# Does classical music have intrinsic value?



## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

I've been listening to Chopin's nocturnes of late and they are rather sublime and almost not of this world. What was Chopin thinking of when he wrote them? I tend to see that music is discovered rather then composed. in the year 1500 all the music of the next 500 was there to be written down only it took certain people to discover it. The music has always been there, go back to the start of the Universe it was there therefore it is intrinsic, I think. Music is ethereal not biological, we can be broken down to atoms and molecules, music can't. It obviously needs a medium to pass through for us to appreciate it and that would be a composer, pen and paper, and musical instruments. So come on, Beethoven's 33rd piano sonata is out there somewhere!


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Perhaps it's not true just for music but for everything, just in different sense. Take a bicycle for example. It had its rather crazy evolution in early days until it settled down into its modern shape, and afterwards it remained pretty much always the same, just small cosmetic and technical changes. So perhaps, we could get Platonic, and argue that there always existed an idea of bicycle in its perfect shape, it just waited to be discovered.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

ZJovicic said:


> Perhaps it's not true just for music but for everything, just in different sense. Take a bicycle for example. It had its rather crazy evolution in early days until it settled down into its modern shape, and afterwards it remained pretty much always the same, just small cosmetic and technical changes. So perhaps, we could get Platonic, and argue that there always existed an idea of bicycle in its perfect shape, it just waited to be discovered.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I disagree! This idea always sounded like a hustle, to get out of paying royalties. I don't know where ideas reside, but I think Beethoven's music resided in him, and Bob Dylan's songs reside in him, and neither would stumble onto the work of the other. The author is the source of their own work, even when they don't know that happens...


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

beetzart said:


> Music is ethereal not biological, we can be broken down to atoms and molecules, music can't.


If you're going to break people down into atoms, why can't music be broken down into sound waves distributed over time?


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

platonist delusion


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I've actually had an argument with a family member over the implications of this very topic, where they were arguing in favour of illegal downloads, since there's no such thing as intellectual property - because "ideas" belong to nobody, and exist outside time, and are merely discovered, to no real credit for the author. Certainly not credit to the extent that we might say they own their own ideas, books, songs, etc...


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

beetzart said:


> I've been listening to Chopin's nocturnes of late and they are rather sublime and almost not of this world. What was Chopin thinking of when he wrote them? I tend to see that music is discovered rather then composed. in the year 1500 all the music of the next 500 was there to be written down only it took certain people to discover it. The music has always been there, go back to the start of the Universe it was there therefore it is intrinsic, I think. Music is ethereal not biological, we can be broken down to atoms and molecules, music can't. It obviously needs a medium to pass through for us to appreciate it and that would be a composer, pen and paper, and musical instruments. So come on, Beethoven's 33rd piano sonata is out there somewhere!


Fascinating topic. Mozart and Stravinsky both believed that their music came from God, and I remember reading in the liner notes to my first LP recording of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" where the composers stated, "I am the vessel through which 'Rite' passed."


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

Nereffid said:


> If you're going to break people down into atoms, why can't music be broken down into sound waves distributed over time?


I'm suggesting the idea of pieces of music exist since the big bang. Every possible permutation exists and it is ethereal. Yes the medium through which music it is played can be broken down but the intrinsic value of its existence can't be. Masters like Beethoven and JS Bach must have had very powerful synesthesia type brains to be able to spot the musical patterns they were interpreting. They could just see and hear the music in their head (clearer for some than others) the patterns of the notes, the beautiful melodies (why can melodies be beautiful?) the keys on a piano, the orchestra and conductor all appearing in their mind's eye. People who were one in a hundred million like Beethoven were really good antennas for the masterpieces they snatched from a different plane.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

All music seems to me to be informed by the aesthetic, personality and knowledge of the composer. There maybe other factors too, including their exposure to previous great ideas. Beethoven famously used the remote key of D in the second movement of his f-minor string quartet, Op. 95.

