort we find here, it's in finding where our interests and feelings intersect with others'. Even the angles of departure can be intriguing.


Amen! This is really a beautiful post. I write all these words, but.... Thanks for this post, Vesteralen.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> There you go again: switching contexts in order to smear.
> 
> - I was answering a post directed at me regarding the nature of republics _infra_ at #106.
> 
> You decline to mention that.
> 
> Therefore you may direct your impetuous comments to Epilogue.


As you know, and "declined" to mention, his 106 was a response to your 105.

Back to music, I hope.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> As you know, and "declined" to mention, his 106 was a response to your 105.
> 
> Back to music, I hope.


But then, what 'that' proves I have no idea.

- 'Pretty vacant'- and not just in the Sex-Pistols sense.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> But then, what 'that' proves I have no idea.
> 
> - 'Pretty vacant'- and not just in the Sex-Pistols sense.


Let's say you win.

Back to music.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Let's say you win.
> 
> Back to music.


I'll just say I'm beautiful.

<Callas musical interlude.>


----------



## Epilogue

science said:


> I think it's going great. Just look at all the music there is out there. There has never been more!


Because it's all about quantity, not quality, amirite?



science said:


> Literature is going great too. And just about every other art.


So which currently working classical composers, authors, and painters are as good as - well, Beethoven, Dante, and Michelangelo would be setting the bar too high - let's say, Stravinsky, Joyce, and Matisse?



science said:


> The one thing that isn't happening is that we're no longer getting many of the working class sort of people to agree that our "art" is superior to their "entertainment."


The _Avengers_ movies, the _Dresden Files_, and Taylor Swift are every bit as much by and for the bourgeoisie as today's high art.

It's not that the working class - or even the lower middle class - stopped looking up to the higher classes. It's that the higher classes stopped aspiring to be more aesthetically sophisticated than the lower classes.


----------



## mmsbls

science said:


> Let's say you win.
> 
> Back to music.


Most people ignore or quickly pass over posts such as this, but I just wanted to say it's one of the best posts I've read on TC in awhile. _Let's not talk about each other and talk about music instead._ I gave it a like, but I wish I could give it 1000 likes.

Wonderful.


----------



## Vesteralen

mmsbls said:


> Most people ignore or quickly pass over posts such as this, but I just wanted to say it's one of the best posts I've read on TC in awhile. _Let's not talk about each other and talk about music instead._ I gave it a like, but I wish I could give it 1000 likes.
> 
> Wonderful.


You know, you're right. I didn't pass over it. I actually noted it and marveled at its maturity, but I failed to "like" it.

Mistake corrected.


----------



## Truckload

Epilogue said:


> I don't "seem to be agreeing with" you, I _am_ agreeing with you. But again, it's one thing to diagnose the problem, another to solve it. Or do you just have no aspirations to solve it?


I am not wise to know how to bring people together. I wish I did. I do know a lot about music. And although I am 62, I continue to study and learn. And the more I learn, the more of the mechanics of music I can internalize, the more I appreciate the "great" composers and the easier it is for me to see the difference between the great and the not so great. With more knowledge comes the ability to be more discerning.

But I am sure lots of forum members will say I am completely wrong.


----------



## science

Epilogue said:


> Because it's all about quantity, not quality, amirite?
> 
> So which currently working classical composers, authors, and painters are as good as - well, Beethoven, Dante, and Michelangelo would be setting the bar too high - let's say, Stravinsky, Joyce, and Matisse?
> 
> The _Avengers_ movies, the _Dresden Files_, and Taylor Swift are every bit as much by and for the bourgeoisie as today's high art.
> 
> It's not that the working class - or even the lower middle class - stopped looking up to the higher classes. It's that the higher classes stopped aspiring to be more aesthetically sophisticated than the lower classes.


I don't know that the higher classes ought to aspire specifically to be "more aesthetically sophisticated" than lower classes, but I don't think they've all given that up. We have a pretty fragmented upper class, and it's true that some of them are less interested in classical music or the European artistic traditions in general than they were sixty years ago, but - I know this is an unfashionable opinion, but I have to hold it until I see otherwise - those traditions continue to flourish, and many others do too.

I cannot agree that the quality of art has lessened either. Today's Beethoven, Stravinsky, Dante, Joyce, Michelangelo and Matisse are Murail and Grisey, Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison, Rem Koolhaas and Philippe Starck. Or somebody. I wouldn't trust myself to have identified Dante or Joyce in their own time, so if I turn out to be wrong about who in particular will get to be remembered, no biggie.


----------



## Vesteralen

Truckload said:


> And although I am 62, I continue to study and learn. And the more I learn, the more of the mechanics of music I can internalize, the more I appreciate the "great" composers and the easier it is for me to see the difference between the great and the not so great. With more knowledge comes the ability to be more discerning.


I am also 62, and I continue to study and learn. And, although I have my own likes and dislikes, I am just as far as I ever was from being able to rule on greatness beyond the most obvious cases.

I would never say you are wrong either in your assessments or in simply having the right to make those judgments.

However, until I can make them for myself, I can't adopt anyone else's either.

By the way, I have enjoyed your comments. Keep them coming.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> No, because when you dismiss, for example, television, as an inferior art, you're dismissing people who enjoy it as inferior.
> 
> Maybe you've got more than prejudice to back you up. Let's see! For my part, some of the most intelligent, educated people I know enjoy some television shows. _The Simpsons_, for example, gets very high praise. Now how are you going to prove to me that those people's tastes (and thus, they) are inferior to yours (and thus, you)?


You're assuming that I condemn television as such and therefore the people who watch it. I've said that I watch TV (although I don't own one), and there are programs I enjoy. Do you think that I must logically look down on _myself_ for doing so?

Why are you so bothered by the thought that some people may have superior perception of artistic qualities - and, for that matter, other values in life? They just do, like it or not. This question of "who gets to say what's superior," as if we lived in some kind of cultural dictatorship where lovers of "free" jazz are going to be forced to listen to Wagner operas even though the genius of Wagner is incomprehensible to them, is bizarre to me.

Enjoy any sort of elevator or supermarket music you like, but I will not consider it artistically equal to Bach in order to make you feel better about yourself.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> I don't know that the higher classes ought to aspire specifically to be "more aesthetically sophisticated" than lower classes, but I don't think they've all given that up. We have a pretty fragmented upper class, and it's true that some of them are less interested in classical music or the European artistic traditions in general than they were sixty years ago, but - I know this is an unfashionable opinion, but I have to hold it until I see otherwise - those traditions continue to flourish, and many others do too.
> 
> I cannot agree that the quality of art has lessened either. Today's Beethoven, Stravinsky, Dante, Joyce, Michelangelo and Matisse are Murail and Grisey, Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison, Rem Koolhaas and Philippe Starck. Or somebody. I wouldn't trust myself to have identified Dante or Joyce in their own time, so if I turn out to be wrong about who in particular will get to be remembered, no biggie.


The only thing I don't see abating is the smuggled-in value judgment of some people trying to reduce affluent people's aesthetic perception to class warfare.


----------



## Strange Magic

Everyone is free, without guilt or shame, to enjoy whatever art they choose. If you don't like somebody else's art, say merely that you are not its intended audience. When in the elevator, what's better than elevator music? My supermarket has been playing 70s' hits lately--love it!


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> You're assuming that I condemn television as such and therefore the people who watch it. I've said that I watch TV (although I don't own one), and there are programs I enjoy. Do you think that I must logically look down on _myself_ for doing so?
> 
> Why are you so bothered by the thought that some people may have superior perception of artistic qualities - and, for that matter, other values in life? They just do, like it or not. This question of "who gets to say what's superior," as if we lived in some kind of cultural dictatorship where lovers of "free" jazz are going to be forced to listen to Wagner operas even though the genius of Wagner is incomprehensible to them, is bizarre to me.
> 
> Enjoy any sort of elevator or supermarket music you like, but I will not consider it artistically equal to Bach in order to make you feel better about yourself.


This is not between you and I - I'm pretty sure that by the highest standards, my tastes are at least as good as yours!

It's about what is true. Let's keep in mind the distinction between insight and taste - sure, some people have more insight than others. I can prove that. But I cannot prove that some people have better taste than others. Although you say they do, you are apparently unwilling to offer proof.

And I maintain that you cannot offer proof because you have actually nothing but your own personal tastes.


----------



## Bulldog

I might as well add my two-cents worth. My views on popularity have only been reinforced after reading these 9 pages. In my opinion, popularity represents nothing except a collective set of preferences. The verbal maneuvers on this thread are interesting but ultimately lead nowhere.


----------



## mmsbls

Nereffid said:


> Is "greatness" an actual thing? I don't think music can be good or bad in any truly objective sense - such qualities can't be "scientifically" measured. And yet there is substantial agreement about whether certain things are good or bad or great, so is such assessment truly subjective either? The answer for me lies in between, arising from shared neurology and shared culture. Because of those factors, there will be significant overlap among many listeners as to which music "hits the right buttons". We all have our own unique set of buttons, but each button is not unique. ...
> So in that sense, popularity is an indicator of quality. But ultimately the whole process is so heavily dependent on context (and, more importantly, on neurological factors we don't understand) that the equation is too crude to be used widely, and certainly can't apply on an individual level.


I agree with much of this and want to expand a bit on it. I think many tend to focus on differences between individuals, but I've always been more interested in similarities. We may have our unique set of buttons, but I suspect that the overlap is rather significant.

Art seems to be an attempt to make a "statement" that strongly moves or engages people. We may feel it moves us by being beautiful, interesting, shocking, spiritual, etc.. When we say we like a work, we presumably mean that it was beautiful, interesting, shocking, spiritual, etc. in a way that engaged us. We don't know exactly why a particular work might move us ("neurological factors we don't understand"), but it doesn't happen by chance. The interaction between the music and our neurophysiology (the "buttons") creates that feeling.

If our common evolution and significantly shared experiences produce a set of "buttons" that are more similar than disimilar regarding responses to music, then one might guess that many of us will respond to works in similar ways. Many will find Mozart's 21st piano concerto more moving than one of Reis. So we could view popularity as an imperfect measure of how particular works move the entire classical music community (or some proper subset - e.g. those who have listened to and enjoyed minimalism). If we make some connection between the number of people in a given set who are strongly moved by various works, we might be able to say something about the effect those works have on moving that collective set of people. And maybe that could be a sort of quality.

Of course, this would not tell us whether person A believes that work A is better than work B, but that's a different question.


----------



## Truckload

Vesteralen said:


> I am also 62, and I continue to study and learn. And, although I have my own likes and dislikes, I am just as far as I ever was from being able to rule on greatness beyond the most obvious cases.
> 
> I would never say you are wrong either in your assessments or in simply having the right to make those judgments.
> 
> However, until I can make them for myself, I can't adopt anyone else's either.
> 
> By the way, I have enjoyed your comments. Keep them coming.


Well I certainly wouldn't expect you to accept my judgement, you don't know my qualifications. But would you accept the judgement of two independent cardiac specialist if they told you that you will die without bypass surgery? I am assuming most of us would accept their judgement and take action.

Would you accept the judgement of Charles Rosen regarding the relative merirts of the composers of the High Classical era? Because it is art, and not science, I might say to myself, how do I know if this Charles Rosen character knows his stuff? So I might dig out some scores and look at things myself and see if he has a point. Once I (and lots of others) have done that enough times, Charles Rosen gets a reputation with me, and others, for his knowledge and perception. He comes to be considered an expert by most people seriously studying the High Classical era of music composition. He gets a mention in the Grove Dictionary of Music. And now if Rosen tells me quartet X of Haydn is far more interesting and advanced than quartet Z by Unnamed, I am inclined to believe Charles Rosen knows what he is talking about.

It is the accumulation of knowledge from generation to generation, and putting trust in experts, that makes it possible for each new generation to attain greater and greater achievements, like going to the moon, or developing a vaccine for polio. (There is that word great again inside greater.) If Einstein had to reinvent gravity, and the laws of motion, he might have died before he ever got to his discovery of the speed of light and E=MC2.

It is the same in music. Brahms could look to Beethoven as a model and that gave him a foundation upon which to build the German Requiem and the Tragic Overture. Beethoven looked to his teacher Haydn. Bach studied Vivaldi extensively. Even going so far as to write out transcriptions of various works of Vivaldi to improve his craft of composition. Why did he pick Vivaldi, why not someone else? Why did Beethoven want to study with Mozart (but Mozart died by the time Beethoven arrived in Vienna)?

To me all of these things are related and connected.


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> When in the elevator, what's better than elevator music? My supermarket has been playing 70s' hits lately--love it!


Shopping music is actually on the verge of being recognized as a Major Art Form: "A Former Kmart Employee Has Digitized His Collection Of Kmart Corporate Tapes Of The Early 1990s." You can download the collection if you like.

http://www.chartattack.com/news/201...ollection-of-kmart-in-store-background-music/


----------



## SeptimalTritone

science said:


> Reposting this, because I think its relevance was missed before:
> 
> Regarding excellence of taste - as far as I can see, there are two separate things we need to distinguish: awareness, and preference. Let's use literature because it's easier for me to illustrate the difference.
> 
> I do not enjoy _1984_, _Brave New World_, or _Fahrenheit 451_ very much because too many details are meaningless, too much of the dialogue is unnatural, no symbolism is extensively developed, the moral of the story is too obvious, there is not much intertextuality, and the wordplay is not clever. They all have a lot of insight into the modern world and effectively call attention to extremely important problems, but those aspects of the novels are not so important to me. A different person with a similar awareness of literary devices could enjoy them enormously, simply by having different preferences. For example, I'd guess that Isaac Asimov was at least as well aware as I am of the flaws of _The Mists of Avalon_, and that I'm roughly as familiar with its virtues as he was, but he enjoyed it and I didn't, because that work's particular set of virtues pushed his buttons and not mine, while its particular set of flaws pushed mine and not his.
> 
> As an example in the other direction, _The Lord of the Flies_ has a number of problems that I recognize - constant violations of the laws of nature - but I like it very much because it is loaded with extensively developed symbolism - even allegory! - constant allusions to Paradise Lost, relatively few insignificant details, and the moral of the story is easily missed unless you read fairly carefully. Readers who demand physical plausibility and moral clarity will not enjoy it as much as I do, even if they have exactly the same awareness.
> 
> So there are four really good, maybe even great works of literature. If someone is about as aware of such things as I am, we can disagree about the novels, enjoy them differentially, and have very rewarding conversations about them. I mention those four because I have had such conversations with people whose insight into literature is at least as penetrating as mine: we generally see the same stuff, but we feel differently about it. We have different tastes, but no one's tastes are superior or inferior. Great conversations, the world moves along swimmingly.
> 
> I can imagine a reader with a strong dislike of vulgar humor and moral ambiguity, who really loves stories about reasonable characters who overcome their emotions and behave rationally, or stories where an unambiguously good character defeats an unambiguously bad character; a reader indifferent to symbolism and puns, who doesn't enjoy comparing and contrasting scenes or characters to each other, or puzzling out political/religious implications of a story, or analyzing scenes from minor characters' points of view. Such a reader could understand Shakespeare as well as I do, and yet not enjoy his most famous works. I haven't met such a person yet, but I can imagine one. Her awareness could be equal to or greater than mine, but we'd have very different tastes.
> 
> But I've often talked to people who read _The Catcher in the Rye_ without being aware of, say, the fact that Holden losing the foils in the subway probably signifies something, or who like _Chronicle of a Death Foretold_ without being aware that the fallibility of memory is a major theme. It's not that they don't like the kind of thing that Salinger or Garcia Marquez are doing in the books; they're just unaware of them. They have a right to their opinion, and I won't try to convert them, but I'm not going to seek them out for conversations about literature, because I see that they don't have a lot to offer. (Of course if I somehow met my younger self, I wouldn't talk to him about literature either, unless he were in a mood to listen relatively quietly.) Even when they like the books, I suppose it's good that they got some pleasure, but clearly I enjoyed them at a deeper level.
> 
> Of course a lot of people who say things like "Shakespeare is great" and "Garcia Marquez is great" cannot actually understand what makes Shakespeare or Garcia Marquez great. When someone reads unaware of the kinds of things I've been discussing, we could be critical of that person's reading ability - though it wouldn't be polite conversation, and I wouldn't expect people to like me if I made a point of doing so.
> 
> So there can be greater and lesser insights into works of art, but matters of taste are a different issue.
> 
> All this translates fairly straightforwardly into music, although I don't have the knowledge to give such detailed examples.
> 
> Let's say six people listen to a work of music.
> 
> Two of them analyze the score in depth and they find many interesting elements to discuss. They agree about their analysis, listen to each other's insights with appreciation, but in the end one of them thinks it is a great work of music and the other thinks it's just ok. If they're online, they'll probably start insulting each other, but in real life they're able to go on being friends and they've probably had a really good time discussing it with each other. These guys are awesome.
> 
> Two other people listen to the work of music without the education necessary to do any analysis. One of them likes it for whatever reason, and one doesn't. That's also fine. They might even enjoy listening to the first two discuss the work, and perhaps they'll achieve a better understanding of what they liked or didn't like about the music, but their fundamental tastes probably aren't going to change. If they're online, they'll probably start insulting each other, but in real life they're able to go on being friends.
> 
> Finally, two more people listen to the work of music without the education necessary to do any analysis. One of them says he likes it because he thinks that's what he's supposed to say. Perhaps it's Dutilleux and he's right; perhaps it's Whitacre and he's wrong; whatever. One of them says she doesn't like it because she thinks that's what she's supposed to say. Perhaps it's Dutilleux and she's wrong; perhaps its Whitacre and she's right; whatever. If they're online, they'll probably start insulting each other, but in real life they're able to go on being friends. In a perfect world, we wouldn't even scorn these guys, and we'd realize that to some degree, the first four were doing the same thing, however unconsciously.


I read all of this in detail and thank you for it.

That being said, we (we being the experts) really do think of people who think Schoenberg is "unnatural and didn't care about the sound and too mathematical" and Cage is "too philosophical at the expense of musicality" and Mozart is "simple aristocratic pretty square melodies with trill cadences at the end" as less than capable listeners and, presumably, less intellectually and emotionally intelligent. Just read the dialogue on this site. Even I internally think this (but try not to say it out loud too often due to politically correct social sensibility).

To be fair, as mmsbls said, those people usually haven't spent the requisite effort to engage with Schoenberg, Cage, and Mozart. And that doesn't make them bad people. But it seems that unless they have the "right" responses, or at least not the "wrong" responses, they are lesser listeners.

Also, music is a lot different from literature. If you read all the words, you'll get at least a basic understanding and can make a reliable (even in uninformed on the more important details) judgement. You'll at least get some of the basic plot right. But with music, it's super easy to tense up and shut your brain off at the surface complexity/dissonance/sonic landscape. You can actually get nothing right.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> The only thing I don't see abating is the smuggled-in value judgment of some people trying to reduce affluent people's aesthetic perception to class warfare.


It once was. That's what the 19th-century revulsion to bourgeois taste and later to the taste of "the masses" was all about. I think we all know this already; recognizing it is not or is no longer "class warfare." It's just noticing the dynamics of a past society.

That has broken down now. We have a much more complex situation. One key difference is that our upper class has for the most part not taken to trying to legitimize itself via artistic taste. We see merely some nostalgia for the days when that was possible, some feeble attempts to preserve those lost values. To the degree that our upper class does promote some artistic values, they're in conflict with each other, and in those conflicts they often resort to populist arguments. So, yeah, it's complex. But even so, it's not at all hard to find some would-be elitist sneering at some uneducated person's dismissal of modern art. It's just hard to find them giving really good arguments for the superiority of their tastes.


----------



## Mahlerian

SeptimalTritone said:


> That being said, we (we being the experts) really do think of people who think Schoenberg is "unnatural and didn't care about the sound and too mathematical" and Cage is "too philosophical at the expense of musicality" and Mozart is "simple aristocratic pretty square melodies with trill cadences at the end" as less than capable listeners and, presumably, less intellectually and emotionally intelligent. Just read the dialogue on this site. Even I internally think this (but try not to say it out loud too often due to politically correct social sensibility).


I don't. I think of them as mistaken and wrong, but certainly not less intelligent or emotionally sensitive.

Perhaps I'm just not an expert, though. That would be fine with me.


----------



## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> When in the elevator, what's better than elevator music?


Silence? .................


----------



## Nereffid

Truckload said:


> I am not wise to know how to bring people together. I wish I did. I do know a lot about music. And although I am 62, I continue to study and learn. And the more I learn, the more of the mechanics of music I can internalize, the more I appreciate the "great" composers and the easier it is for me to see the difference between the great and the not so great. With more knowledge comes the ability to be more discerning.
> 
> But I am sure lots of forum members will say I am completely wrong.


I certainly don't think you're wrong, anyway.

I guess what I'm saying is that increased knowledge also comes with increased baggage - which doesn't have to be a bad thing. I don't dispute the existence of "great" composers or "great" music, as long as the quotes are always there (or taken as read), because I know there's shared (subjective) experiences and standards. As it happens, my taste in 18th & 19th century music doesn't deviate hugely from the widely accepted "greats", so I can't reject the notion outright. The "baggage" in question is simply that these "greats" were essentially "decided on" long before I was born, so I'm inclined to believe that I've been as it were pushed by culture towards these greats and not towards other composers or music.
When it comes to recent music, one of the things I really appreciate is that there is no similar wide acceptance of "greats" and I can follow my own path without any of this baggage (or with far less of it, at any rate). In 100 years time maybe none of the new music I like now will be even close to being considered "great", but why should that concern me now?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> mmbls: Art seems to be an attempt to make a "statement" that strongly moves or engages people. We may feel it moves us by being beautiful, interesting, shocking, spiritual, etc.. When we say we like a work, we presumably mean that it was beautiful, interesting, shocking, spiritual, etc. in a way that engaged us. We don't know exactly why a particular work might move us ("neurological factors we don't understand"), but it doesn't happen by chance. The interaction between the music and our neurophysiology (the "buttons") creates that feeling.


I agree that there is certainly a genetic (or more precisely, a 'phenotypic') component to our tastes and perceptions- but only to a point.

For example: I initially thought that Callas' voice was harsh, steely, hollow and ugly when I first heard it- and sometimes it can be.

But when I learned to listen- to ' ' really ' ' 'listen' to how she was dramatically expressing herself with ingenious colorations and superb musicality, I thought: "My God! I see it! I now know what so many people are talking about now when they gush all of this praise on her."

Now I'm not saying that everyone has to like Callas- far from it (though of course I'd love it).

What I'm saying is that with new technical understandings and dramatic insights that one gleans with experience, one can learn to appreciate and to positively 'adore' artists one formerly wouldn't give the time of day to.

We have reason. We have freewill. And, as Kant pointed out, that makes us moral agents- but I'd say aesthetic agents as well.

We can learn to discern at higher and higher levels of awareness.

All it takes is the good faith effort.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Shopping music is actually on the verge of being recognized as a Major Art Form: "A Former Kmart Employee Has Digitized His Collection Of Kmart Corporate Tapes Of The Early 1990s." You can download the collection if you like.
> 
> http://www.chartattack.com/news/201...ollection-of-kmart-in-store-background-music/


Sounds like (pun intended) the label of Eno's ambient music.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

Mahlerian said:


> I don't. I think of them as mistaken and wrong, but certainly not less intelligent or emotionally sensitive.


But why would they say mistaken and wrong things? Isn't it because they are less intellectually and emotionally sensitive to the music? If they were discerning, wouldn't they not say these things? 

For the record I actually do think they are less sensitive, intellectual, and emotionally intelligent, but I just try to suppress these thoughts inside of me because these are bad egoic thoughts that the Buddha tells me not to have. (Of course, the Buddha tells you not to suppress thoughts because that's egoic, but then again you're not supposed to have egoic thoughts in the first place. It's like a double bind of guaranteed failure.)

Yeah okay fine the "Schoenberg didn't care about the sound" people are just mistaken and wrong. For some reason, I'm psychologically averse to this idea. It's so weird. Like if someone said "Quantum entanglement is a fiction, and therefore quantum computing won't be possible" or "Universe expansion, the cosmic microwave background, and the inflation field are fictions" they would be wrong. I'm so psychologically averse to them being wrong, because it means they're less intelligent and less critically thinking! If they were more intelligent, aware, and critically thinking they wouldn't say these things!!!

Ugh I guess the very idea of "smarter people" or "better critical thinkers" is so classist, even though it's true. What do I do I'm in a double bind... I can only pretend that the dumber people are not dumb by being politically correct, and subject myself in humility to the smarter people (not subject myself to you and some guy because both of you guys are cool I mean subject myself to the Buddha, and Eckhart Tolle, and the imaginary, omniscient, ultra-critical God figure that always patronizes me).


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Silence? .................


Please don't invite X'XX" in; you know that's an automatic lock-down.


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## arpeggio

Woodduck said:


> Silence? .................


Yeah!!!!!!!! A Woodduck post I understand.


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## Strange Magic

Truckload said:


> And now if Rosen tells me quartet X of Haydn is far more interesting and advanced than quartet Z by Unnamed, I am inclined to believe Charles Rosen knows what he is talking about.


But what if masses of classical music lovers prefer Borodin's or Ravel's quartets (popularity argument)? What if you yourself prefer Borodin or Ravel? Should you scold yourself for not being equal to the task? Do you not see, or hear, what Rosen sees or hears? All that these appeals to the "experts" in the arts accomplish is to resort to chest-thumping, often very sophisticated chest-thumping, over who is to be the tastemeister in charge. I always find myself with the best qualifications.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> This is not between you and I - I'm pretty sure that by the highest standards, my tastes are at least as good as yours!
> 
> It's about what is true. Let's keep in mind the distinction between insight and taste - sure, some people have more insight than others. I can prove that. But I cannot prove that some people have better taste than others. Although you say they do, you are apparently unwilling to offer proof.
> 
> And I maintain that you cannot offer proof because you have actually nothing but your own personal tastes.


This sounds as if we agree! Your distinction between insight and taste may (or may not) be what I'm talking about when I say that I can perceive that Mozart is one of the greatest of composers even though he is not the most appealing to my personal taste. I haven't argued that some people have superior taste, or that anyone need apologize for preferring Johann Strauss to Richard Strauss just because Richard Strauss's work is of greater scope, richness and complexity. As a matter of fact, I don't care greatly for much of Richard's music (though I love certain works), but can always hear a bit of Johann, limited though his art may be, with pleasure. To me this simply illustrates the non-correspondence of excellence with popularity.

So what exactly do you want proof of?


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## Marschallin Blair

arpeggio said:


> Yeah!!!!!!!! A Woodduck post I understand.


Yeah, that "A is A" stuff is hard to grasp.


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## Marschallin Blair

dogen said:


> Please don't invite X'XX" in; you know that's an automatic lock-down.


Just call it performance art or _regietheater_ and you'll get taxpayer money for it.


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## Vesteralen

Truckload said:


> Well I certainly wouldn't expect you to accept my judgement, *you don't know my qualifications*. But would you accept the judgement of two independent cardiac specialist if they told you that you will die without bypass surgery? I am assuming most of us would accept their judgement and take action.
> 
> Would you accept the judgement of Charles Rosen regarding the relative merirts of the composers of the High Classical era? Because it is art, and not science, I might say to myself, how do I know if this Charles Rosen character knows his stuff? So I might dig out some scores and look at things myself and see if he has a point. Once I (and lots of others) have done that enough times, Charles Rosen gets a reputation with me, and others, for his knowledge and perception. He comes to be considered an expert by most people seriously studying the High Classical era of music composition. He gets a mention in the Grove Dictionary of Music. And now if Rosen tells me quartet X of Haydn is far more interesting and advanced than quartet Z by Unnamed, I am inclined to believe Charles Rosen knows what he is talking about.
> 
> It is the accumulation of knowledge from generation to generation, and putting trust in experts, that makes it possible for each new generation to attain greater and greater achievements, like going to the moon, or developing a vaccine for polio. (There is that word great again inside greater.) If Einstein had to reinvent gravity, and the laws of motion, he might have died before he ever got to his discovery of the speed of light and E=MC2.
> 
> It is the same in music. Brahms could look to Beethoven as a model and that gave him a foundation upon which to build the German Requiem and the Tragic Overture. Beethoven looked to his teacher Haydn. Bach studied Vivaldi extensively. Even going so far as to write out transcriptions of various works of Vivaldi to improve his craft of composition. Why did he pick Vivaldi, why not someone else? Why did Beethoven want to study with Mozart (but Mozart died by the time Beethoven arrived in Vienna)?
> 
> To me all of these things are related and connected.


I highlighted one phrase in your text because it is significant to me and to my whole stance vis-à-vis Talk Classical.

I do not by any means discount the input of "experts" like Mr Rosen and what they have to say about music. But Mr Rosen is not, to my knowledge, on this forum. Frankly, I don't know who any of the people who post here really are. Some of them may be quite knowledgeable about music. At least they appear to be. They could just be excellent plagiarists for all I know.

If someone wants to come out with their real identity as a recognized music expert, I would welcome their input. But, someone who simply quotes an expert is not in the same position. He or she can tell me what the expert says, but he or she can't answer my questions that I want to direct to that expert any more than I can myself.

And even if an expert tells me that, let's say, Schubert is a better composer than Schumann, I reserve judgment on that. Composer A can compose rings around Composer B when measured by certain so-called objective criteria, but if the music of Composer A doesn't move me and the music of Composer B does, what difference does that make to me? None. Does it make me stupid that I can't appreciate Composer A as much as some expert does. I don't think so.

So, there may be a degree of critical consensus on some music-related issues (and I'm always willing to give a hearing ear to well-put-together arguments), and there may be a kind of popular consensus on some other music-related issues. That does not change the fact that I have my own perception of things with which I am comfortable (and which I have no desire to foist on others as some kind of given they must accept).

What I wonder is, why can't we just share our enthusiasms without worrying how they line up with the critics' or the general publics' enthusiasms?


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## Guest

I'm inclined to think that a genuine "expert" in aesthetic matters would reject the idea that that expertise consists in being able to which works or composers are better than others.

I'm also pretty sure that even experts have to defend their assertions, just like everyone else. An undefended assertion by an "expert" is worth less than a defended assertion by, well, by anyone.


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## mmsbls

SeptimalTritone said:


> That being said, we (we being the experts) really do think of people who think Schoenberg is "unnatural and didn't care about the sound and too mathematical" and Cage is "too philosophical at the expense of musicality" and Mozart is "simple aristocratic pretty square melodies with trill cadences at the end" as less than capable listeners and, presumably, less intellectually and emotionally intelligent. Just read the dialogue on this site. Even I internally think this (but try not to say it out loud too often due to politically correct social sensibility).
> 
> To be fair, as mmsbls said, those people usually haven't spent the requisite effort to engage with Schoenberg, Cage, and Mozart. And that doesn't make them bad people. But it seems that unless they have the "right" responses, or at least not the "wrong" responses, they are lesser listeners.


I think the "lesser listeners" label may be more appropriate than the "less intellectually and emotionally intelligent" label. I certainly consider myself a lesser listener compared to my daughter (music student), and I am a lesser listener compared to many on TC. I don't think it comes from lesser intellect or emotional maturity.

By the way, I don't mean to "correct" what you're saying. I do have empathy for your feelings. I just would like to see a shift in how those "in the know" interact with those who may express unfortunate views of the music.


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## SeptimalTritone

some guy said:


> I'm inclined to think that a genuine "expert" in aesthetic matters would reject the idea that that expertise consists in being able to which works or composers are better than others.
> 
> I'm also pretty sure that even experts have to defend their assertions, just like everyone else. An undefended assertion by an "expert" is worth less than a defended assertion by, well, by anyone.


But when you say "trashing modernism, a popular sport since the 19th century!" doesn't that mean that we _should_ be liking modernism?


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## Epilogue

science said:


> I cannot agree that the quality of art has lessened either. Today's Beethoven, Stravinsky, Dante, Joyce, Michelangelo and Matisse are Murail and Grisey, Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison, Rem Koolhaas and Philippe Starck. Or somebody. I wouldn't trust myself to have identified Dante or Joyce in their own time, so if I turn out to be wrong about who in particular will get to be remembered, no biggie.


Thank you for naming specific artists. That said:

1. All those people are 65 years old or older - not exactly "of our time." (For purposes of comparison, Michelangelo was 37 when he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Joyce was 38 when the last installment of _Ulysses_ was first published, and Beethoven was dead at 56.)

2. Disregarding age, if you can't put come up with anybody better than the people you mention, I'd say you've confirmed my point. (I mean, seriously, McCarthy and Morrison up against _Joyce_, never mind _Dante_?) (Grisey was _maybe_ almost as good as Boulez, who is maybe almost as good as Stravinsky - but then, Grisey is dead.)

Maybe you wouldn't have picked out Joyce in his own time, but many people did; enough that, even if _you_ didn't know or care for his work, you would have known that he was regarded by informed people as one of the world's most important authors.


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## Nereffid

Regarding experts. I didn't hear Mahler's piano quartet (the single extant movement he wrote as a teenager) until long after I'd fallen in love with his symphonies and vocal music. When I finally heard it, I instantly fell in love with it too. If you'd asked me then, I'd have said it was among my favourite pieces of chamber music.
Then I read Donald Mitchell's opinion of it. He's a Mahler expert. He didn't like it, and he explained in great detail what was wrong with it.
Mahler's piano quartet remains one of my favourite pieces of chamber music.


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## Mahlerian

SeptimalTritone said:


> Yeah okay fine the "Schoenberg didn't care about the sound" people are just mistaken and wrong. For some reason, I'm psychologically averse to this idea. It's so weird. Like if someone said "Quantum entanglement is a fiction, and therefore quantum computing won't be possible" or "Universe expansion, the cosmic microwave background, and the inflation field are fictions" they would be wrong. I'm so psychologically averse to them being wrong, because it means they're less intelligent and less critically thinking! If they were more intelligent, aware, and critically thinking they wouldn't say these things!!!


Very smart people can believe all kinds of stupid things. Just because someone believes something you consider crazy and insane (like, say, 9-11 conspiracy theories) doesn't by itself mean they're less intelligent. The truth is, we're no more privy to the workings of others' minds than they themselves are, and they're certainly not aware of important parts of the psychological basis for their beliefs.


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## Vesteralen

SeptimalTritone said:


> That being said, we (we being the experts) really do think of people who think Schoenberg is "unnatural and didn't care about the sound and too mathematical" and Cage is "too philosophical at the expense of musicality" and Mozart is "simple aristocratic pretty square melodies with trill cadences at the end" as less than capable listeners and, presumably, less intellectually and emotionally intelligent. Just read the dialogue on this site. Even I internally think this (but try not to say it out loud too often due to politically correct social sensibility).
> 
> To be fair, as mmsbls said, those people usually haven't spent the requisite effort to engage with Schoenberg, Cage, and Mozart. And that doesn't make them bad people. But it seems that unless they have the "right" responses, or at least not the "wrong" responses, they are lesser listeners.


Wow. Even though I've never said any of those things, and thus can't see any of your comments directed towards me, I'm struggling a bit with this whole concept of assessing peoples' intellect.

I think maybe the real problem isn't so much what people think as it is what they are willing to come out in public with and actually say.

As Mark Twain probably never said: Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt


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## Dim7

Mahlerian said:


> Very smart people can believe all kinds of stupid things.


And intelligent people are arguably _more_ susceptible to certain forms of stupidity than the cerebrally less gifted.....


