# universal



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm trying to make sense of the claim that classical music, or certain works of classical music, are "universal." Maybe we don't see or use this word as often as we used to, and maybe that is for reasons similar to the sort of discomfort and uncertainty that I feel about it. Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe this "universal" idea is expressed as commonly as it ever was.... 

Anyway, when someone says that classical music, or a particular work of classical music, is "universal," what do you think they mean? 

Does it just mean that lots of people all over the world like it? Or is it universal in a way that Duke Ellington, the Beatles, or for that matter Clannad or Eminem or Cesaria Evora or Yanni or Psy aren't? How do we know, how can we tell what is "universal?" 

Is it a synonym for "old?" But lots of musical traditions around the world play "old" music. When people say that classical music or a work of classical music is "universal," do they mean it's universal in a sense that the Beijing opera or Noh drama or gamelan or Carnatic music aren't? 

Of what kind of music can we meaningfully say, "This, unlike classical music, is not universal because...?" 

Is it a sort of colonialist claim - you're supposed to listen to the music of the European aristocracy and bourgeois class, it's universal, so if you don't like it, you're less than fully human? 

Or something else entirely? 

Please help me understand this idea. I'm tempted to conclude that it's highfalutin bunk but maybe someone can explain it to me in a way I haven't understood yet.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

"Universal" means "common to all people." You're part of the human race, aren't you?

When I say a work of art is 'universal' in its appeal, this is necessarily a general statement, not one that can be applied for *every aspect *of 'specialist' music.

We are all human; we all have two ears and a brain, and emotions; we all use speech and gesture, and walk, and move; we sense rhythm; low sounds are from big things, so we perk up; high sounds are from little things; abrupt sounds startle us; quiet sounds make us focus; we all love, and have a sense of spirit; we all sing. Can you name some universal characteristics of being human? It's fun! Collect them all, trade 'em with your friends!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> "Universal" means "common to all people." You're part of the human race, aren't you?
> 
> When I say a work of art is 'universal' in its appeal, this is necessarily a general statement, not one that can be applied for *every aspect *of 'specialist' music.
> 
> We are all human; we all have two ears and a brain, and emotions; we all use speech and gesture, and walk, and move; we sense rhythm; low sounds are from big things, so we perk up; high sounds are from little things; abrupt sounds startle us; quiet sounds make us focus; we all love, and have a sense of spirit; we all sing. Can you name some universal characteristics of being human? It's fun! Collect them all, trade 'em with your friends!


Ok, I have a few questions.

1. What about people who don't like classical music? There are two cases you need to explain: both people in western cultures and also people in cultures where the European tradition hasn't been important. Given that a lot of people don't like it and a lot of other people haven't heard much of it, how is it universal?

2. As you answer that, keep in mind that I want to know what kind of music _isn't_ universal. This is an important point. If saying that "classical music is universal" doesn't contain any meaning beyond "music is universal," then we need to ask ourselves why we even put the modifier "classical" in there in the first place.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

As someone who's lived his entire life within Western civilisation, I don't recall anyone making any claims for the universality of any music that wasn't part of Western civilisation. So I assume "universal" is used as shorthand for "I like it so much, and its reputation is so great, that I assume that even people who are less discerning and civilised than me will also like it".

It's not a wholly useless word, though - I'd lump it with "overrated" and similar words as adjectives that reveal something about their user and might give some pointer as to the "general" regard the music might be held in, but not words to be taken literally.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Classic Music?
Some people are like these:
- Oh noes! Violin is horrible! Change it!
- Oh noes! Piano is horrible! Change it!
- Oh noes! This is so boring!
- Oh noes! It makes me stressed!
- lol I listen to the glorious X genre! I don't need these dogmatic old ....'s music!










That's why not everyone like Classic Music.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

I've heard it as a refutation of the argument that Classical is only for Westerners, or for a certain class of Westerners.

In fact (the reply goes) it is universal. It can appeal to everyone.