It just so happens that such a daring move was part of Beethoven's toolkit, and so why look any further for the source of the idea, and the music?


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

beetzart said:


> I'm suggesting the idea of pieces of music exist since the big bang. Every possible permutation exists and it is ethereal. Yes the medium through which music it is played can be broken down but the intrinsic value of its existence can't be. Masters like Beethoven and JS Bach must have had very powerful synesthesia type brains to be able to spot the musical patterns they were interpreting. They could just see and hear the music in their head (clearer for some than others) the patterns of the notes, the beautiful melodies (why can melodies be beautiful?) the keys on a piano, the orchestra and conductor all appearing in their mind's eye. People who were one in a hundred million like Beethoven were really good antennas for the masterpieces they snatched from a different plane.


While the shape, sound and rhythms of music from culture to culture, I've often wondered how music engages the mind, as well as, the body. 10,000 years ago or even a million years ago, when our ancestors might have started banging sticks and rocks together to produce interesting patterns of sound; when they first started to move their bodies to these sounds and had created dance; was the process mental, physical or both?

While we know that the brain works to understand and recognizes patterns of sound; does the natural rhythm of the body; heart-beat, blood pressure and the process of breathing, also respond to organized patterns of sound? Does the earth and the universe have a rhythm of it's own that is part and parcel of the musical experience?


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

beetzart said:


> I've been listening to Chopin's nocturnes of late and they are rather sublime and almost not of this world. What was Chopin thinking of when he wrote them? I tend to see that music is discovered rather then composed. in the year 1500 all the music of the next 500 was there to be written down only it took certain people to discover it. The music has always been there, go back to the start of the Universe it was there therefore it is intrinsic, I think. Music is ethereal not biological, we can be broken down to atoms and molecules, music can't. It obviously needs a medium to pass through for us to appreciate it and that would be a composer, pen and paper, and musical instruments. So come on, Beethoven's 33rd piano sonata is out there somewhere!


the thing about that philosophy is that it takes away from the genius that created all that fine music.

just like all determinist philosophies, it diminishes us poor humans. Also, why did we poor human s discover this music in the rational order that harmony developed? We could have discovered Wagner in the 13th century and been burned at the stake as witches if music existed in its own right and we just discovered it.

its a very romantic idea, but no, music is composed and the best of it was actually composed by exceptional men of their day.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Boston Charlie said:


> While we know that the brain works to understand and recognizes patterns of sound; does the natural rhythm of the body; heart-beat, blood pressure and the process of breathing, also respond to organized patterns of sound? Does the earth and the universe have a rhythm of it's own that is part and parcel of the musical experience?


I've heard that duple meter is so popular because of our heart beat

and definitely tempo as related to our heart beat is important in how we perceive the music being fast or slow

and the rhythms of the earth and universe are going to be rather long for you to use, but the rhythm of day to night, the rhythm of the seasons....these things we can perceive

if you look very long, from the winter to the fall, you will see that trees dance


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

> Every possible permutation exists and it is ethereal.


By that logic, everything has intrinsic value, not just classical music, but also the stupidest and kitchiest popular hits. If all permutations exist (mathematically speaking), then not only good ones exist, but also the bad ones.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Nate Miller said:


> the thing about that philosophy is that it takes away from the genius that created all that fine music.
> 
> just like all determinist philosophies, it diminishes us poor humans.


Exactly. It credits anything but the poor sod who actually laboured and was inspired to write the dang thing...


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

"whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure"

I'm with Shakey here, you need an actor to act!


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

We surely don't want to invoke nihilism here? Maybe it is bad for the composer that they are merely of instrumental value but we still have the music, and the music is good.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

beetzart said:


> I tend to see that music is discovered rather then composed.


I think you're confusing music with sound. All sound processes are possibilities waiting to be actualised. But whether a sound process is music or not depends on the values of the society which applies the concept.

