# Stylistic diversity



## Guest

It's a nice thing. Everybody likes it. Nobody wants to argue against it. 

In practice, however, it has come up recently most frequently to defend the practice of only one kind of music, and the diversity consists almost entirely of styles from the past, often a quite distant past.

Even more oddly, if anyone wants to suggest that imitating the stylistic mannerisms of the past is maybe not as valid as other ways of going about the creating of art, that person is instantly accused of being against diversity.

Hmmm. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but it does seem to me that one thing is less diverse than many things.


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## norman bates

In fact I can't believe that after a century there are all those neo-atonalists and neo-noisers.
If it's not clear, what I'm saying is that your notion of old and new to me seems very simplistic.


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## binkley

I don't know where artists "imitating the stylistic mannerisms of the past" ends, and paying hommage to the giants upon whose shoulders they stand begins. Maybe it would help to name names.

In my opinion this: 




and this: 




are examples of the former. They remind me of the late painter Thomas Kinkade: arguably skilled craftsmen, catering to a definite public demand, but lacking in creativity. That said, I have no qualms with the composers and their audiences (nor Kinkade and his). If their works suddenly disappeared, it would not increase the demand for or interest in more creative works at all. They are completely different marketplaces.

Then there are composers that sometimes get labeled "neoromantic". And then I'm lost.

Take this: 




or this: 




These sound new and creative to me, not like knock-offs of 19th or even 20th century works. I guess I don't understand what "neoromantic" means, just as I don't really understand what "atonal" means -- or pretty much any value of X in "I think X music sucks!".

So, yeah, I'm all for diversity. It's all music.


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## SeptimalTritone

I know right! According to wikipedia, Rihm is neoromantic. But he's quite good! Not as adventurous as Murail or Billone et. al. but creative and well worth listening to.


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## dgee

I can see Rihm as an expressionist and he was a leading figure of "new simplicity" and maybe the two of those together can add up to neo-romantic somehow. I can definitely see how Jennifer Higdon is neo-romantic - as in "takes cue from romanticism"

I'm all for stylistic diversity. I think the people who get their knickers in a twist about it mostly don't know just how much stylistic diversity there is in music now, probably aren't interested in finding out and only want to use a perceived lack of it to push outmoded notions of academic restrictions on compostion or rampant atonal ideologies etc


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## Bulldog

some guy said:


> It's a nice thing. Everybody likes it. Nobody wants to argue against it.


I suppose that musical diversity has its advantages, but I rarely give it any thought or priority.


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## hpowders

Musical diversity is the politically correct way to go.


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## Jobis

We live in an age of archeaologists, sitting on their backsides pining for the 'good old days' instead of forging a path forward. The ones who do are reviled, sadly. 

Some of us are just a bit cowardly I suppose, we just want to get along, or are afraid of criticising the tried and tested formulae of music-writing. I think that might be why you experience frustration with various users and music fans.

I guess partly to blame are the schools, universities and conservatories that focus solely on the classics, leaving their students to dive in at the deep end when they eventually get round to listening to contemporary music. Its hard to teach the new, however, and there is no standard by which to write music like CP tonality. Serialism does not submit to the same kind of analysis as tonal music; you cannot apply Schenker, it is hard to form expectations or to subvert the listeners' expectations because they are already surrounded by the unfamiliar. All ways in which old composers demonstrated their progressive nature, or their genius.


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## Bulldog

Jobis said:


> We live in an age of archeaologists, sitting on their backsides pining for the 'good old days' instead of forging a path forward. The ones who do are reviled, sadly.


There's nothing wrong with classical music enthusiasts spending most of their listening time on what they consider the timeless music of yesterday. Some of today's music will attain timeless status; most of it will go away without a whimper.

From what I read on this board, there is a disgusting frequency of criticism from both sides.


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## PetrB

I think we're currently in a period of a type of experimentation with style like the art world of the 60's was a period of experimentation, though the sixties was not about pillaging the past, ethnic musics (as much) and the grab-bag of various elements which are now littering the art scenes of the present.

I personally get irritated when say, a painter, lifts the glyph symbols from some ancient culture not even a forerunner of the painter's own, and 'tosses them in' to a new graphic piece... it is the cheapest and shallowest of referencing, and often a slap in the face to some tradition which was filled with a more profound meaning and purpose.

Some of the arguments for it are embedded in that mentality where nothing should be criticized, ever, any and all judgement should be suspended, and the advocating of, say, Andrew Lloyd Weber's work being as 'valid' _and valuable, it seems,_ as the works of Beethoven. This 'agenda' would have us believe "it is all the same," "all cultures and their artworks are of equal value," and a whole lot of silly and yet dangerous notions. _The danger with diversity is things can get extremely disperse -- watered down,_ and all those familiar arguments against it are maybe not at all PC or popular to voice, but remain solid cautionary arguments, against something so disperse it no longer has a taste, smell, or flavor of any interest at all. I'll go out on a limb and say Arvo Part and Jennifer Higdon _could_ be thrown in that bag... like fake flavors, reconstituted or 'constructed' foods, etc. If music is a food, there can be an insidious long-term affect from eating processed food, or nothing but sugary pastry without the remaining highly necessary nutritional elements to stay healthy and alive.

Similarly, even if some of the current styles are cohesive, I feel like something similar is generally going on in the current non-pop music scene -- artists so busy with style and elements from here and there that very little with real content is coming out. That grab-bag of elements, past and present, can in the wrong minds and hands make for truckloads of works which are but superficial, all about a sort of content and intent but without the maker having to find any deep and personal inner resource or meaning from which to make their works... skating about on cultural litter, as it were.

I feel a bit of pity for those who think diversity also means that perhaps, for example, a work very much like or near replicating the baroque, Vivaldi, etc. is acceptable as part of a new diversity, because writing so directly in an older style will usually (until even the least informed of the public becomes a new majority) is clever pastiche, no matter how well-written that type of piece is.

As always, whatever the diversity from one composer's 'style' to the next, the end result is only as good, or "profound" as the maker and the maker's craft. I'm sure that works in one style or another will have different weights; the styles themselves will eventually -- through critics and public reaction -- find more or less favor.

What I do hear currently is the birthing of at least one more contemporary "international" style, i.e. advanced harmony and pieces using a multitude of advanced instrumental techniques (inclusive of electronics) while the music itself is about as simple (and to me, dull) as what reflects this in some current pop music -- a near monodony-like East Indian music, a single line highly ornamented with all the vocabulary and effects, and to me this has little substance or interest...* it is rather like the reverse of The Emperor's New Clothes, i.e. we have the clothing, but no emperor in it.*


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## Guest

PetrB said:


> we have the clothing, but no emperor in it.


I'm going to be stealing this, you know. Over and over again.

I hope that's OK.


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## PetrB

hpowders said:


> Musical diversity is the politically correct way to go.


Our resident pragmatist / cynic speaks the truth here, once again


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## PetrB

some guy said:


> I'm going to be stealing this, you know. Over and over again.
> 
> I hope that's OK.


I'd rather be, I think, a "naked" emperor than an empty set of clothes!

You don't even know my real name to credit the author.

I'm pleased someone thought I said something well. 
Of course you're free to use it, and and I hope it spreads world-wide, myself 

Always best regards.


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## Xaltotun

Very good post PetrB.

My two cents could be this: New is good. New is not necessarily diverse. Old is not necessarily bad. Old is not necessarily non-diverse. Diverse is not necessarily good. Above all, substance is good.


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## bharbeke

I want to be able to hear music I like, including new music I like. I also wish this for others. Popularity of the music I like is not required, although it does increase the odds that more like it will be made in the future.


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## ArtMusic

There is much musical diversity from Monteverdi to Mahler say, and that's more than enough to keep me musically satisfied.


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## science

As long as everyone gets to create the music they want to create, and to listen to the music they want to listen to, without hearing about what a doofus they are, I'm happy. I think that'll be a diverse world.


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## bigshot

An artist needs to be fully informed about the history of his medium and the artists who have come before him, so he doesn't go back and reinvent the wheel. While he is gaining that frame of reference for himself, he should be acquiring the skills required to be a functional artist by learning the fundamental principles of his art at the feet of the masters who came before him. The next and final step is to find the voice within himself that can use the frame of reference and skills to express something unique and personal and powerful. Then and only then can he be gifted with the title of "artist". You have to earn that title through hard work, study and creativity.


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## Guest

science said:


> As long as everyone gets to create the music they want to create, and to listen to the music they want to listen to, without hearing about what a doofus they are, I'm happy. I think that'll be a diverse world.


Sounds good. Unfortunately, in practice it only applies to people who want to "create" old sounding music and to people who only want to listen to old sounding music.

Those people should be free to do that without any criticism.

People who want to do anything else? Those people will be called much worse than "doofus," that's for sure. (And to my certain knowledge, no one who does the old sounding stuff has ever been called a doofus.) How about "charlatan," for starters? How about purposely alienating their audiences? Yeah. That one's real popular. Absurd but popular. How about "poser" for the listeners? That's a nice one. Pretenders all of them. Makes sense. Since no one could possibly like any of that hideous avant-garde crap (oh right, "crap"--how could I have forgotten "crap"?), then if any reports as liking it, of course they are lying.

But yeah. As long as "everyone" really and truly means "everyone," then fine. So far, "everyone" means "a certain few," however.

Here's a small sample of "everyone."


__
https://soundcloud.com/franciscomeirino%2Fsets


__
https://soundcloud.com/emmanuelle-gibello-2014%2Fletroupeau-1


__
https://soundcloud.com/michael-boyd%2Fchronofray


__
https://soundcloud.com/crousty-1%2Fyasunao-tone-jiao-liao-fruits


__
https://soundcloud.com/mark-andre%2Fauf-3-mark-andre


__
https://soundcloud.com/metroensemble%2Fanna-clyne-primula-vulgaris

Here's my credo to put up against science's: No one should be able to do or say anything they like without having anyone react to them.


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## Piwikiwi

bigshot said:


> An artist needs to be fully informed about the history of his medium and the artists who have come before him, so he doesn't go back and reinvent the wheel. While he is gaining that frame of reference for himself, he should be acquiring the skills required to be a functional artist by learning the fundamental principles of his art at the feet of the masters who came before him. The next and final step is to find the voice within himself that can use the frame of reference and skills to express something unique and personal and powerful. Then and only then can he be gifted with the title of "artist". You have to earn that title through hard work, study and creativity.


Imitation, Assimilation and Innovation.


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## science

some guy said:


> Sounds good. Unfortunately, in practice it only applies to people who want to "create" old sounding music and to people who only want to listen to old sounding music.


Why? That's certainly not what I think, nor what I intend. Again, you insist on treating me as if I'm opposed to your music, and I'm not. I'm opposed to your hostile opposition to other music, but not to your music.



some guy said:


> ... charlatan... purposely alienating their audiences... poser... hideous avant-garde crap


All as bad as and _*exactly the same*_ as what you do to music that you disapprove and its listeners.

I understand that the game is going to go on, and that every time I put my face into it both sides will stomp on it, so I'm staying out of it as much as I can. But I don't want to be misunderstood if I can help it.

In general, I think my ideal of freedom would benefit your side. Right now it happens that you and your allies have most of the people who react strongly against your music (or who dare to do so publicly) away from this site, so the hegemony is briefly yours, but they're still out there and they'll be back.

Before you go back to smacking me around, let me ask: have you ever seen me say such a thing against any of the music you promote? And if not, why do you insist on slapping me around like this?


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## science

some guy said:


> No one should be able to do or say anything they like without having anyone react to them.


Kindness is too much to ask no doubt. I understand. I'm so sorry I tried to advocate for anything but the unending war. I'm trying to get out of it now. Please go on without me. Please, really I'm sincere here, please stop stomping on me. I'm trying to get out of your way.

But as I go, if you choose to let me, please do not insist in construing my meanings so unfairly. I'll have to stick around if you do. Perhaps that's what you want. If so, I'm at your service. But I'm tired of it, and I'd rather get out of it. Or do I actually have to take a side? Is it not possible to stay out of it? Is anyone not for you against you? I really hope I can find a third way, well out of the ideological war that discourages me so. I really regret having ever tried to broker some kind of peace. Please do go on without me, and without insisting on portraying me as one of your enemies!


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## Jobis

some guy said:


> Sounds good. Unfortunately, in practice it only applies to people who want to "create" old sounding music and to people who only want to listen to old sounding music.
> 
> Those people should be free to do that without any criticism.
> 
> People who want to do anything else? Those people will be called much worse than "doofus," that's for sure. (And to my certain knowledge, no one who does the old sounding stuff has ever been called a doofus.) How about "charlatan," for starters? How about purposely alienating their audiences? Yeah. That one's real popular. Absurd but popular. How about "poser" for the listeners? That's a nice one. Pretenders all of them. Makes sense. Since no one could possibly like any of that hideous avant-garde crap (oh right, "crap"--how could I have forgotten "crap"?), then if any reports as liking it, of course they are lying.
> 
> But yeah. As long as "everyone" really and truly means "everyone," then fine. So far, "everyone" means "a certain few," however.
> 
> Here's a small sample of "everyone."
> 
> 
> __
> https://soundcloud.com/franciscomeirino%2Fsets
> 
> 
> __
> https://soundcloud.com/emmanuelle-gibello-2014%2Fletroupeau-1
> 
> 
> __
> https://soundcloud.com/michael-boyd%2Fchronofray
> 
> 
> __
> https://soundcloud.com/crousty-1%2Fyasunao-tone-jiao-liao-fruits
> 
> 
> __
> https://soundcloud.com/mark-andre%2Fauf-3-mark-andre
> 
> 
> __
> https://soundcloud.com/metroensemble%2Fanna-clyne-primula-vulgaris
> 
> Here's my credo to put up against science's: No one should be able to do or say anything they like without having anyone react to them.


Who the heck cares about the listening audience? Can't we just let composers do what they want without bloodsucking critics putting their own spin on what the a very personal output of a composer? Even if people do rail against modernism, such people are typically non-composers and non-academics, who can hardly say two informed words about contemporary music, let alone anything worthwhile.

If you're against academics who say stuff like 'Schoenberg denied melody and harmony in his music' you're not alone, and such people will never be recognised in any favourable light but by the ignorant and antagonistic to whom they pander.

And finally; don't mistake youtube comments and forum discourse for informed, intellectual debate, in any way representative of the musical world at large.


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## Jobis

Bulldog said:


> There's nothing wrong with classical music enthusiasts spending most of their listening time on what they consider the timeless music of yesterday. Some of today's music will attain timeless status; most of it will go away without a whimper.
> 
> From what I read on this board, there is a disgusting frequency of criticism from both sides.


You're right, I don't mind what fans think, I was more venting against the attitudes of certain academics (who shall remain unnamed), supposedly at the forefront of musical critique, who hold archaic views on music. I should have been more charitable, especially in lumping in music fans with my comments, in hindsight.


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## science

I think Jobis is getting to a very insightful idea - it does make some difference among whom we tend to find ourselves. I really can't imagine very many people of my acquaintance claiming to enjoy classical music without also enjoying John Cage. In fact, I think most of the people of my acquaintance come to older styles of classical music through modern music, rather than the other way around. It's Cage, Stockhausen, Prokofiev, Piazzolla in the first place, and perhaps later Bach and Beethoven. But there are other communities out there.... We are probably all reacting against different groups of people.


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## Nereffid

science said:


> But there are other communities out there.... We are probably all reacting against different groups of people.


And it's the reacting to _groups_ that's a major part of the problem.
"Their" music is cacophonous nonsense... "they" are only interested in old music... "they" don't write music like "they" used to.
People resent being lumped in with "them".

... And actually "other communities out there" - also _in here_, and I'd rather call them individuals, myself.


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## norman bates

bigshot said:


> An artist needs to be fully informed about the history of his medium and the artists who have come before him, so he doesn't go back and reinvent the wheel. While he is gaining that frame of reference for himself, he should be acquiring the skills required to be a functional artist by learning the fundamental principles of his art at the feet of the masters who came before him. The next and final step is to find the voice within himself that can use the frame of reference and skills to express something unique and personal and powerful. Then and only then can he be gifted with the title of "artist". You have to earn that title through hard work, study and creativity.


I wonder if Jean Dubuffet would agree with that.


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## Sid James

I would like to think that classical music is about diversity, however the reality of my own experiences speaks otherwise. Sure, classical music offers diversity in terms of things like style, technique and genre, but in terms of its history of factionalism, tendency to encourage cliques, and ideological battles, it fosters things that are the opposite to acceptance of diversity.

Even that long history of Western music, founded as it was in feudal times, permeates (at least residually) much thinking about it today. Classical music is anything but a democracy of ideas, it is more split along stratified class lines akin to feudalism. Who you are and what ideology you hold will be the basis of your place along this spectrum of class. 

I don’t think that anyone can convince me that all composers, musicians, writers, listeners are equal. Neither can I be convinced that the barriers erected between them are anything but artificial, arbitrary and prone to abuse and manipulation. They are also linked to various symbols of status and prestige.

Whenever I have been told to “open my ears” to music that is, by implication, unattainable to underlings like myself (the composers I can think of being used in this game are Wagner, Webern and Ferneyhough), this class system comes to mind.

Apart from displaying the remnants of feudalism, classical music is also a technocracy. Those who have technical knowledge are at the top of this hierarchy. They can do things like dissect music in a clinical manner, often claiming impartiality but nevertheless taking great pains to hide the ideologies that underpin their so-called objectivity. If you’ve ever read a review of a classical recording you might get an idea about this. What elevates one recording above another? It’s determined by the tools and trappings of technocracy.

So I am arguing that classical music as a whole is not compatible with notions of diversity, no matter how much we would like it to be (or perhaps, imagine it to be?). It is akin to saying that Stalinism or some fundamentalist religion is about embracing diversity. It is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

My belief is that any ideology associated with classical music is just another cog in the wheel of this feudalist-technocratic construct I have described. It underpins classical music as whole, and thus renders it a remnant of the past. Always has and always will. 

While inspiring figures of the 20th century like Gandhi and Mandela struggled with situations that denied freedom and justice, Western classical music is forever stuck in a mindset of authoritarianism which explains why in terms of ideology the message is to accept what amounts to dictatorship. So much for the diversity of classical music! What a joke that is.