Perhaps in this respect, more or all music is universal. But to me, the argument that Classical is universal is a defensive argument against those who see it as necessarily limited.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

What do I think they mean? I think it varies according to the person using the term. They might be using it to make a claim that classical music can appeal to anyone across all boundaries of ethnicity, culture, era, religion, etc. Or maybe they are trying to express that a great work of classical music unfolds sub specie aeternitatis.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I would say that classical music is universal in the same sense that knitting, Greek Mythology, and break dancing are universal. Under the right conditions all of those _could_ appeal to a high percentage of people throughout the world. Presently they all appeal to a small percentage.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

I got no jokes to offer so I'll offer my serious and thoughtful take on this:

When somebody says "universal", they are assimilating all the information they have received about classical music in general. I perceive from how you frame your premise that you are referring to casual remarks and explanatory gestures like - "oh classical music sounds like it touches a whole lot of things" or "classical music is the apex of music". Such remarks come from a more general understanding. There might be several reasons for such an idea in somebody's mind:

1. They find classical music ubiquitous - in a variety of settings, films, commercials, cartoon shows. They then think that because classical music appears so regularly everywhere, there must be some kind of innate quality in it which is popular and likeable with all kinds of people from all walks of life. Hence "universal".

2. Some might believe this is in a more serious light. They have heard classical music a lot, and they are particularly drawn to or notice the grandeur/large scope/complexity of the music and perhaps naively and erroneously refer to all these qualities collectively as "universal".

3. Other people might live in a strange place where there are so many classical music fans that they cannot be held at fault for saying it is actually "universal". This place would be hard to find these days. It would be much easier to find a place or social group where Katy Perry or Psy is held as "universal", given their immense popularity.

I think it matters with how much weight the opinion is voiced. Somebody who is just casually saying "classical music is universal" perhaps has only a nebulous idea of the subject. Those who are more informed might actually be onto something - in whatever way they mean that classical music is "universal".

My personal opinion? No, I don't think classical music is universal. There is other music than classical music, and I derive considerable enjoyment from it - and there, I decide my answer according to only whether it serves some purpose in my life or not.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> sub specie aeternitatis


"Universally true."

Can you explain how that category could apply to a work of art rather than to a "fact?"


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

GreenMamba said:


> I've heard it as a refutation of the argument that Classical is only for Westerners, or for a certain class of Westerners.
> 
> In fact (the reply goes) it is universal. It can appeal to everyone.
> 
> Perhaps in this respect, more or all music is universal. But to me, the argument that Classical is universal is a defensive argument against those who see it as necessarily limited.


This makes some sense to me, so I'm grateful for it.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone actually argue that classical music is necessarily limited, but perhaps the assumption is out there in unspoken ways - "most people aren't going to like this...."

In fact, I'd argue that since the late nineteenth century at least, most people weren't supposed to like it! Art, not only music, has been designed to alienate portions of its audience, to facilitate the bourgeois "competitive appreciation," the desire to appear aristocratic or intellectually elite by appreciating difficult works of art. The most successful art is the art that has alienated a lot of people, enabling a minority to distinguish themselves by their insight.

The competitive appreciation dynamic is alive and well and powering the heart of the classical music world. Given that reality, calling classical music "universal" can have that colonialist-ish aspect: "The fact that you don't enjoy this 'universal' music reveals that you deserver to occupy a lower station in life. Perhaps wage-labor and top-40 music is for you."

But as you've shown me, calling classical music "universal" could actually (at least on occasion) be designed to push back against that, arguing, "This is music for everyone, not just the intellectually and culturally elite. Don't surrender it to them without a fight."

Now I'm too cynical to believe that (even a conscious intention to the latter could have the former as its subconscious intent), but it is a good different perspective for me to keep in mind.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I don't think there are any universal truths outside of the fundamentals of existence. But anything perceivable is certainly going to be subjective.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

"Music is the universal language of mankind." ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sometimes, what was said, by whom, and the sociopolitical context they were from could be taken as referring to the speaker's time and place, and their more parochial points of reference. I.e. it isn't an unfair guess that what Longfellow was thinking about was Western music, whether it is an English or American folk tune, a hymn, or 19th century western classical music.

On the other hand, he spoke a truth quite possibly wider than his personal scope (what many a creative and imaginative mind will and can do) and if we drop the date, the source, and look at the quote, it says 'music,' without any sociopolitical shades or hues whatsoever.

Where people were, pretty much time out of mind, or where they are now, mothers have cooed some intoned and pitched something to their infants, 'primitive' tribes have their organized sounds, sung or played, connected to whatever meaning that has for them as much as 'civilized' countries have their traditional and more highly constructed art musics.