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## Woodduck

SeptimalTritone said:


> But why would they say mistaken and wrong things? Isn't it because they are less intellectually and emotionally sensitive to the music? If they were discerning, wouldn't they not say these things?
> 
> For the record I actually do think they are less sensitive, intellectual, and emotionally intelligent, but I just try to suppress these thoughts inside of me because these are bad egoic thoughts that the Buddha tells me not to have. (Of course, the Buddha tells you not to suppress thoughts because that's egoic, but then again you're not supposed to have egoic thoughts in the first place. It's like a double bind of guaranteed failure.)
> 
> Yeah okay fine the "Schoenberg didn't care about the sound" people are just mistaken and wrong. For some reason, I'm psychologically averse to this idea. It's so weird. Like if someone said "Quantum entanglement is a fiction, and therefore quantum computing won't be possible" or "Universe expansion, the cosmic microwave background, and the inflation field are fictions" they would be wrong. I'm so psychologically averse to them being wrong, because it means they're less intelligent and less critically thinking! If they were more intelligent, aware, and critically thinking they wouldn't say these things!!!
> 
> Ugh I guess the very idea of "smarter people" or "better critical thinkers" is so classist, even though it's true. What do I do I'm in a double bind... I can only pretend that the dumber people are not dumb by being politically correct, and subject myself in humility to the smarter people (not subject myself to you and some guy because both of you guys are cool I mean subject myself to the Buddha, and Eckhart Tolle, and the imaginary, omniscient, ultra-critical God figure that always patronizes me).


This post is a comic masterpiece. Anyone who can't appreciate that is artistically insensitive and emotionally stunted.

If it helps, ST, we are _all_ inferior listeners. Even the great composers said stupid things about each other's music. So everyone can happily look down on everyone else, guilt-free. The double-bind of ego is broken. To hell with the Buddha and Eckhart Tolle.


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## Guest

science said:


> No, because when you dismiss, for example, television, as an inferior art, you're dismissing people who enjoy it as inferior.


This point was effectively undermined by the response focusing too much on the "television" example of the post rather than the general dismissal of people, so I think it needs to be re-iterated.

There is rampant invalidation from two people on this forum that would make Wagner look like a humble man by comparison, and I find it extremely hurtful. I would much rather have bots posting spam and porn on the forum every other minute than have such intense and personal animosity directed at so many of us here.

It is a shame that bringing up racism has a sort of Godwin's Law kind of effect in making science look foolish... because there seems to be a fair bit of truth to it, frankly.


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## mmsbls

Truckload said:


> Would you accept the judgement of Charles Rosen regarding the relative merirts of the composers of the High Classical era? Because it is art, and not science, I might say to myself, how do I know if this Charles Rosen character knows his stuff? So I might dig out some scores and look at things myself and see if he has a point. Once I (and lots of others) have done that enough times, Charles Rosen gets a reputation with me, and others, for his knowledge and perception. He comes to be considered an expert by most people seriously studying the High Classical era of music composition. He gets a mention in the Grove Dictionary of Music. And now if Rosen tells me quartet X of Haydn is far more interesting and advanced than quartet Z by Unnamed, I am inclined to believe Charles Rosen knows what he is talking about.


I think Nereffid's comment aligns with my views. Experts may understand which music is well written. They may understand elegant modulation, interesting harmonies, and novel techniques. In that, their understanding may far exceed the average listener or even somewhat advanced listeners. And perhaps elegant modulation, interesting harmonies, and novel techniques do lead to more listeners enjoying the music. Maybe they can say which music _is better constructed_.

But better constructed music is not necessarily better music. If less well constructed music creates a stronger emotional response in the majority of people (from the proper set of listeners), one could say the less well constructed music is superior in some sense than the better constructed music. The point of music is not to be well written. It is to have a powerful impact on listeners. Sometimes (or maybe often) the two go hand in hard, but sometimes a piece will possess other characteristics that could make it superior.


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## Guest

This has made for a lot of interesting reading; although I think I'm still minded to believe popularity is indicative of popularity. Relationships to other ideas, such, as "quality" or "greatness" are too fraught with difficulty as to be established with any degree of consensus.


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## SeptimalTritone

nathanb said:


> I would much rather have bots posting spam and *porn on the forum* every other minute than have such intense and personal animosity directed at so many of us here.


A little aside and a bit of advice. In general, when making "I would much rather have X than the even worse Y" sort of statements, make sure that X is actually a bad thing.


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## Vaneyes

Sometimes I get stopped in my tracks with fact. But I just brush myself off and carry on. I've heard knowledge yields confidence. Knowledge is a dangerous thing. Okay, which is it? Popularity is necessary. The being of nothingness, so to speak. That'll be $200, please.


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## Woodduck

nathanb said:


> *This point was effectively undermined by the response focusing too much on the "television" example of the post rather than the general dismissal of people*, so I think it needs to be re-iterated.
> 
> *There is rampant invalidation from two people on this forum* that would make Wagner look like a humble man by comparison, and I find it extremely hurtful. I would much rather have bots posting spam and porn on the forum every other minute than have *such intense and personal animosity *directed at so many of us here.
> 
> It is a shame that bringing up racism has a sort of Godwin's Law kind of effect in making science look foolish... because there seems to be a fair bit of truth to it, frankly.


I see no general dismissal of people here. Since mine was the post using television as an example (an example which was misinterpreted by being overgeneralized) I might possibly conclude you are referring to me as one of the "rampant invalidators" you're referring to. The truth is that no one here is "invalidating" anyone, nor is anyone exhibiting personal animosity - until now.

This has been a stimulating discussion. Let's please not derail this thread in the way that the Tchaikovsky thread was derailed by accusations against other members - and shut down.


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## Guest

Could anyone examine a newly-written score and indicate the likely level of popularity?


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## Woodduck

mmsbls said:


> I think Nereffid's comment aligns with my views. Experts may understand which music is well written. They may understand elegant modulation, interesting harmonies, and novel techniques. In that, their understanding may far exceed the average listener or even somewhat advanced listeners. And perhaps elegant modulation, interesting harmonies, and novel techniques do lead to more listeners enjoying the music. Maybe they can say which music _is better constructed_.
> 
> But better constructed music is not necessarily better music. If less well constructed music creates a stronger emotional response in the majority of people (from the proper set of listeners), one could say the less well constructed music is superior in some sense than the better constructed music. The point of music is not to be well written. It is to have a powerful impact on listeners. Sometimes (or maybe often) the two go hand in hard, but sometimes a piece will possess other characteristics that could make it superior.


I would differ with this only in saying that "better constructed" music is likely to be the music that has that "powerful impact on listeners." It is partly - and often largely - "abstract" qualities in art which determine its expressive power. The structure of a Bach fugue or a Beethoven sonata is a delight of a more than cerebral nature, and our emotional responses to the music depend greatly on it.

The ways in which form determines expression are many and complex. Leonard B. Meyer's _Emotion and Meaning in Music_ is an old but still fine and eminently readable introduction to the subject.


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## mmsbls

dogen said:


> Could anyone examine a newly-written score and indicate the likely level of popularity?


Excellent question. The answer now is no. We simply know vastly too little of how the brain works. In Neferrid's terms, we just don't understand the "buttons" well enough (i.e. the interactions between the music and the physiological state(s) of the brain).

I generally believe that at some point in the future, we may very well be able to determine in theory what percentage of a particular set of people will find a work enjoyable. The percentage may change with time since it's certainly a function of many time-varying characteristics of brains.

Now suppose we could actually determine what percentage of listeners in various categories would find a work enjoyable. Popularity would then no longer be subjective. What that change people's views of what popularity means?


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## mmsbls

Woodduck said:


> I would differ with this only in saying that "better constructed" music is likely to be the music that has that "powerful impact on listeners." It is partly - and often largely - "abstract" qualities in art which determine its expressive power. The structure of a Bach fugue or a Beethoven sonata is a delight of a more than cerebral nature, and our emotional responses to the music depend greatly on it.
> 
> The ways in which form determines expression are many and complex. Leonard B. Meyer's _Emotion and Meaning in Music_ is an old but still fine and eminently readable introduction to the subject.


I agree that the two (better construction and powerful impact) often or perahps almost always go hand in hand. My daughter wanted to do an experiment with me which unfortunately we never did. She wanted me to listen to a new work and indicate which specific parts of the music I found especially enjoyable or interesting. She would also go through the work and annotate what's happening on a music theory basis. We would compare notes to see if my enjoyable parts lined up with "nice" music theory parts.

It is her view that people who don't know music theory (like me) still "hear" the theory in some sense. We hear a lovely modulation even if we can't identify it as such. I remember hearing the first movement of Berwald's 3rd symphony and greatly enjoying certain parts. When my wife heard it, she immediately commented on the interesting harmony of those parts.


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## EdwardBast

Marschallin Blair said:


> Now I'm not saying that everyone has to like Callas- far from it (though of course I'd love it).


Your parenthetical comment might just be a throwaway, and if so, ignore this, but: Are you serious? I happen to like, for example, Scnittke's Symphony no. 7 (1993) - even better than I like The Simpson's  - but I would find it positively horrifying if everyone liked it that much. Why on earth would one wish to live among clones of ones own aesthetic judgments? That would make my skin crawl.


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## mmsbls

This is an interesting thread (if I do say so myself). Please refrain from commenting on other people. I assume everyone would really rather comment on music and ideas related to music. I know that the vast majority of us would rather _read_ comments on music than comments on other members.


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## Marschallin Blair

EdwardBast said:


> Your parenthetical comment might just be a throwaway, and if so, ignore this, but: Are you serious? I happen to like, for example, Scnittke's Symphony no. 7 (1993) - even better than I like The Simpson's  - but I would find it positively horrifying if everyone liked it that much. Why on earth would one wish to live among clones of ones own aesthetic judgments? That would make my skin crawl.


Well, Schnittke's outside my ken- or even house of fashion- but to answer your cheeky question with a cheeky question: Do you spend much time looking in the mirror?

I know I do.

I just want a world 'filled' with inescapable beauty. _;D_. . .

Okay, back to the music, as mmbls suggested.


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## Epilogue

EdwardBast said:


> Why on earth would one wish to live among clones of ones own aesthetic judgments?


I don't want to live among clones of my own aesthetic judgments. I just want everyone to realize by a process of fair and informed consideration that I'm right about everything.


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## Marschallin Blair

Epilogue said:


> I don't want to live among clones of my own aesthetic judgments. I just want everyone to realize by a process of fair and informed consideration that I'm right about everything.


I'm in deeply-moved agreement.

Everyone is entitled to my opinion.


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## EdwardBast

Marschallin Blair said:


> Well, Schnittke's outside my ken- or even house of fashion- but to answer your cheeky question with a cheeky question: Do you spend much time looking in the mirror?
> 
> I know I do.
> 
> I just want a world 'filled' with inescapable beauty. _;D_. . .
> 
> Okay, back to the music, as mmbls suggested.


Actually, my comment was not off topic, and it was not cheeky either. The issue of how the individual values his/her own aesthetic judgments relative to those of others has been central to much of this discussion, particularly the exchanges between Science and Woodduck.


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## Marschallin Blair

EdwardBast said:


> Actually, my comment was not off topic, and it was not cheeky either. The issue of how the individual values his/her own aesthetic judgments relative to those of others has been central to much of this discussion, particularly the exchanges between Science and Woodduck.


Okay.

But when you write, _"Your parenthetical comment might just be a throwaway. . ."- _I interpret that as cheeky.


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## EdwardBast

Epilogue said:


> 2. Disregarding age, if you can't put come up with anybody better than the people you mention, I'd say you've confirmed my point. (I mean, seriously, McCarthy and Morrison up against _Joyce_, never mind _Dante_?) (Grisey was _maybe_ almost as good as Boulez, who is maybe almost as good as Stravinsky - but then, Grisey is dead.)


Have you read McCarthy's best work? Suttree was written at about the same age as Joyce's Ulysses. How about William Gaddis? What he wrote in his 20s stands up very well against Joyce. (And what he wrote during the heydays of The Simpsons does too.) David Foster Wallace?


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## DavidA

The purpose of musc is to communicate to listeners in some way so popularity indicates some form of success. However, popularity is not necessarily an indicator of quality else the cardboard hamburgers of Mc Donald's or the bovine carrying a on in the X Factor would be of I estimable quality. I suggest however that music that has lasted the years has a certain quality to it. For example, no-one would put Irvin Berlin in the Mozart category, musically, but he wrote some of the greatest popular songs ever. I recently heard a band of young singers perform Berlin songs and they still came through fresh as a daisy.


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## Epilogue

EdwardBast said:


> Have you read McCarthy's best work?


I've read _Blood Meridian_.



EdwardBast said:


> How about William Gaddis? What he wrote in his 20s stands up very well against Joyce.


This is beside the point, which is that _The Recognitions_, whatever its merits - or whatever it is that you're referring to; he turned 30 in 1952 - is as far in time from us today as Joyce and Stravinsky were from _Madame Bovary_ and _Les préludes_.



EdwardBast said:


> David Foster Wallace?


Oh, you didn't want to do that.


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## Truckload

I would like to recommend this book:









I have read about half the book and find it very interesting. It speaks directly to the topic at hand. It is not going to provide much new detail to someone who majored in music and has two years of music theory, a year of music history and a year of musicology in their experience, but even to that person, it is a fun read, and it gives access to web based resources that contribute to the enjoyment.


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## EdwardBast

Epilogue said:


> I've read _Blood Meridian_.


That one's pretty good, and a popular favorite, but I don't think it is his best. Argument aside, try Suttree if you are willing to reevalutate. Completely different in every way from BM.



Epilogue said:


> This is beside the point, which is that _The Recognitions_, whatever its merits - or whatever it is that you're referring to; he turned 30 in 1952 - is as far in time from us today as Joyce and Stravinsky were from _Madame Bovary_ and _Les préludes_.


_Carpenter's Gothic_ and _A Frolic of His Own_ are great and much closer to our time. Argument aside, the former is chilling and brilliant, the latter a wonderful romp of social satire. The Recognitions, is still gathering its audience and is quite amazing.



Epilogue said:


> Oh, you didn't want to do that.


Why not? You didn't like _Infinite Jest_?


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## Epilogue

EdwardBast said:


> Argument aside, try Suttree if you are willing to reevalutate. Completely different in every way from BM.


Thank you for the recommendation. I'll try to work up the motivation to at least skim it. I'd be more likely to succeed if you'd also be willing to specify how it's different.



EdwardBast said:


> Why not? You didn't like _Infinite Jest_?


I don't like Joyce. That doesn't change the fact that he's great. I don't like Cormac McCarthy. That doesn't change the fact that he can sometimes sort of write. _Infinite Jest_ just sucks.

In the spirit of I'll show you mine if you show me yours, the best English language sort-of novel published in the last 20 years that I've had the privilege of reading is _Pleasant Hell_ by John Dolan. It doesn't sustain the power of the preface all the way through, and the treatments of several subjects (the dog, the feet, Elizabeth Bathory) wear out their welcome, but there are passages very much worth reading throughout. Maybe better yet - certainly more consistent - is his recent sort-of novella, _Canada Was a Cakewalk_.


----------



## Morimur

Popularity indicates that something is adored by the masses because they can readily decode and identify with the transmitted message.


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## millionrainbows

There is a difference between transient flushes of popularity, and between a work being established in history. What aspect are we talking about? The Kardashians are 'popular.'


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## mmsbls

millionrainbows said:


> There is a difference between transient flushes of popularity, and between a work being established in history. What aspect are we talking about? The Kardashians are 'popular.'


Well, you could use the description from the OP:



mmsbls said:


> I'd like to restrict the concept of popularity and ask what the restricted concept indicates about the music. Most people would not compare The Marriage of Figaro to a Toyota Prius. Both are wonderful but at vastly different things. So I would use the concept of popularity not among all music and all listeners but rather among music that is similar and listeners that have particular backgrounds. Of course one must decide how restrictive to make the class of musical works and listeners. For now, maybe we say music from the same classical music era and listeners with reasonable experience listening to such music. Defining exactly what "reasonable experience" might mean can be a task for the thread if necessary.
> 
> So the question then becomes, "What does it mean about the music (and listeners) when a group of moderately experienced listeners indicates a strong preference for one composer or work over another from a particular classical music era?"


----------



## Bulldog

millionrainbows said:


> There is a difference between transient flushes of popularity, and between a work being established in history. What aspect are we talking about? The Kardashians are 'popular.'


It would be a hoot if the Kardashian clan was still popular into the 22nd century.


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## Morimur

Bulldog said:


> It would be a hoot if the Kardashian clan was still popular into the 22nd century.


22nd century? You give humanity too much credit. Well, even if I am wrong everyone in TC will be long dead and it won't matter.


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## EdwardBast

Epilogue said:


> Thank you for the recommendation. I'll try to work up the motivation to at least skim it. I'd be more likely to succeed if you'd also be willing to specify how it's different.


Set in and about Knoxville Tennessee. The prose is often densely poetic and much more discursive than the stripped down declarative sentences of BM. No allegory (Like the Judge in BM). Frankly, if the first page doesn't speak to you with poetic beauty, you might want to put it down. All you have to do is read the first page and you will already have an idea of how it differs from Blood Meridian. Almost like it's by a different author.



Epilogue said:


> I don't like Joyce. That doesn't change the fact that he's great. I don't like Cormac McCarthy. That doesn't change the fact that he can sometimes sort of write. _Infinite Jest_ just sucks.


I don't care much for Joyce either. Ulysses is interesting in its way, but I didn't find it particularly deep or satisfying. McCarthy is pretty much universally recognized as a great "prose stylist," which words I put in quotes because they make me want to puke. Can't agree about Infinite Jest. I found it hilarious and fancifully ridiculous. Brilliant satire. But there is some sharp characterization and some serious themes as well. I loved the end notes too!



Epilogue said:


> In the spirit of I'll show you mine if you show me yours, the best English language sort-of novel published in the last 20 years that I've had the privilege of reading is _Pleasant Hell_ by John Dolan. It doesn't sustain the power of the preface all the way through, and the treatments of several subjects (the dog, the feet, Elizabeth Bathory) wear out their welcome, but there are passages very much worth reading throughout. Maybe better yet - certainly more consistent - is his recent sort-of novella, _Canada Was a Cakewalk_.


Thanks for the recommendations. I'll look into Dolan.

Anyway: The Recognitions is superb. Timeless.


----------



## Morimur

I prefer Beckett to Joyce—too much nonsense with Joyce. Beckett got to the heart of things and had no stomach for bullsh!t


----------



## Epilogue

EdwardBast said:


> Set in and about Knoxville Tennessee. The prose is often densely poetic and much more discursive than the stripped down declarative sentences of BM. No allegory (Like the Judge in BM). Frankly, if the first page doesn't speak to you with poetic beauty, you might want to put it down. All you have to do is read the first page and you will already have an idea of how it differs from Blood Meridian. Almost like it's by a different author.


Thank you!



EdwardBast said:


> a great "prose stylist," which words I put in quotes because they make me want to puke.


Well, we agree about that, at least. On the other hand, "fancifully ridiculous" gets my gag reflex going equally well.



EdwardBast said:


> Thanks for the recommendations. I'll look into Dolan.


Here's a sample in the form of a fairly short pseudonymous essay, if that's of interest:

http://exiledonline.com/?s=Ace Korakes


----------



## Epilogue

Morimur said:


> Beckett got to heart of things and had no stomach for bullsh!t


Beckett had no stomach for anything _but_ bullsh!t.

("I can't go on. I'll go on." Yes, indeed you will, Sam.)

Unfortunately, this doesn't change the fact of his greatness either.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> This sounds as if we agree! Your distinction between insight and taste may (or may not) be what I'm talking about when I say that I can perceive that Mozart is one of the greatest of composers even though he is not the most appealing to my personal taste. I haven't argued that some people have superior taste, or that anyone need apologize for preferring Johann Strauss to Richard Strauss just because Richard Strauss's work is of greater scope, richness and complexity. As a matter of fact, I don't care greatly for much of Richard's music (though I love certain works), but can always hear a bit of Johann, limited though his art may be, with pleasure. To me this simply illustrates the non-correspondence of excellence with popularity.
> 
> So what exactly do you want proof of?


It can't be the same. Insight is something specific, along the lines of "this chord in this key was unusual in its time" or "this modulation would not have been expected by an eighteenth century audience" or whatever. Taste/preference is whether such things are identified as good or bad. "Mozart is great" is not an insight; at best, it's a conclusion reached after many instances of insights that brought pleasure. At worst, and most likely, it's just something we say because we know we're supposed to say it. After all, if I were to challenge you about what makes Mozart great, how specific could your answer be? Very few of us could come up with anything very substantial.


----------



## science

SeptimalTritone said:


> I read all of this in detail and thank you for it.
> 
> That being said, we (we being the experts) really do think of people who think Schoenberg is "unnatural and didn't care about the sound and too mathematical" and Cage is "too philosophical at the expense of musicality" and Mozart is "simple aristocratic pretty square melodies with trill cadences at the end" as less than capable listeners and, presumably, less intellectually and emotionally intelligent. Just read the dialogue on this site. Even I internally think this (but try not to say it out loud too often due to politically correct social sensibility).
> 
> To be fair, as mmsbls said, those people usually haven't spent the requisite effort to engage with Schoenberg, Cage, and Mozart. And that doesn't make them bad people. But it seems that unless they have the "right" responses, or at least not the "wrong" responses, they are lesser listeners.
> 
> Also, music is a lot different from literature. If you read all the words, you'll get at least a basic understanding and can make a reliable (even in uninformed on the more important details) judgement. You'll at least get some of the basic plot right. But with music, it's super easy to tense up and shut your brain off at the surface complexity/dissonance/sonic landscape. You can actually get nothing right.


I disagree with you about literature, but you get me. I am a "lesser listener" - a much lesser one! (Edit: That doesn't mean that my tastes are bad or invalid, just that they are poorly informed or that I can't explain very well why I like or don't like something that I hear. In the terms I used, I have fewer insights than someone like Charles Rosen. So I recognize and respect his expertise. But I like what I like and there's nothing wrong with that.)


----------



## science

nathanb said:


> This point was effectively undermined by the response focusing too much on the "television" example of the post rather than the general dismissal of people, so I think it needs to be re-iterated.
> 
> There is rampant invalidation from two people on this forum that would make Wagner look like a humble man by comparison, and I find it extremely hurtful. I would much rather have bots posting spam and porn on the forum every other minute than have such intense and personal animosity directed at so many of us here.
> 
> It is a shame that bringing up racism has a sort of Godwin's Law kind of effect in *making science look foolish*... because there seems to be a fair bit of truth to it, frankly.


Hey! I don't think it did that at all! If it did, _I_ didn't notice.


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## Guest

science said:


> Hey! I don't think it did that at all! If it did, _I_ didn't notice.


I didn't think so, or I wouldn't have said what I did. But the first few responses seemed to indicate otherwise.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> It can't be the same. Insight is something specific, along the lines of "this chord in this key was unusual in its time" or "this modulation would not have been expected by an eighteenth century audience" or whatever. Taste/preference is whether such things are identified as good or bad. "Mozart is great" is not an insight; at best, it's a conclusion reached after many instances of insights that brought pleasure. At worst, and most likely, it's just something we say because we know we're supposed to say it. After all, if I were to challenge you about what makes Mozart great, how specific could your answer be? Very few of us could come up with anything very substantial.


My suspicion is that nothing anyone could say about Mozart (or any other artist) would be the sort of proof of greatness you require. Any characteristic or complex of characteristics of his art would be judged as a simple matter of "taste/preference." If I were not at the very end of a long day I could answer your challenge to say what makes Mozart great with some specificity; at the moment I might suggest you read a book like Charles Rosen's _The Classical Style_ and see whether his analyses are substantial enough to convince you. But I think you've already told me that they would not be.

It's in the nature of phenomena of an internal nature - psychological/spiritual/aesthetic/ethical phenomena - that "objective" proofs such as those based on sensory evidence are elusive or unavailable to us, or at best indirect. If you want to regard all judgments concerning inner experience as arbitrary because they are not subject to such proofs (and I'm not sure that you do), I can't imagine that any amount of evidence would convince you that any art is intrinsically superior to any other. But then I'd have to wonder as well whether you require objective "proof" that some human behaviors are more ethical than others. If quality in art is merely a question of what gives an individual pleasure, and Bach is no better than Britney, why isn't right action merely whatever an individual wishes to do? Is goodness any more "provable" than beauty? Judgments in both aesthetics and ethics rest upon perceptions and understandings of human nature and life which cannot be placed on the dissecting table, examined under a microscope, or expressed in a syllogism.

A person listening to a Bach concerto - or a raga by Ali Akbar Khan - and a Britney Spears number either grasps that some music issues from, and appeals to, richer and higher perceptions of reality, or he doesn't. What music he enjoys hearing at a given moment is irrelevant.


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## Guest

"What does popularity indicate?" (about the music, I presume).

It _can _indicate several things: a convergence of opinion on a large scale; a coincidence of opinion; value (rather than quality) to a large number of listeners; and quality. It usually indicates one or more of these things together, but rarely all of them, given that 'quality' is elusive.

Sometimes there is also a 'conspiracy of opinion' which might occur around a piece that is actively promoted by listeners themselves, for example, through social media.

Popularity should not be _assumed _as an indicator of quality but it seems perverse to use popularity as a contra-indicator and as the OP is careful to explain, in exploring any correlation between popularity and quality, you need to be careful to compare like with like.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> If quality in art is merely a question of what gives an individual pleasure, and Bach is no better than Britney, why isn't right action merely whatever an individual wishes to do? Is goodness any more "provable" than beauty?


Quality in art is what happens when a subject becomes fully engaged with an object. There's nothing "mere" about it.

And, as I'm sure you already know, right action refers to the relationships between subject and subject.

The difference, which has nothing to do with provableness, is in the consequences. There are no consequences for disliking Mahler or Xenakis. Well no social consequences. There are consequences for mistreating other people, namely that the other people might object to being mistreated. Xenakis' _Persepolis,_ not being sentient, could care less whether you like it or not.


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## Guest

What has proof to do with artistic endeavour?


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## Vesteralen

Now I understand where regietheater comes from.


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## Guest

Bulldog said:


> I might as well add my two-cents worth. My views on popularity have only been reinforced after reading these 9 pages. In my opinion, popularity represents nothing except a collective set of preferences. The verbal maneuvers on this thread are interesting but ultimately lead nowhere.


Having been away on a short holiday, I return to an admirable attempt by mmsbls to explore "popularity" with some set parameters. I've not read through all 14 pages, but have dipped into randomly selected pages - enough to see that the parameters, like all the usual 'boundaries' have been pushed at and broken. For example, is it possible to explore what popularity indicates without wandering into 'greatness', or making odious comparisons between things that shouldn't be compared? Apparently not.

I like verbal manoeuvres, and I reserve the right to join in with them, but I'm inclined to agree with Bulldog (though I think popularity _can _indicate more than collective preferences) inasmuch as yet another unbounded debate about greatness/quality/popularity is unlikely to generate much light.


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## Vesteralen

MacLeod said:


> yet another unbounded debate about greatness/quality/popularity is unlikely to generate much light.


Well, maybe not "light" exactly, but I have to confess that I've already made at least some slight alterations to my own stance on the use of the word "great" as a direct result of this thread.

Popularity, especially when dealing with today's audiences, is still something I have a hard time feeling is of any real importance. But, this thread has also opened up some new ways of thinking about popularity in a historical context for me.

So, I don't feel that the 14 pages of reading have been a complete waste of time.


----------



## Guest

Vesteralen said:


> So, I don't feel that the 14 pages of reading have been a complete waste of time.


I wouldn't want to suggest that it was - though I can see how my post might read that way. Note that I said 'unbounded debate', by which I mean that if the parameters set in the OP are ignored, the discussion can easily go off the rails. It took only 8 posts before there was a reference to 'great' and only 28 before we got the, IMO, unconsidered assertion that 'popularity indicates greatness'. Even mmsbls himself referenced the traditional swipe at Justin Bieber in the OP (though I think he gets away with it as he was not making the point himself!).

In a world where some want to see simplicity, there is only complexity - an overlapping of communities-within-communities each with its own cultural preferences. In other words, what might be "popular" in one community is completely unheard of or at least unremarked in another. (Garth Brooks - who he?) However, there are those who want to assert their cultural hegemony over others, and I'm beginning to think that "popularity" indicates nothing about what is popular, only something about those who put their hands up as voters.


----------



## Vesteralen

mmsbls said:


> We've had many threads where people have discussed the popularity of works or composers, and in some cases, there may be an implication that popularity is an indicator of *quality*. Mozart is more popular than Haas; therefore, Mozart is *better than *Haas. Often people respond saying that popularity does not equate to quality; otherwise, Justin Bieber (and most popular music) would have to be considered better than Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven.


I see what you're saying, MacLeod, and I have to plead guilty to fostering the discussion of "greatness" on the thread, which was a bit off the rails, perhaps. But, as the highlighted words from the above OP indicate, getting into the subject of greatness was not really something that couldn't have been anticipated by the OP, was it?


----------



## Woodduck

some guy said:


> Quality in art is what happens when a subject becomes fully engaged with an object. There's nothing "mere" about it.
> 
> And, as I'm sure you already know, right action refers to the relationships between subject and subject.
> 
> The difference, which has nothing to do with provableness, is in the consequences. There are no consequences for disliking Mahler or Xenakis. Well no social consequences. There are consequences for mistreating other people, namely that the other people might object to being mistreated. Xenakis' _Persepolis,_ not being sentient, could care less whether you like it or not.


I compared aesthetics with ethics _solely_ with respect to the "provability" which science, not I, demanded. I asserted that both "beauty" (aesthetic excellence) and "goodness" (moral excellence) - both being matters of the spirit - are unprovable scientifically, i.e., by sensory evidence or deduction from it. I wasn't asserting any further equivalence. So you're debating a strawman.

But even so, your own point is invalidated by the fact that although there are indeed social consequences to our treatment of other people, there is still no "proof" of the above sort that those consequences themselves, which others may consider bad for them, are _morally_ wrong. You've merely moved the argument forward a step and left the essential epistemological question - what do we know and how do we know it - untouched.


----------



## Woodduck

The question of "greatness" - lets call it, more broadly and accurately, quality - is hardly an accidental diversion or irrelevancy. When someone on a classical music forum asks "What does popularity indicate?", there will be discussion of what it does and doesn't indicate and why, and our terms have to be defined. Ergo...


----------



## mmsbls

Vesteralen said:


> I see what you're saying, MacLeod, and I have to plead guilty to fostering the discussion of "greatness" on the thread, which was a bit off the rails, perhaps. But, as the highlighted words from the above OP indicate, getting into the subject of greatness was not really something that couldn't have been anticipated by the OP, was it?


I'm neither surprized nor annoyed that greatness has been discussed in the thread. It's true that I'm much more interested in what exactly makes some works significantly more popular (enjoyable) than others. And specifically, what elements of the music interact with the brains of like-minded people to elicit stronger emotional responses for some works than for others? Could those elements be a basis for defining the concept of quality in music?


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> The question of "greatness" - lets call it, more broadly and accurately, quality - is hardly an accidental diversion or irrelevancy. When someone on a classical music forum asks "What does popularity indicate?", there will be discussion of what it does and doesn't indicate and why, and our terms have to be defined. Ergo...


It's not clear whether you're addressing my post, but I don't believe I said or suggested that it's not relevant. As is often the case, the title of the thread needs to be read in the context of the OP which seemed to me to want to avoid a hackneyed discussion.

Of course, my reading of the OP could be wrong.



mmsbls said:


> I'm neither surprized nor annoyed that greatness has been discussed in the thread. It's true that I'm much more interested in what exactly makes some works significantly more popular (enjoyable) than others. And specifically, what elements of the music interact with the brains of like-minded people to elicit stronger emotional responses for some works than for others? Could those elements be a basis for defining the concept of quality in music?


...and intellectual response too?

I prefer the term "value" to "quality" (unless you mean "attribute") as it permits the subjective that we all bring to our listening. In other words, we can acknowledge the value many find in the popular but, in some quarters despised Justin Bieber.


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## Vesteralen

mmsbls said:


> I'm neither surprized nor annoyed that greatness has been discussed in the thread. It's true that I'm much more interested in what exactly makes some works significantly more popular (enjoyable) than others. And specifically, what elements of the music interact with the brains of like-minded people to elicit stronger emotional responses for some works than for others? Could those elements be a basis for defining the concept of quality in music?


I would think that any time we are discussing popularity, we have to deal, at least to some extent, with what is called "the lowest common denominator". We use it as a pejorative, but it's really just a mathematical concept, isn't it?

What it suggests to me, as far as music goes, is that music that is accessible, or in other words, easy to grasp - not needing an excessive amount of familiarity with more arcane or difficult musical concepts - is going to be more popular. An easily recognized melodic line would be one example, but not necessarily the only one.

Here are the first twenty of the 50 greatest pieces of classical music according to Wikipedia: _[Edit - this was not actually "according to Wikipedia" - they were referring to a digital album of that title put out by the LPO, and are probably in track-listing order, not rated by popularity. So, you'd have to print all 50 to be accurate. Nevertheless, the selections listed here are pretty obviously among the most "popular" of classical music pieces if you are talking about the widest possible audience]_

1.Edvard Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46: Morning Mood
2.Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, Op. 67, "Fate": I. Allegro Con Brio
3.Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, Op. 8, "Spring": Allegro
4.Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings
5.Richard Wagner - The Valkyrie: Ride of the Valkyries
6.Frédéric Chopin - Nocturne No. 2 In E-Flat Major, Op. 9
7.Johann Pachelbel - Canon In D Major
8.Carl Orff - Carmina Burana: O Fortuna
9.Johann Sebastian Bach - Orchestral suites No. 3 In D Major, BWV 1068: Air
10.Gustav Holst - The Planets, Op. 32: Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
11.Claude Debussy - Suite bergamasque, L 75: Clair de Lune
12.Giuseppe Verdi - Nabucco: Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves (Va', Pensiero, Sull'ali Dorate)
13.Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21 In C Major, K. 467: II. Andante
14.Johann Sebastian Bach - Brandenburg Concertos No. 3 In G Major, BWV 1048: Allegro
15.Jules Massenet - Thaïs: Meditation
16.Antonín Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 In E Minor, Op. 95, "From the New World": II. Largo
17.Johann Strauss II - On the Beautiful Blue Danube, Op. 314
18.Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dance No. 5 In G Minor
19.Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake Suite, Op. 20: Scene
20.Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No. 1

It's pretty obvious what they all have in common. _[If you wanted another person to recognize them, you could probably just whistle or hum the melodies]_

Within a more selected group, like the members of TC, we find a slightly different set of parameters. And, we could narrow down our own group even further into those with like perceptions.

Individually, all of us probably have certain quirks we can't explain. For example, there is a certain set of soul/blues chords that I just don't like very much. Any song that features those particular chords heavily will not be a favorite song of mine. Why? I can't really say.

No good example of this in classical music strikes me, other than the fact that my ears have an aversion to the sound of organs and countertenors. I can't explain it, it just is there.

None of this helps much.

Sorry.


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## Truckload

Even in the time of Beethoven, or Bach or Wagner there was art music, but there was also popular music. Popular music that was sung and played and enjoyed by the great majority of people, but is forgotten today. If we consider the music of 1804, the year of Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, there was popular music that was probably preferred by a larger absolute number of people than the Beethoven 3rd. If that is what the OP was intending to discuss, I have totally missed the point. I think we are talking about popularity among the audience for art music.