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## KenOC

Sid, that rant is worth a whole forum of its own! I've never seen these ideas expressed before, but they have a quite uncomfortable feeling of truth, at some level.


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## Guest

Ken, have you never read any other posts by Sid? He has expressed those ideas before. If you've read any of his posts, you've seen those ideas expressed many times.


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## SeptimalTritone

Sid James said:


> I would like to think that classical music is about diversity, however the reality of my own experiences speaks otherwise.


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## DiesIraeCX

SeptimalTritone said:


>


ST, I don't think that's what he meant by his statement.



Sid James said:


> I would like to think that classical music is about diversity, however the reality of my own experiences speaks otherwise. Sure, classical music offers diversity in terms of things like style, technique and genre, but in terms of its history of factionalism, tendency to encourage cliques, and ideological battles, it fosters things that are the opposite to acceptance of diversity.


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## SeptimalTritone

To be honest, I actually didn't understand much of the body of his statement. I think classical music is a wonderful ocean to explore. Most people are pretty accepting of everyone who enjoys any part of the ocean, as evidenced by the current listening thread. The "elitism" that Sid or science talks about so often is so misplaced. It really hurts to see some guy accused of elitism, when at worst he's just a bit frustrated that a lot of people haven't given much effort listening to post-1950 or post-2000 music.

Music like Ferneyhough, Stockhausen, Cage, Xenakis, Webern etc. does take longer for a lot of people to get used to. Personally, it took me quite a while to go from "Stockhausen sucks" to "Stockhausen is one of the greatest". And so it's a bit frustrating and disappointing to have people give it a quick shallow listen and say it sucks. We're frustrated at worst. There's no elitism or ideology at all.


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## Andreas

some guy said:


> It's a nice thing. Everybody likes it. Nobody wants to argue against it.
> 
> In practice, however, it has come up recently most frequently to defend the practice of only one kind of music, and the diversity consists almost entirely of styles from the past, often a quite distant past.
> 
> Even more oddly, if anyone wants to suggest that imitating the stylistic mannerisms of the past is maybe not as valid as other ways of going about the creating of art, that person is instantly accused of being against diversity.
> 
> Hmmm. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but it does seem to me that one thing is less diverse than many things.


It seems to me that you go to some lengths in order to not say who defends the practice of only one kind of music or who accuses others of being against diversity.

Could an orthodox way of putting it have been: some people in the community of classical music listeners? Or just: some poeple on this forum?

In either case, we would be moving within the realm of what is conventionally called classical music.

However diverse classical music can be, the term serves to mark the genre boundaries of that particular kind of music, fuzzy as they might be. Accepting the term classical music I suppose allows one to make distinctions regarding what is classcial music and what isn't, which style is still within the classical genre and which isn't.

If one rejects the notion of classical music, though, one cannot make statements about listeners of classical music either. One would, instead, have to refer to listeners of music. However, the two statements I quoted couldn't possibly apply to simply listeners of music, being far too general.

As far as the topic of stylistic diversity is concerned, I can only say that it is a virtue to be open and welcoming to what is new and different in the arts. That doesn't mean that one hads to praise everything new and different. One can give it bad reviews, but one shouldn't try to suppress it.

The main fear of reactionary minds is that their things will be replaced by different things, i.e. fear of loss and displacement. We all know this fear. But it is most strongly felt, I guess, among those who are in the privileged position, because they are the ones who have something to fear for, namely their privileges.

If one is particularly fond of the music of the classical and romantic period, one is in a privileged position, because concert programmes heavily favour music from these periods. And one wants it to stay that way, naturally. It's a natural instinct.

But this is where being open and welcoming to diversity becomes a virtue, because virtues often, maybe generally, involve overcoming gut-reaction instincts.


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## science

My bad. Whatever.


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## SeptimalTritone

^ It pains me to see you in pain science. Hopefully you come to peace with this. I still don't see elitism. But if you do... I hope you come to peace with it.


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## science

View attachment 57850


Here is one little bit of diversity.


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## Nereffid

SeptimalTritone said:


> Music like Ferneyhough, Stockhausen, Cage, Xenakis, Webern etc. does take longer for a lot of people to get used to. Personally, it took me quite a while to go from "Stockhausen sucks" to "Stockhausen is one of the greatest". And so it's a bit frustrating and disappointing to have people give it a quick shallow listen and say it sucks. We're frustrated at worst. There's no elitism or ideology at all.


I'm curious: _why_ is it frustrating and disappointing? I mean, I can understand frustration at having to listen to people _tell you_ it sucks, but otherwise why should it matter?
It's been a long time since I got over the fact that other people hate some of the things I like, and it really doesn't bother me. It just doesn't occur to me, if someone says some music I like sucks, to think that they need to make more effort to get to understand it.


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> I'm curious: _why_ is it frustrating and disappointing? I mean, I can understand frustration at having to listen to people _tell you_ it sucks, but otherwise why should it matter?
> It's been a long time since I got over the fact that other people hate some of the things I like, and it really doesn't bother me. It just doesn't occur to me, if someone says some music I like sucks, to think that they need to make more effort to get to understand it.


Sometimes it is clear that the problem is that the music is not understood, or that perhaps it is a combination of this and the person's own taste. The fact is, you don't know if you dislike something because it does not appeal to you on some fundamental level, or if you dislike it because you do not yet understand it.

But the vitriol in this case strikes some of us as extremely oppressive. Look at these letters to the author of a Schoenberg article for the LA Times:



> I always considered Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone, atonal music pretentious noise. But I've been forced to change my mind after reading Mark Swed's enlightening analysis ("Driven to Express Himself," Oct. 21), which explains that Schoenberg's ear-bangers "expressed the real complexity of experience" with "unfettered inspiration."
> 
> I now feel about Schoenberg's music the way Mark Twain described Wagner's: "It's better than it sounds."





> I can't believe anybody is still tooting Schoenberg's horn.
> 
> One has only to listen to a Beethoven symphony to realize that tonality is alive and well, and that it is serialism that was stillborn. No one has satisfactorily explained why human beings, the world over, organize music around tonal scales, any more than why we arrange it into evenly spaced measures of rhythm--but yet it's safe to say that it connects with something deeply rooted in our psyches.
> 
> Schoenberg's rejection of tonality is a profound act of egotism. His legacy may be a contemplatable body of sound, but it's stripped of one of the main things that give music its meaning. Can't we please let it die in the 20th century along with that other great affront to human nature--communism?





> Fifty years after Arnold Schoenberg's death, the composer's 12-tone system is no longer ahead of its time. His music has always found prominent advocates from Ravel to Stokowski to the Juilliard Quartet. Schoenberg's importance to the history of 20th century music remains secure. But those who are repelled by Schoenberg's music don't just scorn it, they really hate it.
> 
> What Schoenberg's small clique of enthusiasts fails to recognize is that this revulsion is both educated and urbane. The same audience that flees the concert halls whenever his name appears enjoys related musical ideas from such diverse sources as Hildegard von Bingen and Ornette Coleman. Arnold Schoenberg developed a sophisticated compositional structure capable of conveying powerful emotion: unrelentingly excruciating emotion. A Schoenberg revival? I'd sooner hear the death squeals of a herd of walruses succumbing to Ebola.


One would imagine that, given this response, the article itself was confrontational, blaming an unappreciative audience for its lack of culture and calling everyone who doesn't understand Schoenberg's music a philistine or similar, but no, the article is simply a biographical note with a few comments on how Schoenberg's fortunes seem to be changing recently (as of 2001). The vitriol and the revulsion are entirely directed against the _idea_ that Schoenberg could or should be appreciated.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> One would imagine that, given this response, the article itself was confrontational, blaming an unappreciative audience for its lack of culture and calling everyone who doesn't understand Schoenberg's music a philistine or similar, but no, the article is simply a biographical note with a few comments on how Schoenberg's fortunes seem to be changing recently (as of 2001). The vitriol and the revulsion are entirely directed against the _idea_ that Schoenberg could or should be appreciated.


Again, I get that people overreact in how they reveal their dislike of Schoenberg, but my basic question is, why should you care? Wasn't it Socrates who once said "h8rs gonna h8"?
...And similarly, my question to those who take the time to send a letter to the LA Times whining about Schoenberg is, why should you care?



Mahlerian said:


> Sometimes it is clear that the problem is that the music is not understood, or that perhaps it is a combination of this and the person's own taste. The fact is, you don't know if you dislike something because it does not appeal to you on some fundamental level, or if you dislike it because you do not yet understand it.


Quite _separately_ from the "vitriol" associated with a dislike, I don't see any "problem" here. Partly because I'm not sure how understanding can be entirely separate from one's own taste. Maybe "understanding" is simply the wrong word; "finding a relationship with" may be a much more appropriate description of what's going on when people transition from not liking to liking something. The fact that someone couldn't be ***** to spend a lot of time with a piece of music they don't think they're going to like... no, not a problem.


----------



## Mahlerian

Nefferid said:


> Quite _separately_ from the "vitriol" associated with a dislike, I don't see any "problem" here. Partly because I'm not sure how understanding can be entirely separate from one's own taste. Maybe "understanding" is simply the wrong word; "finding a relationship with" may be a much more appropriate description of what's going on when people transition from not liking to liking something. The fact that someone couldn't be ***** to spend a lot of time with a piece of music they don't think they're going to like... no, not a problem.


Understanding and taste are quite different things, although of course one is driven to understand more about those things to which one connects rather than anything else. For myself, I like to try to understand those things which are important to others, because I do believe in absolute value in art, just not in my ability to perceive it accurately.



Nereffid said:


> Again, I get that people overreact in how they reveal their dislike of Schoenberg, but my basic question is, why should you care? Wasn't it Socrates who once said "h8rs gonna h8"?
> ...And similarly, my question to those who take the time to send a letter to the LA Times whining about Schoenberg is, why should you care?


I care because music is important to me. Art is important to me. Art and music connect with humans on a very deep level, and I am passionate about this art and fully convinced that it is a living, breathing tradition that should be allowed to thrive and grow. Schoenberg's music is, to me, something exciting, passionate, endlessly fascinating, by turns beautiful and violent, organic, lively, humorous, serious, fulfilling, and wonderful, and to see all of that dismissed seemingly out of hand or with malice, to see it repeatedly maligned with false statements and meaningless platitudes of opprobrium, is frustrating.


----------



## Andreas

Nereffid said:


> Quite _separately_ from the "vitriol" associated with a dislike, I don't see any "problem" here. Partly because I'm not sure how understanding can be entirely separate from one's own taste. Maybe "understanding" is simply the wrong word; "finding a relationship with" may be a much more appropriate description of what's going on when people transition from not liking to liking something. The fact that someone couldn't be ***** to spend a lot of time with a piece of music they don't think they're going to like... no, not a problem.


I would guess that having understood something entails, first, the feeling of enrichment through the acquisition of a mental object; and secondly, the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I'm not sure these pleasant feelings guarantee that you will actually like the thing you've understood. A liking-through-understanding that is similar to the liking as a spontaneous positive reaction to the surface value of a thing.


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> I care because music is important to me. Art is important to me. Art and music connect with humans on a very deep level, and I am passionate about this art and fully convinced that it is a living, breathing tradition that should be allowed to thrive and grow. Schoenberg's music is, to me, something exciting, passionate, endlessly fascinating, by turns beautiful and violent, organic, lively, humorous, serious, fulfilling, and wonderful, and to see all of that dismissed seemingly out of hand or with malice, to see it repeatedly maligned with false statements and meaningless platitudes of opprobrium, is frustrating.


OK, I understand where you're coming from, but "I care because music is important to me. Art is important to me. Art and music connect with humans on a very deep level, and I am passionate about this art and fully convinced that it is a living, breathing tradition that should be allowed to thrive and grow" are undoubtedly things that people who _despise_ Schoenberg's music say, too, and what I see is a lot of time, energy, and emotional well-being wasted on each side being bothered by what the other thinks, and not just that but also by whether they're entitled to think that way.

(By the way, inasmuch as I was directing the question, it wasn't at you, so thanks for taking the time to answer)


----------



## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> OK, I understand where you're coming from, but "I care because music is important to me. Art is important to me. Art and music connect with humans on a very deep level, and I am passionate about this art and fully convinced that it is a living, breathing tradition that should be allowed to thrive and grow" are undoubtedly things that people who _despise_ Schoenberg's music say, too, and what I see is a lot of time, energy, and emotional well-being wasted on each side being bothered by what the other thinks, and not just that but also by whether they're entitled to think that way.


No doubt. The impulse to dislike Schoenberg's music on the basis of a perceived break with and supposed lack of respect for tradition is one grounded in principles which I understand.

I just consider such views mistaken. From my perspective, Schoenberg's music is born out of a continuation of and a respect for tradition.

The views for which I have no respect are the ones based in misunderstandings or falsehoods: Schoenberg's music is tuneless, it has no sense to it, it sounds random, it's just for the eye and not for the ear, it's only for academics, it's unemotional, its only emotions are negative, and so forth.

Any argument based on these kinds of statements is as worthless as one which posits that the surface of the Earth is flat.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> Mahlerian: The views for which I have no respect are the ones based in misunderstandings or falsehoods: Schoenberg's music is tuneless, it has no sense to it, it sounds random, it's just for the eye and not for the ear, it's only for academics, it's unemotional, its only emotions are negative, and so forth.
> 
> Any argument based on these kinds of statements is as worthless as one which posits that the surface of the Earth is flat.


I can never take doctrinaire nonsense seriously, myself--- a prime example being when someone tells me that if I don't hear harmony and beauty in Schoenberg's later music, then I don't 'understand' it.

Of course, I understand it--- and that's why I reject it: Schoenberg makes an effort at compositional novelty-- which is all to the good and fine, but its a necessary and not sufficient condition for me. I'd like for something to be beautiful, or mysterious, or ennobling, or dramatic in some capacity that speaks to me as a human being-- given the physiological constraints of the human ear.

-- So its a one-way street wherever _I_ go on this flat earth of _theirs_: They can put a roadblock in my way, but I'll just go right through it on the way to the Burberry outlet-- I always do.

The 'Blair Necessities.' The 'Blair-o-gance' of it all. --- this I can relate to.

Gratuitous ugliness and catechism lessons are outside of my ken.


----------



## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> Any argument based on these kinds of statements is as worthless as one which posits that the surface of the Earth is flat.


Uh, I'm not sure how to break this to you, but "...humanity lives on a disc, with the North Pole at its center and a 150-foot (45 m) high wall of ice at the outer edge." It's in Wiki!


----------



## Mahlerian

Marschallin Blair said:


> I can never take doctrinaire nonsense seriously, myself--- a prime example being when someone tells me that if I don't hear harmony and beauty in Schoenberg's later music, then I don't 'understand' it.
> 
> Of course, I understand it--- and that's why I reject it: Schoenberg makes an effort at compositional novelty-- which is all to the good and fine, but its a necessary and not sufficient condition for me. I'd like for something to be beautiful, or mysterious, or ennobling, or dramatic in some capacity that speaks to me as a human being-- given the physiological constraints of the human ear.


Schoenberg's music is not in any sense a searching after novelty. It has drama, mystery, and nobility, as well as beauty. Above all, it has life.

Do you assume that the way I hear it and the way you hear it are the same? Are my ears not human as well? I do hear beauty in all of Schoenberg's music: lyrical melody, rich harmonic and contrapuntal texture, and a keen ear for orchestral sonority.

You are free to dislike it however you like.

But it is not tuneless, it makes perfect sense to the human ear, it does not sound random, it is certainly not designed for the eye alone, many non-academics on this forum enjoy it, it is passionately emotional, and many of those emotions are positive ones.

These things seem completely beyond opinion to me, and they are the ones I specified.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Mahlerian said:


> Schoenberg's music is not in any sense a searching after novelty. It has drama, mystery, and nobility, as well as beauty. Above all, it has life.
> 
> Do you assume that the way I hear it and the way you hear it are the same? Are my ears not human as well? I do hear beauty in all of Schoenberg's music: lyrical melody, rich harmonic and contrapuntal texture, and a keen ear for orchestral sonority.
> 
> You are free to dislike it however you like.
> 
> But it is not tuneless, it makes perfect sense to the human ear, it does not sound random, it is certainly not designed for the eye alone, many non-academics on this forum enjoy it, it is passionately emotional, and many of those emotions are positive ones.
> 
> These things seem completely beyond opinion to me, and they are the ones I specified.


If it makes perfect sense to the human ear, how come it doesn't make sense to my ear?


----------



## Mahlerian

Marschallin Blair said:


> If it makes perfect sense to the human ear, how come it doesn't make sense to my ear?


Because your mind is not accustomed to certain collections of stimuli, because you have difficulty with the way he does phrasing and counterpoint, because of the non-repetition, because the music is often performed somewhat sloppily due to its difficulty for players...there could be any number of reasons.

If you think it's inherently senseless, what's your explanation for why it sounds fine to me, and many others? I can hear the themes and their development in a piece like this:


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## dgee

So is music deficient if you don't like it? Does that work for me, too? Maybe you can tell me what's so wrong with La Traviata, or maybe what's wrong with me because I don't like La Traviata? I'm used to it too, having played it at least 30 times


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Mahlerian said:


> Because your mind is not accustomed to certain collections of stimuli, because you have difficulty with the way he does phrasing and counterpoint, because of the non-repetition, because the music is often performed somewhat sloppily due to its difficulty for players...there could be any number of reasons.
> 
> If you think it's inherently senseless, what's your explanation for why it sounds fine to me, and many others? I can hear the themes and their development in a piece like this:


I never said any Schoenberg was inherently senseless-- that's your characterization, counselor, not mine.

I have said in the past however that Schoenberg's later music sounds emotionally sterile to me, despite its compositional finessing and ingenuity.

I don't have a problem conceptually integrating his phrasing, counterpoint, or tone coloring. Quite the contrary. I understand it but I don't like it.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

dgee said:


> *So is music deficient if you don't like it?* Does that work for me, too? Maybe you can tell me what's so wrong with La Traviata, or maybe what's wrong with me because I don't like La Traviata? I'm used to it too, having played it at least 30 times


No. . . merely 'ugly' to my ears.