Music seems to be from and with people just about anywhere you go. That is pretty much 'a universal' trait and proclivity, then.

For the sake of (good, I hope) argument, let us admit that no matter how much elaborate accumulated and built upon artifice is part of 'western classical music,' that it can still loosely be considered the ethnic music of the west. Ergo: all music from different cultures is, each of them, ethnic music. While not everyone around the world is going to get or appreciate all the different ethnic musics, the music itself is a universal of mankind.

If you're addressing that sort of cant where we hear "Beethoven / Bach / Mozart (yadayada) is universal; people world wide all enjoy its beauty and understand its message," then _replace_ that with "Indonesian Gamelan music, Indian Carnatic music, ancient Korean choral religious music, traditional Japanese epic narrative sung ballades, etc. is universal; people world wide all enjoy its beauty and understand its message," that then shows off the "Beethoven / Bach / Mozart (yadayada) is universal" as being pretty much a seriously narrow and parochial bunch of cultural jingoist hooey, or at least a short-sightedness where one can not see much clear past the end of ones nose


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

science said:


> "Universally true."
> 
> Can you explain how that category could apply to a work of art rather than to a "fact?"


As in, a work of art can offer an experience of something timeless, an intimation of something outside the empirical world to which this world is related. If we think of Plato's allegory of the cave, it's a glimpse of what lies behind the shadows.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> As in, a work of art can offer an experience of something timeless, an intimation of something outside the empirical world to which this world is related. If we think of Plato's allegory of the cave, it's a glimpse of what lies behind the shadows.


Do all works of art do this, or only some? If only some, how can I know which music (or other works of art) do this? Is this the kind of thing that the initiated just know because of their great transcendental mystical insight, or is it the kind of thing that can actually be known in a real way by anyone who investigates it (with the right tools, of course)?

Edit: Sorry, I didn't read thoughtfully enough before I posed that series of questions. You say, "something outside the empirical world" and frankly I don't know of any reason - philosophical, artistic, or otherwise - to think there is any such something. I don't find plausible the idea that our experiences of some art or nature or facts of life or whatever are just so sublime that there must be a supernatural world. Our feeling in those experiences, ecstatic as may be, show us what can happen when an organism of our sort interacts with a world of our sort, and Ockham's razor requires a full stop at that point. Now you can say, "My dear interlocutor, your experiences simply aren't as profound as mine; were they, you too would believe in the supernatural." But that is more than you know about your experiences or mine. Your belief (if you were to say that) about the relative depths or strengths of our experiences tells us something about you, not actually about the relative depths or strengths of our experiences. It is more likely that, as you and I are the same type of organism, the range of our emotional experiences are roughly equivalent, and that this hierarchy of insight is posited for simple convenience, in order to justify a belief for which there is no better argument. To be specific, even if you enjoy, say, music more than I do, I doubt you enjoy mathematics or literature more. I have known sublimity. It may be metaphorically "divine," "magic," and so on, but actual evidence of such a world it is not.

For that matter, I don't think you're doing Plato justice, as he had a more practical and important matter in mind. We have to keep in mind that he didn't live in a time of scientific materialism and wasn't trying to justify belief in a supernatural world.

I'm sure you disagree with me about the existence of that world beyond this one, and I'm sure you have reasons that seem compelling to you - perhaps including the sheer beauty of Beethoven/sunsets/childbirth - but we'd better not go into this debate here. Suffice to say that I am not going to believe in _anything_ - if I catch myself believing in something, I'll try to stop. And I'm sure I won't persuade you to stop believing, or that your beliefs are not so well-founded. So a discussion about our disagreement would be futile in terms of bringing us to agreement, but very effective in terms of getting this thread locked.

Nevertheless, the questions I originally asked remain interesting. Do you know that some music is "universal" and other music is not? Is there anything besides your subjective experience that tells you what it is?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I don't think of Western classical music as universal, at least not in the sense that it can claim to speak for the whole of humanity. Or speak to it, which relates to things like gamelan and Beijing opera that you mention in your opening post, science. Its clear that composers of the Western classical tradition since at least Debussy have drawn from Asian music, but what they're still doing is Western music. Gamelan in its proper context, that is in South East Asia, has a different meaning to people there than it did to a Frenchman who heard visitors to the Universal Exposition in Paris during 1889 play it.