Unlike you I think that sounds become music when a someone convinces us that it's worthy of the concept, normally by suggesting that it's sufficiently similar to other sounds which have been agreed to be music. So music isn't there waiting to be found, it's a social creation.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Kieran said:


> Exactly. It credits anything but the poor sod who actually laboured and was inspired to write the dang thing...


it also promotes the idea that we are all equally talented, but don't have equal opportunity, so if you don't make it, it wasn't because you suck, but because "the system" was keeping you down.

The truth is that people all have different talents and in different amounts, and in the arts some people with talent have better connections, and so they get the few opportunities that there are.

like the song says, "its nice work if you can get it"


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

Perhaps the music is being harvested by a higher power in a different dimension/universe to be used as Elevator music.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

beetzart said:


> We surely don't want to invoke nihilism here? Maybe it is bad for the composer that they are merely of instrumental value but we still have the music, and the music is good.


sure we do

you want to strip us of our humanity, so let's get right to the rat killing


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

beetzart said:


> Perhaps the music is being harvested by a higher power in a different dimension/universe to be used as Elevator music.


that's why God created the Bossa Nova


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

beetzart said:


> I tend to see that music is discovered rather then composed.


Composition students should then be supplied with a giant telescope and a map of the stars, not musical instruments... :lol:


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The moneys with typewriters and infinite time coming up with the works of Shakespeare come to mind. But the purpose of that example is surely to illustrate the nature of infinity rather than to suggest that Shakepeare's works were inevitable. I don't think art is like science in this. Scientists work to discover the true nature of reality. But artists surely do not do this. They might interpret reality or demonstrate certain aspects of it but this is different from discovering the reality. And, anyway, they develop and use a language that is unique to them. The only was I can begin to think of art as discovery or something that was already there is as an example of infinity. Great artists are at least massive shortcuts in the rolling out of infinite time. Beethoven produced all that wonderful music in the 19th century. It would have taken forever for it just to be discovered.

The other side of this is what about all the other early Romantic musics that could have been discovered at the same time as Beethoven but weren't? That music must be lost forever because art progresses to new forms and languages. No early Romantic music of any great value could be composed (or discovered in the ether) now.


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

Would it be fair to say that most composers had some form of synesthesia in that they can see and hear their music in their mind? They could see the patterns and the logic of sonata form. It came easier to some then it did others. The first person to say that 2+2 = 4 didn't invent that sum, it had always been there regardless of whether a human wrote it down. The permutations for music was there when the dinosaurs ruled the earth but there was no medium with which to transfer it to sounds and music.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Beetzart, where do you think these ideas exist? And who created them?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

beetzart said:


> I've been listening to Chopin's nocturnes of late and they are rather sublime and almost not of this world. What was Chopin thinking of when he wrote them? I tend to see that music is discovered rather then composed. in the year 1500 all the music of the next 500 was there to be written down only it took certain people to discover it. The music has always been there, go back to the start of the Universe it was there therefore it is intrinsic, I think. Music is ethereal not biological, we can be broken down to atoms and molecules, music can't. It obviously needs a medium to pass through for us to appreciate it and that would be a composer, pen and paper, and musical instruments. So come on, Beethoven's 33rd piano sonata is out there somewhere!


I live in the mountains on the edge of miles of uncharted wilderness. Using map, compass, brains, muscle and instinct, I've spent hours of effort finding the best ways to get from one place to another, including places almost no one visits. There are hidden waterfalls, shadowy glens and lonely vistas far from the nearest road linked only by the mental maps in my head, and those of a few others, made over years of exploration. A few of my favorites now have visible trails to them just because I've traveled the routes so many times, routes almost no one cared enough about to walk into existence. They wouldn't exist had we not chosen a particular lifestyle of days spent alone in exhausting effort. I'm sure to a few weekend visitors who happen upon them, these trails look like products of nature: How else could this path have found the only passable chimney in that line of cliffs? Or the perfect way to cross that ravine with minimal effort? Or the only dry route across that fen? Of course this is where the trail is. How could it be anywhere else? The intrinsic contours of nature demand it!