Also, there was the equivalent of "crossover" music, even during the time of Beethoven. Beethoven was commissioned to write a piece for a mechanical music making contraption. The piece was Wellington's Victory. Beethoven earned a lot of money from that piece and it was probably heard by a greater absolute number of people than most of his other music.

And then we have art music. When the Beethoven's 3rd was first played, some lovers of art music liked it, some didn't. It did not immediately and completely displace the popularity of the music of Haydn and Mozart among those who love art music. Although many did immediately recognize the genius of the 3rd, it was not universal. As time went on, more and more lovers of art music came to really like the 3rd, and all of the music of Beethoven. By the time of Brahms, the music of Beethoven was almost universally venerated by lovers of art music. But not 100% of art music lovers like the music of Beethoven. Not in 1860 and not today. 

So what does the popularity of Beethoven's music among lovers of art music mean? I believe there is a link between the popularity of Beethoven's music among those who like art music and it's quality, or greatness. As the unanimity of popularity among lovers of art music get closer and closer to 100%, the more statistically significant that popularity becomes.


----------



## Truckload

Vesteralen - I agree with all of the points in this latest post. Not sure where Wiki came up with that list, I am surprised by it.


----------



## Nereffid

mmsbls said:


> It's true that I'm much more interested in what exactly makes some works significantly more popular (enjoyable) than others. And specifically, what elements of the music interact with the brains of like-minded people to elicit stronger emotional responses for some works than for others? Could those elements be a basis for defining the concept of quality in music?


I wonder if it's possible to create a "Netflix, but for classical music" model. Netflix supposedly has 76,897 "micro-genres" (see this _Atlantic_ article for more detail: http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...-netflix-reverse-engineered-hollywood/282679/) based on breaking down movies by specific plot components, genres, and so forth, which it then uses to recommend movies to individual users based on what they've previously said they liked. Perhaps a classical equivalent micro-genre might be "settings of sombre poems with a tonality mostly of B flat, with _Sprechgesang_ elements"*. I suspect that such micro-analysis would be terrifyingly complex for classical music, but if it could be done and then combined with neurological studies it could provide a musico-biological rationale for why some people like some things, and not others. I don't think it could necessarily tell us anything about quality per se.

* To create that description, I picked a composer biography at random from my shelf, opened it at random and rephrased what the author said about the work being discussed. Anyone who can identify the work based on that description will win 1 (one) Internet.


----------



## mmsbls

MacLeod said:


> ...and intellectual response too?
> 
> I prefer the term "value" to "quality" (unless you mean "attribute") as it permits the subjective that we all bring to our listening. In other words, we can acknowledge the value many find in the popular but, in some quarters despised Justin Bieber.


Yes, intellectual response also. Anything that causes someone to enjoy the work. I don't mean attribute. I do mean something similar to value.


----------



## Vesteralen

Truckload said:


> Vesteralen - I agree with all of the points in this latest post. Not sure where Wiki came up with that list, I am surprised by it.


Well, I edited the post to indicate what the sample really was. Maybe that will help.

At any rate, in my eagerness to answer the OP's question, I overlooked this necessary line:

*For now, maybe we say music from the same classical music era and listeners with reasonable experience listening to such music. Defining exactly what "reasonable experience" might mean can be a task for the thread if necessary.*

So, that makes my previous post even more meaningless than before. Let's just say - I have covered the obvious sufficiently.

Now we can proceed to the real discussion.


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## Truckload

Here is a list of favorites created by an FM classical station in Chicago. Interesting list. Does the popularity correlate with quality? I personally have always considered Dvorak to be under-rated and I am thrilled to see his 9th near the top of the list. I like it because it agrees with my own assessment. I realize I am biased about Dvorak. But does the popularity of his 9th in Chicago have any significance? I think it does.

http://blogs.wfmt.com/offmic/2015/05/29/your-top-10-favorite-symphonies/

The other lesser known musical works are also interesting for a different reason.


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## Vesteralen

Okay, imagine this scenario:

Let's say we limit the discussion to the classical era, or even more specifically, let's say from Avison to Hummel.

And, let's also say that we limit our listening group to those who have listened to music from this era over a period of ten years, or a minimum of 300 listenings to complete works from this period.

What would we find?

My guess would be that, though there may be a few devotees of JC or CPE Bach, or Gluck or Stamitz or Agricola or others - even in the group of experienced listeners it is ultimately going to come down to a choice between Haydn, Mozart or early Beethoven.

And, since a large number of Beethoven-o-philes will likely consider him more of a transitional or even romantic figure, it will ultimately come down to Mozart or Haydn.

I still think Mozart will win, though my personal choice will be Haydn.

The only interesting question I get out of this is - why would I choose Haydn over Mozart? No piece by Haydn pleases me more than the final two movements of Mozart's 39th symphony or the first act of The Magic Flute. But, Haydn more consistently pushes the right buttons for me.

I'm trying to figure out why. I think it's partly the humor and partly the "cleanness" of the sound. Mozart's lushness can be appealing at times, but overall I think I personally like a clean, clear sound, and with Haydn I hear all the parts clearly.

That may make no sense to someone else, but it does to me.

But, I'm probably not in the "popular" camp, so it probably doesn't matter.


----------



## Truckload

Vesteralen said:


> I'm trying to figure out why. I think it's partly the humor and partly the "cleanness" of the sound. Mozart's lushness can be appealing at times, but overall I think I personally like a clean, clear sound, and with Haydn I hear all the parts clearly.
> 
> That may make no sense to someone else, but it does to me.


I think that makes perfect sense. And Haydn has lots of fans. I agree with every point you made.

Music of the common practice era contains melody or themes, harmony, form, orchestration and individual quirks of particular composers.

Beethoven really liked the sudden contrast between loud and soft, the sfz effect. It is a quirk.

I think some people just really like the particular quirks of a composer. The quirks resonate with that person.

Haydn obviously really liked a clear and "clean" sound. Harmonies are hardly ever anything but crystal clear. Melodies (themes) are straightforward and almost always consist of motives or fragments that group into units in multiples of 2. A two bar motive builds into a 4 bar phrase, which builds into an 8 bar melody. For Haydn, he wanted to imitate in music proportions and relationships that reflect the correlations between music and mathematics.

Mozart by contrast was more about style and elegance. He liked using harmonies that were more daring and sometimes less complete than Haydn. Mozart used melodies with classical proportions in his expositions, but then he would deviate from that in his transitions and in his developments of ideas. For Mozart, his "quirk" is elegance, and a more flowing texture than Haydn.

Their music always exhibits what was considered the "correct" use of form, harmony, counterpoint and melody for their time. Yet it is relatively easy for someone very familiar with music of the era to listen to a piece and say, that sounds like Haydn, or that sounds like Mozart.


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## Vesteralen

Truckload said:


> Here is a list of favorites created by an FM classical station in Chicago. Interesting list. Does the popularity correlate with quality? I personally have always considered Dvorak to be under-rated and I am thrilled to see his 9th near the top of the list. I like it because it agrees with my own assessment. I realize I am biased about Dvorak. But does the popularity of his 9th in Chicago have any significance? I think it does.
> 
> http://blogs.wfmt.com/offmic/2015/05/29/your-top-10-favorite-symphonies/
> 
> The other lesser known musical works are also interesting for a different reason.


At first I was really confused by this list. I couldn't understand why there were 20 works in the Top Ten and why I had never heard of 8 of them. Then I read the introduction more carefully and saw they were suggesting an unfamiliar work to go with each Top Ten selection and it made sense.

Lots of Beethoven there, huh? But, it's not too surprising a list, as you say. My own personal Top Ten would have included Beethoven's Ninth (from their list) and that's about it, but again, I'm not surprised. I'm not sure which Dvorak symphony I would choose as my favorite. The Ninth is the most consistently pleasing from beginning to end for me, but I may just be suffering from having heard it too much.


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## Ilarion

mmsbls said:


> We've had many threads where people have discussed the popularity of works or composers, and in some cases, there may be an implication that popularity is an indicator of quality. Mozart is more popular than Haas; therefore, Mozart is better than Haas. Often people respond saying that popularity does not equate to quality; otherwise, Justin Bieber (and most popular music) would have to be considered better than Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven.
> 
> I'd like to restrict the concept of popularity and ask what the restricted concept indicates about the music. Most people would not compare The Marriage of Figaro to a Toyota Prius. Both are wonderful but at vastly different things. So I would use the concept of popularity not among all music and all listeners but rather among music that is similar and listeners that have particular backgrounds. Of course one must decide how restrictive to make the class of musical works and listeners. For now, maybe we say music from the same classical music era and listeners with reasonable experience listening to such music. Defining exactly what "reasonable experience" might mean can be a task for the thread if necessary.
> 
> So the question then becomes, "What does it mean about the music (and listeners) when a group of moderately experienced listeners indicates a strong preference for one composer or work over another from a particular classical music era?"
> 
> Incidentally, the modern/contemporary era likely would require greater restrictions (maybe minimalism, serialism, aleatoric, spectralism, etc.)
> 
> There are undefined concepts here, but I wanted the OP to have fewer than 20 pages.


Thank you, mmsbls, for such a keen question - BRAVO:tiphat: This will force me to put on my thinking cap again...


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## Vesteralen

Truckload said:


> Haydn obviously really liked a clear and "clean" sound. Harmonies are hardly ever anything but crystal clear. Melodies (themes) are straightforward and almost always consist of motives or fragments that group into units in multiples of 2. A two bar motive builds into a 4 bar phrase, which builds into an 8 bar melody. For Haydn, he wanted to imitate in music proportions and relationships that reflect the correlations between music and mathematics.


So, I guess if we're dealing with the OP's question, it might seem that some Haydn lovers might, like me, appreciate the clean, clear sound of his compositions, or even the mathematical construct that underlies it.

But, I think the element of humor is just as important. For example, another composer that I think of when I think of clear sound and precision is Telemann. But, Telemann doesn't have near the appeal for me because I can't find that other element that distinguishes him. And, unlike Mozart and Haydn, his music doesn't seem to me to have that signature, identifiable sound.

Of course, my previous post was all guesswork when it came to the popularity question. I don't know how we can be expected to do anything other than guess, however.


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## Truckload

I completely left out rythm. Stupid of me. Especially since it is another major difference between Haydn and Mozart.

In the Baroque era, the emphasis was counterpoint and the independence of each voice or instrument.

One of the hall marks of the High Classical era was a reaction against the Baroque by putting far less emphasis on counterpoint and independence. Homophonic music compared to Polyphonic music.

Haydn was very into the homophonic texture. The texture where each instrument or voice works together, with very little independence. This manifests itself most clearly in the rythms. Most of the parts or voices will have the exact same rythm. It is another Haydn "quirk". With all of the rythms of the various parts USUALLY following along with the primary voice or instrument or melody.

Mozart is more likely to use different rythms in different voices or instruments.

There is nothing "wrong" about either approach, but it creates a difference in the composers personal sound and explains why some might prefer Haydn to Mozart or the reverse, dispite so many similarities in so many other ways.


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## Truckload

Vesteralen said:


> But, I think the element of humor is just as important.


I hate to admit it, but I have always been unable to appreciate or even recognize musical humor. I guess I am "tone deaf" to humor in music. A shortcoming on my part.

Beethoven did not like the Minuet and Trio so he created the Scherzo to replace that form in larger scale works. Scherzo meaning joke or jest. But I have never been able to see the humor in any of Beethoven's scherzo movement. Completely my own fault I am sure.

Sadly I have to do some work now.


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## Ilarion

*Signature, identifiable sound* - Thats it!!! For people who care for music more than the 3 minute 47 seconds of music per soundtrack as identified by music industry marketing professionals, which, imnsho, makes many people unaccustomed to listening to longer musical works - Methinks therein lies the whole problematique of what defines popularity of a piece. 

I would like to think that the majority of this Forum has a sound musical education - music school, conservatory or received pedagogy from a private teacher or have lots of experience in performance as amateur instrumentalist / vocalist / choir member and can therefore speak with some credibility. Those of us in these categories can count ourselves lucky to be able to know the difference between different types of music.


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## Vesteralen

Truckload said:


> I hate to admit it, but I have always been unable to appreciate or even recognize musical humor. I guess I am "tone deaf" to humor in music. A shortcoming on my part.


Well, there are some obvious bits of humor in Haydn, ranging from the audience-wake-up-call to the musical fart.

But, I don't really think of those things as much as I do I kind of ebullience about much of the music itself. It's easy to picture Haydn himself at the keyboard, and difficult to picture him doing anything other than smiling through so much of the music-making.

To a certain extent, we're no doubt victims of our own preconceptions on this sort of thing, I suppose. But, contemporaneous accounts suggest that it's not wholly our imagination, either.


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## Guest

Ilarion said:


> I would like to think that the majority of this Forum has a sound musical education - music school, conservatory or received pedagogy from a private teacher or have lots of experience in performance as amateur instrumentalist / vocalist / choir member and can therefore speak with some credibility. Those of us in these categories can count ourselves lucky to be able to know the difference between different types of music.


Woe is me! No credibility or ability to discern types as I'm an impoverished amateur.


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## Ilarion

MacLeod said:


> Woe is me! No credibility or ability to discern types as I'm an impoverished amateur.


What a load of nonsense you print, MacLeod...I enjoy what you have posted very much, for it bespeaks of someone who has been around the block and then some...So, don't pity yourself - You're too intelligent for such self-debasement,


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## Guest

^^
No self pity. Just tongue in cheek poke at your expectation of TC members' musical background. I dropped music after one year at grammar school and got as far as Initial Grade piano when I was about 28.


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## Vesteralen

Likewise. To be charitable, I guess you could say I'm an amateur instrumentalist and had some private instruction in music theory many moons ago. But, mostly I'm just an avid listener rapidly reaching retirement age.


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## Guest

Ilarion said:


> I would like to think that the majority of this Forum has a sound musical education.


I don't know ... Maybe a poll to investigate?!

For myself I confirm music was not really a part of my education.


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## science

Woodduck said:


> My suspicion is that nothing anyone could say about Mozart (or any other artist) would be the sort of proof of greatness you require. Any characteristic or complex of characteristics of his art would be judged as a simple matter of "taste/preference." If I were not at the very end of a long day I could answer your challenge to say what makes Mozart great with some specificity; at the moment I might suggest you read a book like Charles Rosen's _The Classical Style_ and see whether his analyses are substantial enough to convince you. But I think you've already told me that they would not be.
> 
> It's in the nature of phenomena of an internal nature - psychological/spiritual/aesthetic/ethical phenomena - that "objective" proofs such as those based on sensory evidence are elusive or unavailable to us, or at best indirect. If you want to regard all judgments concerning inner experience as arbitrary because they are not subject to such proofs (and I'm not sure that you do), I can't imagine that any amount of evidence would convince you that any art is intrinsically superior to any other. But then I'd have to wonder as well whether you require objective "proof" that some human behaviors are more ethical than others. If quality in art is merely a question of what gives an individual pleasure, and Bach is no better than Britney, why isn't right action merely whatever an individual wishes to do? Is goodness any more "provable" than beauty? Judgments in both aesthetics and ethics rest upon perceptions and understandings of human nature and life which cannot be placed on the dissecting table, examined under a microscope, or expressed in a syllogism.
> 
> A person listening to a Bach concerto - or a raga by Ali Akbar Khan - and a Britney Spears number either grasps that some music issues from, and appeals to, richer and higher perceptions of reality, or he doesn't. What music he enjoys hearing at a given moment is irrelevant.


I think the analogy between ethics and aesthetics is a good one. No, I don't think proof is possible in either realm. Both really are just matters of opinion. Our judgments in both realms _feel_ objective, but upon analysis they turn out to be subjective. Mathematics (pure logic) is really the only realm subject to proof, and even there the difficulties are a bit more problematic than we usually realize. Science (and empiricism more generally) isn't really a realm of proof, but of something like probabilities (sometimes but not necessary utilizing mathematics) which with extremely sound evidence we can somewhat carelessly call proof. But, although aesthetics and ethics can be informed by mathematics and empirical observation, they are ultimately realms of subjective judgment.

Right action isn't merely whatever an individual wishes to do because we judge each other. I have my own values that I apply in judging myself and others; you have your values. As a society, whoever is in power sets the values that we have to live by; to the degree that we live in democracies, we set those values collectively. The closest such things can get to objective truth is unanimous or near unanimous agreement, which can feel objective and we can call it objective with the same kind of carelessness that we call empirical evidence "proof." But again, upon critical analysis, it turns out to be a matter of corresponding subjective values - not surprising given the similarities of the brains that hold the values - rather than objective truths.

(A fun middle ground is something I call "social facts," things that are objectively true because most people implicitly agree to believe them. The fact that Obama is the President of the US or the border between the US and Canada are examples. If enough people disbelieved or questioned those things, they'd stop being facts. You might put some aesthetic things in this category: most babies are cute when they laugh, it's unpleasant to find a spider crawling on your skin, etc.)

As for "proving" (in the very loose sense) Mozart's greatness, that's not really a super impossible task. First you have to define greatness; then you show that Mozart's work meets that standard. Of course the definition of greatness is going to be subjective, but since your brain is not completely anomalous, you can probably with some care craft a definition that a lot of people are going to share with you. I don't think that's very hard; we can say something like "innovative in its time, influential thereafter, and enduringly popular." Probably we can persuade at least half the people here that it's a good rough definition. And I think we can show fairly easily that Mozart's music meets that criterion.

(Perhaps you want to use words like "transcendent" or "spiritual" in your definition, and you can probably persuade some people, but I for one can't understand what those words actually mean with respect to music. That seems to me to be just adding more terms that require definition. You could take up that task if you're in a philosophical mood, but I'm not philosophical in that way. As far as I can tell, words like "transcendent" and "spiritual" just mean something like, "I really like it," or, "It makes me feel really good," or, "It feels uplifting in a part of me that feels like a deep, important part of me." That's the best I can do with "richer and higher perceptions of reality," trying to make those words mean something that I can understand.)

You might also be able to use terms like "clarity," "balance," and "light," arguing that those traits are at least one way of making music "great." Then you could give examples of Mozart's music that you believe have those traits. If enough people are willing to grant that definition - which is possible - and enough people share your subjective experience of those musical examples - which is probable - then you will have succeeded.

If your definition succeeds wildly, you might even be able to show that "Mozart is great" has the status of a social fact. But with any of these "proofs," as with any proofs beyond a few fundamental principles in the realms of ethics or aesthetics, you probably can't hope to persuade everyone. After all, although our brains are similar in many ways, they are also different in some ways. Because of different genetics and experiences shaping our brains, there are going to be different subjective experiences, causing disagreements. And - this is crucial - because there is no objective standards whose existence you can prove, we're stuck with those subjective disagreements.

In fact, Mozart is a fairly easy case because it happens that his music has been almost universally popular among people who have heard it from his lifetime until now. The analogy to ethics would be something like arguing that harming innocent people without any cause is wrong: almost everyone who has thought about it agrees for ordinary cases. Let the questions be Luigi Nono or assisted suicide and you've got harder tasks. I think Nono is great and I think assisted suicide would generally be ok, you might disagree with me on both points. If we're inclined to have a charitable discussion about it, we might come to disagree less or even to agree. But maybe not. Reasonable people can and do disagree about Nono and assisted suicide. On the other hand, if I think the Pythagorean theory doesn't hold in a Euclidian space, you can prove to any reasonable person that I'm wrong. Same for evolution by natural selection, although the word "proof" is a bit iffy in this case because of the possibility that really surprising new evidence would turn up.

I think this is all fairly obvious - the only problem is that you really want to insist that your judgments in the realms of aesthetics and ethics correspond to an objective truth, that people who perceive things differently than you do are not merely different but objectively wrong, implicitly inferior. Sorry, man, you don't get to claim that. There probably is someone who thinks that Britney Spears's music is really great, and that person can try to make an argument like you might've for a Bach concerto or a raga by Ali Akbar Khan. She may persuade more people than you can, or less, but in either case _it's a difference of opinion, not an error of fact_.


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## KenOC

A question: Within recent musical history, say the Baroque onward, what composers have been generally considered "great" by their contemporary audiences but have subsequently lost that status?


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## Guest

^^

I'm interested, briefly, in the ethics thing. Establishing a hierarchy of behaviours that are more or less ethical is still dependent on a set of subjective criteria, even if they are widely accepted as such ( or closely associated with a well established and powerful belief system).


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## Chordalrock

science said:


> I think the analogy between ethics and aesthetics is a good one. No, I don't think proof is possible in either realm. Both really are just matters of opinion. Our judgments in both realms _feel_ objective, but upon analysis they turn out to be subjective.


Something can be impossible to prove and still be true.

You can't produce a logical proof that it rains, but you can see it rains, and the fact is that it rains.

You may not be able produce a logical proof that suffering is bad, but you can experience it and know that it is bad. And you can build a solid moral philosophy on such insights. It's not "opinion" or "subjective" in any meaningful sense.

Similarly, perhaps, a group of experienced listeners can listen to pieces of music, perceive something real about them, and derive some sort of aesthetic insights from the experience.

At any rate, you have no proof that they need proof that they can know they don't need proof.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> I think the analogy between ethics and aesthetics is a good one. No, I don't think proof is possible in either realm. Both really are just matters of opinion. Our judgments in both realms _feel_ objective, but upon analysis they turn out to be subjective. Mathematics (pure logic) is really the only realm subject to proof, and even there the difficulties are a bit more problematic than we usually realize. Science (and empiricism more generally) isn't really a realm of proof, but of something like probabilities (sometimes but not necessary utilizing mathematics) which with extremely sound evidence we can somewhat carelessly call proof. But, although aesthetics and ethics can be informed by mathematics and empirical observation, they are ultimately realms of subjective judgment.
> 
> Right action isn't merely whatever an individual wishes to do because we judge each other. I have my own values that I apply in judging myself and others; you have your values. As a society, whoever is in power sets the values that we have to live by; to the degree that we live in democracies, we set those values collectively. The closest such things can get to objective truth is unanimous or near unanimous agreement, which can feel objective and we can call it objective with the same kind of carelessness that we call empirical evidence "proof." But again, upon critical analysis, it turns out to be a matter of corresponding subjective values - not surprising given the similarities of the brains that hold the values - rather than objective truths.
> 
> (A fun middle ground is something I call "social facts," things that are objectively true because most people implicitly agree to believe them. The fact that Obama is the President of the US or the border between the US and Canada are examples. If enough people disbelieved or questioned those things, they'd stop being facts. You might put some aesthetic things in this category: most babies are cute when they laugh, it's unpleasant to find a spider crawling on your skin, etc.)
> 
> As for "proving" (in the very loose sense) Mozart's greatness, that's not really a super impossible task. First you have to define greatness; then you show that Mozart's work meets that standard. Of course the definition of greatness is going to be subjective, but since your brain is not completely anomalous, you can probably with some care craft a definition that a lot of people are going to share with you. I don't think that's very hard; we can say something like "innovative in its time, influential thereafter, and enduringly popular." Probably we can persuade at least half the people here that it's a good rough definition. And I think we can show fairly easily that Mozart's music meets that criterion.
> 
> (Perhaps you want to use words like "transcendent" or "spiritual" in your definition, and you can probably persuade some people, but I for one can't understand what those words actually mean with respect to music. That seems to me to be just adding more terms that require definition. You could take up that task if you're in a philosophical mood, but I'm not philosophical in that way. As far as I can tell, words like "transcendent" and "spiritual" just mean something like, "I really like it," or, "It makes me feel really good," or, "It feels uplifting in a part of me that feels like a deep, important part of me." That's the best I can do with "richer and higher perceptions of reality," trying to make those words mean something that I can understand.)
> 
> You might also be able to use terms like "clarity," "balance," and "light," arguing that those traits are at least one way of making music "great." Then you could give examples of Mozart's music that you believe have those traits. If enough people are willing to grant that definition - which is possible - and enough people share your subjective experience of those musical examples - which is probable - then you will have succeeded.
> 
> If your definition succeeds wildly, you might even be able to show that "Mozart is great" has the status of a social fact. But with any of these "proofs," as with any proofs beyond a few fundamental principles in the realms of ethics or aesthetics, you probably can't hope to persuade everyone. After all, although our brains are similar in many ways, they are also different in some ways. Because of different genetics and experiences shaping our brains, there are going to be different subjective experiences, causing disagreements. And - this is crucial - because there is no objective standards whose existence you can prove, we're stuck with those subjective disagreements.
> 
> In fact, Mozart is a fairly easy case because it happens that his music has been almost universally popular among people who have heard it from his lifetime until now. The analogy to ethics would be something like arguing that harming innocent people without any cause is wrong: almost everyone who has thought about it agrees for ordinary cases. Let the questions be Luigi Nono or assisted suicide and you've got harder tasks. I think Nono is great and I think assisted suicide would generally be ok, you might disagree with me on both points. If we're inclined to have a charitable discussion about it, we might come to disagree less or even to agree. But maybe not. Reasonable people can and do disagree about Nono and assisted suicide. On the other hand, if I think the Pythagorean theory doesn't hold in a Euclidian space, you can prove to any reasonable person that I'm wrong. Same for evolution by natural selection, although the word "proof" is a bit iffy in this case because of the possibility that really surprising new evidence would turn up.
> 
> I think this is all fairly obvious - the only problem is that you really want to insist that your judgments in the realms of aesthetics and ethics correspond to an objective truth, that people who perceive things differently than you do are not merely different but objectively wrong, implicitly inferior. Sorry, man, you don't get to claim that. There probably is someone who thinks that Britney Spears's music is really great, and that person can try to make an argument like you might've for a Bach concerto or a raga by Ali Akbar Khan. She may persuade more people than you can, or less, but in either case _it's a difference of opinion, not an error of fact_.


Thanks for your labors in discussing this and clarifying your viewpoint. You are apparently a radical relativist/subjectivist - epistemologically, ethically, and in every way. I'm not. I don't think facts are up for a vote. Disagreement doesn't mean that _everything_ (the U.S.-Canadian border?!) is a matter of opinion (although of course many things are). It can and often does mean that some opinions are correct and others incorrect - or, with respect to art, that some are better-informed and some worse. I don't care how many people tell me that John Williams is a greater musical genius than Wagner. I know better. I'm sure Mr. Williams knows better too. I also suspect that you know better, but that you're philosophically opposed to knowing (or saying) what you know.

I'm glad we're clear on each other's philosophical views. I would only wonder why you think it's necessary to view people you believe hold incorrect views as inferior, as you say I do. God knows I've held enough incorrect views over a substantial lifetime. We all make mistakes, no?


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## Blancrocher

KenOC said:


> A question: Within recent musical history, say the Baroque onward, what composers have been generally considered "great" by their contemporary audiences but have subsequently lost that status?


I could be mistaken, but I don't think it's ever happened. Admission to the greats club takes some geniuses longer to secure than others, but my understanding is once you're in you're in.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> A question: Within recent musical history, say the Baroque onward, what composers have been generally considered "great" by their contemporary audiences but have subsequently lost that status?


I've been reading a biography of Mozart, and the list from the classical era alone would fill many posts.

Piccini, Hasse, Michael Haydn, Stamitz...it goes on and on.


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## Guest

Chordalrock said:


> You may not be able produce a logical proof that suffering is bad, but you can experience it and know that it is bad. And you can build a solid moral philosophy on such insights.


Presuming you had also established what you mean by "bad" (and "good" of course).


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Thanks for your labors in discussing this and clarifying your viewpoint. You are apparently a radical relativist/subjectivist - epistemologically, ethically, and in every way. I'm not. I don't think facts are up for a vote. Disagreement doesn't mean that _everything_ (the U.S.-Canadian border?!) is a matter of opinion (although of course many things are). It can and often does mean that some opinions are correct and others incorrect - or, with respect to art, that some are better-informed and some worse. I don't care how many people tell me that John Williams is a greater musical genius than Wagner. I know better. I'm sure Mr. Williams knows better too. I also suspect that you know better, but that you're philosophically opposed to knowing (or saying) what you know.
> 
> I'm glad we're clear on each other's philosophical views. I would only wonder why you think it's necessary to view people you believe hold incorrect views as inferior, as you say I do. God knows I've held enough incorrect views over a substantial lifetime. We all make mistakes, no?


It's one thing to be like you, and I, and science, and all be in agreement that we like the art of Mr. Wagner more than Mr. Williams, and yet two of us shudder to make any comparisons. When one is fairly certain that there is going to be very little disagreement, one need not prepare much in the way of proof. Now, if you were speaking to some John Williams official fanclub...

It is another thing entirely if "I know better" were to be uttered in a condescending manner when, frankly, the other parties are not in agreement. I would not agree, for instance, that Mr. Tchaikovsky was in anyway a better artist than Mr. Cage. Now, if you were posting on "ihatejohncage.com", go right ahead. But if you're posting where there are a fair share of folks like me, it would be far better manners to tweak "I know better" to something with more of a "in my humble opinion,..." kind of tone.

One of the most crucial aspects of writing is being well aware of one's audience.


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## Chordalrock

MacLeod said:


> Presuming you had also established what you mean by "bad" (and "good" of course).


You are speaking as if I left out some core part of my philosophy without which I have no hope of being right. You do know that according to polls over half of academic philosophers are moral realists? You really have no high ground on this topic if you are a moral nihilist. It is likely to be you who is missing something. Need I also remind you that whole books have been written about the presumed (yes, presumed) is-ought distinction and similar matters. It is perhaps you who needs to enlighten himself, not me.

If I were speaking to an AI who has just been created and lacks consciousness and experience, I would see the need to "establish" what bad means. In this case though, if you have doubts about the meaning of bad, you may wish to give a hard kick to a rock without wearing a shoe, and dissolve your doubts.

I can also tell you that in the case of intolerable suffering, bad means something like "no, no, no! this has to stop!" or, in other words, it means something that one wishes to escape from. Again, this is something that can be know from personal experience, as even a possum would know. I can walk outside and you can walk outside and see whether it rains. If suffering is bad, I can say drill through your hand until gore and blood spurts everywhere and you know whether it is bad. It is not something only I can do or something that requires super powers to test.

(The fact that suffering sometimes leads to good things is irrelevant to the point I'm making. A thing can be both good and bad. Grey is not the absence of black and white, it is the combination of black and white. Good and bad is not the absence of good and bad, it is the combination of good and bad.)

I'm not necessarily saying that aesthetic value is as simple a thing to know as moral good, but I also don't think you can just ignore the possibility that aesthetic value is real. You would need a profound understanding of not only the field of aesthetics but also psychology and the nature of perception to be able to argue convincingly on the topic.


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## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> I've been reading a biography of Mozart, and the list from the classical era alone would fill many posts. Piccini, Hasse, Michael Haydn, Stamitz...it goes on and on.


There were a lot of practicing professional composers in later 18th-century Europe (esp. Vienna), but I'm not sure how many were generally considered "great composers."


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> There were a lot of practicing professional composers in later 18th-century Europe (esp. Vienna), but I'm not sure how many were generally considered "great composers."


The ones I mentioned were those who were singled out for distinction as leading composers of their day in their time, who wrote works with significant popularity with audiences. Unless you want to change the definition of great that you set forward, I would say that all of them unreservedly qualify as having been deemed great.


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## Nereffid

KenOC said:


> There were a lot of practicing professional composers in later 18th-century Europe (esp. Vienna), but I'm not sure how many were generally considered "great composers."


I'm about to log off for the night, so maybe someone else could google it for me  but I have a feeling that Ernest Bloch was for a time considered to be "the fourth B". That might have been just a claim put out by Bloch fans, I don't know...


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## Guest

Chordalrock said:


> You are speaking as if I left out some core part of my philosophy without which I have no hope of being right. You do know that according to polls over half of academic philosophers are moral realists? You really have no high ground on this topic if you are a moral nihilist. It is likely to be you who is missing something. Need I also remind you that whole books have been written about the presumed (yes, presumed) is-ought distinction and similar matters. It is perhaps you who needs to enlighten himself, not me.


Not the first person in this thread today to assert the need for high levels of education and intellect to get to grips with such hi-falutin' topics - though the first to assume (even mildly assert?) that I don't possess either.

What is it with some folks round here that they have to first claim either the difficulty of a subject or their superiority in the field before they actually make a relevant point?

I'm not interested in the moral standpoint of academic philosophers, nor am I seeking moral high ground, nor am I a moral nihilist. But you might at least, tiresome though it might be to state the obvious to one so lowly as one in need of enlightenment, tell me what you mean by "bad" if you are going to tell me the things that are "bad".


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## Woodduck

nathanb said:


> It's one thing to be like you, and I, and science, and all be in agreement that we like the art of Mr. Wagner more than Mr. Williams, and yet two of us shudder to make any comparisons. When one is fairly certain that there is going to be very little disagreement, one need not prepare much in the way of proof. Now, if you were speaking to some John Williams official fanclub...
> 
> It is another thing entirely if "I know better" were to be uttered in a condescending manner when, frankly, the other parties are not in agreement. I would not agree, for instance, that Mr. Tchaikovsky was in anyway a better artist than Mr. Cage. Now, if you were posting on "ihatejohncage.com", go right ahead. But if you're posting where there are a fair share of folks like me, it would be far better manners to tweak "I know better" to something with more of a "in my humble opinion,..." kind of tone.
> 
> One of the most crucial aspects of writing is being well aware of one's audience.


I don't think of other people here as an audience. I think of them as people engaged in conversation who are all free to say what they believe about the subjects they discuss. I believe that by all relevant and necessary criteria Wagner is a musical genius superior to John Williams (whose work I do admire, by the way), and I will lay you odds that Williams believes this too. I am quite sure that the opposite opinion is ill-informed. I'm as sure of these things as I'm sure that my belief that rape and murder are absolutely immoral is not just "my humble opinion." If anyone is offended by my stating these things they might do well to ask themselves why the certainty of others is bothersome to them. They are always free to disagree and to say why they do.


----------



## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> The ones I mentioned were those who were singled out for distinction as leading composers of their day in their time, who wrote works with significant popularity with audiences. Unless you want to change the definition of great that you set forward, I would say that all of them unreservedly qualify as having been deemed great.


We could do the same with composers working today. But how many would we consider "great composers"? Since you mention popularity, perhaps John Adams?


----------



## Blancrocher

Mahlerian said:


> I've been reading a biography of Mozart, and the list from the classical era alone would fill many posts.
> 
> Piccini, Hasse, Michael Haydn, Stamitz...it goes on and on.


It appears that Niccolo Piccinni's doing pretty well for "likes" on Youtube. Maybe some of us need to give "La Cecchina, ossia la buona Figliuola" another look!


----------



## Headphone Hermit

KenOC said:


> A question: Within recent musical history, say the Baroque onward, what composers have been generally considered "great" by their contemporary audiences but have subsequently lost that status?


Franz Schmidt (a contemporary of Mahler in Vienna) - I remember reading something recently along the lines that he had a distinguished and highly successful career as a composer yet his music appears to have lost much of that favour


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> We could do the same with composers working today. But how many would we consider "great composers"? Since you mention popularity, perhaps John Adams?


Popularity was your criterion, not mine.

I'd think it's tough to judge the present day, but sure, I'll include Adams in a list of composers whose work I think may qualify as great. Reich has probably composed a few things that will survive, maybe some early Glass. Boulez's works have remained very durable as well, and the works of several composers of the spectral school. This is of course not to mention composers such as Ligeti and Messiaen whose work has gained clear and so far lasting support.