So I think Eurocentrism and colonialsim play into this, definitely. Without infusions from outside itself, Western classical music would still be stuck somewhere in the dark ages. You even go back to the Renaissance, and Schutz studied the music of the Italians, I think the Venetians in particular (the Gabrieli brothers). This kind of fusion has been going on for ages. But in its own time and place, every music speaks to a community, or a group of people. Its got specific meanings within a certain context. These meanings change over time. Today, you are more likely to hear the old choral music such as by Schutz in choral concerts or indeed on cd or youtube rather than in its original setting, a church service.

Same goes for gamelan which survived by adapting, almost dying out by the 1930's, it was revived upon Indonesia becoming independent. I've said it before on the forum, tourists flocked to places like Bali, and the government responded by funding the manufacture of percussion instruments and the teaching of a new generation of musicians to play and compose for gamelan ensembles.

Its the same within classical music. I don't believe that serialism for example was inevitable, or not for everybody. It came out during the two world wars, in Central Europe. The sounds generated by Schoenberg aren't the same as those conveyed by say Spanish composers of the period, or American. The sultry flamenco infused style of De Falla for example, or indeed the Rhapsody in Blue of Gershwin, combining everything from klezmer to jazz to classical.

And I wonder, its a chicken and egg situation. You've got these pivotal points where Western music turned, Debussy's encounter with gamelan in 1889 is a big one, then there's things like Milhaud going to Harlem in New York after World War I and bringing its sounds into the concert hall. What about Steve Reich going to West Africa in about 1970 and for the first time hearing their drumming in situ? Or Sculthorpe at the same time going to Bali and Japan, hearing their music. Others like this where Partch and Scelsi. They drew from these non-Western cultures, and it added to Western classical.

Music has a place and context, and a time in history, and meaning to people. In a community, or a society or nation. But when we say that a certain composer embodies his era, or nation, or is the peak of his genre, there are limitations to that. There are limitations to Western classical being called universal - J. S. Bach is often cited as being such - because he too is tied to a certain point in history.

But today, music is global. It wasn't ever really sealed off as I said, but now we can listen to almost anything at anytime. Those with technology and access of course. However I don't think that any music can lay claim to speaking to or on behalf of all peoples, that would be going too far.

I think I can relate to what millions says, we're all humans. Music is part of our lives, whether the music of nature, or of today's urban metropolis, or the speech patterns we use. But in terms of one specific type of music or sound being universal, there isn't one. In any case, if there is, its all a hybrid. How can you separate one tradition moving into the other? Maybe its just that whoever we are we have some sort of music as part of our culture, our existence. There are so many types of music that boiling it down or segmenting it isn't of much use.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Mr. Sid James, you raise some good points. 

I worry that some of us may have argued too strongly and scared away the people who want to defend the "universal" language, and I was really hoping to hear their side explained clearly. I fear I'm missing something because such a commonly expressed idea, even if in the end it is wrong in a few ways, usually has some sort of merit to it as well, and I don't want to miss that. 

But maybe I'm by nature a "splitter," not a "lumper." (I don't know about that. Just saying.) Perhaps like you, at least as interesting as the universalities to me are the differences. Who influenced whom (and how) - your example was Schutz, and it made me thing by analogy to the influence that English composers like Dunstable had on the Flemish composers during the Renaissance, and of course from there to their influence on the Italians; how the guitar developed in Spain in the first place and then how it found its way into the Mississippi Delta blues tradition; how the blues scale may have been created as a hybrid of the pentatonic scale in African music and the modes of Western music. And so on forever. 

And differences in context as well; you noted Gamelan, a great example for me is Gregorian chant, which can be on any given day prayer in a monastery, relaxing music for a commute after a mind-numbing day in a cubicle, a tourist attraction in a Paris church, a protest against the liberal reforms of Vatican II, a performance by amateur musicians trying to connect to their heritage through the music of their distant ancestors.... 

In all of this great variety there is a deeper universality: all of it is music made by people in particular contexts. So there's that. But each of us will always remain in some particular context; none of us gets to be universal; none of us gets to see the God's-eye view from nowhere and everywhere. 