Composers, the best ones anyway, are explorers. Only those who haven't tried to find and carve new routes through musical space and who haven't spent years learning the principles of navigation it requires could imagine their works were out there waiting to be found. If Beethoven's 33rd sonata is out there, only he knew where it was and the map to it went to the grave with him. Intrinsic my @$$!


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

You could say that the brains of the great composers did something very special that mere mortals couldn't. Maybe Beethoven composed the Eroica because of a single calcium atoms wave function collapsing in a certain way or his liver produces this rare enzyme that passes the blood brain barrier or something. I'm not a doctor, obviously, but there must have been something special going on in JS Bach's head when he composed one cantata a week that are all masterpieces. Yet the bloke sweeping the floor under the pulpit has no musical ability whatsoever. 

We have the music; it has been composed, and it's f**king awesome. Surely we agree on that?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The idea that "Louie Louie" always existed out there and just needed someone to capture it and perform it scares me to death.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

beetzart said:


> You could say that the brains of the great composers did something very special that mere mortals couldn't. Maybe Beethoven composed the Eroica because of a single calcium atoms wave function collapsing in a certain way or his liver produces this rare enzyme that passes the blood brain barrier or something. I'm not a doctor, obviously, but there must have been something special going on in JS Bach's head when he composed one cantata a week that are all masterpieces. Yet the bloke sweeping the floor under the pulpit has no musical ability whatsoever.
> 
> We have the music; it has been composed, and it's f**king awesome. Surely we agree on that?


The bloke sweeping the floor may have great musical talent. Wasn't Son House rediscovered in the sixties, literally working sweeping the floor somewhere? Many great talents have been neglected, but they have great talent, nonetheless. Beethoven had a lot going for him, musically, temperamentally, and he studied under haydn, met great composers, understood great ideas, and was able to shape things according to his will.

F**king awesome indeed - which is why we celebrate the composer, as well as the music...


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

MarkW said:


> The idea that "Louie Louie" always existed out there and just needed someone to capture it and perform it scares me to death.


it took us a long time to develop the precursors like grain alchohol and Chevy convertibles, but once those pieces were in place....


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

To answer the question, yes -- music has intrinsic value. It teaches problem-solving skills in ways more tangible exercises do not. This is probably more true for people that practice music as opposed to simply listening but it helps either way. This was the emphatic point from the former "Mozart makes you smart" arguments that went on a few years ago.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Where's Rosemary Brown when you need her?? She'd channel all that unwritten music for us.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Jacck nailed this on page one: Platonist delusion.

Have a look at his dialogue (Plato's, not Jacck's ): _Meno_; it's all there in glorious, delusional technicolor.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Nereffid said:


> If you're going to break people down into atoms, why can't music be broken down into sound waves distributed over time?


Atoms probably aren't really matter as such but more something like frequencies or waves or quantum string kind of things or something. If you look at it that way matter is a lot like music, actually everything is music......everything is one big giant cloud of frequencies. And time is just another weird thing that we don't really understand.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> By that logic, everything has intrinsic value, not just classical music, but also the stupidest and kitchiest popular hits. If all permutations exist (mathematically speaking), then not only good ones exist, but also the bad ones.


(slightly off-topic)

And if all permutations exist, is there a permutation out there, if converted to music, that makes such an emotional impact that you for example instantly drop dead when you hear it (or cure your back-pain)


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

This was sort of touched upon on one of the atonal threads. Harmonic potential and possibilities werw always there, but not music (Harmony and Melody and rhythm) itself. Music is carving out a path in time, blocking other possible sounds, or bringing into being others. If music always existed, there was nobody that could hear it as such. There are laws of physics that always existed and their relationships and some elements, but the houses (different sizes and shapes) weren't built yet. So is it with music.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Razumovskymas said:


> Atoms probably aren't really matter as such but more something like frequencies or waves or quantum string kind of things or something. If you look at it that way matter is a lot like music, actually everything is music......everything is one big giant cloud of frequencies. And time is just another weird thing that we don't really understand.


this is what I've said for years. It is like a clue left for us by our Creator to the working of the universe. This is why I think music is so compelling and universal to all humanity.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Kieran said:


> I've actually had an argument with a family member over the implications of this very topic, where they were arguing in favour of illegal downloads, since there's no such thing as intellectual property - because "ideas" belong to nobody, and exist outside time, and are merely discovered, to no real credit for the author. Certainly not credit to the extent that we might say they own their own ideas, books, songs, etc...


I have a friend who is like that. She grabs content from movies and television and such, compiles and posts snippets with her own audio to youtube. She sees nothing wrong with doing that. But when someone copped her last posted video, in total, and messed with it, changing some of the music and adding funny captions, and reposted it, she was livid. How dare someone take her work product without crediting her or paying her.

It all depends, are you the ox or are you the gored.


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

I'll try another analogy. Instead of composing music you are looking for coal. You have a good idea where the richest seam is and how to get there. When ,or if, you finally do you will be able dig the coal out and bring it to the surface to fuel power stations. But that coal has been there a long time, a very long time and just waiting to be dug up and burnt. The miner didn't magic the coal up up, it existed, waiting to be ground out. Sorry, that was the best I could muster!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Music is an artistic creation; a product of physical reality and human consciousness. You could better liken the clang of the miner's pick and the products of coal: a roaring hearth fire, electricity, as the creations analogous to music.

The stuff in the ground is nothing without the application of human ingenuity, or in terms of music, artistic insight and skill.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

beetzart said:


> I'll try another analogy. Instead of composing music you are looking for coal. You have a good idea where the richest seam is and how to get there. When ,or if, you finally do you will be able dig the coal out and bring it to the surface to fuel power stations. But that coal has been there a long time, a very long time and just waiting to be dug up and burnt. The miner didn't magic the coal up up, it existed, waiting to be ground out. Sorry, that was the best I could muster!


so you mean there's only so much music and then we RUN OUT????


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

The first four notes of Beethoven's fifth have always been there as a possibility like numbers are there in an abstract manner, it just took a mind like Beethoven's to discover them; then look what he did with those four notes. The coal analogy wasn't the best but coal has been in the ground for millions of years. I suppose there could be a finite number of permutations in music, whether it sounds pleasant or not. I think all the best ones have been taken though, thanks, Johann.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

you know, you are getting closer to how I see the art of music with that one...

The fundamental building blocks....the overtone series is vibrating systems, the intervals themselves... our scales and tuning system is a human invention, but the mathematical relationships that make the intervals comes from nature

the part of music that you are missing out on in your analogies is the role convention plays in musical meaning

just like it is the convention of the English language that allows you to associate meaning with the words I type, it is musical conventions like the 12 tone equally tempered scale and tertian harmony that allow the association of meaning in music.

the dilemma in modern music is how to associate meaning without relying on the convention of traditional harmony

so the role of convention in the association of meaning is what makes music a human creation, and not an existential object waiting to be discovered


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

The good ones fit the template, but the bad ones don’t.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Man creates nothing… He can only rearrange what Nature provides.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Value is not an attribute inherent in anything. It is something assigned by humans, differing from time to time and place to place and rarely if ever uniform in either. Absent humans, value does not exist in nature, much less "intrinsic" value.


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## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Value is not an attribute inherent in anything. It is something assigned by humans, differing from time to time and place to place and rarely if ever uniform in either. Absent humans, value does not exist in nature, much less "intrinsic" value.


In Ken's very humble opinion. All I am going to say is that I am in complete disagreement with Ken (and others), my detailed beliefs don't belong on this forum, and for once I am REALLY happy that I am getting a lot of syntax errors tonight.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

"Does classical music have intrinsic value?"