But yes, this is admittedly in the eye of the beholder-- _non-disputandum_, certainly.

There are those, for instance, who'd call a beautiful unicorn an ugly, one-horned mule.


----------



## Sid James

SeptimalTritone said:


> To be honest, I actually didn't understand much of the body of his statement. I think classical music is a wonderful ocean to explore. Most people are pretty accepting of everyone who enjoys any part of the ocean, as evidenced by the current listening thread. The "elitism" that Sid or science talks about so often is so misplaced. It really hurts to see some guy accused of elitism, when at worst he's just a bit frustrated that a lot of people haven't given much effort listening to post-1950 or post-2000 music.


I have listened to a good deal of modern/contemporary classical, and it is diverse. However, on TC at least, discussions of this area tend towards the polarised and encourage a sort of die-hard dogmatic fanaticism. The music is diverse, but the ideas about it aren't (or more accurately, aren't allowed to be). A good example is how Marschallin Blair's opinion of Schoenberg is shared by composer John Adams, who studied under a pupil of Schoenberg's but calls his music "aural ugliness."

Nobody can tell me that there is democracy on TC about these issues. If one dissents from orthodoxy of one sort or another, one gets attacked. It doesn't matter if its about ultra-conservatism or radical Modernism, both are just inverse to eachother. Two sides of the same coin.

Your pointing out the freedom on current listening is telling. Its one of the few places on TC where ideas can be freely expressed (well, for now, I wonder how for long that will last?). The rest of the forum, or at least a good part of it, is given over to thuggery and mind games. I'm sorry that you feel sorry for some guy and those of his persuasion, but I am sorry too. Its time people treated others with some deal of respect, no matter if they disagree with them, no matter if the topic is controversial. But we can't have that here, its like stepping into a time machine going back to feudal times, or (given that some parts of the forum are for one type of listener or opinion, other parts are for others) like South Africa under Apartheid.



> ...We're frustrated at worst. There's no elitism or ideology at all.


Oh, forgive my bleeding heart! Give me a break, I mean are you for real? I am frustrated too. Frustrated at for years implications being made about my honesty and integrity when talking of such issues. Snide remarks about my lack of qualifications, of me being a pleb, of my opinion being worthless and even that I am retarded. Such joy to be given this, if one has an opinion that goes against dogma.

In your reply you are doing three of the classic tactics used on these sorts of threads:

1. Invalidate the other person's opinion or experience (it is "misplaced").

2. Stereotype a response to certain types of music (we all hate Stockhausen etc. if we dispute ideology).

3. Denial and blaming the victim ("There's no elitism or ideology at all" and "It pains me to see you in pain science. Hopefully you come to peace with this. I still don't see elitism. But if you do... I hope you come to peace with it.")


----------



## Sid James

some guy said:


> ...
> Here's my credo to put up against science's: No one should be able to do or say anything they like without having anyone react to them.


And here's my credo to you: Everyone should be subjected to some guy's notion of diversity, freedom and democracy of ideas in music on TC forum!

ONE colour of diversity.
ONE book of diversity.
ONE uniform of diversity.

We of the avant-garde (or is it derriere-garde?) are FULLY UNITED.


----------



## violadude

Sid James said:


> And here's my credo to you: Everyone should be subjected to some guy's notion of diversity, freedom and democracy of ideas in music on TC forum!
> 
> ONE colour of diversity.
> ONE book of diversity.
> ONE uniform of diversity.
> 
> We of the avant-garde (or is it derriere-garde?) are FULLY UNITED.


Some Guy isn't against older music. I'm not where this is coming from...


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## dgee

Glad you've enjoyed your break and returned refreshed and invigorated Sid


----------



## Sid James

violadude said:


> Some Guy isn't against older music. I'm not where this is coming from...


That was a bitter joke, however if you read my initial two posts on this thread I emphasise that the issue is about freedom of IDEAS regardless of what music is being talked about. You will have been here long enough to remember earlier years on TC when we had a dominance of ultra conservatism. In the last couple of years we have had the reverse, those of fanatical Modernist persuasion closing ranks denying any questioning of the ideology.

Since I am unqualified, it is interesting how often in these debates I have given sources like the John Adams website above. His critique of Schoenberg is valid, as are arguments for Schoenberg. I'm talking of having a balance here, not of the primitive pack mentality that pervades these threads. I'm afraid to say that no matter that I don't think that Mahlerian is a fanatic, by not presenting the other side of these debates, he is feeding into the fanatics of the forum.

I've also been accused of bullying and being extreme. Do you notice how some guy and his cohorts validate and treat with kid gloves those on their side of the fence, and correspondingly give a lashing to those with the courage to question them (science and myself, for example).

I doubt that you can come to this with anything else but denial of my main points, but I don't care. I've been here too long. My grievances are less for myself and more for those who are new to the forum who will inevitably have to put up with some guys' and his cronies distorted definition of "diversity." Its nothing short of a sort of primitive tribalism, a dictatorship. It denies diversity of ideas, even though experts themselves nowadays have many differing opinions about similar topics. You know, even though I am a dunce, I am able to read. Lack of safety to express yourself imposes a draconian uniformity to which one either has to submit or not participate.


----------



## Sid James

dgee said:


> Glad you've enjoyed your break and returned refreshed and invigorated Sid


Thanks and I'm glad someone here is keeping tabs on me. That's very nice to know.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Sid James said:


> That was a bitter joke, however if you read my initial two posts on this thread I emphasise that the issue is about freedom of IDEAS regardless of what music is being talked about. You will have been here long enough to remember earlier years on TC when we had a dominance of ultra conservatism. In the last couple of years we have had the reverse, those of fanatical Modernist persuasion closing ranks denying any questioning of the ideology.
> 
> Since I am unqualified, it is interesting how often in these debates I have given sources like the John Adams website above. His critique of Schoenberg is valid, as are arguments for Schoenberg. I'm talking of having a balance here, not of the primitive pack mentality that pervades these threads. I'm afraid to say that no matter that I don't think that Mahlerian is a fanatic, by not presenting the other side of these debates, he is feeding into the fanatics of the forum.
> 
> I've also been accused of bullying and being extreme. Do you notice how some guy and his cohorts validate and treat with kid gloves those on their side of the fence, and correspondingly give a lashing to those with the courage to question them (science and myself, for example).
> 
> I doubt that you can come to this with anything else but denial of my main points, but I don't care. I've been here too long. My grievances are less for myself and more for those who are new to the forum who will inevitably have to put up with some guys' and his cronies distorted definition of "diversity." Its nothing short of a sort of primitive tribalism, a dictatorship. It denies diversity of ideas, even though experts themselves nowadays have many differing opinions about similar topics. You know, even though I am a dunce, I am able to read. Lack of safety to express yourself imposes a draconian uniformity to which one either has to submit or not participate.


Yeah, groupthink, 'the return of the primitive'-- masquerading as the _'de riguer'_. . . who are they fooling?

I'd never call a person with a well-bred, searching, and inquisitive mind like Sid a dunce-- but I sure would for all of those cowards who champion the Clothes Without an Emperor.

-- Welcome back, Sid. Your posts were among the very first I habitually consulted at TC when I joined at the beginning of last year.

May they be never ending.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Sid James said:


> And here's my credo to you: Everyone should be subjected to some guy's notion of diversity, freedom and democracy of ideas in music on TC forum!
> 
> ONE colour of diversity.
> ONE book of diversity.
> ONE uniform of diversity.
> 
> We of the avant-garde (or is it derriere-garde?) are FULLY UNITED.












Antiphon: "Yes: we musical-collectivists are all individuals." Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. How _Life of Bria_n can one _get_?

-- _Absolutely_ _'derriere'-garde._

_War is peace!
Freedom is slavery!
Ignorance is strength!
Noise is music!_

Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a!

Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a!


----------



## Sid James

some guy said:


> Ken, have you never read any other posts by Sid? He has expressed those ideas before. If you've read any of his posts, you've seen those ideas expressed many times.


So what? Is there a rule here against that? In any case, I don't remember using those same terms - feudalism and technocracy. Recent readings and experiences in real life have just crystallised these ideas.

I have desisted from either talking to you directly or participating on your threads since February 2013. Same goes for a number of others here. My anger is based on the fact that I was cajoled into a sense of freedom, and then given my commeuppance as an upstart when my opinions began to differ from those with status on this forum. I was put in my place. This would not happen in an atmosphere that is more accepting of diversity of opinion.

I started out questioning things and inevitably learnt how in case after case, what is said (the theory or ideology) and what is actually done (the realpolitik) in classical music are two different things entirely. That's why I think any notion of diversity is a sham, not only yours but any. Its not you in the dock, its not Modernists, but all of these divisive and destructive ideologies of classical music as a whole.

As science has said, you just happen to be in power now on the forum, but there will come a time when someone else of another ideology will take the mantle. And they will preach the same things, and do the same things. Just like the classical music establishment, the faces keep changing but the institutions of power and privelege stay in place.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Sid James said:


> So what? Is there a rule here against that? In any case, I don't remember using those same terms - feudalism and technocracy. Recent readings and experiences in real life have just crystallised these ideas.
> 
> I have desisted from either talking to you directly or participating on your threads since February 2013. Same goes for a number of others here. My anger is based on the fact that I was cajoled into a sense of freedom, and then given my commeuppance as an upstart when my opinions began to differ from those with status on this forum. I was put in my place. This would not happen in an atmosphere that is more accepting of diversity of opinion.
> 
> I started out questioning things and inevitably learnt how in case after case, what is said (the theory or ideology) and what is actually done (the realpolitik) in classical music are two different things entirely. That's why I think any notion of diversity is a sham, not only yours but any. Its not you in the dock, its not Modernists, but all of these divisive and destructive ideologies of classical music as a whole.
> 
> As science has said, you just happen to be in power now on the forum, but there will come a time when someone else of another ideology will take the mantle. And they will preach the same things, and do the same things. Just like the classical music establishment, the faces keep changing but the institutions of power and privelege stay in place.


How?

By falling prey to a silly Jedi mind trick?

You're too clever for this nonsense, Sid.


----------



## violadude

Marschallin Blair said:


> Antiphon: "Yes: we musical-collectivists are all individuals." Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. How _Life of Bria_n can one _get_?
> 
> -- Absolutely _'derriere'-garde._
> 
> _War is peace!
> Freedom is slavery!
> Ignorance is strength!
> Noise is music!_
> 
> Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a!
> 
> Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a!


Resorting to calling people sheep is such a cheap argument. Anyone can do that.

Tonality is the only way to beauty
Everything older is obviously better
non-melodic music is always bad

baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Besides, calling people sheep as an insult is ignorant from a biological point of view. Sheep and humans are both social animals. Most humans have some sort of pack-like mentality. If you think your views are sooooo much different and special that you couldn't find some social group that agrees with you than I think that's fairly delusional.


----------



## KenOC

Do I detect the odor of anti-sheep prejudice here? Sheep are fabulous! To doubters, I recommend the move _Black Sheep_, which may be available on Netflix.

I say, in the Spirit of Sid: "Let us resolutely struggle against those taking the anti-sheep road and sweep them into the dustheap of history!"


----------



## Marschallin Blair

violadude said:


> Resorting to calling people sheep is such a cheap argument. Anyone can do that.
> 
> Tonality is the only way to beauty
> Everything older is obviously better
> non-melodic music is always bad
> 
> baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
> 
> Besides, calling people sheep as an insult is ignorant from a biological point of view. Sheep and humans are both social animals. Most humans have some sort of pack-like mentality. If you think your views are sooooo much different and special that you couldn't find some social group that agrees with you than I think that's fairly delusional.


It seems my response earlier to this got put down the Orwellian Memory Hole.

Okay, take two:

No one was singled out_ by name_ and _called _a sheep; like how certain people _single out_ Sid _by name_ in _their_ gigantic, howling curses against his moderate and well-reasoned musical opinions, for instance.

[The rest of what I want to say has been censored against my will and sense of good taste. Sorry.]


----------



## Marschallin Blair

KenOC said:


> Do I detect the odor of anti-sheep prejudice here? Sheep are fabulous! To doubters, I recommend the move _Black Sheep_, which may be available on Netflix.
> 
> I say, in the Spirit of Sid: "Let us resolutely struggle against those taking the anti-sheep road and sweep them into the dustheap of history!"


He who plays the sheep finds the butcher.

That's not me though.

That's life.


----------



## Woodduck

I've been trying to stay out of this thread, since I expressed my thoughts relevant to the subject pretty exhaustively elsewhere and was rewarded with incomprehension/misrepresentation of my ideas. But I feel the need to state here that the matter raised by this thread is not diversity of _music,_ but diversity of _opinion._

In the OP, some guy states:

_"...it [the subject of diversity] has come up recently most frequently to defend the practice of only one kind of music, and the diversity consists almost entirely of styles from the past, often a quite distant past."_

That is a statement, not about whether music should be diverse, but about what "diversity" means, and it makes a specific allegation about what other people think it means. Some questions this raises, I suggest, are: do some people really think this is what "diversity" means? Is this sort of "diversity" what a substantial number of people actually want? What is the evidence for that? And if I disagree with this allegation, what legitimacy is accorded my opinion? Am I then aligning myself with those who hold this alleged idea of diversity?

No one denies or debates that music today is diverse, no one has asserted that it shouldn't be, and no one, including Sid James, is alleging that some guy or anyone else is "against older music." What is being questioned is whether some guy's explicit attack on a notion of diversity which he imputes to others is not itself contemptuous, and in effect restrictive, of a diversity of opinion, the contempt expressed obliquely through a mischaracterization of people who hold more "conservative" ideas and tastes and who can only be discredited by means of such a mischaracterization. My own statements in the Alma Deutscher thread, where I defended from a number of standpoints the concept of absolute artistic freedom and the legitimacy of Ms. Deutscher or any other artist to create in any manner or style they might wish to, no matter how unfashionable or "uncontemporary" by anyone's definition, was met by some guy with precisely the sort of dismissal to which I here refer, with the clear implication that a diversity which included the creative choice _not_ to be "contemporary" was illegitimate, and the further implication - actually stated quite blatantly - that what I was "really" trying to do was put time into reverse by advocating an alleged "diversity" which would exclude, or at least not welcome, artistic innovation. My defense of artistic freedom was, in other words, called a disguised rejection of contemporary music and musical creativity.

This of course is _not_ what I was advocating, or do advocate; and the fact that I, or anyone else, should be so fancifully and insistently accused of advocating it is the clearest indication that the real conflict here is not over whether music is or should be diverse - it is and it should be - but whether people who offer a _diversity __of opinion_ on this forum are going to have their ideas treated with genuine interest and respect, or whether those on the less fashionable or influential side of an issue will find their ideas misrepresented and discredited. I have seen the latter done; I have been directly subjected to it. And given that it has occurred, it is germane to ask _why_ - to ask what assumptions underlie such tactics. For there are always assumptions - assumptions about what music is and ought to be, about what beliefs and attitudes listeners to music possess and ought to possess - beneath the surface of imputations, accusations and mischaracterizations which are only taken as confirmed by the very fact that they are denied by those subjected to them, and are reiterated more and more insistently in response to every denial. This very thread is one more such reiteration, which anyone who truly understands the discussion in the Alma Deutscher thread can only greet with dismay and caution (or, lucky souls, weary indifference).

But some of us don't take well to intellectual bullying. I don't - and I think it's a good idea to point it out and ask what might be the assumptions and agendas of those who enagage in it.

I see, as I write this, that Sid is speaking plainly for himself. I'm not trying to speak for him, and have nothing to add to what he's saying, except that my own personal experience, as I've described it, gives him credence. Most of us like to think that we're open and unbiased about music, and most of us do indeed approach one another in good faith despite our differences of opinion and taste. But we are naive if we think that the field of classical music has not harbored strong biases, biases which have often hardened into ideologies quite resistant to "softening"; even a brief study of its history, particularly in the twentieth century, will reveal that. And we are naive to think that the "diversity" of contemporary culture has relieved us of such biases and that they no longer affect our opinions or the course of musical development. A real commitment to diversity - or, more fundamentally, to openness and fairness - will keep us alert to their persistence in our discourse, as well as to the force they've exerted and continue to exert, for better or for worse, on music itself.

"Diversity," as hpowders pointed out, is a PC buzzword. A better word, and a better ideal, is _respect _- respect for everyone, no matter how far in or out of the currently fashionable presumptive mainstream their ideas and preferences lie - and, if they are creative artists, no matter where they turn for inspiration.


----------



## mmsbls

This thread actually gives people a chance to discuss how we talk about modern music, but please do not talk about other members in a negative manner. Talk about the music, your feelings about music, how you express those feelings, how people in theory could express those feelings, etc.. Some posts have been deleted (and other posts may be deleted as well).