That used to bother me, particularly in a religious context: I wanted to study and evaluate every religious tradition, to really understand it as much as possible from the inside, sympathetically and critically, intellectually and emotionally.... I wanted to get myself to a place where I could figure out the universal truth about religion... in Plato's terms, to behold the sun itself! 

And when I finally really accepted that I just can't do that, that I will never be any more universal than the next guy... to the degree that I have accepted that... it is a great disappointment. It is tantamount, I think, and certainly analogous to accepting the fact that I am mortal, that I will die, that my consciousness such as it is will degenerate and then disappear forever and the universe will go on without me, with no more notice than it gives to the bursting of a bubble in the froth of a wave washing unseen onto an Antarctic shore. It is not an easy thing. Sure, it happens to everyone, but that is another way of saying that none of us will get that universal POV. 

So we're all stuck in a very particular set of times and places doing our own thing, to the best (or so) of our own abilities and knowledge; and everyone else here with us and everyone before us has been stuck in the same way. The particularity is where the fascination lies, it drives us to reach out for the other, to see what we've been missing so far. If we already had the universal, we'd be finished. No more opportunity, let alone need, for growth. 

Anyway, enough off-topic here.... Actually just saying that perhaps you and I are by our personalities more driven to explore the particularities and specificities than we are to indulge in notions (whether prosaic or fantastic) of universality.


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## ShropshireMoose (Sep 2, 2013)

Marty Grosz, the great jazz guitarist/vocalist and raconteur used to introduce a number in what sounded like a foreign language, then say, "that was esperanto, the universal language that nobody understands!"


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

science said:


> ...
> 
> But maybe I'm by nature a "splitter," not a "lumper." (I don't know about that. Just saying.) Perhaps like you, at least as interesting as the universalities to me are the differences. Who influenced whom (and how) - your example was Schutz, and it made me thing by analogy to the influence that English composers like Dunstable had on the Flemish composers during the Renaissance, and of course from there to their influence on the Italians; how the guitar developed in Spain in the first place and then how it found its way into the Mississippi Delta blues tradition; how the blues scale may have been created as a hybrid of the pentatonic scale in African music and the modes of Western music. And so on forever.
> 
> ...


Splitter and lumper are good ways to describe these two ways of thinking, or maybe two polar ends of a spectrum - the specific versus the universal.

I must say I have gravitated towards the specific for as long as I can remember. Even if I generalise, I tend to give specific examples of what I'm talking about. The examples, analogies, anecdotes all have their limitations of course. But its a way of avoiding bare faced generalisation, which I think is even more limited.

I agree with how you're saying that influence goes from one thing to another without much consistency or logic. One that I often think of, being a jazz fan, is how Adolphe Sax would not have dreamed of what would become of his instrument when he invented it in the late 19th century. Its use for military bands, or marching bands in street parades, was what he probably saw its use being limited to. But then classical composers took it on (Bizet the earliest I know of) and then of course jazz in the early twentieth century, all those great sax players. Modern classical composers too, not to speak of rock and so on later on.

So its another example of how the notion of purity in musical terms is hard to argue. Fusion or crossover may be recently coined terms, but in reality they've been happening in reality for ages, going way back.

There's also the issue of Eurocentrism. You know we call the likes of Debussy, Milhaud, Reich and so on innovators but is it like bringing coals to Newcastle. Other cultures had those things already, things like the pentatonic scales, polyrhythms, microtones. Its just that Western music works differently, it sets up rules and straightjackets, then along comes a so-called liberator to wipe away those rules. Then when he gets established, he's also ready to be wiped away with the next fad by that latest liberator. On it goes. Non-Western cultures - as long as the folk musics, now basically dead, of Western cultures - saw music as being tradition but a living tradition, one capable of both keeping continuity but also adapting and constantly renewing itself. Its a different concept entirely to the Western way of straightjacket-liberator-straightjacket.

Now though its a time of plurality more than anything else. In some ways I don't like it in terms of the increasing homogeneity. But of course, communication today is not as it was a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago. A lot has changed, so too music changes.

Its been said many times that jazz came about roughly the time that recordings where invented. So we have most of the history of jazz on record. It developed quickly, from trad to swing to bebop to free jazz. I'm giving a thumbnail sketch of course, but you get the drift. Communication and recording have made a huge different in how jazz - and things like rock - developed. Classical didn't have that for most of its history, it just had ink on paper, basically. If you wanted to get your music out there, you had to travel.