I like to think of it as the Brussels sprouts of the musical food chain. Not everyone likes it, even if it's good for you, like the baked potato of pop.


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## Guest (Apr 20, 2018)

beetzart said:


> I've been listening to Chopin's nocturnes of late and they are rather sublime and almost not of this world.


That "almost" is quite important. They _are _of this world, and he wrote them. Consciously or subconsciously, he may have drawn on previously composed material composed by another human, but I'm content with the idea that they're his, not someone...or something else's



beetzart said:


> I tend to see that music is discovered rather then composed.


Well, that's fine if _you _want to think of it that way, but that's just you (and some other people who think like you) - but as is evident from the answers you're getting here, some tend to see that music is composed rather than discovered.



beetzart said:


> The music has always been there, go back to the start of the Universe it was there therefore it is intrinsic, I think.


Did we agree on a meaning of 'intrinsic'? To begin with, it's an adjective, so what is it that is 'intrinsic'? I don't think it makes sense to say "music is intrinsic".

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/intrinsic



beetzart said:


> Music is ethereal not biological


There have been discussions here before about the definition of "music" - is it the score? Is it the performed work? Must it be "heard" by someone other than the composer to become a reality? But I don't think any of those debates can lead to the conclusion that music is _really _'ethereal'.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ethereal



beetzart said:


> It obviously needs a medium to pass through for us to appreciate it


And finally...not 'obviously'.

It's fine to think about music in this way if you like, and even the least spiritual of us might ask the question from time to time, "surely there's something else, something more than this earthly life with all its (equally incomprehensible) plastic pollution and ugly violence?" But there is no inevitability or objectivity about the answers we can create.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Boston Charlie said:


> ...and I remember reading in the liner notes to my first LP recording of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" where the composers stated, "I am the vessel through which 'Rite' passed."


Makes me wonder.

"Didn't you just pass a gas station?"
"No, I'm sure I would have felt it."


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

MacLeod said:


> That "almost" is quite important. They _are _of this world, and he wrote them. Consciously or subconsciously, he may have drawn on previously composed material composed by another human, but I'm content with the idea that they're his, not someone...or something else's
> 
> Well, that's fine if _you _want to think of it that way, but that's just you (and some other people who think like you) - but as is evident from the answers you're getting here, some tend to see that music is composed rather than discovered.
> 
> ...


Thank you for your effort. At present I can't make a measured response to you argument. You may well be correct, and if so, well done.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Nate Miller said:


> so you mean there's only so much music and then we RUN OUT????


No, he means Trump is gonna bring it back! 

(sorry... couldn't resist...)


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

beetzart said:


> Every possible permutation exists and it is ethereal.


Among the more distressing implications of this is the thought that there is a symphony floating somewhere in space with the exact content of Beethoven's Fifth, but with even more V - I cadences at the end. *shudder*


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

Eschbeg said:


> Among the more distressing implications of this is the thought that there is a symphony floating somewhere in space with the exact content of Beethoven's Fifth, but with even more V - I cadences at the end. *shudder*


So by that logic there is a Beethoven's Fifth that is longer then the time since the Big Bang occurred. How could that be so? Like the paradox of a god creating a rock that is bigger then it can lift and carry even if the god is all powerful. If everything is possible then the Universe or Multiverse (I-IV) extends far beyond what not just what we can imagine, it is beyond what we could imagine. That is not my quote but based on one of a scientist called JBS Haldene. Could it be argued that the human brain has limits like any machine does? Could a more intelligent species of primate evolve one day, going even further then what even the most intelligent humans could muster?


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

It just occurred to me that the infinite permutations also imply that an Eroica Symphony exists in which that doofus French horn player _doesn't_ come in four measures early!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

There is a place where Beethoven wrote his 5th Symphony in rap and gave the first performance bedecked in gold chains. Not in our immediate neighborhood, fortunately.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

This is exactly the theme of that wonderful story by Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, which contains a copy of every book ever printed, in every possible langues, and not only that but every book possible, every possible combination of every book. Classics with different endings, every possible ending. In fact there are books with total gibberish. Most of them probably. Every combination of letters possible. The true stories of the lives of obscure people, the false stories of obscure people, the stories of people that never were. Infinite in every direction. And these librarian priests, who catalog and archive the collection.