----------



## violadude

Woodduck said:


> I've been trying to stay out of this thread, since I expressed my thoughts relevant to the subject pretty exhaustively elsewhere and was rewarded with incomprehension/misrepresentation of my ideas. But I feel the need to state here that the matter raised by this thread is not diversity of _music,_ but diversity of _opinion._
> 
> In the OP, some guy states:
> 
> _"...it [the subject of diversity] has come up recently most frequently to defend the practice of only one kind of music, and the diversity consists almost entirely of styles from the past, often a quite distant past."_
> 
> That is a statement, not about whether music should be diverse, but about what "diversity" means, and it makes a specific allegation about what other people think it means. Some questions this raises, I suggest, are: do some people really think this is what "diversity" means? Is this sort of "diversity" what a substantial number of people actually want? What is the evidence for that? And if I disagree with this allegation, what legitimacy is accorded my opinion? Am I then aligning myself with those who hold this alleged idea of diversity?
> 
> No one denies or debates that music today is diverse, no one has asserted that it shouldn't be, and no one, including Sid James, is alleging that some guy or anyone else is "against older music." What is being questioned is whether some guy's explicit attack on a notion of diversity which he imputes to others is not itself contemptuous, and in effect restrictive, of a diversity of opinion, the contempt expressed obliquely through a mischaracterization of people who hold more "conservative" ideas and tastes and who can only be discredited by means of such a mischaracterization. My own statements in the Alma Deutscher thread, where I defended from a number of standpoints the concept of absolute artistic freedom and the legitimacy of Ms. Deutscher or any other artist to create in any manner or style they might wish to, no matter how unfashionable or "uncontemporary" by anyone's definition, was met by some guy with precisely the sort of dismissal to which I here refer, with the clear implication that a diversity which included the creative choice _not_ to be "contemporary" was illegitimate, and the further implication - actually stated quite blatantly - that what I was "really" trying to do was put time into reverse by advocating an alleged "diversity" which would exclude, or at least not welcome, artistic innovation. My defense of artistic freedom was, in other words, called a disguised rejection of contemporary music and musical creativity.
> 
> This of course is _not_ what I was advocating, or do advocate; and the fact that I, or anyone else, should be so fancifully and insistently accused of advocating it is the clearest indication that the real conflict here is not over whether music is or should be diverse - it is and it should be - but whether people who offer a _diversity __of opinion_ on this forum are going to have their ideas treated with genuine interest and respect, or whether those on the less fashionable or influential side of an issue will find their ideas misrepresented and discredited. I have seen the latter done; I have been directly subjected to it. And given that it has occurred, it is germane to ask why - to ask what assumptions underlie such tactics. For there are always assumptions - assumptions about what music is and ought to be, about what beliefs and attitudes listeners to music possess and ought to possess - beneath the surface of imputations, accusations and mischaracterizations which are only taken as confirmed by the very fact that they are denied by those subjected to them, and are reiterated more and more insistently in response to every denial. This very thread is one more such reiteration, which anyone who truly understands the discussion in the Alma Deutscher thread can only greet with dismay and caution (or, lucky souls, weary indifference).
> 
> But some of us don't take well to intellectual bullying. I don't - and I think it's a good idea to point it out and ask what might be the assumptions and agendas of those who enagage in it.
> 
> I see, as I write this, that Sid is speaking plainly for himself. I'm not trying to speak for him, and have nothing to add to what he's saying, except that my own personal experience, as I've described it, gives him credence. Most of us like to think that we're open and unbiased about music, and most of us do indeed approach one another in good faith despite our differences of opinion and taste. But we are naive if we think that the field of classical music has not harbored strong biases, biases which have often hardened into ideologies quite resistant to "softening"; even a brief study of its history, particularly in the twentieth century, will reveal that. And we are naive to think that the "diversity" of contemporary culture has relieved us of such biases and that they no longer affect our opinions or the course of musical development. A real commitment to diversity - or, more fundamentally, to openness and fairness - will keep us alert to their persistence in our discourse, as well as to the force they've exerted and continue to exert, for better or for worse, on music itself.
> 
> "Diversity," as hpowders pointed out, is a PC buzzword. A better word, and a better ideal, is _respect _- respect for everyone, no matter how far in or out of the currently fashionable presumptive mainstream their ideas and preferences lie - and, if they are creative artists, no matter where they turn for inspiration.


Wonderful wording, Woodduck! You are the master of prose.


----------



## Woodduck

violadude said:


> Wonderful wording, Woodduck! You are the master of prose.
> 
> View attachment 58080


Thank you. But words are only as good as the ideas they express. (You're a fast reader! I hope not too fast... )


----------



## science

I support contemporary music, including both the most radical sorts and the neo-whatever sorts. 

I passionately resent and will always resent the blatant and intentional misrepresentations of my beliefs. I am considering not exploring any more of the music advocated by people who treat me this way. I realize that in doing so I would be conceding defeat, for their original purpose was to turn people like me off, to keep us in our place. 

But when I can figure out what response would be the most effectively defiant, I will do it. My hate has coalesced: it will be permanent and unwavering.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> Woodduck: In the OP, some guy states:
> 
> "...it [the subject of diversity] has come up recently most frequently to defend the practice of only one kind of music, and the diversity consists almost entirely of styles from the past, often a quite distant past."
> 
> That is a statement, not about whether music should be diverse, but about what "diversity" means, and it makes a specific allegation about what other people think it means. Some questions this raises, I suggest, are: do some people really think this is what "diversity" means? Is this sort of "diversity" what a substantial number of people actually want? What is the evidence for that? And if I disagree with this allegation, what legitimacy is accorded my opinion? Am I then aligning myself with those who hold this alleged idea of diversity?


Lovely post.

Objective, dispassionate, just.

People should tell the truth about others' posts-- or really just refrain from silly, impetuous nonsense.


----------



## Sid James

Marschallin Blair said:


> It seems my response earlier to this got put down the Orwellian Memory Hole.
> 
> Okay, take two:
> 
> No one was singled out_ by name_ and _called _a sheep; like how certain people _single out_ Sid _by name_ in _their_ gigantic, howling curses against his moderate and well-reasoned musical opinions, for instance.
> 
> [The rest of what I want to say has been censored against my will and sense of good taste. Sorry.]


I'm no saint or martyr, I am saying that prior to 2013 I had my own battles with certain factions of this forum, and I just had enough.

Regarding your last line, Nelson Mandela said about implied censorship and banning that it imposes restrictions on one's freedom. But then it gets worse and screws with your mind, you end up imposing your own restrictions out of fear, sometimes its not warranted. You then become your own censor. That is what I have done for two years in this wonderful atmosphere of ideological freedom on certain topics here. Now I've had enough. I don't intend to participate as I did. I don't deny that this is a settling of old scores, to get things off my chest, and if it can be benefit to others then that's even better.

If anything I would ask for a Modernist Manifesto of those on TC who believe in this ideology. What are the "do's" and "don'ts?" What are the things you don't want talked about? What things are banned or not politically correct? What things are outside the restrctions of rusted on orthodoxy?

I am not joking. I want to know these implied restrictions. Here are some I can imagine being argued, if these things where directly said out loud:

- You can only take part in debates about Modern/contemporary music if you have a degree in music (or if not, are accepted by the clique to have equivalent experience)

- You have to accept that certain types of music are "new" whilst others are "old"

- You have to overlook the embarrasing aspects of Modernist orthodoxy - eg. that Cage, Boulez and Stockhausen talked a lot of drivel

- If you criticise the ideology, you must recant as at a show trial, then after you may be accepted into the clan providing some listening and re-education

- There is a distinct line drawn between certain topics, some are for those in the clan, others aren't

- Tradition is to be frowned upon, even though the composers on this forum where trained in sonata form, fugue, harmony etc., it would be better if John Cage had gotten his way and nothing but concepts where taught in music schools (art=life so everyone can be a composer, provided some basic indoctrination)

- And so on.....



Woodduck said:


> No one denies or debates that music today is diverse, no one has asserted that it shouldn't be, and no one, including Sid James, is alleging that some guy or anyone else is "against older music." ...


No, however his reading of history offer the classic Modernist ideological distinction between so-called "old" and "new." I wonder how certain composers who used serialism or electronics flexibly fit into this? Like those who retained the Romantic aesthetic, or continued to write in old forms? Do we need to box and therefore ghettoise everything?

http://www.talkclassical.com/23002-putative-properties-modern-music.html

In other words, many of use here like music of today that isn't really new, but "putatively" so. Or apparently so, it is like imitation new. That's not exactly endearing and embracing diversity, is it? It shuts out many listeners. Why is there a need to do this, unless we want music to be like Apartheid?


----------



## science

I'd known the answer a long time ago and forgot it - the answer is to explore and promote the verboten music. 

Fortunately, there's a lot of it! Jennifer Higdon, here I come!


----------



## violadude

Marschallin Blair said:


> Lovely post.
> 
> Objective, dispassionate, just.
> 
> People should tell the truth about others' posts-- *or really just refrain from silly, impetuous nonsense*.


Exactly! Elegantly worded. I'm glad we could agree on something.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> Sid James: If anything I would ask for a Modernist Manifesto of those on TC who believe in this ideology. What are the "do's" and "don'ts?" What are the things you don't want talked about? What things are banned or not politically correct? What this are outside the restrctions of rusted on orthodoxy?


Why?

You don't need anyone's permission to think or to express an honest opinion on music-- least of all a howling, blockhead mob-- whatever their ideology.

"The crowd is untruth."

- Kierkegaard


----------



## Marschallin Blair

violadude said:


> Exactly! Elegantly worded. I'm glad we could agree on something.
> 
> View attachment 58081


I love the flattery, as only Woodduck knows-- and I thank you for it of course. . . but what's of fundamental importance isn't the right to agree but rather the right to disagree; whatever one's sense of fashion.









I need _these_ shoes, myself. _;D_


----------



## violadude

Marschallin Blair said:


> I love the flattery, as only Woodduck knows-- and I thank you for it of course. . . but what's of fundamental importance isn't the right to agree but rather the right to disagree; whatever one's sense of fashion.
> 
> View attachment 58082
> 
> 
> I need _these_ shoes, myself. _;D_


Well, it would be quite sheepish of you if you wanted the same shoes as me.

Like I always say, group think is from hell.


----------



## mmsbls

Woodduck said:


> "Diversity," as hpowders pointed out, is a PC buzzword. A better word, and a better ideal, is _respect _- respect for everyone, no matter how far in or out of the currently fashionable presumptive mainstream their ideas and preferences lie - and, if they are creative artists, no matter where they turn for inspiration.


Respect for all posters and their ideas would be wonderful. The forum would be more accommodating for almost all, and many of the threads would likely be more interesting.

I've struggled with controversial TC threads concerning modern music for years now. Sometimes there are fascinating discussions on various aspects of the subject, but often there are posters seemingly talking past one another. I feel that people often do not attempt to understand each other's views.

Members who make blatant negative statement about modern music such as "Schoenberg destroyed classical music", "Modern music is simply noise", "Composer X is garbage", etc. could certainly find better words to express their sentiments, and others could interpret those statements in the only way they could possibly be meant - "Schoenberg changed music in a manner I dislike", "Modern music sounds like noise to me", "I dislike composer x."

Unfortunately some take a statement such as "Schoenberg's music sucks" as an insult to them since they like Schoenberg's music. But of course, the statement "I dislike Schoenberg's music" does not insult anyone. Interestingly some members have very strongly criticized Mozart in a similar manner, yet they're generally ignored. We all know Mozart is a great composer so if someone writes derogatory comments on Mozart's music, few if any care. Those who know modern music is as good as older music might choose to respond as we do with Mozart (i.e. those statements reflect on the poster not the music or the composer).

There's a new thread about negative quotes about composers from other composers or music critics. If composers can say such negative things about music or other composers, why can't TC members?

Some would like to "defend" modern music against inappropriate, incorrect, or insulting comments. Of course, the music itself needs no defense - it's just music. But maybe "TC" should attempt to counter comments that are inappropriate (yes, I know we could have a whole thread on what this means) or incorrect. If someone says Schoenberg's music is random noise, one can respond in a number of ways. But if one doesn't show some understanding of why someone might say this, the response will likely be ignored or worse used as support for believing the statement more strongly.* The _fact_ is that many _hear_ Schoenberg's music as random sounds or noise. Ignoring this probably will cause one's arguments to fall on deaf ears.

And yes, some people do troll. We moderators know that. If you feel someone is trolling, please report the post. Word up - calling someone a troll is viewed as an insult on TC.

*There are many studies showing that using facts to refute beliefs _that are emotionally held_ actually can result in the believer holding those beliefs more strongly _especially if they are intelligent_.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Why?
> 
> You don't need anyone's permission to think or to express an honest opinion on music-- least of all a howling, blockhead mob-- whatever their ideology.
> 
> "The crowd is untruth."
> 
> - Kierkegaard


I won't speak for Sid James, but for me the issue isn't whether I have permission. The issue is which opinions someone new to classical music can express without suffering scorn for it.

Edit: And also, I don't think of anyone as the "howling blockhead mob." The most scornful, the least welcoming, are among the elite.


----------



## violadude

mmsbls said:


> Interestingly some members have very strongly criticized Mozart in a similar manner, yet they're generally ignored.


Ignored? Certainly not by me I hope! Mozart is the epitome of beauty and beauty is all I want in my life.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> "The crowd is untruth."





violadude said:


> Like I always say, group think is from hell.


You guys know that everyone says this stuff, right?

Marketers discovered the profitability of this language in the mid-20th century and now it's part of our culture's creed.


----------



## violadude

science said:


> You guys know that everyone says this stuff, right?
> 
> Marketers discovered the profitability of this language in the mid-20th century and now it's part of our culture's creed.


I like parrots.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

> mmsbls: *There are many studies showing that using facts to refute beliefs that are emotionally held actually can result in the believer holding those beliefs more strongly especially if they are intelligent.


Post script on the post script: The famed philosopher of science and defender of rationality and free inquiry; and the scourge of dogmatists the world over, Sir Karl Popper, called this a "re-inforced dogma."

The more you refute some people's _positions_ (as opposed to attacking _them_), the more tightly they will close their eyes, clench their fists, and redouble their fanaticism. . . and hate you.

One of course doesn't make many friends by always winning arguments.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> You guys know that everyone says this stuff, right?
> 
> Marketers discovered the profitability of this language in the mid-20th century and now it's part of our culture's creed.


. . . then Edward Bernays and Madison Avenue are only ripping off academe; thank God its not the reverse.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> I won't speak for Sid James, but for me the issue isn't whether I have permission. The issue is which opinions someone new to classical music can express without suffering scorn for it.


If one's _opinions_ are sized up, is one's _personalit_y being attacked?--- or merely an aesthetic evaluation or the content of an idea?


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> If one's _opinions_ are sized up, is one's _personalit_y being attacked?--- or merely an aesthetic evaluation or the content of an idea?


It depends.

Again, had I my way, we'd be nice to each other.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Post script on the post script: The famed philosopher of science and defender of rationality and free inquiry; and the scourge of dogmatists the world over, Sir Karl Popper, called this a "re-inforced dogma."
> 
> The more you refute some people's _positions_ (as opposed to attacking _them_), the more tightly they will close their eyes, clench their fists, and redouble their fanaticism. . . and hate you.
> 
> One of course doesn't make many friends by always winning arguments.


Exactly so. Which is why it is apparent that the actual goal of people in such arguments is to create and cultivate that hate. The point is reinforce the "us vs. them" mentality, with insiders and outsiders, and the new guy is always the outsider, scorned.

If he is willing to undergo sufficient hazing, to learn what to say and not to say, and above all to support the dichotomy, then he may be welcomed eventually.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> It depends.
> 
> Again, had I my way, we'd be nice to each other.


Does 'being nice' mean abdicating discernment?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Exactly so. Which is why it is apparent that the actual goal of people in such arguments is to create and cultivate that hate. The point is reinforce the "us vs. them" mentality, with insiders and outsiders, and the new guy is always the outsider, scorned.
> 
> If he is willing to undergo sufficient hazing, to learn what to say and not to say, and above all to support the dichotomy, then he may be welcomed eventually.


Was Einstein's refutation of Newton a sublimation on his part to "create and cultivate hate"?

Or was it an honest effort to arrive at a closer approximation to the truth?


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Does 'being nice' mean abdicating discernment?


Of course not. But if _one_ actually can't be "discerning" without being nice, then _one_ has a problem.


----------



## Blake

Very few arguments are actually worth having. But we do so anyway because our tormented mind needs a bit of ego reassurance.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Was Einstein's refutation of Newton a sublimation on his part to "create and cultivate hate"?
> 
> Or was it an honest effort to arrive at a closer approximation to the truth?


Oh, please. Calling someone cowardly because they don't like certain music, or snobby because they do, is nothing like Einstein publishing physics papers. If Einstein had simply called Newton a poopy-head, you'd have a fair analogy.


----------



## violadude

Vesuvius said:


> Very few arguments are actually worth having. But we do so anyway because our tormented mind needs a bit of ego reassurance.


It can be assured that some people's ego needs no more reassurance.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Of course not. But if you actually can't be "discerning" without being nice, then you have a problem.


_Precisely.
_
-- That's where good breeding breeding comes in-- _itself_ a function of intelligence, taste, and judgement.

Cheers.


----------



## Blake

violadude said:


> It can be assured that some people's ego needs no more reassurance.


Mine certainly doesn't.


----------



## violadude

Marschallin Blair said:


> _Precisely.
> _
> -- *That's where good breeding breeding comes in*-- itself a function of intelligence, taste, and judgement.
> 
> Cheers.


Like so?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Vesuvius said:


> Very few arguments are actually worth having. But we do so anyway because our tormented mind needs a bit of ego reassurance.


Does this meta-statement apply to your own statement?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

violadude said:


> Like so?
> 
> View attachment 58090


Adorable- I absolutely love it.

-- I meant of course that diva cats and wayward dogs in the show drifts were excepted, of course.


----------



## Blake

Marschallin Blair said:


> Does this meta-statement apply to your own statement?


Yes, I'm involved.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Oh, please. Calling someone cowardly because they don't like certain music, or snobby because they do, is nothing like Einstein publishing physics papers. If Einstein had simply called Newton a poopy-head, you'd have a fair analogy.


I'd say a fair analogy is Nietzsche calling Plato "a coward before reality" and Kant "a catastrophic spider."

But certainly not someone who says, "I for one, won't drink the Kool Aid and pretend that the Emperor has clothes on, or even that there's an Emperor to begin with."


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Vesuvius said:


> Yes, I'm involved.


Then bravo for the self-refutation.

I admire your honesty.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> I'd say a fair analogy is Nietzsche calling Plato "a coward before reality" and Kant "a catastrophic spider."
> 
> But certainly not someone who says, "I for one, won't drink the Kool Aid and pretend that the Emperor has clothes on, or even that there's an Emperor to begin with."


Yes, definitely was impolite. If they'd existed at the same time and interacted on a well-regulated message board, Nietzsche would've been justly punished.

"Kool Aid" is perfectly insulting, and you know it. It's no different than calling someone a coward or a spider.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Yes, definitely was impolite. If they'd existed at the same time and interacted on a well-regulated message board, Nietzsche would've been justly punished.
> 
> "Kool Aid" is perfectly insulting, and you know it. It's no different than calling someone a coward or a spider.


Were they coeval, then Nietzsche would have won the debate before it _started_. . .