----------



## Strange Magic

*Dog Breeds: a Parallel?*

The World Canine Organization recognizes 339 distinct breeds of dogs. These are grouped into 10 categories: Sheepdogs and Cattle Dogs; Pinscher and Schnauzer and Mastiff; Terriers; Dachshunds; Spitz and Primitive Types; Scenthounds; Pointers and Setters; Retrievers-Flushing Dogs-Water Dogs; Companion and Toy Dogs; Sighthounds.

The most popular AKC breeds in 2014 were, in order: Labrador Retriever; German Shepherd; golden Retriever; Bulldog; Beagle; Yorkshire Terrier; Poodle; Boxer; French Bulldog; Rottweiler.

In the 1890s, the AKC most popular were, in order: Saint Bernard; English Setter; Pointer; Collie; Fox Terrier; Cocker Spaniel; Irish Setter; Beagle; Great Dane; Bull Terrier.

What can we learn from these various facts about the significance of popularity in the ranking of composers or their works, or about excellence or even greatness as these relate either to popularity or to some intrinsic property?

Some may take this as a frivolity, but it may offer a different perspective on the several issues that we have discussed here so earnestly. You be the judge.


----------



## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> Popularity was your criterion, not mine.


Hmmm, where did I say that? In an earlier post, I considered popularity as something that objectively exists, "greatness" merely as a perception, a fashion, and mutable.


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## KenOC

Headphone Hermit said:


> Franz Schmidt (a contemporary of Mahler in Vienna) - I remember reading something recently along the lines that he had a distinguished and highly successful career as a composer yet his music appears to have lost much of that favour


Other examples might be Raff and Meyerbeer. But were they ever widely considered "great composers"? Not sure about it.


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Hmmm, where did I say that? In an earlier post, I considered popularity as something that objectively exists, "greatness" merely as a perception, a fashion, and mutable.





KenOC said:


> A question: Within recent musical history, say the Baroque onward, what composers have been generally considered "great" *by their contemporary audiences* but have subsequently lost that status?


If you're referring to audiences, not experts or critics or fellow composers, you're speaking about popularity.


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Other examples might be Raff and Meyerbeer. But were they ever widely considered "great composers"? Not sure about it.


Of course Meyerbeer was considered a great composer by audiences. They flocked to see his spectacle-filled works year after year for decades, and his operas were mainstays of the repertoire.

If that's not being considered great by an audience, what do you think constitutes being considered great?


----------



## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> Of course Meyerbeer was considered a great composer by audiences. They flocked to see his spectacle-filled works year after year for decades, and his operas were mainstays of the repertoire.
> 
> If that's not being considered great by an audience, what do you think constitutes being considered great?


Audiences may flock to see the latest big-budget superhero sequels, but do even those audiences consider them "great" cinema? Paperbacks for casual beach reading may sell truckloads, but do even their readers consider them "great" literature?


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Audiences may flock to see the latest big-budget superhero sequels, but do even those audiences consider them "great" cinema? Paperbacks for casual beach reading may sell truckloads, but do even their readers consider them "great" literature?


The answer is in many cases yes, actually, they do, and secondly, you're assuming that they looked at the composers in question as low art, which we have no reason to believe they did.


----------



## Blancrocher

Mahlerian said:


> Of course Meyerbeer was considered a great composer by audiences. They flocked to see his spectacle-filled works year after year for decades, and his operas were mainstays of the repertoire.
> 
> If that's not being considered great by an audience, what do you think constitutes being considered great?


It wasn't just audiences--lots of famous musicians and composers thought Meyerbeer was one of the greatest composers who ever lived (though even more were very skeptical of him).


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## Guest

So...they _thought_ he was great...but was he?


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I don't think of other people here as an audience. I think of them as people engaged in conversation who are all free to say what they believe about the subjects they discuss. I believe that by all relevant and necessary criteria Wagner is a musical genius superior to John Williams (whose work I do admire, by the way), and I will lay you odds that Williams believes this too. *I am quite sure that the opposite opinion is ill-informed.* I'm as sure of these things as I'm sure that my belief that rape and murder are absolutely immoral is not just "my humble opinion." If anyone is offended by my stating these things they might do well to ask themselves why the certainty of others is bothersome to them. They are always free to disagree and to say why they do.


Thank you for this helpful response.

I have bolded the only part where I really see a problem. Well, like I said, I also consider Wagner to be superior to Williams. But when we do disagree, well, do you find it offensive to be called "ill-informed"? The rest is imminently reasonable, I think.


----------



## Guest

In what sense is Wagner superior to Williams? He wrote [email protected] film scores!


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> So...they _thought_ he was great...but was he?


His contemporaries may have said "yes". We would likely say "no". And Wagner agrees with us!


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> In what sense is Wagner superior to Williams? He wrote [email protected] film scores!


Yes. How many Oscars did Wagner win? I rest my case.


----------



## Guest

MacLeod said:


> In what sense is Wagner superior to Williams? He wrote [email protected] film scores!


It was my humble opinion.


----------



## Blancrocher

KenOC said:


> Yes. How many Oscars did Wagner win? I rest my case.


He'd have had a chance, I think, if Peter Jackson had done the right thing and given him a screenwriter's credit for LOTR.


----------



## Guest

nathanb said:


> It was my humble opinion.


Exactly so !


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> His contemporaries may have said "yes". We would likely say "no". And Wagner agrees with us!


...and Wagner's opinion is a reliable indicator of greatness?

Instead of checking what popularity indicates by comparing two dissimilar composers (in that they composed for different purposes; and it seems otiose to say that if Williams was as great a composer as Wagner, he would have written his _Tristan _by now) let's compare two similar composers with similar levels of popularity among similar audiences?

Or, on the other hand, let's not.


----------



## KenOC

From what I've read, Wagner's opinion of Meyerbeer changed for the worse when Meyerbeer stopped offering him financial support. This is subject to vagaries of memory.


----------



## EdwardBast

Blancrocher said:


> He'd have had a chance, I think, if Peter Jackson had done the right thing and given him a screenwriter's credit for LOTR.


Except that Tolkien was not indebted in any way to Wagner. He used the same sources as Wagner, but knew them better and in the original languages, of which he was one of the world's great scholars.


----------



## Sloe

EdwardBast said:


> Except that Tolkien was not indebted in any way to Wagner. He used the same sources as Wagner, but knew them better and in the original languages, of which he was one of the world's great scholars.


Lord of the Rings is Tolkien´s own story. Were Tolkien used the same sources as Wagner is The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun.
And another thing Wagner created music that also happens to be among the best ever according to at least me Tolkien did not.


----------



## EdwardBast

Sloe said:


> Lord of the Rings is Tolkien´s own story. Were Tolkien used the same sources as Wagner is The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun.
> And another thing Wagner created music that also happens to be among the best ever according to at least me Tolkien did not.


Tolkien also used the Eddas and other sources as well.

Tolkien was an author and Cambridge professor of philology. Of course he didn't compose music. Why would you point that out?


----------



## Morimur

Wagner also hated children and liked to pinch babies when no one was looking . . . And his head was much too big for his body. An unsavory character that Wagner. His only redeeming quality was that, for some reason, he _loved_ Jews-or so I've heard.


----------



## KenOC

At least Wagner didn't go around shooting cats with a crossbow. Unlike a certain other composer of the time...


----------



## Sloe

EdwardBast said:


> Tolkien also used the Eddas and other sources as well.
> 
> Tolkien was an author and Cambridge professor of philology. Of course he didn't compose music. Why would you point that out?


Lord of the Rings is still Tolkien´s own story and work. He did not transform the Eddas and other sources into another form like Wagner did.
I pointed it out because this is a music related thread in a music forum.


----------



## EdwardBast

Sloe said:


> Lord of the Rings is still Tolkien´s own story and work. He did not transform the Eddas and other sources into another form like Wagner did.
> I pointed it out because this is a music related thread in a music forum.


Tolkien did actually borrow plenty of bits here and there and he did transform them considerably. This is perhaps a bit off topic, although it isn't much farther than baby pinching and shooting cats with crossbows.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> At least Wagner didn't go around shooting cats with a crossbow. Unlike a certain other composer of the time...


Dentistry may have gotten more advanced, but dentists remain the same.


----------



## Sloe

EdwardBast said:


> Tolkien did actually borrow plenty of bits here and there and he did transform them considerably. This is perhaps a bit off topic, although it isn't much farther than baby pinching and shooting cats with crossbows.


Yes but it is still an independent story.


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> I'm not necessarily saying that aesthetic value is as simple a thing to know as moral good, but I also don't think you can just ignore the possibility that aesthetic value is real. You would need a profound understanding of not only the field of aesthetics but also psychology and the nature of perception to be able to argue convincingly on the topic.


When you write "aesthetic value is real," do you mean that it exists objectively, independently of human minds? If so, the burden of proof is on you.


----------



## Faustian

Does _anything_ exist objectively, independent of human minds? :devil:


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Thanks for your labors in discussing this and clarifying your viewpoint. You are apparently a radical relativist/subjectivist - epistemologically, ethically, and in every way. I'm not. I don't think facts are up for a vote. Disagreement doesn't mean that _everything_ (the U.S.-Canadian border?!) is a matter of opinion (although of course many things are). It can and often does mean that some opinions are correct and others incorrect - or, with respect to art, that some are better-informed and some worse. I don't care how many people tell me that John Williams is a greater musical genius than Wagner. I know better. I'm sure Mr. Williams knows better too. I also suspect that you know better, but that you're philosophically opposed to knowing (or saying) what you know.
> 
> I'm glad we're clear on each other's philosophical views. I would only wonder why you think it's necessary to view people you believe hold incorrect views as inferior, as you say I do. God knows I've held enough incorrect views over a substantial lifetime. We all make mistakes, no?


But you are apparently _not_ clear on my views. I didn't write that ordinary "facts" were up for votes: I even suspect that's an intentional misrepresentation of what I did write.

I do not "view people _ believe hold incorrect views as inferior." But that is how "taste" has been used for several centuries and how it continues to be used today. We who enjoy Mozart and Bach look down on those who don't. That was the whole point of organizing culture by class, and IMO it remains largely so, although for the most part the classism is in this case now almost completely pretension rather than reality._


----------



## Guest

Faustian said:


> Does _anything_ exist objectively, independent of human minds? :devil:


Nothing that we can define without the things that exist subjectively. Like that sentence. Like the idea of that sentence. Like the idea of ideas. Etc. But I assume something exists underneath it all... Great, now you've got me wondering.


----------



## KenOC

nathanb said:


> Nothing that we can define without the things that exist subjectively. Like that sentence. Like the idea of that sentence. Like the idea of ideas. Etc. But I assume something exists underneath it all... Great, now you've got me wondering.


None of our realities exist independently of the One Mind. When you turn around, it disassembles the universe behind you. Next time you turn a corner, duck back and you may see it at work! But you have to be fast...very fast.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> But you are apparently _not_ clear on my views. I didn't write that ordinary "facts" were up for votes: I even suspect that's an intentional misrepresentation of what I did write.
> 
> I do not "view people _ believe hold incorrect views as inferior." But that is how "taste" has been used for several centuries and how it continues to be used today. *We who enjoy Mozart and Bach look down on those who don't.* That was the whole point of organizing culture by class, and IMO it remains largely so, although for the most part the classism is in this case now almost completely pretension rather than reality._


_

Well, here are your statements:

Mathematics (pure logic) is really the *only* realm subject to proof, and even there the difficulties are a bit more problematic than we usually realize.

Science (and *empiricism more generally*) isn't really a realm of proof, but of *something like probabilities *(sometimes but not necessary utilizing mathematics) which with *extremely sound evidence* we can somewhat carelessly call proof.

Right action isn't merely whatever an individual wishes to do *because we judge each other*. I have my own values that I apply in judging myself and others; you have your values. *The closest such things can get to objective truth is unanimous or near unanimous agreement.*

A fun middle ground is something I call "social facts," things that are *objectively true because most people implicitly agree to believe them.* The fact that Obama is the President of the US or the border between the US and Canada are examples. *If enough people disbelieved or questioned those things, they'd stop being facts.*

If I've misinterpreted these, it was certainly not intentional. They appear to me to mean that you think truth, anywhere outside of pure mathematics, is identical to consensus.

(Parenthetically, I have to ask how there can be "probabilities" and "extremely sound evidence" of things fundamentally unknowable. Is this too just a matter of consensus? I realize that science is engaged in the construction of theoretical explanations of phenomena, but the empirical aspect of science assumes reliable observation. Scientists are aware of the distinction and do not, I think, "carelessly" characterize their theories as "proofs." They do, however, rightly trust their senses to provide sound data.)

You also said:

The only problem is that you really want to insist that your judgments in the realms of aesthetics and ethics correspond to an objective truth, that *people who perceive things differently than you do are not merely different but objectively wrong, implicitly inferior.* 

The idea that considering a person's ideas or perceptions incorrect amounts to viewing that person as "inferior" is not mine, but yours. You're the one who brought it into the conversation. As I've stated, we've all held incorrect views, but personal inferiority is not all "implicit" in erroneous thinking. I have good friends with whom I have philosophical disagreements, and I don't look down on them for that reason. If you "who enjoy Mozart and Bach look down on those who don't," I'm sure you have plenty of company, but it doesn't include me._


----------



## arpeggio

At one time I thought I knew the answer.

After trying to follow the train of thought for this discussion I have no idea what the answer is.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> But then I'd have to wonder as well whether you require objective "proof" that some human behaviors are more ethical than others. If quality in art is merely a question of what gives an individual pleasure, and Bach is no better than Britney, why isn't right action merely whatever an individual wishes to do? Is goodness any more "provable" than beauty? Judgments in both aesthetics and ethics rest upon perceptions and understandings of human nature and life which cannot be placed on the dissecting table, examined under a microscope, or expressed in a syllogism.





Chordalrock said:


> I'm not necessarily saying that aesthetic value is as simple a thing to know as moral good, but I also don't think you can just ignore the possibility that aesthetic value is real. You would need a profound understanding of not only the field of aesthetics but also psychology and the nature of perception to be able to argue convincingly on the topic.


I think that it is probably unhelpful to have linked the fields of aesthetics and ethics in this way. The risk, not avoided in the exchanges between Woodduck and science, is that a crude reading emerges: "If you can't (or won't) tell 'good' from 'bad' in music, perhaps you can't (or won't) tell good from bad in morals either."

It also takes us too far from the question of popularity and what it might signify.

In seeking to justify one's own standpoint in relation to what is popular, it can be difficult to avoid accusations of double standards. For example, "I like (X universally loved composer) not because he's popular, but because he's very good." (Ergo, I have superior sensibilities to those who just like him for his popularity.) Or "I like (Y obscure composer) and if only more people could see her worth, she would be more popular."

I confess to having held both views at times.

But need we even go there? What does my opinion on the value of Bach and Bacharach matter if we're trying to consider the significance of a _collective _opinion - especially when it's a collective opinion that's _not _mine?


----------



## Vesteralen

Just a quick word on "likes" here, in case anyone is paying attention (not too likely) and is confused by my use of them. I tend to give likes sometimes for contrary opinions on the same issue. The like is based, not on the fact that I agree with the person's ideas, but because I like the way the idea was expressed. Personally, I tend to like things that are clear and relatively simple. (I would have given MacLeod several likes, but we all know how he hates them.)

Anyway, I do agree with MacLeod that we have again drifted far off topic. My own clumsy attempts to get back on topic several pages ago obviously did not strike much of chord with readers, so I would recommend that someone with a bit more intellect than myself try again.


----------



## Guest

Vesteralen said:


> (I would have given MacLeod several likes, but we all know how he hates them.)


I'm clearly suffering extreme 'cognitive dissonance'. I can't make my mind up about moral realism/relativism (though this was relieved by reading a little about in the usual online sources); I can't make up my mind about the extent to which popularity might be an indicator of something more than just convergence or coincidence of opinion...

...and whilst I have argued about the potential negative effects of 'likes' (and still hold to that position) I am nevertheless human and will not deny pleasure at being liked (both in and out of quote marks).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance


----------



## Dim7

I prefer moral surrealism.


----------



## Vesteralen

Please bear with me for a moment - I'm an inveterate reductivist.

It seemed to me that the only way to answer the OP would be to do the following:

1. Pick a style or era of music (I picked the classical era)

2. Establish the ground rules for participation in the survery ( X number of years or X complete listenings - I think I rather arbitrarily picked 10 and 300)

3. This is the hard part - try to guess which composer would be picked as most popular by said test group (I picked Mozart) One would actually have to perform a survey with certified participants to do this - pretty much an impossiblilty, I think.

4. If you personally agree with that opinion, say what qualities of said composer "push your buttons" and likely do the same for your test group (I did not)

5. If you don't agree with that opinion, say what qualities of your personal favorite do the same (I did so for Haydn)

My apologies to mmsbls if I got this wrong - but I don't see how else to address the questions he raised.

Of course, all this is much less interesting than arguing about greatness vs popularity, but it would also keep all the "you are obviously trying to bait me" and "you are intellectually dishonest" stuff to a minimum.


----------



## Ingélou

mmsbls said:


> We've had many threads where people have discussed the popularity of works or composers, and in some cases, there may be an implication that popularity is an indicator of quality. Mozart is more popular than Haas; therefore, Mozart is better than Haas. Often people respond saying that popularity does not equate to quality; otherwise, Justin Bieber (and most popular music) would have to be considered better than Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven.
> 
> I'd like to restrict the concept of popularity and ask what the restricted concept indicates about the music. Most people would not compare The Marriage of Figaro to a Toyota Prius. Both are wonderful but at vastly different things. So I would use the concept of popularity not among all music and all listeners but rather among music that is similar and listeners that have particular backgrounds. Of course one must decide how restrictive to make the class of musical works and listeners. For now, maybe we say music from the same classical music era and listeners with reasonable experience listening to such music. Defining exactly what "reasonable experience" might mean can be a task for the thread if necessary.
> 
> So the question then becomes, "What does it mean about the music (and listeners) when a group of moderately experienced listeners indicates a strong preference for one composer or work over another from a particular classical music era?"
> 
> Incidentally, the modern/contemporary era likely would require greater restrictions (maybe minimalism, serialism, aleatoric, spectralism, etc.)
> 
> There are undefined concepts here, but I wanted the OP to have fewer than 20 pages.


To add my twopenn'orth to the OP - finally.

Popularity under the stated conditions could indicate all or any of a number of factors - exposure, accessibility, quality (but not necessarily), 'universality' within the culture (but not necessarily) and/or a clearly defined melody or rhythm.

I don't think it's possible to come up with a *nutshell *definition of what makes a work popular.

Clearly the fact that a piece of music is popular doesn't indicate that it is naff, necessarily, or that the people who like it have less rarefied tastes. Shakespeare is popular, after all.

And I don't think you need to prove that you have high qualifications in music or music theory to back up your opinion.
To my mind, this is about common sense & experience as much as it is about music.


----------



## Vesteralen

mmsbls said:


> .
> 
> So the question then becomes, "What does it mean about the music (and listeners) when a group of moderately experienced listeners indicates a strong preference for *one composer or work *over another from a particular classical music era?"


Thanks to Ingelou for helping me see that I overlooked yet another feature of the OP. It does not have to be a composer we are talking about. It could also be a particular work that is deemed most popular.


----------



## Guest

I was about to begin a post using a reasonably uncontentious example (eg _Seasons in the Sun_ by Terry Jacks or _Doo Wah Diddy Diddy _by Manfred Mann) to explore the possibilities, but as I arrived late to the thread, and knowing that I have, on more than one occasion prompted a member to post a picture of a deceased equine being thrashed...

In other words, tell me to shut up if we're all done here!


----------



## Vesteralen

MacLeod said:


> I was about to begin a post using a reasonably uncontentious example (eg _Seasons in the Sun_ by Terry Jacks or _Doo Wah Diddy Diddy _by Manfred Mann) to explore the possibilities, but as I arrived late to the thread, and knowing that I have, on more than one occasion prompted a member to post a picture of a deceased equine being thrashed...
> 
> In other words, tell me to shut up if we're all done here!


Personally, I'd be interested to see what you had in mind, but I will be away from now till late afternoon, so I'll have to wait to see it.


----------



## Truckload

I have truly enjoyed the discussion between Woodchuck and Science and others regarding some of the larger issues of absolutes and relativism, aesthetics and values. It has been over 40 years since I had a class in philosophy, but some of the basic themes of the discourse seem familiar. Eventually, I think the notion of "utility", and first principles must enter the contest of ideas if this goes on long enough.

Person A believes all life is sacred and equal and is a vegetarian, and even refuses to eat fish. Person B does not hold that philosophy. A and B are lost in a small plane crash in a forest. B uses hunting and fishing to survive long enough to be rescued. A dies of starvation. The philosophy of A had low utility.


----------



## Truckload

Getting back to music, the entire point of the greatness thing is to prioritize. If I have a limited number of hours in my lifetime to study, enjoy, and learn from the music of all of the composers who have ever lived, how do I decide how to use my limited time? How do I prioritize which music to really study, and try to fully understand? 

Thanks to YouTube and the internet the question of greatness is a little less important than it used to be. If you have to decide what scores to buy, with only limited funds, it is nice to have some idea of the relative importance of a composer. These days you can just download scores from IMSLP. It used to be you had to go to a concert, wait for a work to be broadcast on classical radio, or spend the money on a CD (and before that vinyl). But today you can listen to anything on YouTube. Hurrah!

So the question of greatness has a little less utility today than it did 30 years ago. But we are all still limited in the amount of time we are given to appreciate, study and learn from music. How should I priotize my time?

That is why I remain convinced that the consensus of knowledgable participants, that persists over more than one generation, is a useful measure of greatness, and thus a useful method of prioritizing my own explorations.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

Woodduck said:


> In saying this I assume that artistic excellence actually exists and affects people's preferences. The denial of this, or the inability to recognize it, often seems to me to be rooted in the wish for a "democratization" of human life - less charitably, a leveling - which ends in the elevation of trivia and absurdity to positions of prominence in our artistic life. There's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art - I watch television (occasionally!) - but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.





science said:


> No, *because* when you dismiss, for example, television, as an inferior art, *you're dismissing people who enjoy it as inferior. *


science, whether I agree or not that television is an inferior art is immaterial (I don't, but anyway), but where exactly did Woodduck say that "_therefore, the people who enjoy television are inferior_"? Did he say that or did you, more or less, put those words in his mouth, poisoning the well from the get-go? I can disagree that television is inferior with regard to artistic potential until the cows come home, but you seem to have unfairly forced a slippery-slope ("he thinks television is an inferior, _therefore_, he thinks the people that enjoy television are inferior". He even said he enjoys television!), untenable viewpoint onto Woodduck.


----------



## Sloe

Truckload said:


> It used to be you had to go to a concert, wait for a work to be broadcast on classical radio, or spend the money on a CD (and before that vinyl). But today you can listen to anything on YouTube. Hurrah!


There is a lot of music you can´t find on youtube even music that is great in the meaning of it gives a great joy for me to listen to it.


----------



## Truckload

Sloe said:


> There is a lot of music you can´t find on youtube even music that is great in the meaning of it gives a great joy for me to listen to it.


I'm certain you must be correct, but more and more is posted every day. There is certainly more variety today than 5 years ago, and I see no reason to think there will not be even more variety five years hence. What music that gives you great joy is currently unavailable?


----------



## mmsbls

MacLeod said:


> In seeking to justify one's own standpoint in relation to what is popular, it can be difficult to avoid accusations of double standards. For example, "I like (X universally loved composer) not because he's popular, but because he's very good." (Ergo, I have superior sensibilities to those who just like him for his popularity.) Or "I like (Y obscure composer) and if only more people could see her worth, she would be more popular."


I'm wondering how many people actually like a composer because she's popular? It's possible one might be more easily exposed to a popular composer than an unpopular one, and some could pretend to like someone to seem "with it". But I would accept that anyone telling me they like a particular compooser actually enjoys that composer's music.

Also isn't it almost certainly true that if more people saw the worth of a composer, that composer would actually be more popular?

But I know what you're saying here.


----------



## mmsbls

Vesteralen said:


> Please bear with me for a moment - I'm an inveterate reductivist.
> 
> It seemed to me that the only way to answer the OP would be to do the following:
> 
> 1. Pick a style or era of music (I picked the classical era)
> 
> 2. Establish the ground rules for participation in the survery ( X number of years or X complete listenings - I think I rather arbitrarily picked 10 and 300)
> 
> 3. This is the hard part - try to guess which composer would be picked as most popular by said test group (I picked Mozart) One would actually have to perform a survey with certified participants to do this - pretty much an impossiblilty, I think.
> 
> 4. If you personally agree with that opinion, say what qualities of said composer "push your buttons" and likely do the same for your test group (I did not)
> 
> 5. If you don't agree with that opinion, say what qualities of your personal favorite do the same (I did so for Haydn)
> 
> My apologies to mmsbls if I got this wrong - but I don't see how else to address the questions he raised.
> 
> Of course, all this is much less interesting than arguing about greatness vs popularity, but it would also keep all the "you are obviously trying to bait me" and "you are intellectually dishonest" stuff to a minimum.


Thank you for continously trying to remain true to the OP. I actually don't mind others straying since straying can produce interesting thoughts as well.

If I understand your argument above, in this case you are attempting to delineate which qualities of the music you value _that those who find another composer more popular do not value or value less_. For someone whose "taste" agreed with the others, they would determine those qualities on which they agreed.

I guess I'm asking what do those factors that popular works have indicate about the music. Can those factors be used to determine something about the value or quality of that music? Perhaps they could be used to define some aspect of quality.


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## mmsbls

Truckload said:


> Getting back to music, the entire point of the greatness thing is to prioritize. If I have a limited number of hours in my lifetime to study, enjoy, and learn from the music of all of the composers who have ever lived, how do I decide how to use my limited time? How do I prioritize which music to really study, and try to fully understand?


I agree that a very useful aspect of greatness is helping one prioritize listening. Even if we can't agree on what exactly great means or on what works or composers are great, having such a list indicates that others have listened to a hopefully large number of works or composers and selcted those they collectively find of high value. Such a list is useful _if one tends to enjoy or value such works over randomly selected ones._ Most people I know do enjoy those works more.

I would make the same comment about popularity. Works that are popular indicate that a large number of people enjoy them. I have found that my tastes are often similar to the "the collective" so if many people who enjoy modern music suggest a particular work I will listen to that before other works.


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## Nereffid

My wife and I were watching the world gymnastics championships on TV last night, and it struck me that there might be an analogy in how I perceive the issue of greatness.
_Personal bugbear warning: Like all analogies, there is absolutely no point in trying to "disprove" it by stretching it further. That's not how or why analogies are used._

So we all know what a gymnast is, but who gets to be a "great" gymnast? Well, Kohei Uchimura seems to be one, because he won his 6th all-round title. But he got that accolade by doing gymnastics in a particular way: there are certain things he could and couldn't do, and he was graded on what he did by a jury. Someone could be extremely graceful and stylish in how they escape from a booby-trapped Incan temple while clutching a small idol, but by current standards that doesn't make them a great gymnast. So there are some specific rules in place to determine who the best gymnasts are. They make some sense but are nevertheless arbitrary in some of their specifics, and excellence also depends on subjective judgement by others.
Presumably you can see the analogy with music; but my issue with the notion of a seemingly objective notion of greatness among composers or musical works is that the "rules" are simply too vague - unlike the rules of world gymnastics, they aren't (and, I think, can't be) codified - and are too reliant on subjectivity and, for want of a better word, fashion (what was unacceptable or even unthinkable in one century is old-hat in the next).


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## Blancrocher

mmsbls said:


> I agree that a very useful aspect of greatness is helping one prioritize listening. Even if we can't agree on what exactly great means or on what works or composers are great, having such a list indicates that others have listened to a hopefully large number of works or composers and selcted those they collectively find of high value. Such a list is useful _if one tends to enjoy or value such works over randomly selected ones._ Most people I know do enjoy those works more.
> 
> I would make the same comment about popularity. Works that are popular indicate that a large number of people enjoy them. I have found that my tastes are often similar to the "the collective" so if many people who enjoy modern music suggest a particular work I will listen to that before other works.


Nereffid's analogy reminds me of one of Balanchine's essays on ballet. In it, he discusses how people tend to be ignorant of ballet, which would be as nonsensical to them as a baseball game would be to someone who knew nothing of that sport. Some preliminary learning of rules is essential. After that, though, he doesn't recommend just going to the "best" ballet companies. On the contrary, he says one should throw oneself into every ballet performance one can find--UNTIL one's experience makes it impossible to stand imperfect technique by the high standards one has gradually acquired through repeated exposure to differently successful performances. People will inevitably have differing opinions about what those standards are and what constitutes a successful ballet or performance, of course--but in the end (I'm sure Balanchine would agree) all right-thinking individuals will prefer Stravinksy ballets choreographed by Balanchine as the summit of the art.


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## science

DiesIraeCX said:


> science, whether I agree or not that television is an inferior art is immaterial (I don't, but anyway), but where exactly did Woodduck say that "_therefore, the people who enjoy television are inferior_"? Did he say that or did you, more or less, put those words in his mouth, poisoning the well from the get-go? I can disagree that television is inferior with regard to artistic potential until the cows come home, but you seem to have unfairly forced a slippery-slope ("he thinks television is an inferior, _therefore_, he thinks the people that enjoy television are inferior". He even said he enjoys television!), untenable viewpoint onto Woodduck.


It doesn't matter because television wasn't the only thing at stake; it was merely one example.

"Your culture is inferior" is explicit enough, whether that refers to television or pop music or modernist music or religion, without any need to be more explicit about the inferiority of the people who enjoy or identify with it. "I don't enjoy your culture" would be a completely different point.


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## EdwardBast

Faustian said:


> Does _anything_ exist objectively, independent of human minds? :devil:


Yes! Every_thing_ does.:angel:


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I'm wondering how many people actually like a composer because she's popular? It's possible one might be more easily exposed to a popular composer than an unpopular one, and some could pretend to like someone to seem "with it". But I would accept that anyone telling me they like a particular compooser actually enjoys that composer's music.
> 
> Also isn't it almost certainly true that if more people saw the worth of a composer, that composer would actually be more popular?
> 
> But I know what you're saying here.


You might, but just to be sure for those who might be wondering, I'll expand a little (as there may be an audience beyond you, me and Vesteralen!)

To your first question, I would say that the social drive of music has an enormous impact. I'll return to it with the example I proposed earlier, but suffice to say for now that for some listeners (I'd say many, to some degree, despite the fact that many would deny it) the extent to which a song or composer is popular plays a part in their 'choosing' to like it. It's a contrast to your second question where there is a dilemma for the seeker of the avant-garde: if no-one knows the obscure that you like, how on earth do you gain cachet from liking it? It must become popular because only then can your unerring instinct for nosing out the diamond in the rough be properly acknowledged.



Vesteralen said:


> Personally, I'd be interested to see what you had in mind, but I will be away from now till late afternoon, so I'll have to wait to see it.


So, I'll go ahead with what I had in mind.

First, I'm going to use an example from pop, for three reasons: I'm less likely to tread on others' sacred cows in the classical sphere; more importantly, I think it easier to say what it is about a pop song that makes it popular, and, venturing my first potentially contentious point, we may just be able to multiply up from the simple to the more complex and draw some conclusions about 'typical' classical (WAM, LvB etc); and I know more about pop than I do classical!

Second, I'll try to avoid an iconic pop artist because it brings too much other baggage (though there will be baggage).

Third, I'll use an example that I personally don't like, in an attempt to avoid bias.

Last, a one-hit wonder - more or less - focuses attention on the song and not the artist.

So, my example is _Seasons in the Sun_ by Terry Jacks. First, was it popular? Here's wiki...



> "Seasons in the Sun" is an English-language adaptation of the song "Le Moribond" by Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel with lyrics by American singer-poet Rod McKuen. It became a worldwide hit in 1974 for Canadian singer Terry Jacks and became a Christmas Number 1 in 1999 for Westlife. Jacks's version is one of the fewer than forty all-time singles to have sold 10 million copies worldwide.


Speaking personally, I couldn't stand it, and I think most of my classmates rejected it too. I can only guess to what extent what I earlier called the 'social drive' was at play here, but it must have been to some degree. So whoever was buying it, it wasn't English mid-teen boys who were either just beginning to flex their musical taste muscles (Bowie or T-Rex usually, though not in my case) or who had access to allegedly superior music of a different kind (I'd already been exposed to eg Zappa, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, even though I was an assiduous follower of the UK Top Forty). As mmsbls said in the OP, the idea of the audience is important. It's too imprecise to talk about 'worldwide popularity' and assume it means 'universally liked'. After all, 10 million sales worldwide may be a pop phenomenon, but it only scratches the surface of the actual music-listening population of the globe.

Before I proceed further, someone might like to comment on what I've said so far and perhaps tell me why they liked the song (or go and try it out on YTbe).


----------



## DiesIraeCX

science said:


> It doesn't matter because television wasn't the only thing at stake; it was merely one example.
> 
> "Your culture is inferior" is explicit enough, whether that refers to television or pop music or modernist music or religion, without any need to be more explicit about the inferiority of the people who enjoy or identify with it. "I don't enjoy your culture" would be a completely different point.


That's just it, though, I'm refuting that the "television example" is a _relevant_ example at all. And judging from Woodduck's original post that you replied to, I feel I'm correct in my refutation. Here it is again:



Woodduck said:


> In saying this I assume that artistic excellence actually exists and affects people's preferences. The denial of this, or the inability to recognize it, often seems to me to be rooted in the wish for a "democratization" of human life - less charitably, a leveling - which ends in the elevation of trivia and absurdity to positions of prominence in our artistic life. There's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art - I watch television (occasionally!) - but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.





science said:


> No, *because* when you dismiss, for example, television, as an inferior art, *you're dismissing people who enjoy it as inferior. *


You've moved the goalpost and then proceeded to judge Woodduck's statement with your new rules, which he clearly wasn't playing by. It seems quite clear to me that he's saying that television doesn't meet the same level of artistic excellence that say, painting or a symphony, meets. Keep in mind, this is a viewpoint I don't agree with, but as I said, that's irrelevant. In the same way that I don't think Beethoven's folk songs quite meet the artistic excellence that his string quartets possess. Where is this equivalence of inferiority in artistic excellence and inferiority of people. Sounds merely like an artistic judgement to me. It may not coincide with absolute relativism viewpoints, but that's besides the point.

Now, because it doesn't seem as clear to me as it does to you, could you possibly point out where the maliciousness in his post lies? Where is it? Does my statement about Beethoven's folk songs and string quartets also possess maliciousness, am I saying that the people who enjoy his folk songs more than the string quartets are inferior? I can assure you I'm not, but considering Woodduck's original misconstrued post, I'm curious as to how you analyze mine.

If people can bring up past posts by Woodduck for negative reasons (and they often do), I can bring them up for positive reasons. I've never, not once, read a post by him that judges people (the listeners). He seems to be a passionate judge (we all are) and lover of music and art, he may harshly criticize art and singers (abilities) and symphonies and operas, but hasn't once called a listener inferior for listening to a work he doesn't like. If I'm incorrect in analyzing your original post and your thoughts on certain peoples' inferiority, Woodduck, please let me know.


----------



## mmsbls

MacLeod said:


> Before I proceed further, someone might like to comment on what I've said so far and perhaps tell me why they liked the song (or go and try it out on YTbe).


I'm only quoting the end of your post but will reply to other parts.