I also like how you talk to how music has different purposes. Yet another aspect of that specific or contextual view.



> Anyway, enough off-topic here.... Actually just saying that perhaps you and I are by our personalities more driven to explore the particularities and specificities than we are to indulge in notions (whether prosaic or fantastic) of universality.


Navel gazing and (pseudo?) intellectual answers aside, here is the facetious and smart alek answer to that.

Universal music, the label, is universal. Get a record deal on there and it leads to...

The sound of a cash register, which is universal (well, there aren't any old style cash registers now, but it sounds better than money being transferred into your electronic bank account), which means...

Musicians move to where the money is. What's the hot spot now? Is it the old centres of London or New York, or are places like Shanghai and Rio hotting up? As developing countries emerge as global powers, we might get musicians going to these places (haven't quite a few of the world's orchestras gone on visits to Asia for decades now, as places like China are opening up?). Like Handel moved to London to develop his career, will we see musos start to build bases in these newly emerging cities?

Time will tell, history is happening as we speak. So our era is defining what is universal. Maybe in the future Mandarin will be a universal language like English. It probably isn't that far from reality?


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

science said:


> Do all works of art do this, or only some? If only some, how can I know which music (or other works of art) do this? Is this the kind of thing that the initiated just know because of their great transcendental mystical insight, or is it the kind of thing that can actually be known in a real way by anyone who investigates it (with the right tools, of course)?
> 
> Edit: Sorry, I didn't read thoughtfully enough before I posed that series of questions. You say, "something outside the empirical world" and frankly I don't know of any reason - philosophical, artistic, or otherwise - to think there is any such something. I don't find plausible the idea that our experiences of some art or nature or facts of life or whatever are just so sublime that there must be a supernatural world. Our feeling in those experiences, ecstatic as may be, show us what can happen when an organism of our sort interacts with a world of our sort, and Ockham's razor requires a full stop at that point. Now you can say, "My dear interlocutor, your experiences simply aren't as profound as mine; were they, you too would believe in the supernatural." But that is more than you know about your experiences or mine. Your belief (if you were to say that) about the relative depths or strengths of our experiences tells us something about you, not actually about the relative depths or strengths of our experiences. It is more likely that, as you and I are the same type of organism, the range of our emotional experiences are roughly equivalent, and that this hierarchy of insight is posited for simple convenience, in order to justify a belief for which there is no better argument. To be specific, even if you enjoy, say, music more than I do, I doubt you enjoy mathematics or literature more. I have known sublimity. It may be metaphorically "divine," "magic," and so on, but actual evidence of such a world it is not.
> 
> ...


Well, I agree that I wasn't really doing Plato justice. Plato's allegory, for him, was distinguishing between abstract ideas and the world of sensory experience. But I think it expresses a fundamental insight about our experience of reality being different from reality in itself, or reality as such.

I wasn't intending to suggest the existence of a supernatural world, or to change anyone's beliefs. And I wasn't positing a theory that some people have some innate ability to get a more profound experience out of art than others. Trying to put it as simply as I can, I was trying to suggest that someone talking about universality in art could be making an argument about it's ability to appeal to a large number up people across a broad spectrum, that it all contains a commonality and can "speak for everyone" as Sid put it. But they could also be arguing something altogether different, that art gives expression to truths about existence in a language that our intellects are unable to comprehend, let alone translate into concepts or words.

I don't think there are any blanket statements that you can make about music. And I don't think there is anything exclusive about one genre of music, or in one civilization's music to another. I'm talking about the aesthetic experience, in being absorbed in a work of art and losing ourselves in contemplation, of being taken us outside ourselves. I think most people have aesthetic experiences, and this doesn't necessarily even have to come from a work of art, it can come from an observation of a sunset or quite possibly anything. When someone is speaking of the universal in art, they might be speaking of the ability of great artists and works of art are able to show us the universal behind the particular, or the universal through the particular.

I'm not trying to be mystical or even offer my personal beliefs. Do I believe that there are convincing conclusions that can be reached using rational argument that it is almost certain that there is a part of total reality that we have no way of understanding? Yes. And maybe our experience of art, the aesthetic experience, is communicating something about that reality. But that's neither here nor there as far as this topic is concerned. I was simply trying to answer the question you asked in your initial post, and clarify what someone might mean by "universal".