What a great story. Really worth reading. Its about two cups of coffee long, or one Savinelli Hercules 320EX pipe of Erinmore Flake.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

beetzart said:


> I'll try another analogy. Instead of composing music you are looking for coal. You have a good idea where the richest seam is and how to get there. When ,or if, you finally do you will be able dig the coal out and bring it to the surface to fuel power stations. But that coal has been there a long time, a very long time and just waiting to be dug up and burnt. The miner didn't magic the coal up up, it existed, waiting to be ground out. Sorry, that was the best I could muster!


So do artists create or discover. Is the "rightness" and and "inevitableness" of the composition perhaps just a figment of our perspective. The "search" for "right" answers. The "rightness" of the answers is only obvious long after the fact. In the moment life and art have always been as uncertain, confusing, and subject to marketing and PR, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as it feels right now.

I have a book of original criticisms of the classical music "war horses", it is eye opening how Beethoven's Fifth, say, or his Ninth, was first perceived.

Is "rightness" merely correspondence with the strongly held norms of today? Norms formed by and influenced by previous norms.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Does anything have intrinsic value?

If one can answer that, all the other questions are real easy.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

MarkW said:


> The idea that "Louie Louie" always existed out there and just needed someone to capture it and perform it scares me to death.


What should scare you even more is the fact that the writers of said work were investigated. Does that also mean the investigators were out there just waiting to hear "subversion?"


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I don't believe music was always there. But, when you think about how it all came to be (according to science), about all the things that had to happen _before_ there was music, it's mind-bogglingly stupendous. Everything else has to be miraculously realized before there's a chance for music to come into existence. 
Music may happen, when against all odds, a tiny spot in the endless cold universe has finally achieved the level of order, stability and safety that is required for life and eventually advanced, intelligent life. Only when such life is about more than just survival, when it finds the peace and means to express itself, then there can be music. From this perspective, music really is the ultimate manifestation of the universe.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I used to have thoughts similar to this, that music exists in nature waiting to be discovered. If you think about it, there is math in music, and perhaps masterpieces find musical formulas of nature.

That's one way I have thought about it. I think of Simon and Garfunkel's version of Scarborough Fair and think it sounds like a mathematical equation!

In terms of lyrics, there is meter and rhyme to follow.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I used to have thoughts similar to this, that music exists in nature waiting to be discovered. If you think about it, there is math in music, and perhaps masterpieces find musical formulas of nature.
> .


There is along standing contentious argument as to whether mathematics is invented or discovered. The feeling is an even more compelling that mathematical structures and concepts are discovered, due to them seeming to emerge from the logic of the situation. Many fine minds have wrestled with this. But then again, since when do mathematicians have feelings?


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

I love this website. Any discussion can evolve into every discussion. Maybe we ar we all wannabee philosophers. Or maybe we are all lonely, and yearn for good chat.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

JeffD said:


> There is along standing contentious argument as to whether mathematics is invented or discovered. The feeling is an even more compelling that mathematical structures and concepts are discovered, due to them seeming to emerge from the logic of the situation. Many fine minds have wrestled with this. But then again, since when do mathematicians have feelings?


I've heard of that debate before...


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## laurie (Jan 12, 2017)

This is what Jean Sibelius thought about it all ...

“Music is, for me, like a beautiful mosaic which God has put together. He takes all the pieces in his hand, throws them into the world, and we have to recreate the picture from the pieces.”


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I used to have thoughts similar to this, that music exists in nature waiting to be discovered. If you think about it, there is math in music, and perhaps masterpieces find musical formulas of nature.
> 
> That's one way I have thought about it. I think of Simon and Garfunkel's version of Scarborough Fair and think it sounds like a mathematical equation!
> 
> In terms of lyrics, there is meter and rhyme to follow.