'Kool Aid' is a term that can be normative or pejorative-- depending on its context.

Unless of course there is a Grand Inquisitor Politically-Correct Enforcer pretending that he knows, not unlike the Queen of Hearts, that words mean neither more or less than what _he_ says they mean.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Were they coeval, then Nietzsche would have won the debate before it _started_. . .
> 
> 'Kool Aid' is a term that can be normative or pejorative-- depending on its context.
> 
> Unless of course there is a Grand Inquisitor Politically-Correct Enforcer pretending that he knows, like the Queen of Hearts, that words mean neither more or less than what _she_ says they mean.


I'm pretty sure we agree about this in our hearts.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> I'm pretty sure we agree about this in our hearts.


I tolerably sure we wouldn't.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

violadude said:


> Like I always say, group think is from hell.
> 
> View attachment 58083


What a tremendous beard, it takes me ages to grow one.

; I say: introverted individualists unite or not separately in their own homes via digital media!


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> I tolerably sure we wouldn't.


Ok. Why call it "Kool Aid" then, instead of simply saying you don't like it?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Ok. Why call it "Kool Aid" then, instead of simply saying you don't like it?


Isn't it obvious?

- Because 'Kool Aid' denotes an unthinking, collectivistic, uncritical acceptance of something that is detrimental to oneself in some way. . . in this case, exercising one's own musical aesthetic judgement.

There's no rule that says one has to like anything. . . music or otherwise.

And if there were, I'd just break it anyway.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> Isn't it obvious?
> 
> - Because 'Kool Aid' denotes an unthinking, collectivistic, uncritical acceptance of something that is detrimental to oneself in some way. . . in this case, exercising one's own musical aesthetic judgement.
> 
> There's no rule that says one has to like anything. . . music or otherwise.
> 
> And if there were, I'd just break it anyway.


Right, and "unthinking, collectivistic, uncritical" are intentionally insulting.


----------



## violadude

Marschallin Blair said:


> And if there were, I'd just break it anyway.


So hardcore.

.......................


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Of course not. But if you actually can't be "discerning" without being nice, then you have a problem.


A word of warning in using the second-person 'you' in the Forum.

A post of mine was deleted by a moderator earlier this evening because I (inadvertently) used the second-person 'you' in a post; by which of course I meant the third-person-singular, 'one.'

-- But interestingly enough, I see that the very same 'infraction' is allowed to stand by moderation in your post above.

Mine was deleted; and of course I was sent a PM by a moderator politely admonishing me not to insult people by using the word 'you' in a posted response.

Yours is allowed to stand.

Are all animals equal?-- but some animals more equal than others?


----------



## Woodduck

mmsbls said:


> Respect for all posters and their ideas would be wonderful. The forum would be more accommodating for almost all, and many of the threads would likely be more interesting.
> 
> I've struggled with controversial TC threads concerning modern music for years now. Sometimes there are fascinating discussions on various aspects of the subject, but often there are posters seemingly talking past one another. I feel that people often do not attempt to understand each other's views.
> 
> *Members who make blatant negative statement about modern music such as "Schoenberg destroyed classical music", "Modern music is simply noise", "Composer X is garbage", etc. could certainly find better words to express their sentiments, and others could interpret those statements in the only way they could possibly be meant - "Schoenberg changed music in a manner I dislike", "Modern music sounds like noise to me", "I dislike composer x."
> *
> *Unfortunately some take a statement such as "Schoenberg's music sucks" as an insult to them since they like Schoenberg's music. But of course, the statement "I dislike Schoenberg's music" does not insult anyone.* Interestingly some members have very strongly criticized Mozart in a similar manner, yet they're generally ignored. We all know Mozart is a great composer so if someone writes derogatory comments on Mozart's music, few if any care. Those who know modern music is as good as older music might choose to respond as we do with Mozart (i.e. those statements reflect on the poster not the music or the composer).
> 
> There's a new thread about negative quotes about composers from other composers or music critics. If composers can say such negative things about music or other composers, why can't TC members?
> 
> Some would like to "defend" modern music against inappropriate, incorrect, or insulting comments. Of course, the music itself needs no defense - it's just music. But maybe "TC" should attempt to counter comments that are inappropriate (yes, I know we could have a whole thread on what this means) or incorrect. *If someone says Schoenberg's music is random noise, one can respond in a number of ways. But if one doesn't show some understanding of why someone might say this, the response will likely be ignored or worse used as support for believing the statement more strongly.* The fact is that many hear Schoenberg's music as random sounds or noise. Ignoring this probably will cause one's arguments to fall on deaf ears.*
> 
> And yes, some people do troll. We moderators know that. If you feel someone is trolling, please report the post. Word up - calling someone a troll is viewed as an insult on TC.
> 
> *There are many studies showing that using facts to refute beliefs _that are emotionally held_ actually can result in the believer holding those beliefs more strongly _especially if they are intelligent_.


Opinions which displease us are not personal insults and should not evoke them. There are constructive ways to deal with opinions we disagree with. _But this is a different and simpler issue than the one that's been raised here_.

The questions Sid James and I have raised are (and I don't want to speak for Sid here, but only to give my sense of where we agree): What are the assumptions about music, particularly at present with respect to the idea of "modernity," which underlie and motivate discussions on this forum (and in the culture more broadly)? How do these assumptions - or ideologies - affect the conduct of discussions here? And are certain opinions or points of view ignored, marginalized, misrepresented, or otherwise disrespected because of such ideological bias?

This is not a matter of "I think this is great or that is terrible and let's find pleasant ways of saying it." It's a matter of "You have the right - or wrong - set of ideas about what music is or should be, you ought to have the right one, and if you don't you will be disrespected and your ideas will not get far on this forum." This is a more difficult issue to discuss, and we too easily pretend it doesn't exist. The last person to admit to ideological bias is the person who has it, and since most of us do have unquestioned (often unconscious) biases there's plenty of denial going around. Self-examination is needed.

If people have felt disrespected, or if they've seen their thoughts dismissed and misrepresented, or if they perceive a pattern to such, it's not a bad thing to point it out and analyze the reasons for it. But this is not merely a personal matter between members. We are only the individual keepers of our flames, and the flames burn throughout culture and history. Ideological bias is a musical and cultural issue which ought to be wide open to inquiry on a classical music forum. And when we see it exemplified in our midst, drawing our heads into our shells of defensiveness and avoiding the issue by recasting it as a mere matter of factionalism or taste or forum etiquette is to miss an opportunity for enlightenment.


----------



## Sid James

Marschallin Blair said:


> Why?
> 
> You don't need anyone's permission to think or to express an honest opinion on music-- least of all a howling, blockhead mob-- whatever their ideology.
> 
> "The crowd is untruth."
> 
> - Kierkegaard


I don't need anybody's permission, however as you would know that the worse things that a person can be accused of is:

- Ignorance: "You don't know what you are talking about"

- Invalidation of opinion (even worse, of emotion) : "I can't understand how anyone can feel like you do."

- Given advice that isn't asked for: "You should..."

The fact is that it isn't only one member here, its become a cultural factor of the forum. Its not only about Modern/contemporary music.

If people want this forum to become a friendly place, then communication needs to be worked on. I think its beyond being a friendly place, but not in an irreparable state. As I suggested, this matter is academic as far as I am concerned, my days of participation as in the past are over. It's the time factor mainly, but I am trying to warn those new to the forum that regarding the adversity they experience in such matters, they are not alone and its not the first time this has happened.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> A word of warning in using the second-person 'you' in the Forum.
> 
> A post of mine was deleted by a moderator earlier this evening because I (inadvertently) used the second-person 'you' in a post; by which of course I meant the third-person-singular, 'one.'
> 
> -- But interestingly enough, I see that the very same 'infraction' is allowed to stand by moderation in your post above.
> 
> Mine was deleted; and of course I was sent a PM by a moderator politely admonishing me not to insult people by using the word 'you' in a posted response.
> 
> Yours is allowed to stand.
> 
> Are all animals equal?-- but some animals more equal than others?


Thanks for the warning. I've edited my post.

Edit: Just to be clear, I didn't intend that post as an insult to anyone - I don't think it's insulting. But even if it were insulting, it definitely wasn't about you. I'm sure you have no problem of that sort. You are a master of English tone and connotation, you can express any opinion you want as politely as you want.


----------



## dgee

Having just about quit this forum on occasion because of the prevalence of threads devoted to denigrating modern music and the persistent thread bombing where members hop into a reasonable discussion of anything from Schoenberg to Babbitt to something they've never heard of that's modern to suggest it burns their ears or is horrible or is deservedly unpopular, I find this discussion bizarre. 

Out in the real world contemporary/modernist music is withdrawn at every opportunity, hidden away and ghettoised, it needn't be bullied out of the way here too. It's funny to reflect that things have improved markedly from when I joined


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> Thanks for the warning. I've edited my post.
> 
> Edit: Just to be clear, I didn't intend that post as an insult to anyone - I don't think it's insulting. But even if it were insulting, it definitely wasn't about you. I'm sure you have no problem of that sort. You are a master of English tone and connotation, you can express any opinion you want as politely as you want.


The last thing _I'd _want would be for someone to edit their thoughts to accommodate _my_ aesthetic sensibilities.

I'm _not_, nor could I possibly _be_, offended in what you originally wrote.

I just thought the whole matter silly and Orwellian--- after I had _my_ post deleted, but somehow, your identically-infraction-worthy post was allowed. . . . . . '_somehow_'. . . . . . to escape detection from the moderator.

Funny how that works out.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

dgee said:


> Having just about quit this forum on occasion because of the prevalence of threads devoted to denigrating modern music and the persistent thread bombing where members hop into a reasonable discussion of anything from Schoenberg to Babbitt to something they've never heard of that's modern to suggest it burns their ears or is horrible or is deservedly unpopular, I find this discussion bizarre.
> 
> Out in the real world contemporary/modernist music is withdrawn at every opportunity, hidden away and ghettoised, it needn't be bullied out of the way here too. It's funny to reflect that things have improved markedly from when I joined


I wouldn't call the lies, half-truths, and libelous statements that Woodduck's been subjected to an improvement-- but I would certainly call it a _retrogression_, and a 'return to the primitive.'


----------



## arpeggio

*?????????????????*

Another thread that is burning out what few functioning brain cells I have left. 

I am probably wrong but it seems to me that many of you are agreeing with each other and do not realize it. Maybe you do realize it and I do not realize that you all are realizing it. 

Right now I am listening to a new CD I just purchased that contains a fantastic work that I just performed this afternoon with the National Concert Band: Roger Cichy's: _Galilean Moons_. The concert had all sorts of 'diversity' of music from a Sousa march to a modernistic work by Persichetti. The audience loved the concert especially the Cichy. Several audience members were new and said they were going to attend more concerts.

So I just performed a concert that had all sorts of what I think is 'diversity' and it was a great success. Of course my perception of 'diversity' may be bogus.


----------



## violadude

Marschallin Blair said:


> I wouldn't call the lies, half-truths, and libelous statements that Woodduck's been *subjected to* an improvement-- but I would certainly call it a _retrogression_, and a 'return to the primitive.'


This is subjugation:









This is not:


----------



## mmsbls

Woodduck said:


> _But this is a different and simpler issue than the one that's been raised here_.
> 
> ...And when we see it exemplified in our midst, drawing our heads into our shells of defensiveness and avoiding the issue by recasting it as a mere matter of factionalism or taste or forum etiquette is to miss an opportunity for enlightenment.


It's possible I'm misunderstanding your post. Hopefully not. I agree there are two separate issues. The first paragraph in my post was a response to the last paragraph in yours. The remainder of my post addressed the other issue. The question of ideologies and their effect on TC discussions is interesting as are many such questions. Unfortunately, all too often these issues do not fully play out because members shift their focus from the issue at hand to ad homs, insults, or other attacks, and moderators edit or delete posts and close threads. Worse still, sometimes members receive infractions.

So the two issues are different, but one must be properly dealt with in order to fully explore the other.


----------



## science

Marschallin Blair said:


> The last thing _I'd _want would be for someone to edit their thoughts to accommodate _my_ aesthetic sensibilities.
> 
> I'm _not_, nor could I possibly _be_, offended in what you originally wrote.
> 
> I just thought the whole matter silly and Orwellian--- after I had _my_ post deleted, but somehow, your identically-infraction-worthy post was allowed. . . . . . '_somehow_'. . . . . . to escape detection from the moderator.
> 
> Funny how that works out.


I didn't see your post so I can't guess about what happened there. My post didn't violate the TOS in any way that I know of. But if it did, it might've simply not yet come to the attention of the mods.

But I will be more careful with "you" from now on - not with you of course, but with using the word "you!"


----------



## science

dgee said:


> Having just about quit this forum on occasion because of the prevalence of threads devoted to denigrating modern music and the persistent thread bombing where members hop into a reasonable discussion of anything from Schoenberg to Babbitt to something they've never heard of that's modern to suggest it burns their ears or is horrible or is deservedly unpopular, I find this discussion bizarre.
> 
> Out in the real world contemporary/modernist music is withdrawn at every opportunity, hidden away and ghettoised, it needn't be bullied out of the way here too. It's funny to reflect that things have improved markedly from when I joined


There definitely is a difference between various parts of "the real world" and online fora.

At present on this forum I see no risk of fans of modernist music being bullied into silence. Now it's fans of the likes of Jenkins, Whitacre, and Higdon who get - have almost been - bullied into silence.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> There definitely is a difference between various parts of "the real world" and online fora.
> 
> At present on this forum I see no risk of fans of modernist music being bullied into silence. Now it's fans of the likes of Jenkins, Whitacre, and Higdon who get - have almost been - bullied into silence.


Is Don tilting at those windmills again?

"Now, where _are_ those bullies, Sancho?"


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> I didn't see your post so I can't guess about what happened there. My post didn't violate the TOS in any way that I know of. But if it did, it might've simply not yet come to the attention of the mods.
> 
> But I will be more careful with "you" from now on - not with you of course, but with using the word "you!"


Oh it doesn't matter to me-- merely to ""fair-and-impartial"" moderators.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

violadude said:


> So hardcore.
> 
> .......................


I prefer 'principled,' myself. _;D_

Always charge, never bend.

'*WWBD*'-- *W*hat *W*ould *B*runnhilde *D*o?

- _Or _*B*lair, for that matter.


----------



## mmsbls

science said:


> Now it's fans of the likes of Jenkins, Whitacre, and Higdon who get - have almost been - bullied into silence.


In your experience is the bullying a direct reply focusing on the original poster or is it more indirect referring to the content of the post?

A: I love Higdon's music.

B1: People who like Higdon's music haven't explored modern music much and are not open to interesting music.

B2: Higdon uses older styles, and her music is not really interesting.


----------



## Wood

mmsbls said:


> In your experience is the bullying a direct reply focusing on the original poster or is it more indirect referring to the content of the post?


Crikey, its really kicked off overnight!

This is a helpful query. I can see that Sid & Science are very upset, but it is hard to see the cause of it.

I do not feel slightly intimidated about posting the following:

I LIKE EINAUDI!

Nothing that anyone could say on here would either change that view or hurt my feelings. However, a well-thought out post like we particularly get from Some Guy promoting more adventurous music that I may be unaware of is always gratefully received in this small corner of the world.

But back to the bullying, Sid & Science, can you provide any examples which may make inexperienced members feel intimidated from posting in favour of certain composers or ideas?

I follow these debates pretty closely, but I can only see rudeness coming from the other side, so it would be good if you could point out where this is happening, with examples, so that we can understand your position better.


----------



## Nereffid

mmsbls said:


> Respect for all posters and their ideas would be wonderful. The forum would be more accommodating for almost all, and many of the threads would likely be more interesting.
> 
> I've struggled with controversial TC threads concerning modern music for years now. Sometimes there are fascinating discussions on various aspects of the subject, but often there are posters seemingly talking past one another. I feel that people often do not attempt to understand each other's views.





Woodduck said:


> Opinions which displease us are not personal insults and should not evoke them. There are constructive ways to deal with opinions we disagree with. _But this is a different and simpler issue than the one that's been raised here_.
> ...
> 
> This is not a matter of "I think this is great or that is terrible and let's find pleasant ways of saying it." It's a matter of "You have the right - or wrong - set of ideas about what music is or should be, you ought to have the right one, and if you don't you will be disrespected and your ideas will not get far on this forum." This is a more difficult issue to discuss, and we too easily pretend it doesn't exist. The last person to admit to ideological bias is the person who has it, and since most of us do have unquestioned (often unconscious) biases there's plenty of denial going around. Self-examination is needed.


The key word I would use is *empathy*.

Some people (in the real world too!) just seem to have inordinate difficulty accepting the fact that others have very different likes and dislikes, and moreover that others actually experience the world in a very different way. Even on TC where the users are supposedly united by a shared interest in a particular subject, the range of experiences and ideas is so vast that it seems we might as well be inhabiting parallel universes. While in most situations this fact isn't relevant, there are occasions where it is, and it's the failure of some posters to accept or recognise these "parallel universes" - their lack of empathy - that causes conflict.

Thus, "_I can't understand why anyone would prefer X over Y_". Such an attitude makes discussion of certain subjects fraught with peril because what's implicit there is that X is flat-out wrong. Whoever likes X must then choose between conflict and acquiescence, because a response of "live-and-let-live" doesn't seem to cut it in the mind of the unempathic.

It also makes _even pointing out the problem_ a problem, because challenging the fact that an unempathic person's dogma is merely dogma will just provoke an unempathic, dogmatic response.
Personally, I regard "_I can't understand why anyone would prefer X over Y_" as meaning "_I entirely lack the intellectual and emotional capacity to imagine the world through eyes other than my own_", so I have little interest in engaging with such people.

Though the argument appears to revolve around acceptance of modern music, at heart it's an argument about how or whether we are able to accept other people's opinions.


----------



## Sid James

Wood said:


> ...
> But back to the bullying, Sid & Science, can you provide any examples which may make inexperienced members feel intimidated from posting in favour of certain composers or ideas?...