I think the social drive of music can definitely play a role. I suspect it plays a vastly larger role in popular music than in classical because popular musicians are still alive, people see them in videos or concerts, and popular music is often listened to by younger more impressionable people. (I think it's true that younger people are more impressionable, but if anyone knows differently, let me know).

I'm not sure to what extent something like social drive exists in, for example, TC member's liking of works. I do feel that the work's characteristics play a significantly larger role than anything attributable to social factors. Maybe I'm wrong.

I did not like Seasons in the Sun, but picking a one-hit-wonder is a good idea (to focus more on the music).


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## Art Rock

I was at university when Seasons in the sun came out, and was a huge hit in Holland as well. Not my taste of music, but I did not mind hearing it on the radio (I even put it on the car USB stick for nostalgia reasons). I never understood both sides of the coin for this one: (A) why so many people loved it, as shown by the sales, and (B) why so many people list it as one of the songs they hate.

Come to think of it, in general I have difficulty to understand the mechanism behind love and hate when it comes to music (or other things). I cannot define myself why I love or hate (better: dislike) certain things, let alone why others feel the way they do. Popularity plays no role for me personally: I love and dislike plenty of popular things, as well as non-popular things. I dislike Beethoven's 9th (a perennial crowd favourite), but I love his 5th (which is immensely popular as well).


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## Guest

DiesIraeCX said:


> could you possibly point out where the maliciousness in his post lies? Where is it?


I'm not sure that science is alleging maliciousness, but I'm inclined to agree that Woodduck's posts, surely without malice but perhaps with intent, carry an innuendo which goes beyond the inferiority of the art (which Woodduck clearly objects to in his rejection of the elevation of trivia and absurdity, the democratisation of life, the levelling).



> There's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art - I watch television (occasionally!) - but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.


How else to read 'lacking' if not as a signal of the inferiority/superiority of the perceiver?


----------



## DiesIraeCX

MacLeod said:


> I'm not sure that science is alleging maliciousness, but I'm inclined to agree that Woodduck's posts, surely without malice but perhaps with intent, carry an innuendo which goes beyond the inferiority of the art (which Woodduck clearly objects to in his rejection of the elevation of trivia and absurdity, the democratisation of life, the levelling).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> here's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art - I watch television (occasionally!) - but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.
> 
> 
> 
> How else to read 'lacking' if not as a signal of the inferiority/superiority of the perceiver?
Click to expand...

Well, I would say that believing certain peoples are inferior, that's a mighty strong word with some mighty terrible implications, is inherently malicious.

About your response to this statement by Woodduck:



> here's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art - I watch television (occasionally!) - but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.


Once again, he's referring to perceiving artistic excellence, whether one agrees, or whether you or I agree isn't the point. It may be a contentious viewpoint for some, but my issue is with equating this with saying people are inferior. There was no modifier in science's judgement of Wooduck, he merely said that Woodduck is saying that the people who enjoy it _are_ inferior. Flat out. Where was the modifier there?

I take it that he's saying if you can't perceive the difference in the level of artistic excellence in the television medium and the art music medium, then your perception (in perceiving artistic excellence) is lacking. What am I missing here? Even if he said that their perception is "inferior", that still doesn't even come close to meaning, "you are inferior. Flat out. No modifiers.".

Once again, it bears repeating, I don't agree with it. I perhaps hold _some_ relativism viewpoints, but i cannot understand when it's taken to its extremes. I am not an absolute relativist by any means. I do believe in artistic excellence.


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## Nereffid

I was 4 when "Seasons in the Sun" was a hit, so it's one of those songs that's been around long enough that it's quite familiar to me even though I can't be absolutely certain that I've ever heard it from start to finish.

I do remember that, some years later, a classmate had a version of the lyric that referred to our chemistry teacher:

We had joy, we had fun,
We had Murphy on the run,
But the fun didn't last
'Cause the bast*rd ran too fast.

I've found with popular music that familiarity becomes a complicating issue when deciding whether I like something or not - when it comes to the music of my teens, the purely musical aspects tend to get swamped by the memories. Now I have children who listen to music I wouldn't otherwise have paid any attention to, and the issue of familiarity appears again in a different way, because familiarity in of itself is part of the rationale behind popular music: something like, say, Taylor Swift's "Shake it off" is instantly memorable and I'd be inclined to say it's a "great" pop song _because it's popular_. "Seasons in the Sun" is stuck in the head 40 years after it first appeared, and I genuinely can't decide whether I like it or not.


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## Vesteralen

Art Rock said:


> I was at university when Seasons in the sun came out, and was a huge hit in Holland as well. Not my taste of music, but I did not mind hearing it on the radio (I even put it on the car USB stick for nostalgia reasons). I never understood both sides of the coin for this one: (A) why so many people loved it, as shown by the sales, and (B) why so many people list it as one of the songs they hate.
> 
> Come to think of it, in general I have difficulty to understand the mechanism behind love and hate when it comes to music (or other things). I cannot define myself why I love or hate (better: dislike) certain things, let alone why others feel the way they do. Popularity plays no role for me personally: I love and dislike plenty of popular things, as well as non-popular things. I dislike Beethoven's 9th (a perennial crowd favourite), but I love his 5th (which is immensely popular as well).


I agree with this post completely if you switch the 5th and the 9th in the example. Now, that's an interesting thing, too. isn't it?


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## Art Rock

It is. Other examples: in threads about your ten favourite .... (symphonies, composers, operas, whatever), I often find posts where there are say 3-5 choices in complete agreement with my own taste - but also a few in the same post that I don't like at all. Taste is indeed very, very subjective.


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## mmsbls

Woodduck said:


> In saying this I assume that artistic excellence actually exists and affects people's preferences. The denial of this, or the inability to recognize it, often seems to me to be rooted in the wish for a "democratization" of human life - less charitably, a leveling - which ends in the elevation of trivia and absurdity to positions of prominence in our artistic life. There's nothing wrong with enjoying inferior art - I watch television (occasionally!) - but we are definitely lacking in perception if we can't tell the difference.


I also believe that something (or somethings) which we can identify as artistic excellence exists. It may be hard to easily define, but perhaps we can say excellence can be identified by groups of experts. Experts are those who have spent years studying or immersed in a subject and who have been identified as particularly knowledgeable by others who have spent years on that subject. Maybe excellence can also be identified by some other people. Presumably experts use some set of criteria to determine excellenece.

So if a group of experts identifies Schubert's string quintet as excellent, is that relevant to others who are not able to properly associate Schubert's music with the particlaur set of criteria (i.e. cannot assess excellence)? I can think of two reasons the others might be interested. First, some may wish to become familiar with musical works deemed excellent by experts. Second, _if there is a significant correlation between excellent works and the enjoyment of those works by non-experts_, non-experts would have a higher likelihood of enjoying excellent works over random works.

As I've said earlier, I'm particularly fascinated by the possibility of the second reason. You said popularity merely tends to be influenced by excellence. Most here would probably agree that not all popular works are excellent. But a more interesting question might be, "What percentage of excellent works are popular within groups who are knowledgeable of those works?"


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## Vesteralen

mmsbls said:


> Thank you for continously trying to remain true to the OP. I actually don't mind others straying since straying can produce interesting thoughts as well.
> 
> If I understand your argument above, in this case you are attempting to delineate which qualities of the music you value _that those who find another composer more popular do not value or value less_. For someone whose "taste" agreed with the others, they would determine those qualities on which they agreed.
> 
> I guess I'm asking what do those factors that popular works have indicate about the music. Can those factors be used to determine something about the value or quality of that music? Perhaps they could be used to define some aspect of quality.


Well, I wasn't aware of trying to make an argument . But, I guess what you said is a fair analysis.

I don't know what to say to your final question, exactly. If, for example, Haydn's music was found by others to be enjoyable for the same reasons I stated, I don't think it would prove anything about the quality of the music. It would only prove what our shared reactions are.

I do think, though, that there is something to be said for music that sounds distinctive. On the other hand, though, does the fact that I am three or four times more likely to be able to identify a piece as being by Haydn than I am able to identify a piece as being by Telemann say something about the music, or just about me? I would probably have to listen to as many compositions by Telemann as I have listened to compositions by Haydn before I could speak with authority on that, and that's not likely to happen because I don't feel the motivation (at least not right now) to do that.


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## Vesteralen

mmsbls said:


> So if a group of experts identifies Schubert's string quintet as excellent, is that relevant to others who are not able to properly associate Schubert's music with the particlaur set of criteria (i.e. cannot assess excellence)? I can think of two reasons the others might be interested. First, some may wish to become familiar with musical works deemed excellent by experts. Second, *if there is a significant correlation between excellent works and the enjoyment of those works by non-experts, *non-experts would have a higher likelihood of enjoying excellent works over random works.


mmsbls, could you possibly restate the part I bolded? I'm not sure what you're saying there.


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## Vesteralen

Art Rock said:


> It is. Other examples: in threads about your ten favourite .... (symphonies, composers, operas, whatever), I often find posts where there are say 3-5 choices in complete agreement with my own taste - but also a few in the same post that I don't like at all. Taste is indeed very, very subjective.


Yes, and I will add that often I can even acknowledge some of those few "others" as being great (meaning, in this case, evidencing great skill in orchestration, or inventiveness, or clever construction) but I still don't much care for them.

I've never had any problem acknowledging value in things I don't much like - Schubert's Unfinished is an example. I just go on to something more up my alley.


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## science

DiesIraeCX said:


> That's just it, though, I'm refuting that the "television example" is a _relevant_ example at all. And judging from Woodduck's original post that you replied to, I feel I'm correct in my refutation. Here it is again:
> 
> You've moved the goalpost and then proceeded to judge Woodduck's statement with your new rules, which he clearly wasn't playing by. It seems quite clear to me that he's saying that television doesn't meet the same level of artistic excellence that say, painting or a symphony, meets. Keep in mind, this is a viewpoint I don't agree with, but as I said, that's irrelevant. In the same way that I don't think Beethoven's folk songs quite meet the artistic excellence that his string quartets possess. Where is this equivalence of inferiority in artistic excellence and inferiority of people. Sounds merely like an artistic judgement to me. It may not coincide with absolute relativism viewpoints, but that's besides the point.
> 
> Now, because it doesn't seem as clear to me as it does to you, could you possibly point out where the maliciousness in his post lies? Where is it? Does my statement about Beethoven's folk songs and string quartets also possess maliciousness, am I saying that the people who enjoy his folk songs more than the string quartets are inferior? I can assure you I'm not, but considering Woodduck's original misconstrued post, I'm curious as to how you analyze mine.
> 
> If people can bring up past posts by Woodduck for negative reasons (and they often do), I can bring them up for positive reasons. I've never, not once, read a post by him that judges people (the listeners). He seems to be a passionate judge (we all are) and lover of music and art, he may harshly criticize art and singers (abilities) and symphonies and operas, but hasn't once called a listener inferior for listening to a work he doesn't like. If I'm incorrect in analyzing your original post and your thoughts on certain peoples' inferiority, Woodduck, please let me know.


I didn't attribute any malice to Woodduck's judgment of television. But look, he's saying that if you don't agree with him about which arts are superior and inferior, you're "lacking in perception." Not that you merely have a "philosophical disagreement" (as he said later, speaking of moving goalposts) but lacking in a fundamental human capacity.

And the important point is, statements like this don't exist in a vacuum. As I said, even if Woodduck himself somehow manages o judge people as lacking in perception without having any sort of snobbery toward such people, that's not how arguments like his are usually intended. "I don't like the same music you like" is a neutral thing. "Your music [or television or whatever] sucks" is not. The former is a thing two people who regard each other as equals might say to each other; the latter is intended as a personal criticism, even an insult. Adding something like "your failure to perceive that your music sucks is not merely a difference in taste but a fundamental failure in your perception" only serves to drive home the point. That's all true even if somehow Woodduck - one particular case that would not matter to the fundamental point at all; a particular case that if we didn't interact with him personally would be of interest to us only if he really is an exception to this general rule - has not a shred of that intention.

It's not about Woodduck. It's about the ideas he champions, and what they mean in the world. Snobbery exists. He happens to champion ideas that can only support one of the most old-fashioned sort of it. Even if he manages to erect some kind of barrier in his mind between "you have inferior perception of aesthetic realities" and "you are an inferior person," those barriers do not ordinarily exist and they have no real reason to exist. Their only purpose would be to arbitrarily shield us from the ordinary consequences of his ideas.

[snipped]


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## Nereffid

One thing that continues to puzzle me - I have trouble getting my head round the idea - but I'll throw it down here.

- Is it possible that we can acknowledge something as excellent while still not liking it ourselves? Yes, it happens; some posters have said as much above.

- Is it possible that the same applies specifically to experts? Yes, that's reasonable, isn't it?

- So is it, therefore, possible that there exists some music about which the experts have a consensus that it is excellent, but even the experts themselves generally don't like it?


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## Blancrocher

Nereffid said:


> So is it, therefore, possible that there exists some music about which the experts have a consensus that it is excellent, but even the experts themselves generally don't like it?


Mark Twain said that Wagner's music is "better than it sounds."


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## Truckload

Nereffid said:


> One thing that continues to puzzle me - I have trouble getting my head round the idea - but I'll throw it down here.
> 
> - Is it possible that we can perceive something as excellent while still not liking it ourselves? Yes, it happens; some posters have said as much above.
> 
> - Is it possible that the same applies specifically to experts? Yes, that's reasonable, isn't it?
> 
> - So is it, therefore, possible that there exists some music about which the experts have a consensus that it is excellent, but even the experts themselves generally don't like it?


My musicology professor (40 years ago) was an expert in virtually every era of music and virtually all of the well-known composers. However, he had a particular love for music of the pre-Baroque eras. He knew that Strauss and Mahler were "great" composers, and could tell you why (use of orchestration, harmony, form, innovation) in great detail, but he really disliked any music beyond the early Romantics. He particularly disliked what he considered "vulgar" emotionalism, hence his dislike of Mahler and Strauss.


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## Guest

Twenty two pages.

For something I think is pretty simple: popularity correllates with nothing, really. All sorts of things are popular for all sorts of reasons.

So why twenty two pages? Well, I think that that's pretty simple, too. For many people, myself included at one time, it's not enough to listen to and enjoy what you're hearing. You have to turn your tastes into facts, facts that are validated by agreement with other people, either people generally (popularity) or experts (also popularity).

There's certainly nothing wrong with a social creature being social. The problem arises when the approval of others, whether anonymous others or expert others, is somehow necessary to one's enjoyment. The problem arises when an intrinsically subjective situation has to be redefined as objective in order to validate it. Taste is an intensely personal thing. Best to leave it at that. Do others share your tastes? Sure. We're not altogether different. So hang out with those people. Just be aware how easy it is for anyone in a group to feel that their group is right and other groups are wrong. Otherwise, you really don't need to validate your tastes. They are what they are. You enjoy what you enjoy. 

Well? Enjoy it!


----------



## Vesteralen

some guy said:


> Twenty two pages.
> 
> For something I think is pretty simple: popularity correllates with nothing, really. All sorts of things are popular for all sorts of reasons.
> 
> *So why twenty two pages? Well, I think that that's pretty simple, too. For many people, myself included at one time, it's not enough to listen to and enjoy what you're hearing. You have to turn your tastes into facts, facts that are validated by agreement with other people, either people generally (popularity) or experts (also popularity).*
> 
> There's certainly nothing wrong with a social creature being social. The problem arises when the approval of others, whether anonymous others or expert others, is somehow necessary to one's enjoyment. The problem arises when an intrinsically subjective situation has to be redefined as objective in order to validate it. Taste is an intensely personal thing. Best to leave it at that. Do others share your tastes? Sure. We're not altogether different. So hang out with those people. Just be aware how easy it is for anyone in a group to feel that their group is right and other groups are wrong. Otherwise, you really don't need to validate your tastes. They are what they are. You enjoy what you enjoy.
> 
> Well? Enjoy it!


I don't strongly disagree with anything you said here except the bolded portion.

I can't speak for anyone else posting on this thread, but I can say that whatever contribution I may have made to making this go to 22 pages was not motivated by anything of the sort.


----------



## Ingélou

It's an interesting question & I've enjoyed reading the answers suggested - even though I don't think you can draw definite conclusions about what makes music/composers popular - there are too many factors involved.

And I also don't think you can draw definite conclusions about why anyone would want to discuss the reasons for musical popularity - there are a number of factors involved. But chiefly intellectual curiosity, I'd guess.


----------



## EdwardBast

science said:


> I didn't attribute any malice to Woodduck's judgment of television. But look, he's saying that if you don't agree with him about which arts are superior and inferior, you're "lacking in perception." Not that you merely have a "philosophical disagreement" (as he said later, speaking of moving goalposts) but lacking in a fundamental human capacity.


This sounds like a distortion to me. Why do you assume he cares about agreement? It is perfectly possible to say someone lacks perception without caring one way or the other whether they agree with ones position. I doubt he cares one whit. I wouldn't. Beethoven _is_ better than reality TV. Even Wagner is better than reality TV. 

I have hung back in this discussion because my answer to the OP's question would, until about ten minutes ago, have consisted of a single word: "Nothing."


----------



## Nereffid

some guy said:


> For something I think is pretty simple: popularity correllates with nothing, really. All sorts of things are popular for all sorts of reasons.


So popularity correlates with _lots of things_, then.


----------



## Chordalrock

science said:


> When you write "aesthetic value is real," do you mean that it exists objectively, independently of human minds? If so, the burden of proof is on you.


Strictly speaking, neither rain nor value exists independently of the human mind, yet - also strictly speaking - something like rain exists and something like a great composition exists regardless of whether anyone is able to perceive them as such.

Value is a human concept, but the attributes that allow humans to ascribe value to an object exist independently of the human mind, and in some very real sense, they already contain all the potential value of the object. The human mind doesn't entirely invent the value, it partly finds it and partly invents it.

A lot of people are allowing themselves to be confused by language and concepts like "objective" and "subjective" and the unproven assumptions that go with them.

If you want me to prove that these people are in fact confused, all I have to do is present a scenario that demonstrates that their beliefs lead to absurdities. I think such scenarios have already been presented, such as the idea that trite pop music isn't any worse than Beethoven's 5th symphony.

At the end of the day, this isn't about logic but about language, and thus the fact remains I can take the horse to the water, but I can't make the horse drink it.


----------



## Chordalrock

science said:


> I didn't attribute any malice to Woodduck's judgment of television. But look, he's saying that if you don't agree with him about which arts are superior and inferior, you're "lacking in perception." Not that you merely have a "philosophical disagreement" (as he said later, speaking of moving goalposts) but lacking in a fundamental human capacity.


Experience modifies perception. A person who prefers trite music to great music isn't lacking in a "fundamental human capacity", he is mainly lacking in experience.

-Snipped -.


----------



## mmsbls

Vesteralen said:


> mmsbls, could you possibly restate the part I bolded? I'm not sure what you're saying there.


When I said "if there is a significant correlation between excellent works and the enjoyment of those works by non-experts" I mean something along these lines.

If you place some works deemed excellent by experts in one group and some works deemed less than excellent in another group, will non-experts (or really everyone) generally enjoy the works in the excellent group more than the works in the less than excellent group? In other words do the factors that experts use to distinguish excellent works have some causal effect on peoples brains such that they have a vastly increased probability of enjoying works with those factors?

Hopefully that helps?


----------



## KenOC

I would like to see some examples from the people here of works widely enjoyed by "non-experts" that are non-excellent. Anybody?


----------



## Mandryka

Nereffid said:


> One thing that continues to puzzle me - I have trouble getting my head round the idea - but I'll throw it down here.
> 
> - Is it possible that we can acknowledge something as excellent while still not liking it ourselves? Yes, it happens; some posters have said as much above.
> 
> - Is it possible that the same applies specifically to experts? Yes, that's reasonable, isn't it?
> 
> - So is it, therefore, possible that there exists some music about which the experts have a consensus that it is excellent, but even the experts themselves generally don't like it?


One possible view is that the people who have learned to see whatever it is that makes music good will also learn to appreciate goodness. Through developing the discernment, your values change.

Indeed part of why it's worth becoming a discerning person: you'll thereby appreciate things in a new way, hopefully a way which helps enhance your life.

But clearly an expert may sometimes not be in the mood to listen to great music. It's a sort of human failing.


----------



## Mandryka

KenOC said:


> I would like to see some examples from the people here of works widely enjoyed by "non-experts" that are non-excellent. Anybody?


Rachmaninov concertos
Fur Elise
The 1812 Overture
tubular bells
that thing by Gavin Briars about Jesus Blood
Liszt
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Beethoven's Ode to Joy
Celtic music
Brahms' lullaby 
Debussy's Claire de lune


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## DeepR

It indicates that it has been exposed a lot and was generally received well.


----------



## mmsbls

some guy said:


> For something I think is pretty simple: popularity correllates with nothing, really. All sorts of things are popular for all sorts of reasons.


I guess if there are all sorts of reasons, then popularity would correllate with those reasons.



some guy said:


> So why twenty two pages? Well, I think that that's pretty simple, too. For many people, myself included at one time, it's not enough to listen to and enjoy what you're hearing. You have to turn your tastes into facts, facts that are validated by agreement with other people, either people generally (popularity) or experts (also popularity).


Interesting. I agree with Ingélou that intellectual curiosity is a much better explanation. Certainly that was why I started the thread and continued contributing.


----------



## KenOC

Mandryka said:


> Rachmaninov concertos
> Fur Elise
> The 1812 Overture
> tubular bells
> that thing by Gavin Briars about Jesus Blood
> Liszt
> Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
> Beethoven's Ode to Joy
> Celtic music
> Brahms' lullaby
> Debussy's Claire de lune


I would consider this list as more a statement of personal taste than a useful assessment of the excellence, or non-excellence, of the music. In short, I disagree with most of it. Which of course proves nothing, putting my judgment on an equal footing with the list itself.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

KenOC said:


> I would like to see some examples from the people here of works widely enjoyed by "non-experts" that are non-excellent. Anybody?


Shostakovitch (the ultimate "beginner bait" composer)
Vaughn Williams
Arvo Part (or most neoromantic composers like late Penderecki, Jennifer Higdon, etc.)
Chopin's Piano Concertos (one is supposed to praise his ballades, nocturnes, mazurkas, preludes etc. but turn his nose up at the piano concertos)
Holst
Beethoven's 5th piano concerto and Brahms's violin concerto (crowd pleasers)
Philip Glass
Any film composer. Even further, declaring that a film composer is classical, even in passing, will earn you infinite scorn.
Tchaikovsky (read any of PetrB's posts on Tchaikovsky. another "beginner bait" composer)

I could come up with more, but can't think of them at the top of my head.


----------



## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> I would like to see some examples from the people here of works widely enjoyed by "non-experts" that are non-excellent. Anybody?


We had a thread related to this awhile ago, and one possible answer was Grieg's Piano Concerto. PetrB thought the work was not very good. Of course, I would never have known that anyone did not view that work as excellent.

Also maybe Pachelbel's Canon.


----------



## Sloe

SeptimalTritone said:


> Shostakovitch (the ultimate "beginner bait" composer)
> Vaughn Williams
> Arvo Part (or most neoromantic composers like late Penderecki, Jennifer Higdon, etc.)
> Chopin's Piano Concertos (one is supposed to praise his ballades, nocturnes, mazurkas, preludes etc. but turn his nose up at the piano concertos)
> Holst
> Beethoven's 5th piano concerto and Brahms's violin concerto (crowd pleasers)
> Philip Glass
> Any film composer. Even further, declaring that a film composer is classical, even in passing, will earn you infinite scorn.
> Tchaikovsky (read any of PetrB's posts on Tchaikovsky. another "beginner bait" composer)
> 
> I could come up with more, but can't think of them at the top of my head.


I like all of that except Pärt and Glass. I have not heard so much of Higdon that I feel I can say I make an opinion of what I have heard I might not like her. Schostakovitch I might be indifferent to.
To just dismiss a composer because they make film music is just wrong especially considering how large part of all composers from this and the last century that have made film music.
I can´t see why just these works by Beethoven and Brahms are more crowd pleasars than any other of their works.


----------



## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> We had a thread related to this awhile ago, and one possible answer was Grieg's Piano Concerto. PetrB thought the work was not very good. Of course, I would never have known that anyone did not view that work as excellent.


 Indeed. My point is that we certainly cannot generate a list, one we can agree on, of works enjoyed by the classical music masses that are "inferior" in any way except, perhaps, being overly familiar to some of us. And therefore we cannot say, reliably, that the tastes of those masses are in any way "lower" or less valid than our own.

Here are the top ten from this year's countdown on KUSC as voted by their radio audience -- probably as good a test of "popularity" (in the US at least) as we're likely to find:

-Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 "Choral"
-Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 "From the New World"
-Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
-Bach: Brandenburg Concerto
-Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
-Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2
-Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
-(plus three other Beethoven works)

Which of these is inferior???


----------



## SeptimalTritone

Sloe said:


> I like all of that except Pärt and Glass. I have not heard so much of Higdon that I feel I can say I make an opinion of what I have heard I might not like her. Schostakovitch I might be indifferent to.
> To just dismiss a composer because they make film music is just wrong especially considering how large part of all composers from this and the last century that have made film music.
> I can´t see why just these works by Beethoven and Brahms are more crowd pleasars than any other of their works.


I actually like a sizeable chunk of my list, but I have to remind myself that these are "guilty pleasures".

In particular, the first few times I listened to Tchaikovsky's piano trio, I really really liked it. In fact, I still do. But of course, PetrB and Charles Rosen don't like Tchaikovsky (Charles Rosen said that Tchaikovsky's compositional technique was wasteful, and PetrB has complained about Tchaikovsky's uncreative use of sequencing etc.)

So I've actually stopped listening to Tchaikovsky, for fear that I would enjoy it. I've also stopped listening to the small amounts of metal, techno, new age (i.e. Enya), and video game music I used to listen to, for fear that I would enjoy it. I would be a plebian who enjoys the simple chord progressions and rhythms of these genres!


----------



## DeepR

Fortunately PetrB doesn't decide what is good and what isn't.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

SeptimalTritone said:


> So I've actually stopped listening to Tchaikovsky, for fear that I would enjoy it. I've also stopped listening to the small amounts of metal, techno, new age (i.e. Enya), and video game music I used to listen to, for fear that I would enjoy it. I would be a plebian who enjoys the simple chord progressions and rhythms of these genres!


Are you being serious here, SeptimalTritone? You stopped listening to music you enjoyed because two particular people don't enjoy that music? Because you don't want to be a "plebian"? Because you don't want to enjoy simple chord progressions and rhythms?  I'm probably just missing the humor, forgive me if I have.


----------



## Blancrocher

SeptimalTritone said:


> So I've actually stopped listening to Tchaikovsky, for fear that I would enjoy it.


In that case, stay away from the Tchaikovsky album featuring works for cello and orchestra (with Raphael Wallfisch & Geoffrey Simon). It's become a terrifying addiction for me! Be afraid! Be very afraid!


----------



## ArtMusic

Mandryka said:


> One possible view is that the people who have learned to see whatever it is that makes music good will also learn to appreciate goodness. Through developing the discernment, your values change.
> 
> Indeed part of why it's worth becoming a discerning person: you'll thereby appreciate things in a new way, hopefully a way which helps enhance your life.
> 
> But clearly an expert may sometimes not be in the mood to listen to great music. It's a sort of human failing.


There are consistent observations one can make on great works. They tend to be universally written by the great composers and *popular over time*. Latter is something that is important to discern popular *and* greatness.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

DiesIraeCX said:


> Are you being serious here, SeptimalTritone? You stopped listening to music you enjoyed because two particular people don't enjoy that music? Because you don't want to be a "plebian"? Because you don't want to enjoy simple chord progressions and rhythms?  I'm probably just missing the humor, forgive me if I have.


I like your and Blancrocher's responses! Yes, the Tchaikovsky Rococo variations are awesome.

I'm not being entirely serious, but then again, I'm not being entirely not serious either. Who knows. Lately, I've been pretending to be more angry than I actually am. Or maybe I'm not. I have no idea.

On a slightly more serious mode: I've been not entirely honest with myself about what I like. I would, in an effort to be as modern and avant-garde as some guy, listen to the most wild noise music, and tell myself the lie that I like it. But then I grew tired of this music's simplicity and repetitiveness, and concluded, well, I can't be as modern as some guy. I just don't have it in me.

This realization made me feel _really_ bad. I thought that, even with the variability of tastes and preferences, I would like really modern music. I thought that if I were super duper meditative, Buddhist, in the now and the present moment, at one with myself, I would be able to appreciate the meditative richness and spirituality of Karkowski, Merzbow, Yoshihide, Sachiko M, etc. as a continuation of the greatness of Cage and Feldman. But nope, I couldn't be spiritual enough to do it!

I never again want to trick myself into liking things I don't like for the sake of being modern, or being discerning. It's like literally falling into the Emperor's new clothes trap, and literally believing it. I'll just have to accept that at present, I don't have the spirituality within me. Maybe being born a woman would have helped me close the gap. After all, women are, on the whole, more spiritual than men. They're more spiritual by their inherent motherly instincts, they are less bullish and argumentative, they are more social, they are more cooperative and compassionate, they are more patient, and they are less aggressive. They're better people. Maybe I should have been born a woman in order to compensate for my lack of spirituality.

Ugh.

OK fine. I used to believe that the people who liked the most modern music were the most spiritual (because modern music has nonlinear narratives, meditative repetition, free form, and unfamiliar sounds that were more "Godly" and less "earthly", and therefore is spiritual and Buddhistic and holy), and that my liking modern music was indication of my own spirituality and greatness! Until I discovered that I didn't like the most ultra-avant garde stuff, and realized that I couldn't cut it! This really sucks SO MUCH.


----------



## SimonNZ

ArtMusic said:


> There are consistent observations one can make on great works. They tend to be universally written by the great composers and *popular over time*. Latter is something that is important to discern popular *and* greatness.


And because Hildegard of Bingen's music was utterly unknown and unperformed for _eight centuries_ that proves...?


----------



## Skilmarilion

SeptimalTritone said:


> PetrB and Charles Rosen don't like Tchaikovsky ....


Anyone can have an opinion. To reference someone else's opinion isn't really meaningful.

"Stature" is irrelevant as well. Boulez can say he doesn't like Tchaikovsky, or any random guy for that matter -- both equally valid opinions and both equally useless and irrelevant in terms of affecting the merit of Tchaikovsky's music.


----------



## Vesteralen

SeptimalTritone said:


> my liking modern music was indication of my own spirituality and greatness! Until I discovered that I didn't like the most ultra-avant garde stuff, and realized that I couldn't cut it! This really sucks SO MUCH.


Didn't want to requote the whole thing, but man, this was priceless. On the basis of this post I would say, never be serious again, Sept.......


----------



## Mahlerian

Skilmarilion said:


> "Stature" is irrelevant as well. Boulez can say he doesn't like Tchaikovsky, or any random guy for that matter -- both equally valid opinions and both equally useless and irrelevant in terms of affecting the merit of Tchaikovsky's music.


Boulez, contrary to popular belief, has said more recently that he *does* enjoy listening to Tchaikovsky and Sibelius, they're just not the kind of works he wants to conduct.


----------



## ArtMusic

SimonNZ said:


> And because Hildegard of Bingen's music was utterly unknown and unperformed for _eight centuries_ that proves...?


It is relatively popular today but not near the stature of Bach. Pure and simple.


----------



## SimonNZ

ArtMusic said:


> It is relatively popular today but not near the stature of Bach. Pure and simple.


I'm asking if you consider Hildegard a "great" composer, and if so, how you feel about that contradicting your own criteria about longevity of popularity. (your criteria was not that they had to be of "the stature of Bach", so how about we leave him out of this example)

Or lets try from another angle: imagine you're standing in 1579. Someone tells you of music by one composer that has been unperformed for 400 years, and is able to tell you it will be unperformed for another 400 years. Would you be of the belief, as you seem to be, that this composer must be utterly, irredeemably worthless?


----------



## arpeggio

KenOC said:


> I would like to see some examples from the people here of works widely enjoyed by "non-experts" that are non-excellent. Anybody?


Author deleted original post. I did a bad job explaining myself. Sorry.


----------



## science

SeptimalTritone said:


> I like your and Blancrocher's responses! Yes, the Tchaikovsky Rococo variations are awesome.
> 
> I'm not being entirely serious, but then again, I'm not being entirely not serious either. Who knows. Lately, I've been pretending to be more angry than I actually am. Or maybe I'm not. I have no idea.
> 
> On a slightly more serious mode: I've been not entirely honest with myself about what I like. I would, in an effort to be as modern and avant-garde as some guy, listen to the most wild noise music, and tell myself the lie that I like it. But then I grew tired of this music's simplicity and repetitiveness, and concluded, well, I can't be as modern as some guy. I just don't have it in me.
> 
> This realization made me feel _really_ bad. I thought that, even with the variability of tastes and preferences, I would like really modern music. I thought that if I were super duper meditative, Buddhist, in the now and the present moment, at one with myself, I would be able to appreciate the meditative richness and spirituality of Karkowski, Merzbow, Yoshihide, Sachiko M, etc. as a continuation of the greatness of Cage and Feldman. But nope, I couldn't be spiritual enough to do it!
> 
> I never again want to trick myself into liking things I don't like for the sake of being modern, or being discerning. It's like literally falling into the Emperor's new clothes trap, and literally believing it. I'll just have to accept that at present, I don't have the spirituality within me. Maybe being born a woman would have helped me close the gap. After all, women are, on the whole, more spiritual than men. They're more spiritual by their inherent motherly instincts, they are less bullish and argumentative, they are more social, they are more cooperative and compassionate, they are more patient, and they are less aggressive. They're better people. Maybe I should have been born a woman in order to compensate for my lack of spirituality.
> 
> Ugh.
> 
> OK fine. I used to believe that the people who liked the most modern music were the most spiritual (because modern music has nonlinear narratives, meditative repetition, free form, and unfamiliar sounds that were more "Godly" and less "earthly", and therefore is spiritual and Buddhistic and holy), and that my liking modern music was indication of my own spirituality and greatness! Until I discovered that I didn't like the most ultra-avant garde stuff, and realized that I couldn't cut it! This really sucks SO MUCH.


Wow, that's a remarkably open post. It takes courage to share things like that.

This is why the point is important - it's ok for you and someguy and me and Woodduck and ArtMusic and anyone else to have unique tastes. It isn't a contest of any sort. It's ok to like Merzbow's music, it's ok not to like it; it's also ok to like Eric Whitacre's music, and of course present company will agree it's ok not to like it. It's really sad that we sometimes try to make each other feel shame for having different tastes.

I think it feels like a fun game at times, just affecting snobbery for the sake of pleasantly witty conversation, and in a face-to-face situation where we can read each other's emotions and have some idea what sort of people we're interacting with, it really could be harmless entertainment. But over the internet, it doesn't work: people's feelings really do get hurt. Mine have been, not only on my own behalf but I've also been angered by what I've seen people write about music enjoyed by other people. It's too bad that you have to feel _anything_ bad about yourself in any way on any level just because you happen not to like any sort of music whatever.

I could go on about whether we hurt each other's feelings intentionally or not, but I'm on record on that elsewhere, and for now I just want to express solidarity with you - not agreement in your tastes, which are thankfully unique to you and not a carbon copy of even the most impressive (given a certain set of values which you and I more or less share) talkclassicaler (in terms of taste and knowledge) - but to affirm the legitimacy of your own pleasures and ideas. Be your own freaking self, man. You're alldamnedright.