Well, that's a 400 year old folk song, so with S&G we find literal agreement with the OP regarding music that pre-exists the date it was presumably authored ("authored", according to them, that is).


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## malc (Apr 19, 2018)

Maybe the idea of developing more involved forms than folk music , came when sitting around the camp fire and singing an endless song of exploits , a warrior accidentally burnt his toe and started howling , and so impressing the group , the chorus was born?


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## malc (Apr 19, 2018)

Maths and music is only when mathematically minded people get involved ? Obviously the "string theory" was invented by a cellist fed up with trumpets.Xenakis and Stockhausen liked their numbers too.


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

As a materialist I struggle to understand abstract concepts of this nature that don't exist but are still there, like permutations and possibilities. The winning lottery numbers, are calculable, and exist as a permutation before they are drawn, the combination is still an option that exists in the abstract. But with a deterministic world only one combination has always existed for a particular draw based on physical laws of motion and causality. If you have a huge playlist on shuffle it is almost impossible to predict the next song but your device has already determined what order the music will play. But all possible orders exist in a non-physical form at the same time. I suppose your device has some complicated algorithm by which is decides on for shuffle.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

beetzart said:


> But with a deterministic world ... .


It depends on what flavor of determinism you think the world has. Stochastic process do exist. Einstein said God does not play dice with the universe, but nevertheless dice exist in the universe. Not everything can be determined, as Heisenberg pointed out. Many people believe in free will, and I have read many models of consciousness and the "self" where free will is not ruled out by the biomechanical-chemical-materialist basis of the brain's operation.

I have to agree however. Probability and statistics is one area of mathematics where my pretty developed intuition fails me regularly.


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

I read that in circa 1.0 x 10^-30 seconds after the big bang there was no determinism because every particle was utterly random. So from that perspective determinism didn't start at the big bang but when particles started to obey the laws of physics we have today. So at that point did all the possible pieces of music exist in the abstract. Swedish physicist Max Tegmark is a champion of the Multiverse Hypothesis suggested that the known universe is not big enough to support another planet that contains intelligent life. He bases this on statistics and the probability of intelligent occurring elsewhere. But what if another intelligent species managed to compose Beethoven's fifth note perfect to our Ludwig? If the Multiverse Hypothesis is correct then all possibilities exist in every form imaginable, and beyond imaginable. Whether any alien life could compose/discover music better then we have I can't wait to hear it. I'm thinking of Saint Saens' Organ symphony and I wonder how it wold be recieved by ET. Subjectively, I regard the Organ Symphony as one of the greatest every written, on par with Beethoven's 9th and probably a tad better than Brahms' symphonies.


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## Guest (Apr 21, 2018)

beetzart said:


> I've been listening to Chopin's nocturnes of late and they are rather sublime and almost not of this world. What was Chopin thinking of when he wrote them? I tend to see that music is discovered rather then composed. in the year 1500 all the music of the next 500 was there to be written down only it took certain people to discover it. The music has always been there, go back to the start of the Universe it was there therefore it is intrinsic, I think. Music is ethereal not biological, we can be broken down to atoms and molecules, music can't. It obviously needs a medium to pass through for us to appreciate it and that would be a composer, pen and paper, and musical instruments. So come on, Beethoven's 33rd piano sonata is out there somewhere!


I don't see how any of this implies that great composers are any less great than they are. I'm surprised that that was the angle of debate chosen to refute the OP. It certainly doesn't have any implication for copyright. A particular composer discovers a piece of music by arranging existing sounds in a particular way. He has done it, not anyone else and that is why the great composers are remarkable. If I have understood the OP properly (it seems a bit confused), he is just saying what is obvious. Using the word 'discover' instead of 'compose' is merely a play with words which has no substance.

Beethoven's 33rd sonata is only out there somewhere if he wrote it and it is lost.


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