I probably could, however that would be inappropriate. Despite the fact that I got angry, I don't want to make this a witch hunt. Maybe doing these things is part of any online discussion group or places like facebook. It becomes an echo chamber of the fashions and fads of the moment. There are ways of being inititiated into the inner circle. Early in my time here, I remember one particular occassion when I made it hard for a newbie, and that person left. That feeling of being the cause of that never left me. I have not done it since, but whenever I see it happen time and time again, I get angry.

Until now I have largely kept this under wraps, perhaps fired a round of bullets, most often way off target. But in this topic it is on target. If we mean by diversity a democracy of ideas, then I'm on topic. But my gut feeling is that classical music isn't a democracy, its a hierarchy, as I explained. So we will never get to some sort of level playing field, its always going to be loaded in certain persons or groups favour.


----------



## Woodduck

Sid James said:


> I would ask for a Modernist Manifesto of those on TC who believe in this ideology. What are the "do's" and "don'ts?" What are the things you don't want talked about? What things are banned or not politically correct? What things are outside the restrictions of rusted on orthodoxy?
> 
> I am not joking. I want to know these implied restrictions. Here are some I can imagine being argued, if these things where directly said out loud:
> 
> - You can only take part in debates about Modern/contemporary music if you have a degree in music (or if not, are accepted by the clique to have equivalent experience)
> 
> - You have to accept that certain types of music are "new" whilst others are "old"
> 
> - You have to overlook the embarrasing aspects of Modernist orthodoxy - eg. that Cage, Boulez and Stockhausen talked a lot of drivel
> 
> - If you criticise the ideology, you must recant as at a show trial, then after you may be accepted into the clan providing some listening and re-education
> 
> - There is a distinct line drawn between certain topics, some are for those in the clan, others aren't
> 
> - Tradition is to be frowned upon, even though the composers on this forum where trained in sonata form, fugue, harmony etc., it would be better if John Cage had gotten his way and nothing but concepts where taught in music schools (art=life so everyone can be a composer, provided some basic indoctrination)
> 
> - And so on.....
> 
> the classic Modernist ideological distinction between so-called "old" and "new." I wonder how certain composers who used serialism or electronics flexibly fit into this? Like those who retained the Romantic aesthetic, or continued to write in old forms? Do we need to box and therefore ghettoise everything?
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/23002-putative-properties-modern-music.html
> 
> In other words, many of use here like music of today that isn't really new, but "putatively" so. Or apparently so, it is like imitation new. That's not exactly endearing and embracing diversity, is it? It shuts out many listeners. Why is there a need to do this, unless we want music to be like Apartheid?


Sid cites the thread "Putative Properties of Modern Music." It is worth reading. But here are a couple of key excerpts:

*"New music is new. A consequence of newness is unfamiliarity... One should expect new music to be new, i.e., unfamiliar. And one should recognize that unfamiliarity means that the new thing will be difficult to understand."*

"21st century--*increasing distance between what new music composers are producing and what listeners are even aware of, a gap abetted by an increasing number of composers who are willing to produce what listeners want. If Higdon and Adès can give people "new" music that is nonetheless familiar, then it's the people producing new music who are out of step.* Music is a product. The customer is king. *Genuine innovation is increasingly marginalized**, innovative composers dismissed as "obscure" and the consumer secure that his or her needs are paramount." *

If anyone doubts that ideology is a factor in the discourse of this forum, it's impossible to miss it here. Assumptions often implicit and buried, if not denied, are here stated outright:

- "New music" is "innovative." It is "unfamiliar." It is "difficult to understand."

- Music that listeners "want" - music that they can "understand," i.e, enjoy - is not real "new music."

- It is unfortunate and reprehensible that listeners do not want to hear real "new music," i.e. music which is by definition difficult to understand.

- Composers who produce music that listeners can "understand", i.e. enjoy, are making life hard for composers of real "new music," which listeners cannot expect to enjoy, by outcompeting them for the attention of listeners.

- If composers of music which is not really "new music" - i.e. which is liked by listeners - were not around to outcompete the composers of "real" "new music," listeners would be listening to more "real" "new music," and its composers would not be dismissed as "out of step," "marginal," or "obscure."

Conclusion: _The trouble with contemporary classical music is that listeners want to hear music which makes sense to them and which they enjoy, and that some composers are actually writing it. _

Contempt by the avant-garde for the complacent, lazy, ignorant listener and for the composer who refuses to align himself with the "progressives"... Where have we heard all that before? Haven't we been hearing it all our lives? Isn't it the central ideology, the fundamental world view, of the self-proclaimed Modernist? _"Our"_ music, the "real" music of "our time," isn't embraced with open arms, isn't understood, isn't loved - but it's _"their"_ fault. It couldn't be because what we offer people is harsh or chaotic, because it has no recognizable relationship to anything previously heard, because it exhibits no conformity to aesthetic ideals that have made music deeply meaningful to people, ideals that have grown and matured over centuries... No, it's because listeners won't bother to _try_ to understand our music, which they would learn to enjoy if they were willing to _work_ at it - and because those darned "conservative" composers insist on arresting the inevitable progress of musical evolution by offering people familiar, old-fashioned, "pretty" sounds that we the innovators have declared, and shown by our bold example, to be irrelevant to our times.

There is not one of these assumptions which is self-evidently true. There is not one that cannot be challenged. There is not one that should not be challenged. And there are more where these came from. But if we don't recognize them as assumptions - and I wonder how anyone could fail to recognize them at this point in history - we will not have realistic conversation about where music is, has been, or might be going.

Modernism as an ideology is getting pretty old. But it hangs on to life - whatever life is left in it - because contemporary music is dauntingly diverse and fragmented in a multicultural world, and no new unifying ideology has arisen - certainly not post-modernism, which is explicitly deconstructive and disintegrative, not constructive and unifying - to provide a sense of mission and a path forward, particularly for the music that calls itself, perhaps anachronistically, "classical." It may well be that disintegration _is in_ _fact_ the path forward: not disintegration of music - there will always be music - but disintegration of ideology as explanation, justification, and motivation for what composers do and how they define themselves. But this is a very different sort of path - an individual path, one not defined by the "oughts" of any aesthetic, social, or cosmic manifest destiny. I think it's a path that many artists recognize and are taking - some probably with trepidation, others with a pleasant sense of freedom.

The Modernist view of the artist, his mission and his place in the world, which was a direct descendant of the Romantic view of the artist as a being apart from and above the common herd, was born in a more homogeneous society which had established clear traditions which Modernism could simultaneously own, challenge, and rebel against. That society, and those traditions, are long gone; this fact, and the general failure of Modernist movements to woo the mass of classical music "consumers" away from their still deep-rooted attachment to the aesthetics of the more distant past, have paradoxically made "Modernist" ideologies themselves appear very unmodern, outdated and irrelevant, and has left - or liberated -the contemporary artist to find his own voice, his own raison d'etre, and his own place in a culture of extreme multiplicity and unlimited choice: a culture, in short, of _real_ diversity.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Sid cites the thread "Putative Properties of Modern Music." It is worth reading. But here are a couple of key excerpts:
> 
> *"New music is new. A consequence of newness is unfamiliarity... One should expect new music to be new, i.e., unfamiliar. And one should recognize that unfamiliarity means that the new thing will be difficult to understand."*
> 
> "21st century--*increasing distance between what new music composers are producing and what listeners are even aware of, a gap abetted by an increasing number of composers who are willing to produce what listeners want. If Higdon and Adès can give people "new" music that is nonetheless familiar, then it's the people producing new music who are out of step.* Music is a product. The customer is king. *Genuine innovation is increasingly marginalized**, innovative composers dismissed as "obscure" and the consumer secure that his or her needs are paramount." *
> 
> If anyone doubts that ideology is a factor in the discourse of this forum, it's impossible to miss it here.


Probably the least ideological thread on TC. So it's interesting to see that ideologue seekers can even find it here in this thread. But it involves a lot of distorting or at least interpretation.



Woodduck said:


> Assumptions often implicit and buried, if not denied, are here stated outright:


Well, the things I stated do look somewhat different in my statements from how they look in your statements here, in which your interpretations of what I actually said are given, with individual words or phrases from my statements littered about. But they mean something different in your statements from what they meant in my statements.



Woodduck said:


> - "New music" is "innovative." It is "unfamiliar." It is "difficult to understand."


One of the two missing contexts is simply a look at what a word, "new," implies. New is indeed innovative, in a simply semantic way. That is, the word "innovative" is made with the Latin root, nova, which means new. That is, the context is not any putative qualities of contemporary music, not in this part of my post, anyway, but what the word "new" means. New music, on the other hand, is certainly not unfamiliar to me. Nor is it difficult to understand. And I argue elsewhere that emphasizing its difficulties is not the most welcoming way to present it.

The other context is the reality that the word new can refer to two different and distinct things, "recent" and "different from the past." These two meanings make possible the fallacy of equivocation in these discussions. Explicitly pointing out the two different meanings won't keep anyone from continuing to use that fallacy, but since fallacies undermine rational discourse, it's still a good thing to point them out.



Woodduck said:


> - Music that listeners "want" - music that they can "understand," i.e, enjoy - is not real "new music."


One, there are many listeners. Some of those listeners want Karkowski and Merzbow. Some of them want Higdon and Pärt. Nothing to do with any conversation about newness. Two, the word "new" has two meanings. One of them is "recent." All four people I just mentioned are "new" in the sense of recent. Two of them are "new" in the sense of "different from what was done in the past." Nothing to do with real. Just an example of what "new" can mean. Neither Higdon nor Pärt are new in one sense. Both are new in the other sense. But the senses are different. And that brings us to how the fallacy is often used in these conversations. The two meanings of "new" are ignored and a third meaning is implied, which uses "new" as a term of approbation. "New" means "good" and the argument is then that Higdon and Pärt are just as good as Karkowski and Merzbow.

Well, maybe they are. I don't think that "good" describes objects, as I have said before. It describes experiences. And it is perfectly obvious that some listeners have positive experiences with the first pair but not with the second pair, some listeners have positive experiences with the second pair but not with the first, and some have positive experiences with all four.

And positive experiences need no justification. They are self-justifying.

Only if any listener from either of the first two categories draws a conclusion about the music they don't like is there any possibility for ideology. Otherwise, it's just people listening to whatever they like. Which no one can legitimately argue against. Only one thing remains, then, which is the observation that Higdon and Pärt are doing something that is familiar. Well, they are. That is what makes them desirable for people who like older sounding music. It is what makes them undesirable for people who like their older music to have actually been done in that past. That it sounds old is not debatable. That some listeners like it because it sounds old is also not debatable. The only part that's debatable is whether sounding old is an artistically valid path for a composer.

To turn that into some sort of attack on the tastes of the listeners who like old sounding music is pretty low.



Woodduck said:


> - It is unfortunate and reprehensible that listeners do not want to hear real "new music," i.e. music which is by definition difficult to understand.


No. It is unfortunate and reprehensible that anyone's dislike of something they don't understand is used as the basis for attacking the music itself and, sometimes, by extension, the people who like it.



Woodduck said:


> - Composers who produce music that listeners can "understand", i.e. enjoy, are making life hard for composers of real "new music," which listeners cannot expect to enjoy, by outcompeting them for the attention of listeners.


This is starting to sound just like that fallacy of equivocation thing, isn't it? But here it is taking a part of the whole group identified by the word "listener" and treating that part as if it were the entire group. Fallacy of composition kinda thing (if you're interested in the names of things). This is a very unfortunate characteristic of every conversation about new music I have ever been in. There are many listeners. They do not all like or understand the same things. They do not even agree about the value of immediate enjoyment--that is, some new music aficionados "enjoy" listening to things that they do not yet "enjoy."



Woodduck said:


> - If composers of music which is not really "new music" - i.e. which is liked by listeners - were not around to outcompete the composers of "real" "new music," listeners would be listening to more "real" "new music," and its composers would not be dismissed as "out of step," "marginal," or "obscure."


One, new is different from old. That's not a big matter of debate. They are two different things and easy to spot. The debate is not over whether recent music that is new is more real than recent music that sounds old. They are both real. They both have their fans.

There are many listeners. There are listeners who like Incapacitants. There are listeners who like Justin Bieber. There are listeners who like Mozart. There are listeners who like Groundation. And there are listeners who like any combination of the above. "Listeners" is not the kind of category you keep insisting it is. It is much more various.



Woodduck said:


> Conclusion: _The trouble with contemporary classical music is that listeners want to hear music which makes sense to them and which they enjoy, and that some composers are actually writing it. _As you do indeed know--making your assertion here disingenuous at the very least--contemporary classical music makes sense to some listeners. Some listeners want to listen to contemporary classical music. Some listeners enjoy contemporary classical music. And all composers, no matter who they are--Boulez, Ferneyhough, Gorecki, Penderecki, Panufnik, Yoshihide--they are all writing music that some listeners want to hear, that some listeners enjoy. That other listeners do not enjoy any one of them is neither here nor there. "What listeners want," is not a single thing, so cannot be used to attack or defend any particular kind of music.
> 
> 
> 
> Woodduck said:
> 
> 
> 
> Contempt by the avant-garde for the complacent, lazy, ignorant listener and for the composer who refuses to align himself with the "progressives"... Where have we heard all that before? Haven't we been hearing it all our lives? Isn't it the central ideology, the fundamental world view, of the self-proclaimed Modernist?
> 
> 
> 
> No.
> 
> 
> 
> Woodduck said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...it exhibits no conformity to aesthetic ideals that have made music deeply meaningful to people,
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Same fallacy, different word. "People" is not a category of individuals who all agree with each other. It seems so evident that we would not even be having this discussion if that were literally true. But it's not. And your entire post here actually demonstrates that it is not. The music you're aspersing here (if I'm understanding it correctly, since you don't ever get specific enough to identify any particular piece or even style) is deeply meaningful to some people.
> 
> 
> 
> Woodduck said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...those darned "conservative" composers insist on arresting the inevitable progress of musical evolution by offering people familiar, old-fashioned, "pretty" sounds that we the innovators have declared, and shown by our bold example, to be irrelevant to our times.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> New is different from old. Old is easy to tell, because it's already happened. We know it. It is part of our heritage. It needn't be done again, simply because it has already been done. That some people have found reasons for doing it, anyway, is clear. Surely one can still point out that it needn't be done without being called a bully or worse.
> 
> 
> 
> Woodduck said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...ideology as explanation, justification, and motivation for what composers do and how they define themselves.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I doubt that ideology has ever been any of these things for any but a very small minority of composers, if for any. Ideology is a very convenient word for battering ideas one doesn't like, though. That certainly seems to be true.
Click to expand...


----------



## science

Wood said:


> But back to the bullying, Sid & Science, can you provide any examples which may make inexperienced members feel intimidated from posting in favour of certain composers or ideas?


No, I don't think I'm allowed to do that. But I don't think that matters very much.

Anyway, if it's true that you can only see rudeness coming from one side, then you're probably simply on the other. As I see it, all the sides are rude to each other.

I want to make it clear that I am not limiting my vision of the matter to talkclassical, which I've always found one of the least unpleasant places to discuss classical music.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Sid cites the thread "Putative Properties of Modern Music." It is worth reading. But here are a couple of key excerpts:
> 
> *"New music is new. A consequence of newness is unfamiliarity... One should expect new music to be new, i.e., unfamiliar. And one should recognize that unfamiliarity means that the new thing will be difficult to understand."*
> 
> "21st century--*increasing distance between what new music composers are producing and what listeners are even aware of, a gap abetted by an increasing number of composers who are willing to produce what listeners want. If Higdon and Adès can give people "new" music that is nonetheless familiar, then it's the people producing new music who are out of step.* Music is a product. The customer is king. *Genuine innovation is increasingly marginalized**, innovative composers dismissed as "obscure" and the consumer secure that his or her needs are paramount." *
> 
> If anyone doubts that ideology is a factor in the discourse of this forum, it's impossible to miss it here. Assumptions often implicit and buried, if not denied, are here stated outright:
> 
> - "New music" is "innovative." It is "unfamiliar." It is "difficult to understand."
> 
> - Music that listeners "want" - music that they can "understand," i.e, enjoy - is not real "new music."
> 
> - It is unfortunate and reprehensible that listeners do not want to hear real "new music," i.e. music which is by definition difficult to understand.
> 
> - Composers who produce music that listeners can "understand", i.e. enjoy, are making life hard for composers of real "new music," which listeners cannot expect to enjoy, by outcompeting them for the attention of listeners.
> 
> - If composers of music which is not really "new music" - i.e. which is liked by listeners - were not around to outcompete the composers of "real" "new music," listeners would be listening to more "real" "new music," and its composers would not be dismissed as "out of step," "marginal," or "obscure."
> 
> Conclusion: _The trouble with contemporary classical music is that listeners want to hear music which makes sense to them and which they enjoy, and that some composers are actually writing it. _
> 
> Contempt by the avant-garde for the complacent, lazy, ignorant listener and for the composer who refuses to align himself with the "progressives"... Where have we heard all that before? Haven't we been hearing it all our lives? Isn't it the central ideology, the fundamental world view, of the self-proclaimed Modernist? _"Our"_ music, the "real" music of "our time," isn't embraced with open arms, isn't understood, isn't loved - but it's _"their"_ fault. It couldn't be because what we offer people is harsh or chaotic, because it has no recognizable relationship to anything previously heard, because it exhibits no conformity to aesthetic ideals that have made music deeply meaningful to people, ideals that have grown and matured over centuries... No, it's because listeners won't bother to _try_ to understand our music, which they would learn to enjoy if they were willing to _work_ at it - and because those darned "conservative" composers insist on arresting the inevitable progress of musical evolution by offering people familiar, old-fashioned, "pretty" sounds that we the innovators have declared, and shown by our bold example, to be irrelevant to our times.
> 
> There is not one of these assumptions which is self-evidently true. There is not one that cannot be challenged. There is not one that should not be challenged. And there are more where these came from. But if we don't recognize them as assumptions - and I wonder how anyone could fail to recognize them at this point in history - we will not have realistic conversation about where music is, has been, or might be going.
> 
> Modernism as an ideology is getting pretty old. But it hangs on to life - whatever life is left in it - because contemporary music is dauntingly diverse and fragmented in a multicultural world, and no new unifying ideology has arisen - certainly not post-modernism, which is explicitly deconstructive and disintegrative, not constructive and unifying - to provide a sense of mission and a path forward, particularly for the music that calls itself, perhaps anachronistically, "classical." It may well be that disintegration _is in_ _fact_ the path forward: not disintegration of music - there will always be music - but disintegration of ideology as explanation, justification, and motivation for what composers do and how they define themselves. But this is a very different sort of path - an individual path, one not defined by the "oughts" of any aesthetic, social, or cosmic manifest destiny. I think it's a path that many artists recognize and are taking - some probably with trepidation, others with a pleasant sense of freedom.
> 
> The Modernist view of the artist, his mission and his place in the world, which was a direct descendant of the Romantic view of the artist as a being apart from and above the common herd, was born in a more homogeneous society which had established clear traditions which Modernism could simultaneously own, challenge, and rebel against. That society, and those traditions, are long gone; this fact, and the general failure of Modernist movements to woo the mass of classical music "consumers" away from their still deep-rooted attachment to the aesthetics of the more distant past, have paradoxically made "Modernist" ideologies themselves appear very unmodern, outdated and irrelevant, and has left - or liberated -the contemporary artist to find his own voice, his own raison d'etre, and his own place in a culture of extreme multiplicity and unlimited choice: a culture, in short, of _real_ diversity.