(At least as long as you still like Nono. I'm only 97% joking....) No, I'm 100% joking and hopefully septimal will know that! But just in case anyone gets their dander up, here's the spoiler of the jest.


----------



## KenOC

arpeggio said:


> One of the cheapest debating tricks is to ask a question you already know the answer too.
> 
> Ken knew how many would react to his question and was ready with his responses. I know from previous exchanges that he knew that many consider _1812 Overture_ to be a weak piece of music.
> 
> This is why I have learned to be careful responding to any of his questions.


Well, at least I didn't attack you personally by name. Even I, unworthy though I am, am not _that _cheap! :lol:


----------



## Chordalrock

science said:


> I think it feels like a fun game at times, just affecting snobbery for the sake of pleasantly witty conversation, and in a face-to-face situation where we can read each other's emotions and have some idea what sort of people we're interacting with, it really could be harmless entertainment. But over the internet, it doesn't work: people's feelings really do get hurt. Mine have been, not only on my own behalf but I've also been angered by what I've seen people write about music enjoyed by other people. It's too bad that you have to feel _anything_ bad about yourself in any way on any level just because you happen not to like any sort of music whatever.


You aren't taking into account wider cultural implications of such attitudes. How long would Beethoven and the other greats survive if everyone was happy listening to the occasional pop pap and was telling each other that self-improvement is an illusion and nasty elitism and suspecting that no one really truly likes music anyway and anyone who claims to is a poseur?

I'm sorry, but if everyone thought in that manner - which seems to be the polite norm in America and strikes me, as a foreigner, as hyper-sensitive - it wouldn't take long for everywhere to be as culturally bankrupt as America. We in the Nordic countries are still proud to keep our orchestras alive with public funding as well as speak our minds, but in the land of polite-to-the-death there may soon come a time when no one will be able to listen to classical music live. What a shame. And all because a people is more interested in avoiding hurt feelings than avoiding cultural death.


----------



## KenOC

Perhaps in America we're busy creating culture rather than recreating it. When culture is created, it always has plenty of detractors among adherents of the old. And culture can, often, be created without enforced tithes to pay for it.

Just a random defense, from a culturally bankrupt land with quite a few excellent orchestras and concert halls, which get by with little to no governmental support.


----------



## Chordalrock

KenOC said:


> Perhaps in America we're busy creating culture rather than recreating it.


This must be why you can think of as many great contemporary music composers who are Finnish as you can those who are American, in spite of the fact that there are 50 to 60 times as many people in America. You are just so busy creating new culture there are barely any composers there that you could name.



KenOC said:


> Just a random defense, from a culturally bankrupt land with quite a few excellent orchestras and concert halls, which get by with little to no governmental support.


I'll give it two more generations and there won't be a professional orchestra in America outside mega cities.

No, really, are you seriously arguing that destroying all standards won't have any marked effect on anything of importance? - that people will keep composing and listening to great music without being exposed to it, encouraged to do it, taught to appreciate it, in fact while being taught to hate it as elitism? I'm guessing it might have something of an effect on cultural life.


----------



## KenOC

Chordalrock said:


> This must be why you can think of as many great contemporary music composers who are Finnish as you can those who are American, in spite of the fact that there are 50 to 60 times as many people in America. You are just so busy creating new culture there are barely any composers there that you could name.


"Millions of Swifties and KatyCats--as well as Beliebers, Barbz, and Selenators, and the Rihanna Navy--would be stunned by the revelation that a handful of people, a crazily high percentage of them middle-aged Scandinavian men, write most of America's pop hits."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/hit-charade/403192/

There, see? The Nordic countries _are _contributing to new culture!


----------



## Chordalrock

KenOC said:


> "Millions of Swifties and KatyCats--as well as Beliebers, Barbz, and Selenators, and the Rihanna Navy--would be stunned by the revelation that a handful of people, a crazily high percentage of them middle-aged Scandinavian men, write most of America's pop hits."
> 
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/hit-charade/403192/
> 
> There, see? The Nordic countries _are _contributing to new culture!


They are probably the best current pop hits too.

Nice find.


----------



## violadude

Septimaltritone,

Funny, I used to have the opposite problem that you do. I was an elitist pretending to be a "plebe".


----------



## Mandryka

ArtMusic said:


> There are consistent observations one can make on great works. They tend to be universally written by the great composers and *popular over time*. Latter is something that is important to discern popular *and* greatness.


Do you think it's contingent or necessary that they're popular over time and written by great composers?


----------



## Mandryka

KenOC said:


> In short, I disagree with most of it.


Which ones do you agree with?


----------



## Nereffid

Chordalrock said:


> No, really, are you seriously arguing that destroying all standards won't have any marked effect on anything of importance? - that people will keep composing and listening to great music without being exposed to it, encouraged to do it, taught to appreciate it, in fact while being taught to hate it as elitism? I'm guessing it might have something of an effect on cultural life.


But "hating elitism" is not - repeat, not - the same as "destroying all standards". Nobody here, as far as I'm aware, has claimed that all standards must be destroyed, or that standards do not or should not exist.
I would say simply this: that _my_ standards should not be accorded greater status across the entire culture than _someone else's_ standards.


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## KenOC

Nereffid said:


> I would say simply this: that _my_ standards should not be accorded greater status across the entire culture than _someone else's_ standards.


However, _our _standards are the only ones we have. But history suggests that the development of whatever art we choose will not be kind to us.


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## Nereffid

KenOC said:


> However, _our _standards are the only ones we have.


Can you clarify, when you say "our" do you mean us, collectively, or each of us, individually?

If the former, then the responses to your earlier question about non-excellent works liked by non-experts demonstrates (rather hilariously easily, I think) that "our" standards don't even hold amongst ourselves.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I think the social drive of music can definitely play a role. I suspect it plays a vastly larger role in popular music than in classical [...]
> 
> I'm not sure to what extent something like social drive exists in, for example, TC member's liking of works.


See SeptimalTritone's posts on the issue! I doubt this is an isolated example.



Art Rock said:


> Come to think of it, in general I have difficulty to understand the mechanism behind love and hate when it comes to music (or other things). I cannot define myself why I love or hate (better: dislike) certain things, let alone why others feel the way they do. Popularity plays no role for me personally: I love and dislike plenty of popular things, as well as non-popular things. I dislike Beethoven's 9th (a perennial crowd favourite), but I love his 5th (which is immensely popular as well).


Popularity plays no role for me now, but it used to when tribalism - represented by my musical tastes - mattered more than it does now. (I should add that I don't think tribalism ever disappears, but its manifests are more complicated in local society, though they become more sharply defined in certain situations - such as on TC!)



Nereffid said:


> I was 4 when "Seasons in the Sun" was a hit, so it's one of those songs that's been around long enough that it's quite familiar to me even though I can't be absolutely certain that I've ever heard it from start to finish.
> 
> I do remember that, some years later, a classmate had a version of the lyric that referred to our chemistry teacher:
> 
> We had joy, we had fun,
> We had Murphy on the run,
> But the fun didn't last
> 'Cause the bast*rd ran too fast.


You're on to something here. Your parody of the chorus highlights one element of what made the song popular. It's this little ditty that I recall more than any other part - and I also recall it's triteness being one of the things that I hated about it.

Just to finish this off, here are the things that, IMO, made it a popular pop song. (not in any particular order, and someone might want to add something else)


The subject matter.
The guitar opening.
The insistent keyboard.
The string and choral enhancements (the 'choir of angels' effect).
Simplicity of the lyrics
Rhyme.
The key changes.
The kudos of the writers - both Brel and McKuen had international reputations.

It's a list of the bl33ding obvious, really. What matters is that these factors combined produced something about which there was a 'coincidence of opinion' on an astonishing large scale, despite the fact that the same things that turned off some - the 'memorable chorus' or the 'trite ditty' - turned on others.

In relation to the OP, what does the 'popularity' of this song indicate? I'm not sure that it 'indicates' anything (perhaps I'm being picky here) but one could draw some inferences about what elements _can _make music popular. As I said earlier, it's not too difficult to see how, by "multiplying up", exactly the same elements can make the same appeal to a classical listener. By "multiplying up" I just mean that where pop mostly depends on melodic simplicity, popular classical's appeal is that the melodic lines become longer (not necessarily any less simple). If melody is important to me (and it is) it is likely that I will enjoy exploring melodies that present increasing challenges. The diving and swooping melodic line in the 2nd mvmt of Prokofiev's 5th symphony is, to me ears, brilliant, and much more appealing than the rinky-dink tunes of the popular Tchaikovsky that I know. But the core element is the same.


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## Guest

Nereffid said:


> But "hating elitism" is not - repeat, not - the same as "destroying all standards". Nobody here, as far as I'm aware, has claimed that all standards must be destroyed, or that standards do not or should not exist.
> I would say simply this: that _my_ standards should not be accorded greater status across the entire culture than _someone else's_ standards.


I'm not even sure that there is any justification for the idea that there is such a discernible movement as "hating elitism" (which in any case is used falsely as a synonym for an attack on standards). I hate elitism - I don't hate either "standards" or "excellence".


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## Vesteralen

MacLeod said:


> If melody is important to me (and it is) it is likely that I will enjoy exploring melodies that present increasing challenges. The diving and swooping melodic line in the 2nd mvmt of Prokofiev's 5th symphony is, to my ears, brilliant, and much more appealing than the rinky-dink tunes of the popular Tchaikovsky that I know. But the core element is the same.


Excellent example, MacLeod. It helped me get your point much better.


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## ArtMusic

It is obvious that popularity may matter nothing to one individual listener. I like the music of unknown composer William Williams, what do I care if the rest of the world has never heard of him? I separate that however with my assessment of whether the work is great or not, which is where popularity comes in. Williams was not a great composer, nor are his works popular. It's all about separating out and assessing objectively.


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## DeepR

SeptimalTritone said:


> I like your and Blancrocher's responses! Yes, the Tchaikovsky Rococo variations are awesome.
> 
> I'm not being entirely serious, but then again, I'm not being entirely not serious either. Who knows. Lately, I've been pretending to be more angry than I actually am. Or maybe I'm not. I have no idea.
> 
> On a slightly more serious mode: I've been not entirely honest with myself about what I like. I would, in an effort to be as modern and avant-garde as some guy, listen to the most wild noise music, and tell myself the lie that I like it. But then I grew tired of this music's simplicity and repetitiveness, and concluded, well, I can't be as modern as some guy. I just don't have it in me.
> 
> This realization made me feel _really_ bad. I thought that, even with the variability of tastes and preferences, I would like really modern music. I thought that if I were super duper meditative, Buddhist, in the now and the present moment, at one with myself, I would be able to appreciate the meditative richness and spirituality of Karkowski, Merzbow, Yoshihide, Sachiko M, etc. as a continuation of the greatness of Cage and Feldman. But nope, I couldn't be spiritual enough to do it!
> 
> I never again want to trick myself into liking things I don't like for the sake of being modern, or being discerning. It's like literally falling into the Emperor's new clothes trap, and literally believing it. I'll just have to accept that at present, I don't have the spirituality within me. Maybe being born a woman would have helped me close the gap. After all, women are, on the whole, more spiritual than men. They're more spiritual by their inherent motherly instincts, they are less bullish and argumentative, they are more social, they are more cooperative and compassionate, they are more patient, and they are less aggressive. They're better people. Maybe I should have been born a woman in order to compensate for my lack of spirituality.
> 
> Ugh.
> 
> OK fine. I used to believe that the people who liked the most modern music were the most spiritual (because modern music has nonlinear narratives, meditative repetition, free form, and unfamiliar sounds that were more "Godly" and less "earthly", and therefore is spiritual and Buddhistic and holy), and that my liking modern music was indication of my own spirituality and greatness! Until I discovered that I didn't like the most ultra-avant garde stuff, and realized that I couldn't cut it! This really sucks SO MUCH.


Wow, you make things complicated for yourself. 
I'd say trust your own intuition and response to the music and let that be your guide, for it's the only thing that makes sense.


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## Vesteralen

MacLeod said:


> I'm not even sure that there is any justification for the idea that there is such a discernible movement as "hating elitism" (which in any case is used falsely as a synonym for an attack on standards). I hate elitism - I don't hate either "standards" or "excellence".


I feel the need to sort of expand on this, and I have to say it is this overall thread which has been helping me to clarify my own thoughts on this whole issue.

If someone gave me a bunch of cement blocks and some sheet metal, I could probably make myself a shelter from the rain. I might even do it well enough that it would stay standing for more than just a few days. I might even like my little shelter and enjoy being inside it.

That does not mean that I am a great architect, either by my own or anyone else's standards. Would I seriously compare myself to the designer/builders of Carnegie Music Hall or the Empire State Building?

In one Music Theory course I went through we were asked to construct a sixteen measure melody. Mine wasn't pleasing at all - to me or anyone else. But, suppose I had managed to come up with something I really liked. I have a right to like it, of course. But, am I now in a position to compare myself with Beethoven, Brahms or Stravinsky?

Just to state the obvious even more so - I'm going to use Brahms' Second Piano Concerto as an example (just the first two movements - I've always felt the last two movements were a bit of a letdown, personally). Anyway, I have always felt the first two movements of this work were some of the most beautiful and powerful music of the Romantic period. That was even before I had it explained to me how both movements were constructed out of the same very tiny melodic "germ", if you will. Even if we are uncomfortable for some reason with the expression "work of art", we must at least acknowledge a superior craftsmanship at work here that makes this composition "greater" than my own 16-measure "melody". To deny that one is greater than the other seems absurd, no matter how much one personally likes or dislikes the other.

(And I'm not saying that superior craftsmanship always produces something "great" - I felt "greatness" before and independently of awareness of the craftsmanship.)

I still consider myself firmly in the camp of those who resent critical or popular opinion being shoved down our throats, and as I've said ad nauseam, I don't care if only .0067% of the listening public considers Carl Nielsen to be "great" - he still ranks near the very top of my personal list and that won't change no matter what anyone's poll says.

But, I believe that there are such things as craftsmanship and achievement in music and it is not wrong to acknowledge them. In fact, it's kind of wrong not to.


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## Vesteralen

DeepR said:


> Wow, you make things complicated for yourself.
> I'd say trust your own intuition and response to the music and let that be your guide, for it's the only thing that makes sense.


My apologies to Sept if I was wrong, but it seems like several other posters are taking his original post on this topic as completely serious. I hope I didn't blunder, but I thought that, though the assessment of where he stood musically was factual, his manner of explaining it was more like parody.

I still think so, (and I thought it was very funny parody, actually), but, if I was wrong, I apologize.


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## mmsbls

MacLeod said:


> See SeptimalTritone's posts on the issue! I doubt this is an isolated example.


Yes, I think that surprised many of us indicating that while it may not be an isolated example it also is perhaps relatively uncommon. If 10-20% of people's liked works were liked for reasons having nothing directly to do with the music, it still would not significantly affect classifications of very well liked works and much less well liked works.

But, yes, one would have to be very careful in using listeners' inputs to properly assess what their expressed likes truly mean.


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## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> Indeed. My point is that we certainly cannot generate a list, one we can agree on, of works enjoyed by the classical music masses that are "inferior" in any way except, perhaps, being overly familiar to some of us. And therefore we cannot say, reliably, that the tastes of those masses are in any way "lower" or less valid than our own.


Well, I think the idea is that some popular works could be viewed by experts as constructed less well or lacking in some other standard feature. Those highly popular works might not be viewed as excellent. Most of us at TC would not be in a position to make that assessment.

When the experts determine excellence in a work they have a set of criteria that might be relatively meaningless to most of us. I don't directly care about the structure of a work or other theoretical considerations. It might be the case that my enjoyment is strongly correlated with those expert criteria. That possibility I find very interesting.


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## science

Vesteralen said:


> I feel the need to sort of expand on this, and I have to say it is this overall thread which has been helping me to clarify my own thoughts on this whole issue.
> 
> If someone gave me a bunch of cement blocks and some sheet metal, I could probably make myself a shelter from the rain. I might even do it well enough that it would stay standing for more than just a few days. I might even like my little shelter and enjoy being inside it.
> 
> That does not mean that I am a great architect, either by my own or anyone else's standards. Would I seriously compare myself to the designer/builders of Carnegie Music Hall or the Empire State Building?
> 
> In one Music Theory course I went through we were asked to construct a sixteen measure melody. Mine wasn't pleasing at all - to me or anyone else. But, suppose I had managed to come up with something I really liked. I have a right to like it, of course. But, am I now in a position to compare myself with Beethoven, Brahms or Stravinsky?
> 
> Just to state the obvious even more so - I'm going to use Brahms' Second Piano Concerto as an example (just the first two movements - I've always felt the last two movements were a bit of a letdown, personally). Anyway, I have always felt the first two movements of this work were some of the most beautiful and powerful music of the Romantic period. That was even before I had it explained to me how both movements were constructed out of the same very tiny melodic "germ", if you will. Even if we are uncomfortable for some reason with the expression "work of art", we must at least acknowledge a superior craftsmanship at work here that makes this composition "greater" than my own 16-measure "melody". To deny that one is greater than the other seems absurd, no matter how much one personally likes or dislikes the other.
> 
> (And I'm not saying that superior craftsmanship always produces something "great" - I felt "greatness" before and independently of awareness of the craftsmanship.)
> 
> I still consider myself firmly in the camp of those who resent critical or popular opinion being shoved down our throats, and as I've said ad nauseam, I don't care if only .0067% of the listening public considers Carl Nielsen to be "great" - he still ranks near the very top of my personal list and that won't change no matter what anyone's poll says.
> 
> But, I believe that there are such things as craftsmanship and achievement in music and it is not wrong to acknowledge them. In fact, it's kind of wrong not to.


I think the musical analogy between a person like you or me constructing a makeshift shelter and a great architect must be something like comparing an untrained musician playing with a toy piano to a Beethoven symphony. I don't think that's really what's under discussion. The issue is more analogous to whether it is possible for a person of not-inferior judgment to believe that the Walt Disney Concert Hall is as good as a Greek temple or a Romanesque palace.


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## isorhythm

In a way this question, and the related question of whether there's such a thing as "greatness" or "quality," reduces to whether you think there's such a thing as shared human nature. That is of course an even more complicated question, but if your answer is closer to "no," then of course popularity indicates nothing and talking about the quality of music, apart of particular subjective reactions to it, is meaningless. Mozart is a composer whom many people happen to like, the end.

I don't share this view. I think there is a such thing as human nature, but it's tricky - we can never say "all people are like this, will have x, y, z reaction to this work of art," since such statements are obviously false. Human beings nonetheless have something essential in common, even if we can't precisely describe what it is, and this is related to the fact that nearly everyone who listens to Beethoven, and is open to what Beethoven was trying to do, will have a strong reaction to it, even if we can't precisely describe what it is about Beethoven's music that makes it work.


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## ArtMusic

Mandryka said:


> Do you think it's contingent or necessary that they're popular over time and written by great composers?


Not strictly necessary, just an observation of what the past tended to show.


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## Guest

isorhythm said:


> In a way this question, and the related question of whether there's such a thing as "greatness" or "quality," reduces to whether you think there's such a thing as shared human nature.


How so?



isorhythm said:


> if your answer is closer to "no," then of course popularity indicates nothing and talking about the quality of music, apart of particular subjective reactions to it, is meaningless.


Or perhaps simply unnecessary. Why talk about anything that involves a subject apart from the subject? If it involves a subject, then it simply doesn't make sense to talk about the "it" as it exists/if it exists apart from the subject.

That's what I think this discussion reduces down to, the almost universal desire, apparently, to talk about subjective things without any reference to any subjects. Many of us seem eager to transcend ourselves, to find truth with a capital T that is universal without any reference to ourselves.

I'd rather chase a will o' the wisp. At then least you're outdoors, doing something in the beautiful nature, before your hideous, watery death.



isorhythm said:


> I think there is a such thing as human nature, but it's tricky - we can never say "all people are like this, will have x, y, z reaction to this work of art," since such statements are obviously false. Human beings nonetheless have something essential in common, even if we can't precisely describe what it is, and this is related to the fact that nearly everyone who listens to Beethoven, *and is open to what Beethoven was trying to do,* will have a strong reaction to it, even if we can't precisely describe what it is about Beethoven's music that makes it work.


Stacking the deck does simplify things a bit, though.

Anyway, leaving the vague (and undemonstratable) "something essential in common" to the side for the nonce, think about what you just said about Beethoven. Or about "nearly everyone."

Which Beethoven? Which piece? He wrote a lot of stuff. _Für Elise_ and _Grosse Fuge._ _Wellington's Victory_ and the opus 111. For instance. Anyone's reactions to each of these pieces is likely to differ widely because the pieces differ widely. They're all identifiable as by Beethoven, just as all of us are identifiable as humans. But otherwise, wow. Think of the differences.


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## Sloe

science said:


> Wow, that's a remarkably open post. It takes courage to share things like that.
> 
> This is why the point is important - it's ok for you and someguy and me and Woodduck and ArtMusic and anyone else to have unique tastes. It isn't a contest of any sort. It's ok to like Merzbow's music, it's ok not to like it; it's also ok to like Eric Whitacre's music, and of course present company will agree it's ok not to like it. It's really sad that we sometimes try to make each other feel shame for having different tastes.


I completely agree. It is embarrasing enough to admit to like classical music that I then have to like the right classical music is just too much.


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## Headphone Hermit

KenOC said:


> I would like to see some examples from the people here of works widely enjoyed by "non-experts" that are non-excellent. Anybody?


_Beware of the Flowers ('cos I'm sure they're goin' to get you, yeh)_ by John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett - i'm a 'non-expert' and this is 'non-excellent' but it one of my favourites :tiphat:


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## Blancrocher

*Post has been deleted*


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## SimonNZ

some guy said:


> Which Beethoven? Which piece? He wrote a lot of stuff. _Für Elise_ and _Grosse Fuge._ _Wellington's Victory_ and the opus 111. For instance. Anyone's reactions to each of these pieces is likely to differ widely because the pieces differ widely. They're all identifiable as by Beethoven, just as all of us are identifiable as humans. But otherwise, wow. Think of the differences.


And as I just had pointed out to me recently Beethoven's most popular work in his own lifetime was his Septet, which has little popularity now. So, yeah, when some talk about the unbroken continuity of Beethoven's popularity it disguises that we're almost talking about different Beethovens, as within his catalogue popularity waxes and wanes according to the countless whims or needs of fashion. Perhaps, I might speculate, the only thing possibly guaranteeing a long popularity (_if _one is seeking that) is offering a many-sidedness that will make at least some aspects fit the various fashions or methods of access or contexts of the moment.


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## isorhythm

some guy said:


> How so?
> 
> Or perhaps simply unnecessary. Why talk about anything that involves a subject apart from the subject? If it involves a subject, then it simply doesn't make sense to talk about the "it" as it exists/if it exists apart from the subject.


I said particular subject - i.e., individual listeners. I'm saying that the conversation doesn't end with "different listeners like different things." Of course you can't talk about music without the subject.



some guy said:


> That's what I think this discussion reduces down to, the almost universal desire, apparently, to talk about subjective things without any reference to any subjects. Many of us seem eager to transcend ourselves, to find truth with a capital T that is universal without any reference to ourselves.


Possibly some people have this desire, but I do not - see above.



some guy said:


> Stacking the deck does simplify things a bit, though.


This was not deck-stacking but an important part of the actual substance of my argument, which I made in an earlier post in the thread.



some guy said:


> Anyway, leaving the vague (and undemonstratable) "something essential in common" to the side for the nonce, think about what you just said about Beethoven. Or about "nearly everyone."
> 
> Which Beethoven? Which piece? He wrote a lot of stuff. _Für Elise_ and _Grosse Fuge._ _Wellington's Victory_ and the opus 111. For instance. Anyone's reactions to each of these pieces is likely to differ widely because the pieces differ widely. They're all identifiable as by Beethoven, just as all of us are identifiable as humans. But otherwise, wow. Think of the differences.


Pick a few of your favorite Beethoven pieces. It doesn't matter.

"Different pieces are different" and "different people are different" are true statements, but trivial, uninteresting and ultimately irrelevant ones. We can do better.


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## Vesteralen

science said:


> I think the musical analogy between a person like you or me constructing a makeshift shelter and a great architect must be something like comparing an untrained musician playing with a toy piano to a Beethoven symphony. I don't think that's really what's under discussion. The issue is more analogous to whether it is possible for a person of not-inferior judgment to believe that the Walt Disney Concert Hall is as good as a Greek temple or a Romanesque palace.


I see your point, science, and it's a good one.

But, if I can be allowed to clarify a bit - if there are degrees of knowledge, skill and craftsmanship that separate my rudimentary building from the creation of a true architect, I can't object to it when people further classify degrees of these things with reference to things that are closer in nature to one another.

Personally, I see no reason to do it. But, I think my point is that, as long as no one uses their own concept of greatness to try to impose preferences on me, it really doesn't bother me what his or her opinion of greatness is. I'm not offended by the _idea_ of greatness, just to the misuse to which that idea may sometimes be put.

I don't think that in the world outside TC there is necessarily any connection between perceived greatness and popularity. The only place I've ever seen that become an issue is here where, among the relatively closed world of classical music aficionados, there seems to be an assumption by some that if a composer or particular work isn't "great" it doesn't merit anyone's interest, and that those people who find such a work of interest are basically those who just don't have enough knowledge or wisdom about classical music.

Some see that attitude in others more than I do, but I can understand it when their perception of the situation sends off red lights.

[Added on: There is one more thing that does bother me. I have a very modest view of my own knowledge and perceptions musically and I would not presume to try to tell someone else what is great and what isn't. There are some people here who are much more knowledgeable than I am and I can't object to them handing out their judgments as long as they aren't arrogant about it. But, judging by the 'What is your musical background?' thread, it seems that the majority of people here have a background very much like mine or less. That's why I happen to think that, in general, the only question we can really ask in a general forum thread on this site is "What is your favorite....?" I don't see any way the general forum here could possibly be expected to rule on a question like "What is the greatest...?" In that view, I have not changed.)


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## Chordalrock

Nereffid said:


> But "hating elitism" is not - repeat, not - the same as "destroying all standards". Nobody here, as far as I'm aware, has claimed that all standards must be destroyed, or that standards do not or should not exist.
> I would say simply this: that _my_ standards should not be accorded greater status across the entire culture than _someone else's_ standards.


The dystopia isn't about people enjoying different things equally, but about people putting on the occasional pop piece on the background and never really enjoying music much or at all.

This is already the case for a huge number of people who grew up in families that didn't care about music or culture or self-improvement.

It is a myth that most people care about music. I myself didn't use to care about it until I started listening to metal and then classical in my late teens - struggling to listen to things that bored me but slowly getting into it more and more, so that now over ten years later my life is infinitely richer than it would have been if I had never struggled and strived to appreciate "the greats". Nor would I have ever done that if they hadn't had the reputation of being great - exactly the kind of dystopia that your misguided egalitarianism leads to (I can bet there are not many people like me in America, for example).

Everyone's standards being equal is exactly the same as no standards at all. This leads to lower and lower expectations, and thus lower and lower state of culture and enjoyment of culture. You may not care, but for many people life without the wonders of music is a lot poorer one. Again, this is your "utopia", not a utopia at all but a dystopia.


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## Huilunsoittaja

Perhaps the "problem" of good composers not being called good comes from a fear of disliking something that is generally accepted as being good. After all, who really wants to say they like something that is _actually _bad? Most people rationalize what they like and say "It's good to me, therefore I like it," but what if what you like simply _is _bad and not worth other people liking? Are you willing to keep your opinion if you were forced to accept that something you like is generally accepted as bad, and you must at least agree with the majority opinion?

The test of insecurity!


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## mmsbls

isorhythm said:


> I think there is a such thing as human nature, but it's tricky - we can never say "all people are like this, will have x, y, z reaction to this work of art," since such statements are obviously false. Human beings nonetheless have something essential in common, even if we can't precisely describe what it is, ...


Humans have an enormous amount in common. I think there's a tendency to view humans as unique and not realize that many environmental stimuli create very similar responses. A high percentage of people respond to sudden noises in the dark or the sight of snakes with fear, but almost no one reacts to grass that way. Music is more complicated, but there exists an entire industry which depends on the ability of some people to understand most people's response to certain music. Film composers are given the job of writing music that will either directly produce certain emotions or at least be consistent with those emotions.

They don't think their job is impossible because human nature is too varied. They readily compose music that fits with frightening, tranquil, exciting, and other emotional scenes. That would be impossible if the interaction of specific music and our brains always produced vastly differing responses. It turns out that interaction often produces essentially the same response.

Obviously there is considerable space between understanding relatively simple responses to film music and understanding why people enjoy certain music. Still the fact that it's relatively straightforward to match music with film scenes indicates we can understand a considerable amount about the interaction between music and brains.



isorhythm said:


> "Different pieces are different" and "different people are different" are true statements, but trivial, uninteresting and ultimately irrelevant ones. We can do better.


I do think the issue is not what do we know today about how music interacts with brains but rather what could eventually be known and what that knowledge would tell us about the effect of different music on our enjoyment of the music. Clearly we presently know a significant amount about the interaction, but I assume we can know vastly more. It's still unclear whether that information could allow us to correlate popularity with features of music that experts use to determine excellence.


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## Guest

some guy said:


> Well, I think that that's pretty simple, too. For many people, myself included at one time, it's not enough to listen to and enjoy what you're hearing. You have to turn your tastes into facts, facts that are validated by agreement with other people, either people generally (popularity) or experts (also popularity).
> 
> There's certainly nothing wrong with a social creature being social. The problem arises when the approval of others, whether anonymous others or expert others, is somehow necessary to one's enjoyment. The problem arises when an intrinsically subjective situation has to be redefined as objective in order to validate it. Taste is an intensely personal thing. Best to leave it at that. Do others share your tastes? Sure. We're not altogether different. So hang out with those people. Just be aware how easy it is for anyone in a group to feel that their group is right and other groups are wrong. Otherwise, you really don't need to validate your tastes. They are what they are. You enjoy what you enjoy.
> 
> Well? Enjoy it!


Whilst I included 'social drive' in my analysis of what makes a song popular, let's not overstate. I have seen little among the now 26 pages to suggest that this discussion is TC members seeking validation of their tastes. Precious little music has actually been mentioned, so that would be difficult, and when it has, it's been a symbol for something else - John Williams, for example.


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## Nereffid

Chordalrock said:


> Everyone's standards being equal is exactly the same as no standards at all. This leads to lower and lower expectations, and thus lower and lower state of culture and enjoyment of culture. You may not care, but for many people life without the wonders of music is a lot poorer one. Again, this is your "utopia", not a utopia at all but a dystopia.


Funny, this is the second time in a couple of weeks here that someone's accused me of wanting to destroy civilisation. The first time it was because I suggested we not look down on women just because they're not men. Now it's because I suggested we not look down on pop music just because it's not classical music.

This bizarre rhetoric of dystopia really doesn't persuade me that my ideas are wrong.


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## Guest

Huilunsoittaja said:


> what if what you like simply _is _bad and not worth other people liking? Are you willing to keep your opinion if you were forced to accept that something you like is generally accepted as bad


"What if" indeed. As you can see from my signature, I accept the idea of a comparative (provided we are comparing like with like) but not an absolute. Still, you can't legislate for people wanting to be liked via their musical tastes, and owning up to having "bad" music might, for them, be very difficult. If those for whom it is not an issue would spend less time identifying the good, bad and greatest - which is not what this thread set out to do - they would be showing a little sensitivity to the needs of those for whom it is an issue.

(See "Do you look down on pop music?" for examples of the disdain some are willing to show towards their fellow music lovers.)



Chordalrock said:


> Everyone's standards being equal is exactly the same as no standards at all. This leads to lower and lower expectations, and thus lower and lower state of culture and enjoyment of culture. You may not care, but for many people life without the wonders of music is a lot poorer one. Again, this is your "utopia", not a utopia at all but a dystopia.


Can you quote where anyone has actually said anything that substantiates the conclusions you are drawing?


----------



## science

Vesteralen said:


> I see your point, science, and it's a good one.
> 
> But, if I can be allowed to clarify a bit - if there are degrees of knowledge, skill and craftsmanship that separate my rudimentary building from the creation of a true architect, I can't object to it when people further classify degrees of these things with reference to things that are closer in nature to one another.
> 
> Personally, I see no reason to do it. But, I think my point is that, as long as no one uses their own concept of greatness to try to impose preferences on me, it really doesn't bother me what his or her opinion of greatness is. I'm not offended by the _idea_ of greatness, just to the misuse to which that idea may sometimes be put.
> 
> I don't think that in the world outside TC there is necessarily any connection between perceived greatness and popularity. The only place I've ever seen that become an issue is here where, among the relatively closed world of classical music aficionados, there seems to be an assumption by some that if a composer or particular work isn't "great" it doesn't merit anyone's interest, and that those people who find such a work of interest are basically those who just don't have enough knowledge or wisdom about classical music.
> 
> Some see that attitude in others more than I do, but I can understand it when their perception of the situation sends off red lights.
> 
> [Added on: There is one more thing that does bother me. I have a very modest view of my own knowledge and perceptions musically and I would not presume to try to tell someone else what is great and what isn't. There are some people here who are much more knowledgeable than I am and I can't object to them handing out their judgments as long as they aren't arrogant about it. But, judging by the 'What is your musical background?' thread, it seems that the majority of people here have a background very much like mine or less. That's why I happen to think that, in general, the only question we can really ask in a general forum thread on this site is "What is your favorite....?" I don't see any way the general forum here could possibly be expected to rule on a question like "What is the greatest...?" In that view, I have not changed.)


For me, the important idea is in the distinction between "insight" (or knowledge, or whatever) and "values" (or tastes, preferences, whatever.) Insights are facts, and can be stated. They are descriptions of what is happening in the music (or the painting, the architecture, whatever). Values are whether the things so described are great, good, bad, or whatever. So, "the tonality of this passage is ambiguous because these chords can be interpreted in different ways" is, if true, an insight. Any sufficiently intelligent being in the universe, given the right education, is going to agree. "That sounds great," or, "That sounds awful," is obviously a value.

So, speaking for myself, I love hearing the insights of people who know more about music than I do. (That's a lot of people.) That can be theory, history, whatever. Even a comment that basically amounts to "this exists" often excites me, which is one reason current listening is a fun thread. But in this realm, we are not equal. Mahlerian, for example, knows far more than I do about probably every aspect of music.

But the intensity of that love and joy is at least matched by my sadness (and, shame on me for it, sometimes rage) whenever someone states - or more commonly, implies with blindingly cutting wit - that something is wrong with someone who likes certain music, or does not like certain music. (I'm eventually going to get myself banned because of that.) In this, Mahlerian is equal not only to me, but to my aunt's cat.

"This meatloaf recipe calls for more salt than most others." - insight, subject to empirical verification

"It is way too salty." - value

"This is the greatest meatloaf. You're wrong not to like it. I'm better than you because I like it." - value with added unkindness

The principle applies to every art.


----------



## Nereffid

science said:


> Even a comment that basically amounts to "this exists" often excites me


This deserves a :clap: of its own. The sheer joy of discovery _even before you listen_ doesn't get discussed much; I wonder how common it is?



science said:


> But the intensity of that love and joy is at least matched by my sadness (and, shame on me for it, sometimes rage) whenever someone states - or more commonly, implies with blindingly cutting wit - that something is wrong with someone who likes certain music, or does not like certain music.