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## helpmeplslol (Feb 1, 2014)

In my humble and freshly formulated opinion:
A work of art is 'universal' when it can be appreciated regardless of culture.
Alternatively, a work of art is 'universal' when any hypothetical alien culture would be able to appreciate its beauty. The degree to which these hypothetical aliens could be allowed to vary, then, is the degree to which the work is universal.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

science said:


> Ok, I have a few questions.
> 
> 1. What about people who don't like classical music? There are two cases you need to explain: both people in western cultures and also people in cultures where the European tradition hasn't been important. Given that a lot of people don't like it and a lot of other people haven't heard much of it, how is it universal?


You're being too specific, as well as looking at exceptions, rather than commonalities. I'm sure that if you keep looking for exceptions, you will no doubt find them. The purpose of this thread seems to be to dispell the idea of universality, perhaps to point out that we, as classical music listeners, are exclusionary, or have specialized taste. I do not wish to be characterized in that way, nor do I wish to characterize other people from other cultures in that way. I like all kinds of music, from India, Morrocco, Persia, china, Japan, Korea, etc.

Besides that, I'm really not excited about discussing why people do not like certain music; I'd rather enthuse about what we like, and can share: universal characteristics of music.



science said:


> 2. As you answer that, keep in mind that I want to know what kind of music _isn't_ universal. This is an important point. If saying that "classical music is universal" doesn't contain any meaning beyond "music is universal," then we need to ask ourselves why we even put the modifier "classical" in there in the first place.


No _*genre *_of music is universal; we classify them in order to signal there unique qualities.

The *elements *of music *are* universal. Rhythm, melody, timbre, singing. That seems obvious. What are you trying to accomplish with this?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Just adding this to the mix, anecdote quoted verbatim in green from a book I've got on Gershwin (source below). Its about Gershwin's visit it Europe in 1928, which included Vienna. I'm with Berg on this, _music is music_, however it relates to this thread? I must say though that I'm fine with other viewpoints on this topic, or any topic that's controversial on this forum. What I want is just to say what I think, and others have the same right and validity to do it. That's it, I'd rather diversity of opinions than a bland uniformity.

George and Berg became fast friends. Josefa Rosanka was at that time engaged to Rudolf Kolisch, who invited the two composers to his apartment and, with some colleagues, played a Berg string quartet which fascinated George. Then, it was George's turn. He had a rare moment of shyness. After the intellectual rigour of the Serialist composer, he was reluctant to play show tunes for him but Berg put him at his ease. 'Mr Gershwin,' he said quietly, 'music is music.' George played and Berg loved it.

- Ruth Leon, _Gershwin_, Haus Publishing, London, 2004 (pp. 89-90).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SilenceIsGolden said:


> When someone is speaking of the universal in art, they might be speaking of the ability of great artists and works of art are able to show us the universal behind the particular, or the universal through the particular.


I think you have pointed in that sentence to the only sense in which the term "universal" can apply to a specific work or style of art, including of course music. Art, as such, is certainly universal, in that humans in all times and places have created and/or appreciated it. But it's obvious that no individual work or style can be appreciated by everyone. On the other hand, a work of art may express, for someone able to appreciate it, perceptions, feelings, and ideas common to all humans, including those who do not share that appreciation. The style of the work may therefore not be "universal," yet the meanings it embodies may be. If we want to say that a work of art is "universal," this is the distinction that allows us to say it.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I think you have pointed in that sentence to the only sense in which the term "universal" can apply to a specific work or style of art, including of course music. Art, as such, is certainly universal, in that humans in all times and places have created and/or appreciated it. But it's obvious that no individual work or style can be appreciated by everyone. On the other hand, a work of art may express, for someone able to appreciate it, perceptions, feelings, and ideas common to all humans, including those who do not share that appreciation. The style of the work may therefore not be "universal," yet the meanings it embodies may be. If we want to say that a work of art is "universal," this is the distinction that allows us to say it.


And, as a postscript to that: taste by definiton is always a rarefied and minority view.

What's that thing Nietzsche says in the _Gay Science_? Or is it _Beyond Good and Evil_? . . . I can't remember. Anyway, its something to the effect that madness is rare in individuals, but the norm in groups, parties, and nations._ Mutatatis mutandis _for bad taste.


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