This is an awesome post, and precisely to the point.


----------



## Jobis

some guy said:


> Probably the least ideological thread on TC. So it's interesting to see that ideologue seekers can even find it here in this thread. But it involves a lot of distorting or at least interpretation.
> 
> Well, the things I stated do look somewhat different in my statements from how they look in your statements here, in which your interpretations of what I actually said are given, with individual words or phrases from my statements littered about. But they mean something different in your statements from what they meant in my statements.
> 
> One of the two missing contexts is simply a look at what a word, "new," implies. New is indeed innovative, in a simply semantic way. That is, the word "innovative" is made with the Latin root, nova, which means new. That is, the context is not any putative qualities of contemporary music, not in this part of my post, anyway, but what the word "new" means. New music, on the other hand, is certainly not unfamiliar to me. Nor is it difficult to understand. And I argue elsewhere that emphasizing its difficulties is not the most welcoming way to present it.
> 
> The other context is the reality that the word new can refer to two different and distinct things, "recent" and "different from the past." These two meanings make possible the fallacy of equivocation in these discussions. Explicitly pointing out the two different meanings won't keep anyone from continuing to use that fallacy, but since fallacies undermine rational discourse, it's still a good thing to point them out.
> 
> One, there are many listeners. Some of those listeners want Karkowski and Merzbow. Some of them want Higdon and Pärt. Nothing to do with any conversation about newness. Two, the word "new" has two meanings. One of them is "recent." All four people I just mentioned are "new" in the sense of recent. Two of them are "new" in the sense of "different from what was done in the past." Nothing to do with real. Just an example of what "new" can mean. Neither Higdon nor Pärt are new in one sense. Both are new in the other sense. But the senses are different. And that brings us to how the fallacy is often used in these conversations. The two meanings of "new" are ignored and a third meaning is implied, which uses "new" as a term of approbation. "New" means "good" and the argument is then that Higdon and Pärt are just as good as Karkowski and Merzbow.
> 
> Well, maybe they are. I don't think that "good" describes objects, as I have said before. It describes experiences. And it is perfectly obvious that some listeners have positive experiences with the first pair but not with the second pair, some listeners have positive experiences with the second pair but not with the first, and some have positive experiences with all four.
> 
> And positive experiences need no justification. They are self-justifying.
> 
> Only if any listener from either of the first two categories draws a conclusion about the music they don't like is there any possibility for ideology. Otherwise, it's just people listening to whatever they like. Which no one can legitimately argue against. Only one thing remains, then, which is the observation that Higdon and Pärt are doing something that is familiar. Well, they are. That is what makes them desirable for people who like older sounding music. It is what makes them undesirable for people who like their older music to have actually been done in that past. That it sounds old is not debatable. That some listeners like it because it sounds old is also not debatable. The only part that's debatable is whether sounding old is an artistically valid path for a composer.
> 
> To turn that into some sort of attack on the tastes of the listeners who like old sounding music is pretty low.
> 
> No. It is unfortunate and reprehensible that anyone's dislike of something they don't understand is used as the basis for attacking the music itself and, sometimes, by extension, the people who like it.
> 
> This is starting to sound just like that fallacy of equivocation thing, isn't it? But here it is taking a part of the whole group identified by the word "listener" and treating that part as if it were the entire group. Fallacy of composition kinda thing (if you're interested in the names of things). This is a very unfortunate characteristic of every conversation about new music I have ever been in. There are many listeners. They do not all like or understand the same things. They do not even agree about the value of immediate enjoyment--that is, some new music aficionados "enjoy" listening to things that they do not yet "enjoy."
> 
> One, new is different from old. That's not a big matter of debate. They are two different things and easy to spot. The debate is not over whether recent music that is new is more real than recent music that sounds old. They are both real. They both have their fans.
> 
> There are many listeners. There are listeners who like Incapacitants. There are listeners who like Justin Bieber. There are listeners who like Mozart. There are listeners who like Groundation. And there are listeners who like any combination of the above. "Listeners" is not the kind of category you keep insisting it is. It is much more various.
> 
> As you do indeed know--making your assertion here disingenuous at the very least--contemporary classical music makes sense to some listeners. Some listeners want to listen to contemporary classical music. Some listeners enjoy contemporary classical music. And all composers, no matter who they are--Boulez, Ferneyhough, Gorecki, Penderecki, Panufnik, Yoshihide--they are all writing music that some listeners want to hear, that some listeners enjoy. That other listeners do not enjoy any one of them is neither here nor there. "What listeners want," is not a single thing, so cannot be used to attack or defend any particular kind of music.
> 
> No.
> 
> Same fallacy, different word. "People" is not a category of individuals who all agree with each other. It seems so evident that we would not even be having this discussion if that were literally true. But it's not. And your entire post here actually demonstrates that it is not. The music you're aspersing here (if I'm understanding it correctly, since you don't ever get specific enough to identify any particular piece or even style) is deeply meaningful to some people.
> 
> New is different from old. Old is easy to tell, because it's already happened. We know it. It is part of our heritage. It needn't be done again, simply because it has already been done. That some people have found reasons for doing it, anyway, is clear. Surely one can still point out that it needn't be done without being called a bully or worse.
> 
> I doubt that ideology has ever been any of these things for any but a very small minority of composers, if for any. Ideology is a very convenient word for battering ideas one doesn't like, though. That certainly seems to be true.


Merzbow has been doing the same thing his whole career, how it that new? It was when he started but he's arguably a conservative composer since he has hardly changed at all.

Why can't we deal with composers on a more intimate level, and actually consider how their own music has developed, rather than holding them to lofty, abstract standards of what is 'new' and 'modern'?

Saying 'Arvo Part is not new', while he may be expressing ideas that he himself has never before come across, or which may differ in context entirely to what 'sounds familiar', is a distortion of the truth. There is no stipulation that new music must be devoid of any qualities of the music that came before; that is absurd. So Part hangs onto tonality; so what? Merzbow hangs onto noise, Webern to the 12 tones, etc. etc. if the music is on the whole renewed, then vestiges of the past are to be expected.

Your comment that the 'old' needn't be done again is peculiar, i'm no fan of musical historicism, but there such a thing as tradition, no? You put far too much emphasis on novelty.

Can you not foresee the bizarre situation where a composer, working in isolation from the world, produces his massive magnum opus, but by the time it is finished his then contemporaries tell him such music is 'rehashed, old, not modern' and therefore 'artistically worthless'?

I have to say you appear at a glance, somewhat controlling; 'variety is good, but it must happen in a chronological line (or else it is worthless)', when we ought to be aware that modernism opened up a new dimension as it were, and we need no longer think in terms of linear 'progress'.

This post may seem a bit scatty, and it is, but hopefully you get the point.


----------



## Nereffid

Wood said:


> But back to the bullying, Sid & Science, can you provide any examples which may make inexperienced members feel intimidated from posting in favour of certain composers or ideas?
> 
> I follow these debates pretty closely, but I can only see rudeness coming from the other side, so it would be good if you could point out where this is happening, with examples, so that we can understand your position better.


I had a very good example but when I went to get a link to it, I discovered that the post in question had been deleted by a moderator. So that proved the point in my own mind at least!

It is all a question of degree. There are undoubtedly posters who have an aggressive style, and others who are more sensitive to perceived aggression (and some who show both traits). So some people see bullying where others don't. Surely we've all had the experience of being baffled by someone else's response to something - I've seen some things I'd regard as innocuous being treated as huge insults, and some boorish behaviour praised as gentlemanly.

In my last post above I wrote "Though the argument appears to revolve around acceptance of modern music, at heart it's an argument about how or whether we are able to accept other people's opinions."
Actually I think more fundamentally you could say it's about personality clashes. I know I've found some posters get on my nerves regardless of the topic at hand.


----------



## Guest

Jobis said:


> Can you not foresee the bizarre situation where a composer, working in isolation from the world, produces his massive magnum opus, but by the time it is finished his then contemporaries tell him such music is 'rehashed, old, not modern' and therefore 'artistically worthless'?


Bizarre, yes.



Jobis said:


> I have to say you appear at a glance, somewhat controlling; 'variety is good, but it must happen in a chronological line (or else it is worthless)'


Well, that is not what I have said or ever would say. I have said this, though, that while we do not know the future and don't know which of the many things that please us today will be pleasing our grandchildren's grandchildren (whom we will never meet), we do know the past, at least what has survived of the past.

This is not a difficult concept. I don't know why it seems so difficult to accept. We know the past. It has happened. We know the present, but it does not present (!) itself as being as neat or as comprehensible as the past does. It seems messy and chaotic. We do not know the future at all.

Nothing in there of any necessity to have things happen "in a chronological line." Indeed, the only chronological line that we can see with any certainty (not that certainty means accurate, of course) is in the past, so it cannot apply to either the present or the future. Again I say it, except for its meaning of "recent," new means something different from how things were done in the past. If you were to have followed Merzbow's career with any thoroughness, you would have heard that he has done many different things over that time span. Unless you and I have very different senses of what "the same thing" means. In a way, you could say that about just about any composer. It has already been said about Vivaldi, for instance. But it could equally be said about Bach or Beethoven or Bruckner as well. I propose that that means it's not a useful concept for this conversation.

We don't know very well all the things that are happening today. We don't know which of any of those things will survive into the future. We don't know the future at all. We do know the past, at least a filtered version of the past or two. Or three. That is, we do not know what is worthless or not. We do know what has already been done is all. And we obviously have different opinions about the extent to which what has already been done needs to be done again. But the opinion that the past does not need to be done again is quite obviously different from the opinion that things have to happen in a chronological line. Things happen is all. And once they have happened, we know them (or are able to know them) and can understand how they fit in with or differ from what happened before.

This is not nearly as complicated as some posters keep wanting to make it.

This is not at all ideological. Just logical.


----------



## science

For me, the issue isn't acceptance of any music. I accept it all, and fairly easily. I don't experience anything as difficult. I mean, all you have to do is listen to it. You don't have to like it. And I find that when I just listen to it, I usually like it. 

I don't mind if someone likes some work more or less than I do, or more or less than someone else does. I'm almost completely indifferent to comments like "I don't like that very much" or "I like that very much." 

But I find explanations very interesting. If someone says they really like something because whatever whatever whatever, or that they really don't like something because whatever whatever whatever, the whatever whatever whatever usually interests me very much. 

The only thing that bothers me is when we get ethical-ish sounding judgments: when listeners are described (even via euphemism, which none of us fail to see through) as unthinking, cowardly, affected, unintelligent, and so on. We all know perfectly well that describing the music in those terms is only an indirect description of its listeners in the same terms. 

I don't like that at any time, but even that doesn't bother me too much as long as it's directed upward. I only get really angry when I see it directed downward: when someone of unquestionably high cultural status directs at someone with unquestionably much less status, i.e. when the cool people among us do it to the uncool. But in this I'm just unfairly biased against the cool people, irrationally attached to "slave morality" and its resentments and its sense of justice as alleviating the grievances of the weaker parties: I recognize that contrary to my biases, the rules have to apply equally to everyone. After all, especially in our postindustrial world (but to lesser degrees throughout history, at least since the "Axial Age" revolutions in human thought), the stronger parties generally portray themselves as the weaker, often even with sincere conviction. Well, so much for kindness. There's probably nothing better in this fallen world than rules, equally applied. 

It's too bad that I need human society. My great loves - reading, listening to music, travel - are much easier to pursue alone. It's also too bad that I don't already know everything that I want to know, and that some of the things I most want to know are most easily discovered in conversation with other people.


----------



## Jobis

some guy said:


> Bizarre, yes.
> 
> Well, that is not what I have said or ever would say. I have said this, though, that while we do not know the future and don't know which of the many things that please us today will be pleasing our grandchildren's grandchildren (whom we will never meet), we do know the past, at least what has survived of the past.
> 
> This is not a difficult concept. I don't know why it seems so difficult to accept. We know the past. It has happened. We know the present, but it does not present (!) itself as being as neat or as comprehensible as the past does. It seems messy and chaotic. We do not know the future at all.
> 
> Nothing in there of any necessity to have things happen "in a chronological line." Indeed, the only chronological line that we can see with any certainty (not that certainty means accurate, of course) is in the past, so it cannot apply to either the present or the future. Again I say it, except for its meaning of "recent," new means something different from how things were done in the past. If you were to have followed Merzbow's career with any thoroughness, you would have heard that he has done many different things over that time span. Unless you and I have very different senses of what "the same thing" means. In a way, you could say that about just about any composer. It has already been said about Vivaldi, for instance. But it could equally be said about Bach or Beethoven or Bruckner as well. I propose that that means it's not a useful concept for this conversation.
> 
> We don't know very well all the things that are happening today. We don't know which of any of those things will survive into the future. We don't know the future at all. We do know the past, at least a filtered version of the past or two. Or three. That is, we do not know what is worthless or not. We do know what has already been done is all. And we obviously have different opinions about the extent to which what has already been done needs to be done again. But the opinion that the past does not need to be done again is quite obviously different from the opinion that things have to happen in a chronological line. Things happen is all. And once they have happened, we know them (or are able to know them) and can understand how they fit in with or differ from what happened before.
> 
> This is not nearly as complicated as some posters keep wanting to make it.
> 
> This is not at all ideological. Just logical.


I see your logic, but the difficulty is how can you know the avant garde will have enduring relevance? Maybe Arvo Part is going to be a big influence on the music of the future; you are already qualifying the newness of music by how 'strange' it is, because the point is this; newness is only an quality of time. Gesualdo is not as new as Vivaldi or Corelli, but he is more adventurous with tonality. Vivaldi and Corelli, like Part, were not doing anything 'radical' with tonality, but nonetheless they produced new music; new forms, new instrumentation, new material.

We _do_ know now that the Beatles, for example, were of great cultural and musical importance, despite being not at all 'modern' by your standards. There seems to be too much at work in the world to write of anyone as being not sufficiently modern in their outlook or output for that matter.

I don't understand what you're worried about, the past is literally impossible to repeat, so composers of any originality are going to produce new works.


----------



## Nereffid

some guy said:


> And we obviously have different opinions about the extent to which what has already been done needs to be done again.


Also, different opinions about the extent to which what has already been done _is being done again_.


----------



## clavichorder

The grease finally got in the axels of this thread and its rolling. I was hoping it wouldn't take off, its just more of the same.


----------



## Blancrocher

clavichorder said:


> The grease finally got in the axels of this thread and its rolling. I was hoping it wouldn't take off, its just more of the same.


I disagree--I think discussions of contemporary musical styles are just now entering a baroque phase.


----------



## clavichorder

Blancrocher said:


> I disagree--I think discussions of contemporary musical styles are just now entering a baroque phase.


I'm stuck in the English high renaissance of these discussions. Let me know when Purcell comes along, then I can contribute.


----------



## Guest

Jobis said:


> ...the difficulty is how can you know the avant garde will have enduring relevance?


Jobis, I already said that we cannot know the future.



Jobis said:


> Gesualdo is not as new as Vivaldi or Corelli, but he is more adventurous with tonality. Vivaldi and Corelli, like Part, were not doing anything 'radical' with tonality, but nonetheless they produced new music; new forms, new instrumentation, new material.


Yes. The word new has different meanings. Also ground we have covered already. And tonality is not the only constituent of music, even of tonal music.



Jobis said:


> We _do_ know now that the Beatles, for example, were of great cultural and musical importance, despite being not at all 'modern' by your standards.


What _are_ my standards of modernity? Since I have never stated any such thing, you will perforce have to make something up. That's certainly something that's been done before, so we do know that it is possible to do. Doesn't make it right, by any means....



Jobis said:


> There seems to be too much at work in the world to write of anyone as being not sufficiently modern in their outlook or output for that matter.


I have repeatedly repudiated the notion of "suffiently modern" as being a useful thing. "Sufficiently modern" is not something I ascribe to. It is a concept that keeps being attributed to me. That is all. It is an attempt to discredit me without actually addressing any of the things I say or believe.



Jobis said:


> I don't understand what you're worried about, the past is literally impossible to repeat, so composers of any originality are going to produce new works.


It is _only_ the items from the past that are at all possible to repeat; that is, you cannot repeat what hasn't been done yet. And there's that fallacy of equivocation again.


----------



## Jobis

some guy said:


> Jobis, I already said that we cannot know the future.
> 
> Yes. The word new has different meanings. Also ground we have covered already. And tonality is not the only constituent of music, even of tonal music.
> 
> What _are_ my standards of modernity? Since I have never stated any such thing, you will perforce have to make something up. That's certainly something that's been done before, so we do know that it is possible to do. Doesn't make it right, by any means....
> 
> I have repeatedly repudiated the notion of "suffiently modern" as being a useful thing. "Sufficiently modern" is not something I ascribe to. It is a concept that keeps being attributed to me. That is all. It is an attempt to discredit me without actually addressing any of the things I say or believe.
> 
> It is _only_ the items from the past that are at all possible to repeat; that is, you cannot repeat what hasn't been done yet. And there's that fallacy of equivocation again.