Some years ago, I first discovered Insane Clown Posse via that Internet meme regarding magnets, and I proceeded to spend a bit of time laughing at how bad the song "Miracles" was, how bad their other music was, how stupid ICP was, and how stupid their fans were. And then I realised _Those fans love this music and love this band, possibly more than I love all the music I love. Who am I to tell them their tastes are misguided and wrong? That really they should be listening to the music I love, because that music is inherently better? Because it isn't inherently better, is it?_ 
Any comments I make these days about musical greatness and popularity are coloured by my memory of realising I was being an a**hole back then.


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## Guest

science said:


> whenever someone states - or more commonly, implies with blindingly cutting wit - that something is wrong with someone who likes certain music, or does not like certain music.


Luckily for you, this rarely if ever happens.

Unluckily for you, the "implies" bit gives you complete control over interpretation, so you can convince yourself that it's happening all the time, even though it's not.


----------



## Ingélou

Nereffid said:


> This deserves a :clap: of its own. The sheer joy of discovery _even before you listen_ doesn't get discussed much; I wonder how common it is?
> 
> Some years ago, I first discovered Insane Clown Posse via that Internet meme regarding magnets, and I proceeded to spend a bit of time laughing at how bad the song "Miracles" was, how bad their other music was, how stupid ICP was, and how stupid their fans were. And then I realised _Those fans love this music and love this band, possibly more than I love all the music I love. Who am I to tell them their tastes are misguided and wrong? That really they should be listening to the music I love, because that music is inherently better? Because it isn't inherently better, is it?_
> Any comments I make these days about musical greatness and popularity are coloured by my memory of realising I was being an a**hole back then.


Very perceptive post; everyone has times in their life when they adore music, literature or art that is fashionable or simplistic. 
A well-balanced diet includes the odd bit of chocolate fudge cake.


----------



## Chordalrock

Nereffid said:


> Funny, this is the second time in a couple of weeks here that someone's accused me of wanting to destroy civilisation. The first time it was because I suggested we not look down on women just because they're not men. Now it's because I suggested we not look down on pop music just because it's not classical music.
> 
> This bizarre rhetoric of dystopia really doesn't persuade me that my ideas are wrong.


And what were those ideas again? That people will just magically decide to put on classical music for their babies, in a culture that shuns such elitism? Most people, you lose them as kids, you lose them.

I also doubt that a lot of adults would put much effort into learning to appreciate difficult, sophisticated art forms without being promised something better than you get from pop music. Like, for reals, why do it for no reason - in a culture favoring immediate gratification at that?

I wish it weren't so, but you are already living in the dystopia, you are just too used to it to see it as an issue. Only something like 1% of people in America love classical music deeply and derive joy from it daily. Add a few percentage points for other genres. That figure could easily be 50 to 90% if everyone had the good fortune to grow up amid sophisticated music since birth or had the discipline and motivation to improve themselves later in life as I did.


----------



## Chordalrock

Ingélou said:


> Very perceptive post; everyone has times in their life when they adore music, literature or art that is fashionable or simplistic.
> A well-balanced diet includes the odd bit of chocolate fudge cake.


Oh, I've never liked pop as much as I do now. But I am not going to pretend that everyone is happy with the amount of enjoyment they derive from music - I used to not be! - or that everyone enjoys music as much as most people in this thread. That would be wishful thinking.

And very convenient, in that it removes all sense of responsibility for the state of the culture and people's involvement in it. Who cares if schools don't teach discipline and self-improvement! Who cares if people never learn to appreciate music much!

Well, those people might care, for one.

But none of you want real solutions, you are just happy pretending that everyone is as happy about the situation as you are - typical behaviour from the fortunate, since what reason would they have for things to be different.


----------



## Nereffid

Chordalrock said:


> I wish it weren't so, but you are already living in the dystopia, you are just too used to it to see it as an issue. Only something like 1% of people in America love classical music deeply and derive joy from it daily. Add a few percentage points for other genres. That figure could easily be 50 to 90% if everyone had the good fortune to grow up amid sophisticated music since birth or had the discipline and motivation to improve themselves later in life as I did.


Let's say a miracle happens and everyone in the world loves "sophisticated music". What then? Is the world a better place?
Everyone on TC loves classical music, and it's hardly a model of ideal human behaviour, is it?


----------



## Ingélou

Ingélou said:


> Very perceptive post; everyone has times in their life when they adore music, literature or art that is fashionable or simplistic.
> A well-balanced diet includes the odd bit of chocolate fudge cake.





Chordalrock said:


> Oh, I've never liked pop as much as I do now. But I am not going to pretend that everyone is happy with the amount of enjoyment they derive from music - I used to not be! - or that everyone enjoys music as much as most people in this thread. That would be wishful thinking.
> 
> And very convenient, in that it removes all sense of responsibility for the state of the culture and people's involvement in it. Who cares if schools don't teach discipline and self-improvement! Who cares if people never learn to appreciate music much!
> 
> Well, those people might care, for one.
> 
> But none of you want real solutions, you are just happy pretending that everyone is as happy about the situation as you are - typical behaviour from the fortunate, since what reason would they have for things to be different.


Everyone has a right to express their opinion - but since you quote *me* before making your somewhat sweeping observations, may I just say that I don't really go along with what you've just said, and I absolutely *can'*t see how it follows on from what I said. :tiphat:

For example, as a teacher, I taught juniors to improve their reading skills, and also worked in schools and colleges where I taught English literature. I never minded if my pupils sometimes wanted to splurge on something a bit less literary. It's all grist to the mill. I gorged myself on Enid Blyton's *Famous Five* books when I was young - and now Jane Austen is my favourite novelist.

And the fact that I was a rabid Beatles fan when I was thirteen didn't stop me from becoming a fan of Lully, Biber & Purcell in my third age.


----------



## Woodduck

Nereffid said:


> Let's say a miracle happens and everyone in the world loves "sophisticated music". What then? Is the world a better place?
> Everyone on TC loves classical music, and it's hardly a model of ideal human behaviour, is it?


Yes, the world would be a better place. Better, not "ideal."


----------



## Chordalrock

Nereffid said:


> Let's say a miracle happens and everyone in the world loves "sophisticated music". What then? Is the world a better place?
> Everyone on TC loves classical music, and it's hardly a model of ideal human behaviour, is it?


I specified sophisticated music as a component of the growing up environment, because it develops a child's musical perception a lot better than simple music, opens more doors musically, and very possibly allows deeper appreciation of music as such in many cases.

As for your question - are you serious? I already told you. My life would be considerably worse without all this music. I'm sure the same is true for many others who don't have a fulfilling life otherwise - the norm in the modern world I would say. Perhaps for you it wouldn't make a difference, but - seriously - do you even listen to what I am saying? I've already answered this question many times.


----------



## Ingélou

Woodduck said:


> Yes, the world would be a better place. Better, not "ideal."


Maybe better in some ways - but worse in others. I can't help feeling there'd be even greater cartloads of 'more-sophisticated-than-thou' attitudes in such a world.


----------



## Dim7

I bet there would be atonality debates all over the place, not just in TC. What a nightmare.


----------



## Woodduck

Ingélou said:


> Maybe better in some ways - but worse in others. I can't help feeling there'd be even greater cartloads of 'more-sophisticated-than-thou' attitudes in such a world.


Even if you are correct (and I doubt that you are), an increase in "more-sophisticated-than-thou" attitudes would be a small price to pay for a decrease in the "less-sophisticated-than-thou" attitudes to which I and untold numbers of other intelligent children with hopes for a good life were, and are, subjected. Snobbery and prejudice are ineradicable from human nature, but the snobbery of excellence is far less destructive, and far more motivating, than the snobbery of mediocrity.

What was proposed was a world in which everyone, or nearly everyone, was exposed to and loved classical music. Such a world would have to be different with respect to much more than music. Music education would have to be seen as only one of the disciplines necessary to a broader and deeper cultivation of the human potential. A world in which the improvement of the mind, the understanding of mankind's cultural heritage, and the refinement of the aesthetic sense were considered the central goal of education (come to think of it, that's what education was once thought to be) would be a world very unlike the one in which most of us, at least here in America, grew up and now live.


----------



## Guest

Ingélou said:


> Maybe better in some ways - but worse in others.


Come on now. It's got to be a better world where Wagner is chosen, rather than Britney Spears, as the mood music for dropping napalm from helicopter gunships.


----------



## Nereffid

Chordalrock said:


> As for your question - are you serious? I already told you. My life would be considerably worse without all this music. I'm sure the same is true for many others who don't have a fulfilling life otherwise - the norm in the modern world I would say. Perhaps for you it wouldn't make a difference


This needs a careful answer.
If you took away classical music from me now, then yes, my life would be instantly worse. But I don't think that's the question.
If we rewound the clock and prevented me from ever wanting to listen to classical music in the first place, would my life be worse than it is now?
I can't see how it would necessarily be. I would be listening to other music, and enjoying it. I get the impression that _you_ would think my life could be better.

I just find it weird, frankly. My wife doesn't listen to much classical music. It has never once occurred to me to tell her her life would be better if she listened to more of it.

Did you see what I said above about the Insane Clown Posse? My point there was that for their fans, it's the music of Insane Clown Possee (which I really don't like) that helps them have fulfilling lives. I absolutely will not say that their lives would be more fulfilling if they instead listened to Beethoven (which I really do like).


----------



## Nereffid

Woodduck said:


> Even if you are correct (and I doubt that you are), an increase in "more-sophisticated-than-thou" attitudes would be a small price to pay for a decrease in the "less-sophisticated-than-thou" attitudes to which I and untold numbers of other intelligent children with hopes for a good life were, and are, subjected. Snobbery and prejudice are ineradicable from human nature, but the snobbery of excellence is far less destructive, and far more motivating, than the snobbery of mediocrity.


But has anyone in this thread actually advocated "the snobbery of mediocrity"?


----------



## Art Rock

Nereffid said:


> If we rewound the clock and prevented me from ever wanting to listen to classical music in the first place, would my life be worse than it is now?
> I can't see how it would necessarily be. I would be listening to other music, and enjoying it.


Fully agree with this. Had I not chosen to start exploring classical music in 1986, I would have sticked to prog and related pop/rock and enjoyed those immensely (as I still do). Certainly, listening to classical music extensively for three decades has not made me a better person in any way.


----------



## Woodduck

Nereffid said:


> But has anyone in this thread actually advocated "the snobbery of mediocrity"?


No. I haven't implied that they did. I've only said that it's a characteristic of my society (quite notoriously so in America) and that a snobbery that worked the other way would be less destructive of human potential.


----------



## Ingélou

Nereffid said:


> This needs a careful answer.
> If you took away classical music from me now, then yes, my life would be instantly worse. But I don't think that's the question.
> If we rewound the clock and prevented me from ever wanting to listen to classical music in the first place, would my life be worse than it is now?
> I can't see how it would necessarily be. I would be listening to other music, and enjoying it. I get the impression that _you_ would think my life could be better.
> 
> I just find it weird, frankly. My wife doesn't listen to much classical music. It has never once occurred to me to tell her her life would be better if she listened to more of it.
> 
> Did you see what I said above about the Insane Clown Posse? My point there was that for their fans, it's the music of Insane Clown Possee (which I really don't like) that helps them have fulfilling lives. I absolutely will not say that their lives would be more fulfilling if they instead listened to Beethoven (which I really do like).


I absolutely agree.

I am still in touch with a schoolfriend who like me learned the violin at school and like me gave it up.

In her case she just wasn't interested in the classical music that we had to play. She feels strongly that if other music had been on offer, for example pop or jazz, she wouldn't have given up. These days she enjoys herself very much dancing the Argentinian tango, and she has become quite an expert on tango music and enjoys it profoundly. She still doesn't like classical much.

In what way would her life be better if she'd stuck to classical music?

In my case, I quite liked the classical music we played, but I didn't have that sort of background. Instead, I grew up with Jimmy Shand and Scottish & Irish folk songs. I spent most of my adult life going to folk concerts, listening to folk music, and doing country dancing, English & Scottish. 
I took the violin up again four years ago & first of all took classical lessons and even a low-grade exam in classical violin. I quite liked it. I also discovered baroque music in a big way, and I go to concerts regularly.
But folk is still my first love and it is now what I concentrate on in my playing.

If I hadn't rediscovered classical music, I don't think my life would have been any worse. I'd probably just have known & enjoyed even more folk music.

So, like Nereffid, I wouldn't want to make classical music a universal prescription and say that it must be better.
I love Shakespeare & Jane Austen & Metaphysical poetry, & I'd like everyone to have a *chance* to study the literature of their country - but that isn't to say that it's morally worse if they turn away from 'the classics' in literature.

As deep as my love for Shakespeare, Austen & the Metaphysicals is my love for the traditional ballads - they are not 'high art' but they are still art - the best are very fine.

I do believe in the pursuit of 'excellence' in art - but I don't think it is only to be found in 'the classics', and there are many examples of people with a connoisseur's taste in literature or music who were not good people.


----------



## Dr Johnson

dogen said:


> Come on now. It's got to be a better world where Wagner is chosen, rather than Britney Spears, as the mood music for dropping napalm from helicopter gunships.


Surely Britney was not even a twinkle in someone's eye when the events to which you refer were taking place?


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## science

I can't believe that people wouldn't like classical music without snobbery to motivate them. Classical music is great. It is its own attraction. Buttressing it with snobbery is like guarding a lion with a mouse. I'd wager a pretty good portion of my savings that actually the main thing that turns many people off from classical music is in fact the snobbery associated with it.


----------



## Nereffid

Woodduck said:


> No. I haven't implied that they did. I've only said that it's a characteristic of my society (quite notoriously so in America) and that a snobbery that worked the other way would be less destructive of human potential.


Perhaps the reduction of both forms of snobbery would be the least destructive of all.


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## Blancrocher

science said:


> I can't believe that people wouldn't like classical music without snobbery to motivate them. Classical music is great. It is its own attraction. Buttressing it with snobbery is like guarding a lion with a mouse. I'd wager a pretty good portion of my savings that actually the main thing that turns many people off from classical music is in fact the snobbery associated with it.


Charles Rosen once admitted in a lecture that he overcame an initial aversion to music of the 2nd Viennese School because the cool and sophisticated people around him all seemed to like it. In the end, though, he didn't regret a low-minded initiation that brought him decades of pleasure.

As an irrelevant aside, I often come to Talk Classical as a refuge from the snobbery of my local organic grocery store.


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## Woodduck

Blancrocher said:


> Charles Rosen once admitted in a lecture that he overcame an initial aversion to music of the 2nd Viennese School because the cool and sophisticated people around him all seemed to like it. In the end, though, he didn't regret a low-minded initiation that brought him decades of pleasure.
> 
> As an irrelevant aside, I often come to Talk Classical as a refuge from the snobbery of my local organic grocery store.


My organic grocer pipes in classical music. The snobs all shop there.


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## isorhythm

A whole new question has been perhaps unwittingly introduced now: whether better music makes better people.

The answer is no. They have nothing to do with each other. I was never claiming otherwise, in case it wasn't clear.

But, again, that doesn't mean there's nothing to say about music beyond total relativism of taste. There's a whole philosophical tradition of aesthetics from antiquity to the present. These people were not all wasting their time. We can try to understand what makes some music special without believing that liking it makes people special, or not liking it makes them worthy of scorn.


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## mmsbls

Maybe people are discussing two different things that have one outcome the same. First there's the question of whether people liking classical music would make them happier or better in some ways. But then there's the real world issue of how to get more people to like classical music. Woodduck has elaborated a bit on the bigger picture in getting more to like classical music.



Woodduck said:


> What was proposed was a world in which everyone, or nearly everyone, was exposed to and loved classical music. Such a world would have to be different with respect to much more than music. Music education would have to be seen as only one of the disciplines necessary to a broader and deeper cultivation of the human potential. A world in which the improvement of the mind, the understanding of mankind's cultural heritage, and the refinement of the aesthetic sense were considered the central goal of education (come to think of it, that's what education was once thought to be) would be a world very unlike the one in which most of us, at least here in America, grew up and now live.


So maybe a better (love that word) question is whether a world where education and other societal influences which in theory would increase the number of classical music loving people would be a better or happier place. Based on all the happiness research I've read I suspect that people would not be happier. And the question of whether people would be better is too simplistically obvious .


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## clavichorder

Take this dorky metaphor as a starting point if it's not good enough on it's own:

Popularity is it's own entity that is rooted in the soil of natural preferences, but is also fueled by a fickle sun sometimes obscured by the weather or altered in position by the time of day and the seasons. It's possible that vines may dangle off of established plants, which while not born out of the soil itself, are nonetheless seeing the light of day.


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## Guest

Dr Johnson said:


> Surely Britney was not even a twinkle in someone's eye when the events to which you refer were taking place?


That's just artistic licence. Nice avatar.


----------



## Chordalrock

Nereffid said:


> Did you see what I said above about the Insane Clown Posse? My point there was that for their fans, it's the music of Insane Clown Possee (which I really don't like) that helps them have fulfilling lives. I absolutely will not say that their lives would be more fulfilling if they instead listened to Beethoven (which I really do like).


Yes, I saw and responded to it.

I didn't say people have to listen to classical music in order to enjoy music deeply at all. I merely proposed it as the best 'teacher' in early childhood, and suggested that it may lead to a deeper appreciation of music as such in many cases. So, your straw man that you would just enjoy other music if you couldn't enjoy classical is beside the point.

My point was that there are huge amounts of people who don't enjoy any music much or at all, and wouldn't know how to do anything about it, due to their growing up environment and the worthlessness of the culture around them. You are simply ignoring all these people in making your straw man argument that classical music doesn't matter.

I don't know for sure if classical music matters, but if you are going to put on music for a baby so that his musicality can develop, then why not choose the richest and most sophisticated tradition - classical (perhaps in addition to jazz and some pop or Indian classical).

I'm so tired of reading that people would just enjoy some other music equally. The social circles where you hang out are obviously very different from those that I have known. And I have seen many empty lives in my online travels - lives which would have been immensely enriched by music, but these people are too old to easily improve their musicality at this point, and the only thing telling them that they can is me.

I myself used to be bitter that I didn't have a musical background, and I kind of still am. I hate it when people pretend this is a non-issue and that there is no problem at all in their culture.


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## Fugue Meister

My God, I'm away for 3 or 4 days and come back to find this thread, spanning over 400 posts... This thread certainly is very "_popular_", (I can just hear the cringes)...

If I can throw in my humble but pointless opinion it would be, well I'm sure someone already hit the gist of what my opinion actually is but I read the whole thread in one sitting so it's sort of a blur... Someone said something along the lines (and I'm too lazy to go back and check who it was, {after reading 29 pages, can you blame me?}) of "I don't care if Nielsen is only popular with 0.067% of the public, he'll always be aces in my book", (I'm sort of jazzing it up from the back of my memory) but this is how I feel.

There is an ocean of music to explore. I'm really just grateful I live in an age where we have can explore that vastness with such ease because of the internet. To be able to come to a site like TC and get suggestions on what other tangents of musical expression can be found based on ones interests or tastes, then I take those suggestions and I'm off to the amazing modern archive "youtube", where I sample new music to my hearts content... it's quite remarkable.

Anyway fantastic thread, it made for a thought-provoking yet entertaining read ( although I must say time consuming, I took up all my web surfing time tonight).


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## Becca

Ingélou said:


> Very perceptive post; everyone has times in their life when they adore music, literature or art that is fashionable or simplistic.
> A well-balanced diet includes the odd bit of chocolate fudge cake.


How can a well-balanced diet NOT include chocolate? It is, after all, one of the primary food groups. Add eggs, milk and flour and you have dietetic perfection.


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## brotagonist

Popularity is _fast listening_-it rises quickly to the top and is forgotten as quickly. I like _slow listening_-it is savoured for a long time and is revisited regularly.


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## science

Fugue Meister said:


> There is an ocean of music to explore. I'm really just grateful I live in an age where we have can explore that vastness with such ease because of the internet.


Amen! Of course I don't know what the future holds, but so far at least it is the present that is the golden age of music. Whether you want to hear Pygmy polyphony, Tuvan throat singing, Balinese gamelan, Hindustani ragas, Qawwali, bluegrass, Dixieland, smooth jazz, reggae, ska, punk rock, Afrobeat, tango, tango nuevo, slack-key guitar, Fado, klezmer, old sea shanties, Byzantine chant, K-pop, Pinoy hip hop, Ambrosian chant, Renaissance polyphony, Baroque zarzuelas, Beethoven, Gilbert and Sullivan revivals, ragtime on piano rolls, Cage, Merzbow, or Yanni, it's all pretty readily available.


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## Guest

science said:


> Amen! Of course I don't know what the future holds, but so far at least it is the present that is the golden age of music. Whether you want to hear Pygmy polyphony, Tuvan throat singing, Balinese gamelan, Hindustani ragas, Qawwali, bluegrass, Dixieland, smooth jazz, reggae, ska, punk rock, Afrobeat, tango, tango nuevo, slack-key guitar, Fado, klezmer, old sea shanties, Byzantine chant, K-pop, Pinoy hip hop, Ambrosian chant, Renaissance polyphony, Baroque zarzuelas, Beethoven, Gilbert and Sullivan revivals, ragtime on piano rolls, Cage, Merzbow, or Yanni, it's all pretty readily available.


Your list needs to get with the times! Death industrial, psybient, EAI, funeral doom, dub techno, witch house, lowercase, noir jazz, glitch, swarm him!


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## science

nathanb said:


> Your list needs to get with the times! Death industrial, psybient, EAI, funeral doom, dub techno, witch house, lowercase, noir jazz, glitch, swarm him!


My bad, no doubt.

What I most regret is leaving out disco and new age.


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## Chordalrock

science said:


> Amen! Of course I don't know what the future holds, but so far at least it is the present that is the golden age of music. Whether you want to hear Pygmy polyphony, Tuvan throat singing, Balinese gamelan, Hindustani ragas, Qawwali, bluegrass, Dixieland, smooth jazz, reggae, ska, punk rock, Afrobeat, tango, tango nuevo, slack-key guitar, Fado, klezmer, old sea shanties, Byzantine chant, K-pop, Pinoy hip hop, Ambrosian chant, Renaissance polyphony, Baroque zarzuelas, Beethoven, Gilbert and Sullivan revivals, ragtime on piano rolls, Cage, Merzbow, or Yanni, it's all pretty readily available.


And yet, the majority of people are able to enjoy only a very limited number of pop hits and other pieces. Why is that? And what to do about it?

It's unfortunate but true that a lot of people mostly don't bother with music because they run out of favorites so fast. There is just nothing to do after growing tired of a few old favorites and a couple of new hits - unless you believe in self-improvement, in which case you also have to believe in some sort of standard that is beyond and above you, otherwise there is nothing to rise toward or improve in.

Even if the superiority of classical music were an illusion, it would be an illusion worth preserving if only to provide people with a worthy standard outside themselves.


----------



## mmsbls

Chordalrock said:


> My point was that there are huge amounts of people who don't enjoy any music much or at all, and wouldn't know how to do anything about it, due to their growing up environment and the worthlessness of the culture around them. You are simply ignoring all these people in making your straw man argument that classical music doesn't matter.
> 
> I don't know for sure if classical music matters, but if you are going to put on music for a baby so that his musicality can develop, then why not choose the richest and most sophisticated tradition - classical (perhaps in addition to jazz and some pop or Indian classical).
> 
> I'm so tired of reading that people would just enjoy some other music equally. The social circles where you hang out are obviously very different from those that I have known. And I have seen many empty lives in my online travels - lives which would have been immensely enriched by music, but these people are too old to easily improve their musicality at this point, and the only thing telling them that they can is me.
> 
> I myself used to be bitter that I didn't have a musical background, and I kind of still am. I hate it when people pretend this is a non-issue and that there is no problem at all in their culture.


I'm not certain if you're suggesting that

1) People should be exposed to classical music because among all music styles classical allows people to enjoy music the most and elevate their appreciation of music or

2) People should be exposed to classical music because without classical music to improve their musicality they could end up living empty lives. People without music to enjoy at the highest level cannot live full lives even if they pursue other causes such as science, philosophy, visual art, philanthropy, etc..

If you are advocating #1, I'm still not sure how you can know that others enjoy or appreciate music less than you do or that they would enjoy or appreciate music more if they listened to classical rather than popular music. It seems as though you feel this is an empirical fact.


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## Guest

"The country* is going to the dogs because the plebs will listen to trash...and, worse, popular trash."

Alternatively, the country is going to the dogs because attitudes such as the above are as much a part of the problem of the atomisation of society as the deficient listening habits of the plebs.

Alternatively, the country is no more "going to the dogs" now than in the past 50, 100 or 200 years, and musical taste is in any case of much lower priority than, say, equality for all and protection of the environment and its resources in maintaining social fabric.



*insert country of your own choosing, or interpret as you wish.


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## science

Chordalrock said:


> And yet, the majority of people are able to enjoy only a very limited number of pop hits and other pieces. Why is that?


Who cares? They do a lot of things worse than that too.



Chordalrock said:


> And what to do about it?


Nothing. Or better marketing. But I'm fine with nothing.



Chordalrock said:


> It's unfortunate but true that a lot of people mostly don't bother with music because they run out of favorites so fast. There is just nothing to do after growing tired of a few old favorites and a couple of new hits - unless you believe in self-improvement, in which case you also have to believe in some sort of standard that is beyond and above you, otherwise there is nothing to rise toward or improve in.
> 
> Even if the superiority of classical music were an illusion, it would be an illusion worth preserving if only to provide people with a worthy standard outside themselves.


If providing "people with a worthy standard outside themselves" is so important to you, a better way to go about it would be to try to be a very good person. Be kind to everyone; defend the powerless; give things to people who need them when you can; forgive people who take advantage of you; be gracious when someone makes a mistake; humbly remember that any advantage you have over anyone else is due to luck alone. That's a worthy standard. Contrasting how much more closely your musical tastes align with some ideal than theirs does is nothing more significant than boasting that your car is newer or your house is bigger or you've read longer books or your shoes are more expensive or whatever.


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## Chordalrock

mmsbls said:


> I'm not certain if you're suggesting that


May I suggest re-reading my messages from the last few pages of this thread instead of assuming I am just your typical elitist, or otherwise reducing me to a convenient label and making unhelpful assumptions about me. I am not going to repeat myself yet again on any of those points that you raise. I am a nice person and will respond to any questions you might have when you show sufficient understanding of what I have written so far, but not until then.

@science: people have helped me and been kind to me, but it is all rather trivial compared with being able to deeply enjoy endless amounts of music - if someone could have gifted me with that ability, I would have a lot more reason to be grateful than I do now.


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## Nereffid

Chordalrock said:


> My point was that there are huge amounts of people who don't enjoy any music much or at all, and wouldn't know how to do anything about it, due to their growing up environment and the worthlessness of the culture around them.


Yes, and _my_ point is that neither you nor I gets to judge that their culture is worthless.
And I don't agree that people who live without music necessarily have a music-shaped hole in their lives; this seems to be a fundamental difference between us.



Chordalrock said:


> You are simply ignoring all these people in making your straw man argument that classical music doesn't matter.


Except I never said that classical music doesn't matter! I simply said that it doesn't get to matter over every other music for everybody.


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## JD Reyes

I would respectfully disagree - to a point. By our modern standard, popular often _does_ mean well marketed and accessible, but a piece such as the archetypal 5th Symphony of Beethoven, for example, is popular because it is well-crafted.


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## Vesteralen

Fugue Meister said:


> Someone said something along the lines (and I'm too lazy to go back and check who it was, {after reading 29 pages, can you blame me?}) of "I don't care if Nielsen is only popular with 0.067% of the public, he'll always be aces in my book", (I'm sort of jazzing it up from the back of my memory) but this is how I feel.


I plead guilty to the above paraphrased quote. I took a little break from this thread because I got pretty upset - particularly about this:

_*But none of you want real solutions, you are just happy pretending that everyone is as happy about the situation as you are - typical behaviour from the fortunate, since what reason would they have for things to be different.* _

(Sorry - I don't know how to do multiple quotes on the same post, so I couldn't get the author's name to show here.)

Look, I happen to have a job that has occasional bits of down time that allow me to log on here and participate. But, the fact that I find it occasionally enjoyable to participate in a forum like this to discuss something I enjoy does not make me smug, apathetic or a waste of space. I can't speak for others here, but I would think that many, like myself make very good use of our time. I happen to do a great deal of community service work and my schedule is actually a lot more crammed than it may appear here - especially in my off-work hours. Maybe _some_ of the people I assist would enjoy a little classical music in their lives, if they could spare the time from worrying about getting a job, dealing with an alcoholic partner, or getting someone to translate into their language when they go to the doctor.

Maybe in some ways I am one of the more fortunate ones, but the fact that I have more pressing issues to deal with in my "spare" time than carrying a picket sign in front of an elementary school saying "Teach classical music", does not justify the above comment, no matter how passionately and sincerely believed it may have been.

Anyway, we have again strayed far off topic. If I have some time later, I'll post something else I thought about that relates more directly to the OP.


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## The Member Who Forgot

I think it is music that demands less attention, less complex themes. After all Emmerdale Farm is popular, but it's absolutely terrible.


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## Guest

The Member Who Forgot said:


> I think it is music that demands less attention, less complex themes. After all Emmerdale Farm is popular, but it's absolutely terrible.


That's true, and I don't like parsnips.


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## Vesteralen

You know what? I'm not even going to bother anymore.


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## Guest

Vesteralen said:


> You know what? I'm not even going to bother anymore.


Oh, come on; it's like doing crosswords - it wards off senility.


----------



## mmsbls

Chordalrock said:


> May I suggest re-reading my messages from the last few pages of this thread instead of assuming I am just your typical elitist, or otherwise reducing me to a convenient label and making unhelpful assumptions about me. I am not going to repeat myself yet again on any of those points that you raise. I am a nice person and will respond to any questions you might have when you show sufficient understanding of what I have written so far, but not until then.


I never considered you an elitist. I have no idea what you mean by reducing you to a convenient label. And I think the only assumption I made was that that you felt it was relatively straighforward to ascertain that some others enjoy or appreciate music less than you do (i.e. it is an empirical fact).

I think you might have misunderstood what I am asking or read much more into my post than is actually there. I read your posts several times and thought there was some ambiguity (like there is in many discussions here at TC). It's not always easy to understand exactly what others mean. I simply wanted to know whether your comments were more focused on _what_ music would benefit people's lives or _that_ music is critical to people's lives. It's also possible you believe both.

Obviously I have not shown sufficient understanding of what Chordalrock is saying, so maybe someone else could try to enlighten me? My questions are here.


----------



## Guest

^^ Well I would if I thought it might help your conversation with Chordalrock but as I think s/he has me on ignore (certainly ignoring my post where I asked a question) I don't see much point. Sorry.


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## Sloe

The Member Who Forgot said:


> I think it is music that demands less attention, less complex themes. After all Emmerdale Farm is popular, but it's absolutely terrible.


It is better than days of our lives.


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## EdwardBast

science said:


> I can't believe that people wouldn't like classical music without snobbery to motivate them. Classical music is great. It is its own attraction. Buttressing it with snobbery is like guarding a lion with a mouse. I'd wager a pretty good portion of my savings that actually the main thing that turns many people off from classical music is in fact the snobbery associated with it.


You would lose the bet. The main thing that turns people off from classical music is that they have no idea what they are supposed to get out of it or how to listen to it.


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## violadude

Donald Trump might be President of the US. 

Do you still think popularity means anything now?


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## Morimur

violadude said:


> Donald Trump might be President of the US.
> 
> Do you still think popularity means anything now?


The US would be the laughingstock of the entire world-and rightly so.


----------



## arpeggio

Morimur said:


> The US would be the laughingstock of the entire world-and rightly so.


We already are.


----------



## Guest

violadude said:


> Donald Trump might be President of the US.
> 
> Do you still think popularity means anything now?


Violadude, I'm sorry, you're a great guy, you're fantastic, but you're fired.


----------



## Chordalrock

EdwardBast said:


> You would lose the bet. The main thing that turns people off from classical music is that they have no idea what they are supposed to get out of it or how to listen to it.


Can you believe you actually had to write this on an internet forum? I thought I was a social shut-in, but from what I can tell, a lot of people on this forum have been holed up in their ivory towers their entire life and have no clue about these things, even to the point that when someone like me tells them how things are outside in the real world, their brains switch off and they reflexively ignore it like it is some sort of fairy tale with dragons and other incredible creatures. "What is this talk about people who just don't get anything out of classical music or much of any music? It sounds like gibberish and I better forget you said it because it is messing with my mind!"

There is so much I could tell you from personal experience, but I don't want to bore anyone with unbelievable tales of psychology, listening habits, and other arcane topics.


----------



## EdwardBast

Morimur said:


> The US would be the laughingstock of the entire world-and rightly so.


Have to agree with Arpeggio on this one. Dub'ya and an earlier president upstaged by a chimp would make President Trump an unremarkable phenomenon.


----------



## Guest

Chordalrock said:


> ...when someone like me tells them how things are outside in the real world, their brains switch off....


You have misplaced an option. That possibly other people who are outside in the real world (whatever that is) simply disagree with you, based on their experiences in the real world which for some reason do not necessarily match your experiences.

That is, their conclusions do not necessarily match your conclusions, since that's what we're really talking about, eh? Not the experiences themselves but the conclusions drawn from them.


----------



## EdwardBast

Chordalrock said:


> Can you believe you actually had to write this on an internet forum? I thought I was a social shut-in, but from what I can tell, a lot of people on this forum have been holed up in their ivory towers their entire life and have no clue about these things, even to the point that when someone like me tells them how things are outside in the real world, their brains switch off and they reflexively ignore it like it is some sort of fairy tale with dragons and other incredible creatures. "What is this talk about people who just don't get anything out of classical music or much of any music? It sounds like gibberish and I better forget you said it because it is messing with my mind!"
> 
> There is so much I could tell you from personal experience, but I don't want to bore anyone with unbelievable tales of psychology, listening habits, and other arcane topics.


I have taught music appreciation classes and music literature classes for non-majors, which I think counts as relevant contact with the outside world. My point was simply to counter the assertion that insider snobbery was the main cause of a general disaffection with classical music among the disaffected. I didn't say that people don't get anything out of classical music. Where did you get that? I said that more of the people who are turned off by it, are turned off because they lack an understanding of what it has to offer and how to listen to it, rather than because they perceive those who like it and claim to understand it to be snobs.


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## Chordalrock

some guy said:


> You have misplaced an option. That possibly other people who are outside in the real world (whatever that is) simply disagree with you, based on their experiences in the real world which for some reason do not necessarily match your experiences.
> 
> That is, their conclusions do not necessarily match your conclusions, since that's what we're really talking about, eh? Not the experiences themselves but the conclusions drawn from them.


Nope, sorry, I know what I'm talking about, because I used to be one such person myself - i.e. someone who enjoyed a very limited amount of music and then not that much.

It took me a lot of work to get where I am now - enjoying a lot wider selection of music, often more profoundly than before. I had to develop my musical perception a lot to get to this point - something which had been utterly neglected in my childhood.

So I'm not jumping to any conclusions when I meet people who are like I used to be - I understand them because I was like them once. And I'm still very far from the level of appreciation and enjoyment that most who grew with classical seem to enjoy, so I'm not even trying to be some sort of elitist flouting my "superiority". In fact, I perceive that I'm very much inferior in this respect to a huge number of classical music fans.

But rather than assume I just have different standards and call it a day, I pretty much know from studying psychology that it is due to my extremely limited experiences with music during childhood.

Now, would you assume there are many people who had very limited experiences with music during childhood, and would you assume that they grew up to be similarly musically stunted as I did for the same reasons that I did? And why on earth would you assume that if it happened to me, it hasn't happened to huge swaths of people?


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> Can you believe you actually had to write this on an internet forum? I thought I was a social shut-in, but from what I can tell, a lot of people on this forum have been holed up in their ivory towers their entire life and have no clue about these things, even to the point that when someone like me tells them how things are outside in the real world, their brains switch off and they reflexively ignore it like it is some sort of fairy tale with dragons and other incredible creatures. "What is this talk about people who just don't get anything out of classical music or much of any music? It sounds like gibberish and I better forget you said it because it is messing with my mind!"
> 
> There is so much I could tell you from personal experience, but I don't want to bore anyone with unbelievable tales of psychology, listening habits, and other arcane topics.


Actually, I live in the real world just as much as you do. Sure, we know different people but the people I know are just as real as the people you know.


----------



## isorhythm

Chordalrock said:


> It took me a lot of work to get where I am now - enjoying a lot wider selection of music, often more profoundly than before. I had to develop my musical perception a lot to get to this point - something which had been utterly neglected in my childhood.


But did you do the work because other people persuaded you that your tastes were inadequate?

Or did you feel yourself drawn to the music, even before you learned to enjoy it?


----------



## Guest

Chordalrock said:


> So I'm not jumping to any conclusions when I meet people who are like I used to be - I understand them because I was like them once.


You have identified a similar attribute, and you're not jumping to any conclusions when you claim to understand people based on a single similarity?


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## Chordalrock

isorhythm said:


> But did you do the work because other people persuaded you that your tastes were inadequate?
> 
> Or did you feel yourself drawn to the music, even before you learned to enjoy it?


Since you give me only two options, I would have to choose the first one.

I lived in a culture (a Nordic country) that had standards, but where nobody ever mentioned elitism in any context, and I only ever learned of the concept when I came to the internet when I was 19 - on a newsgroup with mostly American posters. I never thought or felt that there was anything like elitism associated with classical music - until I heard that from people on the internet.

But yes, I did believe that classical music was superior, and I did, in one manner or another (I no longer remember), derive this belief from the surrounding culture. This belief was the reason I bothered with the music at all after finding that it bored me - I believed the problem was with me, not with the music. And already back then, from reading psychology, I had figured out that I could do something about it by improving my musicality/perception.

I remember my high school music teacher unapologetically teaching us that Beethoven was the greatest composer who ever lived and that he was different from other composers in that, where others composed something that was great now and then, Beethoven did so with his every composition. That is just to illustrate some of my experiences back then.

I certainly thought of myself as somewhat inadequate musically because I didn't appreciate the classics. Frankly, the way to improvement begins with honestly assessing one's inadequacies and/or flaws. I don't see any problem with this perspective, other than those created by a culture of excessive & mindless pampering.


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## isorhythm

^That's interesting. Do most people in your country end up liking classical music as adults? Or is it still a minority? These aren't rhetorical questions, by the way. I'm curious.


----------



## science

Chordalrock said:


> Since you give me only two options, I would have to choose the first one.
> 
> I lived in a culture (a Nordic country) that had standards, but where nobody ever mentioned elitism in any context, and I only ever learned of the concept when I came to the internet when I was 19 - on a newsgroup with mostly American posters. I never thought or felt that there was anything like elitism associated with classical music - until I heard that from people on the internet.
> 
> But yes, I did believe that classical music was superior, and I did, in one manner or another (I no longer remember), derive this belief from the surrounding culture. This belief was the reason I bothered with the music at all after finding that it bored me - I believed the problem was with me, not with the music. And already back then, from reading psychology, I had figured out that I could do something about it by improving my musicality/perception.
> 
> I remember my high school music teacher unapologetically teaching us that Beethoven was the greatest composer who ever lived and that he was different from other composers in that, where others composed something that was great now and then, Beethoven did so with his every composition. That is just to illustrate some of my experiences back then.
> 
> I certainly thought of myself as somewhat inadequate musically because I didn't appreciate the classics. Frankly, the way to improvement begins with honestly assessing one's inadequacies and/or flaws. I don't see any problem with this perspective, other than those created by a culture of excessive & mindless pampering.


If we were all being totally honest, I think _most_ of us here would admit that at some point in our lives the cultural status of classical music played a role in our attraction to it.

Fortunately we can enjoy classical music without that affectation. _It's good music._ The music will take care of itself. We don't need to shame people into it.

In fact, maybe a lot of us would be better off - would enjoy the music more - if we just enjoyed the music without fear of shame. After all, are we about the music or the status? I know that rhetorical question is a trick, since the direct route to higher status is to say we're here for the music. Ok, so that's the answer we all have to pay lip service too. Next, we should probably try not to be too hypocritical!


----------



## tdc

Chordalrock said:


> I remember my high school music teacher unapologetically teaching us that Beethoven was the greatest composer who ever lived and that he was different from other composers in that, where others composed something that was great now and then, Beethoven did so with his every composition.


Wow, its unfortunate that someone with this kind of (blatantly incorrect) view would be given the role of teaching music to others.


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## isorhythm

science said:


> If we were all being totally honest, I think _most_ of us here would admit that at some point in our lives the cultural status of classical music played a role in our attraction to it.


Sure, but lots of things have cultural status and lots of people care about cultural status. Why classical music? Why us?

There has to be something more.

(Also worth noting that, at least in America, classical music doesn't have any cultural status to speak of anymore.)


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Chordalrock said:


> And why on earth would you assume that if it happened to me, it hasn't happened to huge swaths of people?


Both asumptions would be problematical - that what happened to you *has* happened to large swathes is just as contentious as what happened to you *has not* happened to large swathes - both are attempting to generalise to a wider population from a tiny sample.

Surely you know the dangers of trying to generalise from the particular?


----------



## Vesteralen

From the way this thread keeps getting hijacked away from the OP's questions into discussions on such unrelated topics as the relative merits and demerits of hand-feeding culture to children, etc. (matters that might, indeed, deserve their own thread) I would assume the following:

1 - No one is really interested in examining *what factors are at work *when a considerable portion of the experienced listening public seems to prefer certain particular compositions belonging to a certain genre over others.

2- No one feels comfortable talking about *what "buttons" are pushed *for them personally when they react in some strongly favorable way to a particular work. Or perhaps, they don't feel comfortable guessing whether or not other listeners experience the same or similar reactions to the same stimuli.

I only assume the above because, basically, no one has given anything really interesting on these OP topics for consideration. The closest we've come (outside of a couple poor attempts of my own to address the issues) has been a very generalized discussion of why certain composers or works are perceived as "great"?

The OP clearly asked for a much narrower focus down to specific genres or even specific works.


----------



## Guest

science said:


> If we were all being totally honest, I think _most_ of us here would admit that at some point in our lives the cultural status of classical music played a role in our attraction to it.


I'm not sure I'd agree with this, but I can only speak for myself, and myself thanks you for giving me an out. Because if I am totally honest--something I always try to be, all the time--a no point in my life did the cultural status of classical music play a role in my attraction to it.

When I started listening to it, I was around nine, mas o menos. No one else I knew listened to it. If I had thought about it, I would have concluded that someone did, enough to justify the costs of those recordings and of that radio station in Sacramento. But I never thought about that. I just loved the music. More than anything. I was probably 13 before I came across anyone who knew about classical music and that was a teacher who was giving us junior high hooligans a music appreciation class. Everything he played was something I already knew and loved. That was a strange experience. None of my peers liked classical music until eighth grade. In high school there were two. Not until college was there anything like enough people to constitute a community.

Far as I was concerned, in other words, classical music had no sort of status at all, cultural or otherwise. That is, except for the musical status. It had that, in spades. Boy howdy. I ran across people from time to time who made fun of "sympathy" music. But I would just laugh nervously and back away slowly, not making eye contact. Only in college, after my overwhelming experience with twentieth century music, did I start responding to negative nellies. Or perhaps nelly's.

In other words, for a long time after I was totally smitten, I only knew two things about other people's ideas about classical music--if they didn't listen to it, they made fun of it. If they listened to pre-twentieth century music exclusively, they rabidly attacked anything past 1908 or so. As I recall, my first contact with classical music as something having cultural status was with my prospective in-laws, whose idea was that no one liked classical music but that some people pretended to like it to be cool. They thought I brought classical LPs with me when I visited them in order to impress them.

I found that a very strange notion. How would I impress them if they didn't even like the stuff? Easy, because they were referring to this mysterious idea that classical music is culturally superior. Still pretty weird. Classical music is fun to listen to. Full stop.


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## ArtMusic

Fact: all music have some kind of a status in culture, especially classical because of its long history. Status here just means a social perception, it has nothing to do with how listeners may or may not enjoy the music.


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## EdwardBast

My experience is a bit like some guy's. I heard a fair amount of classical music from a young age, in part because my mom was an organist and chorister who sang occasionally with the hometown symphony. She loved Russian music, so I grew up with Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and even a bit of Stravinsky. She sat with me in my preschool days and explained the stage action or programmatic content for whatever symphonic poem or ballet suite was on the stereo, and we would sit together and listen with full attention to long pieces. So I never got to consider whether there was status in listening to this kind of music. It was in my blood before I could even think about it. My native musical language was Russian and I have had an affinity for Russian music (and literature and art) ever since. In high school the friends with whom I tripped were perfectly happy to listen to classical music too, along with jazz, prog rock, Indian classical, electronic music, or anything else that fired the imagination. It was just part of life for me.


----------



## Chordalrock

tdc said:


> Wow, its unfortunate that someone with this kind of (blatantly incorrect) view would be given the role of teaching music to others.


What she said about Beethoven was in basic agreement with the Beethoven article from the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica written by Donald Francis Tovey, where he writes in no uncertain terms that Beethoven was the greatest composer who ever lived. Do you think you can do better than Tovey?

Even if my teacher had been incorrect (I don't think she was far off the truth myself), I think her attitude is much preferable to pretending that Beethoven doesn't matter at all, as they seem to do in American high schools.


----------



## Chordalrock

isorhythm said:


> ^That's interesting. Do most people in your country end up liking classical music as adults? Or is it still a minority? These aren't rhetorical questions, by the way. I'm curious.


Not most people, not at all. Like I said earlier: you lose them as kids, you lose them.

I don't think we're doing particularly well in Finland, just a lot better than many other countries, mostly in supporting those who already grow up in the right kind of families.

Also, I don't know what the concept of elitism even enters the conversation. I've never suggested that only some sort of elite can enjoy classical music. My theory is the opposite: almost anyone can enjoy it if they are exposed to it young enough. It is everyone else who is content to see classical music as a sort of minority, rather elite passion.


----------



## tdc

Chordalrock said:


> What she said about Beethoven was in basic agreement with the Beethoven article from the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica written by Donald Francis Tovey, where he writes in no uncertain terms that Beethoven was the greatest composer who ever lived. Do you think you can do better than Tovey?
> 
> Even if my teacher had been incorrect *(I don't think she was far off the truth myself*), I think her attitude is much preferable to pretending that Beethoven doesn't matter at all, as they seem to do in American high schools.


Well it seems as if you are more or less agreeing she was incorrect. The rest of your post isn't very relevant to my comment. To suggest all other notable composers only write great pieces now and then while Beethoven penned only masterpieces is laughable. It is a ridiculous comment.

If the same statement appears in Tovey's 1911 article, it is still flat out wrong.


----------



## Sloe

Chordalrock said:


> Not most people, not at all. Like I said earlier: you lose them as kids, you lose them.
> 
> I don't think we're doing particularly well in Finland, just a lot better than many other countries, mostly in supporting those who already grow up in the right kind of families.
> 
> Also, I don't know what the concept of elitism even enters the conversation. I've never suggested that only some sort of elite can enjoy classical music. My theory is the opposite: almost anyone can enjoy it if they are exposed to it young enough. It is everyone else who is content to see classical music as a sort of minority, rather elite passion.


Just because a majority is not listening to classical music daily or weekly it doesn´t mean a majority is not liking classical music. They just feel for listening to other music or to do other things.


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## KenOC

[deleted........]


----------



## Chordalrock

Sloe said:


> Just because a majority is not listening to classical music daily or weekly it doesn´t mean a majority is not liking classical music. They just feel for listening to other music or to do other things.


I was the only person I knew with a serious interest in classical music in my late teens, but I had a fair amount of friends and tried to make them interested in classical, so I have some idea of why people other than me listen to or don't listen to classical music.

A few times I took some of my friends to a classical music concert. I once remember a friend commenting during the intermission about a Chopin 3rd sonata performance that there were no hummable melodies - and asking was there going to be any melodies he might like. It sounds awkard or odd when I recount it, but seemed perfectly natural and genuine as I remember it.

Another time in another concert with another friend, the friend started commenting on the good looks of a female violinist during concert. We were sitting in front row, she heard him and smiled. I think neither of them was particularly interested in the music (1st movement of Mozart's 23rd piano concerto as I recall).

One of my friends listened to some classical already before I did, but never much or very seriously. He liked a couple of popular classical music favorites, but couldn't find any affection for the rest of the stuff, though the reason may partly be that he had never explored the music thoroughly, so that some pieces he might have liked he simply didn't know about.

I once brought a recording of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude to high school music class, where everyone could bring a piece and then the class would listen to it. I remember one comment was that it obviously took great skill to play, but it's not music that the person commenting would like to listen to (he said).

I manage to conduct social experiments of this sort because Finns are a very honest, even blunt nation. I suppose if you try to do this in the U.S. you'll never know who actually likes what and how much, so you'd indeed be right to merely speculate. However, I don't need to merely speculate. It is a topic I have a lot of experience about.


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## arpeggio

Chordalrock said:


> I was the only person I knew with a serious interest in classical music in my late teens, but I had a fair amount of friends and tried to make them interested in classical, so I have some idea of why people other than me listen to or don't listen to classical music.
> 
> A few times I took some of my friends to a classical music concert. I once remember a friend commenting during the intermission about a Chopin 3rd sonata performance that there were no hummable melodies - and asking was there going to be any melodies he might like. It sounds awkard or odd when I recount it, but seemed perfectly natural and genuine as I remember it.
> 
> Another time in another concert with another friend, the friend started commenting on the good looks of a female violinist during concert. We were sitting in front row, she heard him and smiled. I think neither of them was particularly interested in the music (1st movement of Mozart's 23rd piano concerto as I recall).
> 
> One of my friends listened to some classical already before I did, but never much or very seriously. He liked a couple of popular classical music favorites, but couldn't find any affection for the rest of the stuff, though the reason may partly be that he had never explored the music thoroughly, so that some pieces he might have liked he simply didn't know about.
> 
> I once brought a recording of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude to high school music class, where everyone could bring a piece and then the class would listen to it. I remember one comment was that it obviously took great skill to play, but it's not music that the person commenting would like to listen to (he said).
> 
> I manage to conduct social experiments of this sort because Finns are a very honest, even blunt nation. I suppose if you try to do this in the U.S. you'll never know who actually likes what and how much, so you'd indeed be right to merely speculate. However, I don't need to merely speculate. It is a topic I have a lot of experience about.


In went to high school in North Carolina in USA. I had similar experiences.


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## Sloe

Chordalrock said:


> I was the only person I knew with a serious interest in classical music in my late teens, but I had a fair amount of friends and tried to make them interested in classical, so I have some idea of why people other than me listen to or don't listen to classical music.
> 
> A few times I took some of my friends to a classical music concert. I once remember a friend commenting during the intermission about a Chopin 3rd sonata performance that there were no hummable melodies - and asking was there going to be any melodies he might like. It sounds awkard or odd when I recount it, but seemed perfectly natural and genuine as I remember it.
> 
> Another time in another concert with another friend, the friend started commenting on the good looks of a female violinist during concert. We were sitting in front row, she heard him and smiled. I think neither of them was particularly interested in the music (1st movement of Mozart's 23rd piano concerto as I recall).
> 
> One of my friends listened to some classical already before I did, but never much or very seriously. He liked a couple of popular classical music favorites, but couldn't find any affection for the rest of the stuff, though the reason may partly be that he had never explored the music thoroughly, so that some pieces he might have liked he simply didn't know about.
> 
> I once brought a recording of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude to high school music class, where everyone could bring a piece and then the class would listen to it. I remember one comment was that it obviously took great skill to play, but it's not music that the person commenting would like to listen to (he said).
> 
> I manage to conduct social experiments of this sort because Finns are a very honest, even blunt nation. I suppose if you try to do this in the U.S. you'll never know who actually likes what and how much, so you'd indeed be right to merely speculate. However, I don't need to merely speculate. It is a topic I have a lot of experience about.


None of these reactions were really negative. My impression of your post is that to like classical music one have to be excited over Chopin.


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## mmsbls

science said:


> If we were all being totally honest, I think _most_ of us here would admit that at some point in our lives the cultural status of classical music played a role in our attraction to it.


I know you have stated this premise several times on TC, and I've always been a bit skeptical. I can't say it's wrong since "most" only means 51% or more so almost half could not care about status. Do you feel you have good reasons for believing that cultural status played a role in most of the people you interact with (in person and TC or elsewhere on line) being attracted to classical music?

I suppose when you say "played a role" for most people that's not a very strong statement. I assume you mean that cultural status played a large role.


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## violadude

Chordalrock said:


> I was the only person I knew with a serious interest in classical music in my late teens, but I had a fair amount of friends and tried to make them interested in classical, so I have some idea of why people other than me listen to or don't listen to classical music.
> 
> A few times I took some of my friends to a classical music concert. I once remember a friend commenting during the intermission about a Chopin 3rd sonata performance that there were no hummable melodies - and asking was there going to be any melodies he might like. It sounds awkard or odd when I recount it, but seemed perfectly natural and genuine as I remember it.
> 
> Another time in another concert with another friend, the friend started commenting on the good looks of a female violinist during concert. We were sitting in front row, she heard him and smiled. I think neither of them was particularly interested in the music (1st movement of Mozart's 23rd piano concerto as I recall).
> 
> One of my friends listened to some classical already before I did, but never much or very seriously. He liked a couple of popular classical music favorites, but couldn't find any affection for the rest of the stuff, though the reason may partly be that he had never explored the music thoroughly, so that some pieces he might have liked he simply didn't know about.
> 
> I once brought a recording of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude to high school music class, where everyone could bring a piece and then the class would listen to it. I remember one comment was that it obviously took great skill to play, but it's not music that the person commenting would like to listen to (he said).
> 
> I manage to conduct social experiments of this sort because Finns are a very honest, even blunt nation. I suppose if you try to do this in the U.S. you'll never know who actually likes what and how much, so you'd indeed be right to merely speculate. However, I don't need to merely speculate. It is a topic I have a lot of experience about.


People have dull sensibilities when it comes to music. I'm not surprised. The music many people listen to today isn't exactly subtle.


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## science

mmsbls said:


> I know you have stated this premise several times on TC, and I've always been a bit skeptical. I can't say it's wrong since "most" only means 51% or more so almost half could not care about status. Do you feel you have good reasons for believing that cultural status played a role in most of the people you interact with (in person and TC or elsewhere on line) being attracted to classical music?
> 
> I suppose when you say "played a role" for most people that's not a very strong statement. I assume you mean that cultural status played a large role.


I don't mean it was the biggest factor; it might be the fifth or tenth biggest if we could quantify such things, but I believe it is a factor for most of us at some point.

I have formed this opinion partially by introspection, partially by seeing people's behavior in real life, partially by watching our behavior online, and partially by thinking about how music works socially.

Probably none of us consciously think with much regularity thoughts like, "I have to learn to like this Prokofiev sonata because this is the kind of music that the highest status people like." So people protest a little because of that. But that doesn't matter at all to my claim. (Even if we had that thought, we would almost always euphemistically abbreviate it: we might just think of someone that we hope to impress with our taste and knowledge.)

People also object because of a romantic idea that we must be loyal to art for art's sake; implying or stating that they are not living up to that ideal feels to them like a criticism. But I don't believe in that ideal, and obviously I don't believe that anyone who does hold that ideal actually lives up to it. I'd even suggest that they have adopted this ideal because of its apparent social status.

If the social circle that I aspired most highly to join were one that valued driving large pickup trucks, defending the Confederate flag and the NRA's interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, hunting, and listening to country music - I would like country music. It would happen. I would feel like I just happened to like country music, but the feeling of coincidence does not logically exclude a reality of causation.

The idea that classical music doesn't have social status in America is so strange to me that it is hard for me to figure out what people mean when they say that. I realize that there are subcultures in America, such as the one I described earlier, in which other kinds of music are more accepted, and among those subcultures listening to classical music is strange. But those cultures themselves do not have very high status. On Wall Street or K Street, the Ivy League or the board rooms of Fortune 500 companies, classical music is still very highly respected. Granted, it no longer enjoys the exclusivity that it used to perhaps fifty years ago. I've written about this before: the old strategies of snobbery no longer work, and today's snob needs to embrace "the best" music of multiple genres, especially jazz and the more authentic varieties of "world music." (The partisans of the country music culture or the New Age music culture or whatever will of course say that they don't care about Wall Street or K Street, etc., but to anyone sufficiently cynical that's obviously not true. Our culture gives lip service to democratic values as it does to rebellion, but in the end - no matter what we say, what we buy, whatever - we're all part of a mind-bogglingly huge, complex hierarchy and we know our approximate place within it.)

Well, I should speak for myself. All my life, from childhood until now, I've had in mind ideas about what sort of person I'd want to be, based on who I respected out of the people that I knew and who I thought I could plausibly become. I think we all have something like this, although usually we don't put much conscious thought into it: these ideals usually operate just below the threshold of consciousness. We only become aware of them in particularly lucid, self-aware times. Well, some of our ideal selves would like certain sorts of music. I've never had to force myself to like that music; it is the music that I like.

This is how almost everything human works. It's how we believe whatever religion we believe (or not), how we acquire a particular dialect of a language; it's how we choose what to wear, where to live, what kind of furniture to have, how to wear our hair, how to spend our lives, which political issues to support and which to oppose. All the solipsism of our self-images and interior worlds cannot change the fact that we are controlled by instincts of which we are unconscious, and unconsciously we are herd animals. If we try to be unique, it is because uniqueness is valued by the herd that we value.

I guess I've become comfortable with these ideas because I've been working with them for many years, but many people find them threatening: almost as if these ideas meant something like "You don't really like classical music," or even, "You shouldn't like classical music." They are disturbing ideas for other reasons - one of the hardest tasks our society or culture faces in the coming decades is figuring out how to make peace with the discovery that our minds really are something our brains do, and we are not truly who our consciousness believes we are. But I really don't see why any of this would threaten our self-images as classical music fans. Why do we need to care very much about any of this? The music is still good music, at least in my opinion and in the opinions of most people whose opinions I value!


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## EdwardBast

science said:


> The idea that classical music doesn't have social status in America is so strange to me that it is hard for me to figure out what people mean when they say that. I realize that there are subcultures in America, such as the one I described earlier, in which other kinds of music are more accepted, and among those subcultures listening to classical music is strange. But those cultures themselves do not have very high status. On Wall Street or K Street, the Ivy League or the board rooms of Fortune 500 companies, classical music is still very highly respected.


I have to agree with you. Classical music does have status in many circles in America today, so the premise of some listeners having a status-seeking motive in listening to it is undoubtedly valid. This just doesn't seem to be that common on TC, at least according to the self-selecting sample that has responded to the suggestion.


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## Sloe

awa


arpeggio said:


> In went to high school in North Carolina in USA. I had similar experiences.


When I was in high school the only music that was accepted was hard rock, punk and The Prodigy. I am happy to have grown away from that age and can like whatever I like.


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## SimonNZ

science said:


> If the social circle that I aspired most highly to join were one that valued driving large pickup trucks, defending the Confederate flag and the NRA's interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, hunting, and listening to country music - I would like country music. It would happen. I would feel like I just happened to like country music, but the feeling of coincidence does not logically exclude a reality of causation.


But your ******* would listen to the approved genre exclusively. What I've noticed about classical enthusiasts is an openness to a wide variety of the world's musics - and would argue that it is this wider curiosity that fuels their early classical listening.

I don't know anyone who has ever been in the slightest bit impressed that I play classical cds. What's more, when I think of the media representations of classical listeners I was exposed to when young its pretty clear they were not well regarded: they were usually pompous, affected, self-deluded air-conducting snobs. They were unfailingly depicted as modern-day Malvolios. I was never given any reason to believe they had social status, certainly not that they should be emulated.


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## science

SimonNZ said:


> But your ******* would listen to the approved genre exclusively. What I've noticed about classical enthusiasts is an openness to a wide variety of the world's musics - and would argue that it is this wider curiosity that fuels their early classical listening.


I don't think that variable has much affect on the fundamental idea that I was explaining in that post, but you've got a good point - there is an "open" personality type and a "closed" one, or something like that. (It's a continuum of course, and we could debate the best way of framing it; I like "need/tolerance for novelty.") And as of now, a guy with a highly open personality would probably not choose to identify very closely with the "*******" subculture.

Someone with an extremely closed personality could like just about anything, including classical - it'd just have to be either what they grew up with, or identified with the group that they now identify with. It'll depend on who they have as models, what they feel like they can plausibly aspire to. Those models are mostly going to be people with similarly closed personalities, so it'll work out.

Someone with an extremely open personality could like just about anything, including things that they only heard for the first time earlier today and sound like nothing they've ever heard before. But these guys's models will mostly be people with similarly open personalities. And they still might not happen to like classical music, depending on their experience with it.

The closed personality sort of classical listener will not share your tastes! He'll be one of the "I must have my Beethoven" sorts. There's lots of them. They grew up liking Beethoven; or came to like it as a teenager or very young adult. The open personality sort of person who does not like classical music might like all kinds of other stuff, just happens he never got into classical music. After all, most of our tradition is pretty conservative stuff!


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## science

Hey, I think I just realized that I can get us back on the OP's question. 

For something to remain popular for a long period of time, it has to be something for which enjoyment can be modeled effectively.... This is sort of a meme theory of popularity, although with a little more specificity as to the means of transmission than meme theory requires.


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## Guest

The impact of "status" and "snobbery" has been, IMO, overstated, or rather, over-generalised. I accept that my attitudes to music over the years have been partly impacted by factors other than the qualities of the music itself. But I wouldn't want to overstate that impact for me, or to generalise to the wider population (that they must all be affected) or to infer the degree of impact for others. However, I also think that the social component has been understated.

At work, I have observed the reaction, "Oh, you listen to classical...oh...right...lovely" but I've also observed a reticence among some work colleagues to discuss their own musical tastes. Who wants to be judged or defined by one's musical tastes one way or the other, unless among good friends? (And even then, the judgements of friends can have a negative impact).


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## Strange Magic

I have to say that my musical tastes and habits have never been altered by any notion of what others might expect of me. I spent my teen years listening exclusively to musics that pleased me, though often, in the case especially of my interest in flamenco song, completely isolated from the tastes and opinions of my peers. And the habit of maintaining the autonomy of my musical interests and assessments has remained with me always. I am always open to hearing new things, however, and have expanded my tastes over the decades by exposure to new things that have pleased me. But since I live among people for whom music holds little lasting or deeply affecting influence, and since I listen to almost all music while alone, the opinions of others are rarely brought to bear in any question of personal taste.


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## Guest

Don't worry, science. These rebuttals only prove that many posters are not in touch with the idea of their own subconscious.


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## Guest

nathanb said:


> Don't worry, science. These rebuttals only prove that many posters are not in touch with the idea of their own subconscious.


Which rebuttals? And whilst there may be people not in touch 'with the idea of their subconscious'(?) it seems a bit presumptuous to infer so from posts here.


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## science

nathanb said:


> Don't worry, science. These rebuttals only prove that many posters are not in touch with the idea of their own subconscious.


It's not a bad thing - none of us are, really. The theater of introspection is for the most part a theater of lies and illusions.

And that's ok too.


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## Chordalrock

violadude said:


> People have dull sensibilities when it comes to music. I'm not surprised. The music many people listen to today isn't exactly subtle.


I find it convenient to think of sensitivity and perceptiveness as two separate traits or abilities. I myself lack the sensitivity to music that many here seem to have, but I've come a long way in terms of developing my perceptiveness, including things like being able to follow fast or complex music (mentally group it according to beat), being able to hear the harmony as well as the melody, being able to hear an isolated melody in relation to its implied harmony, remembering well what went before so that intervals seemed more melodious because I heard them in relation to each other, and such skills that I used to lack to lesser or greater extent and that developed slowly to the level where they are now.

Do you know how perception works? It's not just that you hear sound waves, your memories also modify that sensory data unconsciously. Experience in music affects your taste and sensibilities a lot in many different ways, as does of course guiding perception by knowing how to listen to complex music (a skill that can be easily learned but is difficult to master).

Certainly, when you've only listened to pop music with a clear beat for example, your expectations are such that it's hard to even adapt to listening to classical. Like, where is the beat? It's not always so obvious. But like I said above, there's also a lot of other stuff involved.

Actually, I think one reason that most people seem to listen to songs exclusively rather than any sort of instrumental is that they don't notice harmony very well and perhaps don't follow melodies with their mind (by grouping notes according to the beat etc), so they are just listening to someone say words in a somewhat melodious rhythmic fashion. Singing of this sort is half-way between speech and classical singing. Take that singer away and listeners such as that are lost. Perhaps? Perhaps it's just trouble focusing on music, actually stopping to listen to pure melody and harmony instead of someone saying words. Due to reasons outlined above.

Anyway, an example of what I was talking earlier in this message: I played for a friend, on the piano, the passage with 16th notes in the right hand from KV 310 (1st movement recap in A minor, mostly) - he said it was kind of cheerful. I asked him if he had noticed to pay attention to the left hand, and told him to do it, and I played it again. This time he noticed that it's actually a rather melancholy passage. Of course, a more experienced listener would hear the right hand as rather melancholy even if the left hand was not included at all. But this sort of hearing (of fast, rather sophisticated passages) requires a rather well-developed sense of intervals and tonality, requiring a lot of memories about such kinds of music (memories being the basis of perception like I said).

This message is somewhat all over the place, but to conclude, I'd say I wouldn't assume anything about sensibility before knowing if they are even paying attention to the music and how well they are able to hear it. Even experienced listeners can miss beautiful details in a piece of music, so imagine what it is like for people who are basically half deaf in some sense.


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## tdc

nathanb said:


> Don't worry, science. These rebuttals only prove that many posters are not in touch with the idea of their own subconscious.


I don't think so. It seems people are simply relaying their own experiences and observations about their appreciation of music and how it developed - this appears to be largely the same way science claims he came up with his reasoning, through personal observation.



science said:


> It's not a bad thing - none of us are, really. The theater of introspection is for the most part a theater of lies and illusions.
> 
> And that's ok too.


Yet, still you seem quite convinced you understand certain elements about the nature of our subconscious drives quite clearly somehow. Why? Aside from personal observation and your own intuition, what evidence do you have?

For the record your statement that introspection is for the most part a theatre of lies and illusions is pretty much the opposite of what Carl Jung thought - someone who spent much of his life studying the subconscious. He essentially suggested the outward physical world we observe with the 5 senses is the theater of lies and illusions - (something modern science to a large extent seems to corroborate), and introspection a way to get a better grasp on truly knowing ourselves.


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## science

tdc said:


> I don't think so. It seems people are simply relaying their own experiences and observations about their appreciation of music and how it developed - this appears to be largely the same way science claims he came up with his reasoning, through personal observation.
> 
> Yet, still you seem quite convinced you understand certain elements about the nature of our subconscious drives quite clearly somehow. Why? Aside from personal observation and your own intuition, what evidence do you have?
> 
> For the record your statement that introspection is for the most part a theatre of lies and illusions is pretty much the opposite of what Carl Jung thought - someone who spent much of his life studying the subconscious. He essentially suggested the outward physical world we observe with the 5 senses is the theater of lies and illusions - (something modern science to a large extent seems to corroborate), and introspection a way to get a better grasp on truly knowing ourselves.


Just to be clear, my own personal introspection is a pretty insignificant part of my own thought on anything. I can't care very much about what Jung thought... I can't find many nice things to say about him. But if you can show me that my ideas are out of harmony with the best contemporary neuroscience or psychology, I'd be _very_ interested in that. That'd really be important to me.

If you like Jung, you might be interested to know that my thoughts on the social nature of music are closely related to many contemporary evolutionary theories of religion, especially that of Scott Atran in _In Gods We Trust_. (The big name at a popular level in this field is David Sloan Wilson. He's a reasonable man and I respect his opinions, but for now I find Atran more persuasive.)


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## Woodduck

Put me down as another "antisocial" classical music lover. I heard all sorts of music as a kid, most of it was not classical, and yet it was classical that I recognized, almost instantly, as my own. I loved it before I knew what it was that I loved: I had music from Prokofiev's _Cinderella_ on a little golden 45 rpm record, and it enchanted me. Once I knew what "classical music" was and where to find it, there was no stopping me, and much of the rest of the aural environment became noise pollution to be ignored and avoided. I was made aware by "society" that I was odd, and I had to acquire, at the cost of some loneliness and pain, the courage to tell "society" where to stick it. Of course "society" was right about me - and thank goodness. Ha ha.

I just can't buy all this "we are what society tells us to be" stuff. We really have quite a bit of say in the matter - but of course we have to believe that we do. If we have no particular sensitivity to music, or if we aren't convinced of the acceptability of thinking for ourselves, we may listen to the music our "social group" listens to, or to what is "approved" by somebody or other. If we are musically sensitive and more independent and questioning, we will listen to what sounds good to us and look to others mainly for information rather than approval.

In light of this, the popularity of a given kind or piece of classical music indicates quite different things depending on what kind of listeners we're talking about: at one extreme, independent-minded, knowledgeable listeners who are actually interested in music and the idea of music, and at the other extreme, "socially-determined" people who like what they like because it's what other people like, because it's what they hear when they tune in to Classical Drive Time on K*** FM (Vivaldi and Mozart on the hour, right after the following important messages from Bug-Off pest control and The Great Undertaking funeral services), or because it doesn't require any special effort or insight to grasp. Among listeners of the first kind, popularity is likely to correlate much more with artistic quality; among the second, with ease of consumption.


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## DeepR

Music has always been my own super individual journey and I certainly haven't been influenced by popularity or social expectations. In a world where I sometimes feel a slave to society, I cherish it like my own thoughts. It's a safe haven, a magical, hidden refuge for the mind where there's true freedom and nobody can take that away from me.


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## Sloe

Woodduck said:


> people who like what they like because it's what other people like, because it's what they hear when they tune in to Classical Drive Time on K*** FM (Vivaldi and Mozart on the hour,


Tonight I will listen to the four seasons by Vivaldi because that is what will be played on the radio and I do like it.


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## Woodduck

Sloe said:


> Tonight I will listen to the four seasons by Vivaldi because that is what will be played on the radio and I do like it.


One of those works that's hard not to like - unless you've heard it played on K*** FM five thousand times.


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## Sloe

Woodduck said:


> One of those works that's hard not to like - unless you've heard it played on K*** FM five thousand times.


It was played a lot earlier this year but it haven´t I haven´t heard it in several months now.
Something that I did get tired of was Ferenc Farkas Antique Hungarian Dances.


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