So what was the point of this thread again?

I didn't mean to say that tonality was the only constituent of music, but the examples of music you seem to regard as not really new are all tonal, so I, perhaps falsely, made a connection there. I didn't realise there were serious composers going around actively repeating anything from the past, but please enlighten me.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Wood said:


> Crikey, its really kicked off overnight!
> 
> This is a helpful query. I can see that Sid & Science are very upset, but it is hard to see the cause of it.
> 
> I do not feel slightly intimidated about posting the following:
> 
> I LIKE EINAUDI!
> 
> Nothing that anyone could say on here would either change that view or hurt my feelings. However, a well-thought out post like we particularly get from Some Guy promoting more adventurous music that I may be unaware of is always gratefully received in this small corner of the world.
> 
> But back to the bullying, Sid & Science, can you provide any examples which may make inexperienced members feel intimidated from posting in favour of certain composers or ideas?
> 
> I follow these debates pretty closely, but I can only see rudeness coming from the other side, so it would be good if you could point out where this is happening, with examples, so that we can understand your position better.


_Mutatis mutandis_, but for _*Woodduck*_-- speaking for myself. _;D_


----------



## Marschallin Blair

science said:


> For me, the issue isn't acceptance of any music. I accept it all, and fairly easily. I don't experience anything as difficult. I mean, all you have to do is listen to it. You don't have to like it. And I find that when I just listen to it, I usually like it.
> 
> I don't mind if someone likes some work more or less than I do, or more or less than someone else does. I'm almost completely indifferent to comments like "I don't like that very much" or "I like that very much."
> 
> But I find explanations very interesting. If someone says they really like something because whatever whatever whatever, or that they really don't like something because whatever whatever whatever, the whatever whatever whatever usually interests me very much.
> 
> The only thing that bothers me is when we get ethical-ish sounding judgments: when listeners are described (even via euphemism, which none of us fail to see through) as unthinking, cowardly, affected, unintelligent, and so on. We all know perfectly well that describing the music in those terms is only an indirect description of its listeners in the same terms.
> 
> I don't like that at any time, but even that doesn't bother me too much as long as it's directed upward. I only get really angry when I see it directed downward: when someone of unquestionably high cultural status directs at someone with unquestionably much less status, i.e. when the cool people among us do it to the uncool. But in this I'm just unfairly biased against the cool people, irrationally attached to "slave morality" and its resentments and its sense of justice as alleviating the grievances of the weaker parties: I recognize that contrary to my biases, the rules have to apply equally to everyone. After all, especially in our postindustrial world (but to lesser degrees throughout history, at least since the "Axial Age" revolutions in human thought), the stronger parties generally portray themselves as the weaker, often even with sincere conviction. Well, so much for kindness. There's probably nothing better in this fallen world than rules, equally applied.
> 
> It's too bad that I need human society. My great loves - reading, listening to music, travel - are much easier to pursue alone. It's also too bad that I don't already know everything that I want to know, and that some of the things I most want to know are most easily discovered in conversation with other people.


Is hell other people?- as Sartre would have us believe.

Or is it the absence of an adoring audience?- as Marschallin Blair says, while looking into the mirror. _;D_

I can't imagine living in a world without colorful and interesting people.


----------



## Wood

Sid James said:


> *I probably could*, however that would be inappropriate. Despite the fact that I got angry, I don't want to make this a witch hunt. Maybe doing these things is part of any online discussion group or places like facebook. It becomes an echo chamber of the fashions and fads of the moment. *There are ways of being inititiated into the inner circle.* Early in my time here, I remember one particular occassion when I made it hard for a newbie, and that person left. That feeling of being the cause of that never left me. I have not done it since, but whenever* I see it happen time and time again*, I get angry.
> 
> Until now I have largely kept this under wraps, perhaps fired a round of bullets, most often way off target. But in this topic it is on target. If we mean by *diversity* a *democracy of ideas*, then I'm on topic. But my gut feeling is that classical music isn't a democracy, its a hierarchy, as I explained. So we will never get to some sort of level playing field, its always going to be loaded in certain persons or groups favour.


The difficulty is that your attack is so general that it is hard to relate to anything that is actually posted here, and if you choose not to provide examples of this bullying then it is hard to accept your assertion that it exists.

What is the 'inner circle' on TC?

I have seen young newbies getting slaughtered for dissing Beethoven and Mozart. They deserve some patience. However, it seems to me that it is the more experienced members who attack _avant garde_ music and its adherents. They do not go away.

In the context of this thread, 'diversity' doesn't refer to a 'democracy of ideas', just the diversity of past sources for contemporary classical music.

Democracy v. hierarchy in classical music sounds interesting, but would be preferable in its own thread.


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## Marschallin Blair

Wood said:


> The difficulty is that your attack is so general that it is hard to relate to anything that is actually posted here, and if you choose not to provide examples of this bullying then it is hard to accept your assertion that it exists.
> 
> What is the 'inner circle' on TC?
> 
> I have seen young newbies getting slaughtered for dissing Beethoven and Mozart. They deserve some patience. However, it seems to me that it is the more experienced members who attack _avant garde_ music and its adherents. They do not go away.
> 
> In the context of this thread, 'diversity' doesn't refer to a 'democracy of ideas', just the diversity of past sources for contemporary classical music.
> 
> Democracy v. hierarchy in classical music sounds interesting, but would be preferable in its own thread.


Wood, just go into Woodduck's profile page and look at his postings-- and then read the ridiculous non-rebuts and half-truths that follow them.

-- Talk about the art of smearing.


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## Wood

science said:


> No, I don't think I'm allowed to do that. But I don't think that matters very much.


But I think it does matter if your assertions about this are to be accepted. You can PM me with examples if you wish. I'm happy to post them without referring to you. I don't care about receiving infractions because I am an anarchist.:lol:



> Anyway, if it's true that you can only see rudeness coming from one side, then you're probably simply on the other. As I see it, all the sides are rude to each other.


Not at all. I could give you many quotes on comments like 'cacophonous noise' and '4:33', attempts by people to derail threads about modern music, and we have seen on this thread and many before how Some Guy's words are altered to mean something else then thrown back at him. The reason I created 'Wood's Law' was to try to make people too embarrassed to reference '4:33' in almost every thread. I seem to have been unsuccessful in any case.

BUT I can't think of examples the other way round.

I don't like bullies. They should be exposed and hung out to dry. We need evidence however, or else it will be, as Sid said above, a witch hunt.



> I want to make it clear that I am not limiting my vision of the matter to talkclassical, which I've always found one of the least unpleasant places to discuss classical music.


Well that certainly wasn't clear at all, but it is now. :tiphat:


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## Wood

Nereffid said:


> I had a very good example but when I went to get a link to it, I discovered that the post in question had been deleted by a moderator. So that proved the point in my own mind at least!
> 
> It is all a question of degree. There are undoubtedly posters who have an aggressive style, and others who are more sensitive to perceived aggression (and some who show both traits). So some people see bullying where others don't. Surely we've all had the experience of being baffled by someone else's response to something - I've seen some things I'd regard as innocuous being treated as huge insults, and some boorish behaviour praised as gentlemanly.
> 
> In my last post above I wrote "Though the argument appears to revolve around acceptance of modern music, at heart it's an argument about how or whether we are able to accept other people's opinions."
> Actually I think more fundamentally you could say it's about personality clashes. I know I've found some posters get on my nerves regardless of the topic at hand.


Yes, bullies do tend to single out their victims.

Personality clashes are quite likely, and they are complicated by egos too. It could be that some here wish to be top dog and feel threatened.

You and I are perhaps trying to be peacemakers in a dispute where we cannot be sure of the specific motives driving some of the protagonists. It is a shame though when people are getting angry and upset. I think Science and Sid James are stepping back from their rather heated positions, which is good.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Go ahead everyone, this is food for a Wagnerian.


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## Wood

Marschallin Blair said:


> Wood, just go into Woodduck's profile page and look at his postings-- and then read the ridiculous non-rebuts and half-truths that follow them.
> 
> -- Talk about the art of smearing.


I like reading Woodduck's posts, so will happily do so.

Can you select a few for me where he gets smeared?


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## tdc

Woodduck said:


> Sid cites the thread "Putative Properties of Modern Music." It is worth reading. But here are a couple of key excerpts:
> 
> *"New music is new. A consequence of newness is unfamiliarity... One should expect new music to be new, i.e., unfamiliar. And one should recognize that unfamiliarity means that the new thing will be difficult to understand."*
> 
> "21st century--*increasing distance between what new music composers are producing and what listeners are even aware of, a gap abetted by an increasing number of composers who are willing to produce what listeners want. If Higdon and Adès can give people "new" music that is nonetheless familiar, then it's the people producing new music who are out of step.* Music is a product. The customer is king. *Genuine innovation is increasingly marginalized**, innovative composers dismissed as "obscure" and the consumer secure that his or her needs are paramount." *
> 
> If anyone doubts that ideology is a factor in the discourse of this forum, it's impossible to miss it here. Assumptions often implicit and buried, if not denied, are here stated outright:
> 
> - "New music" is "innovative." It is "unfamiliar." It is "difficult to understand."
> 
> - Music that listeners "want" - music that they can "understand," i.e, enjoy - is not real "new music."
> 
> - It is unfortunate and reprehensible that listeners do not want to hear real "new music," i.e. music which is by definition difficult to understand.


Well I'm not going to respond to a lot of this post because well written as it is it twists a lot of things too far out of the original context in which they were stated. I admit your posts _are_ generally very well written. I often enjoy reading them and agree with some of them. However it seems to me a lot of people confuse nice prose with logic.

I do think a lot of things that make people grow physically/intellectually/spiritually can be initially uncomfortable or not enjoyable. Is exercise comfortable? Is eating healthy comfortable? Is studying comfortable? I would suggest a large percentage of the most worth while things in life tend to push people out of their comfort zone. A lot of people around here seem to think everything should be made more comfortable for them, if you look at the over all state of our society - you seem to be arguing for the status quo - ignorance can indeed be a very comfortable place.

A lot of people just like to relax and eat comfort food - they usually end up dying of heart disease.


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## Blake

"New" means innovation and unfamiliarity. If it's derivative and familiar... well, it's not new. We seem to be overlooking the fundamentals of terminology here. 

What seems to be argued is - how unfamiliar does a piece have to be to garner the title ~new music~? Dunno'. Because, of course, every artist utilizes methods from the past. Some people can hear subtle variations and that's enough for them to consider it "new", while others need a much more dramatic shift.


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## Marschallin Blair

Wood said:


> I like reading Woodduck's posts, so will happily do so.
> 
> Can you select a few for me where he gets smeared?


The list is long and (un)distinguished, Wood. . . I'd really prefer that you check them for yourself. I want to protect the guilty, after all. They have enough problems as it is._ ;D_


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## Petwhac

tdc said:


> I do think a lot of things that make people grow physically/intellectually/spiritually can be initially uncomfortable or not enjoyable. Is exercise comfortable? Is eating healthy comfortable? Is studying comfortable? I would suggest a large percentage of the most worth while things in life tend to push people out of their comfort zone. A lot of people around here seem to think everything should be made more comfortable for them, if you look at the over all state of our society - you seem to be arguing for the status quo - ignorance can indeed be a very comfortable place.


Do you really equate listening to music with eating, exercising or studying?
Leaving aside the idea that one can 'grow spiritually' which to me means precisely nought, can listening to music make you grow physically or intellectually? Is that what music is for?

I don't think so.

I've never heard a single plausible explanation as to why composers compose and listeners listen other than for PLEASURE.

Some people take pleasure in Higdon, others in Ferneyhough and perhaps some in both.
And I'm sure both those accomplished musicians take pleasure in their composing. Otherwise, WHY the hell do it!


tdc said:


> A lot of people just like to relax and eat comfort food - they usually end up dying of heart disease.


I'd rather have a great time and die of heart disease than live a long life of boredom! :lol:


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## violadude

Petwhac said:


> Do you really equate listening to music with eating, exercising or studying?
> Leaving aside the idea that one can 'grow spiritually' which to me means precisely nought, can listening to music make you grow physically or intellectually? Is that what music is for?
> 
> I don't think so.
> 
> I've never heard a single plausible explanation as to why composers compose and listeners listen other than for PLEASURE.
> 
> Some people take pleasure in Higdon, others in Ferneyhough and perhaps some in both.
> And I'm sure both those accomplished musicians take pleasure in their composing. Otherwise, WHY the hell do it!
> 
> I'd rather have a great time and die of heart disease than live a long life of boredom! :lol:


I compose not necessarily just for pleasure, but to grow and learn in my study. It gives me satisfaction even when the actual act of composition might not be all the way pleasurable at the time.


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## Petwhac

violadude said:


> I compose not necessarily just for pleasure, but to grow and learn in my study. It gives me satisfaction even when the actual act of composition might not be all the way pleasurable at the time.


Yes, to grow and learn in your study of composition? To get better at something you love to do, need to do?
Ultimately, it's for pleasure still. But you have to work hard at it to get better at it.


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## Sid James

Nereffid said:


> The key word I would use is *empathy*.
> 
> Some people (in the real world too!) just seem to have inordinate difficulty accepting the fact that others have very different likes and dislikes, and moreover that others actually experience the world in a very different way. Even on TC where the users are supposedly united by a shared interest in a particular subject, the range of experiences and ideas is so vast that it seems we might as well be inhabiting parallel universes. While in most situations this fact isn't relevant, there are occasions where it is, and it's the failure of some posters to accept or recognise these "parallel universes" - their lack of empathy - that causes conflict.
> 
> Thus, "_I can't understand why anyone would prefer X over Y_". Such an attitude makes discussion of certain subjects fraught with peril because what's implicit there is that X is flat-out wrong. Whoever likes X must then choose between conflict and acquiescence, because a response of "live-and-let-live" doesn't seem to cut it in the mind of the unempathic.
> 
> It also makes _even pointing out the problem_ a problem, because challenging the fact that an unempathic person's dogma is merely dogma will just provoke an unempathic, dogmatic response.
> Personally, I regard "_I can't understand why anyone would prefer X over Y_" as meaning "_I entirely lack the intellectual and emotional capacity to imagine the world through eyes other than my own_", so I have little interest in engaging with such people.
> 
> Though the argument appears to revolve around acceptance of modern music, at heart it's an argument about how or whether we are able to accept other people's opinions.


I think that empathy is important. In fact, one thread I could have made but self-censored a while back was an article in a music magazine by a musician, who talked about the gap between technical knowledge/ability of his fellow musicians and their communication and social skills. He argued that a lot of them where very difficult to work with - this, in an essentially collaborative field - and where prone to behaviours that can be described as bullying, controlling and anti-social. His conclusion was that music had to get into line with the anti-bullying policies espoused by governments and corporations the world over.

What I took from that article is that music is indeed a profession that has many challenges. I know this from other sources, also from such as what I've read here related by musicians over the years. It requires a lot of discipline, practice, focus on technique, study, attention to detail and so on. Its no surprising that the human dimension easily gets lost in all this.

So, what I'm trying to do is understand why I have been treated in this manner on this forum who put themselves above me. This is part of what got my 'classical music is a technocracy' theory going. They value a narrow set of things, and they seek to impose it on all around them, all who they interract with.

I am not going to try and do anything but say this is a factor here. Its unfortunate that I realised this all too late in the piece. I have fought my battles here often with people who have vastly different priorities to me. It doesn't excuse bullying - or cyber-bullying for that matter - but it provides a window for the reasons specifically related to classical music.


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## Sid James

Woodduck said:


> ...
> Modernism as an ideology is getting pretty old. But it hangs on to life - whatever life is left in it - because contemporary music is dauntingly diverse and fragmented in a multicultural world, and no new unifying ideology has arisen - certainly not post-modernism, which is explicitly deconstructive and disintegrative, not constructive and unifying - to provide a sense of mission and a path forward, particularly for the music that calls itself, perhaps anachronistically, "classical." It may well be that disintegration _is in_ _fact_ the path forward: not disintegration of music - there will always be music - but disintegration of ideology as explanation, justification, and motivation for what composers do and how they define themselves. But this is a very different sort of path - an individual path, one not defined by the "oughts" of any aesthetic, social, or cosmic manifest destiny. I think it's a path that many artists recognize and are taking - some probably with trepidation, others with a pleasant sense of freedom.
> 
> The Modernist view of the artist, his mission and his place in the world, which was a direct descendant of the Romantic view of the artist as a being apart from and above the common herd, was born in a more homogeneous society which had established clear traditions which Modernism could simultaneously own, challenge, and rebel against. That society, and those traditions, are long gone; this fact, and the general failure of Modernist movements to woo the mass of classical music "consumers" away from their still deep-rooted attachment to the aesthetics of the more distant past, have paradoxically made "Modernist" ideologies themselves appear very unmodern, outdated and irrelevant, and has left - or liberated -the contemporary artist to find his own voice, his own raison d'etre, and his own place in a culture of extreme multiplicity and unlimited choice: a culture, in short, of _real_ diversity.


That basically sums up my view. This is why I said that classical music can't get away from a feudalist mindset. The world has moved on, and although by no means perfect new ways of thinking have been developed in other areas, even in other genres of music. The politics of the 20th century has also shown us that an educated elite leading the masses towards some sort of utopia is like a fairy tale. It all too often has resulted in the opposite, in an imposition of ideas rather than encouraging sharing of ideas and developing a sense of real plurality.

But my view is negative, I think it ultimately can't happen. Classical music is like an ancient relic, say like the Parthenon in Athens. Doesn't even matter if we talk about avant-garde, that's just like applying a light and sound show to the Parthenon and claiming it is new. Its new wine in old casks, or vice-versa. As norman bates said on his, the first response to this thread, there's been neo-atonal and neo-noise around for like 100 years now. To argue even that "new" in classical music means exactly that is a contradiction, appended with bucket loads of ideology and dogma.


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## Sid James

arpeggio said:


> ...I am probably wrong but it seems to me that many of you are agreeing with each other and do not realize it. Maybe you do realize it and I do not realize that you all are realizing it. ....


No, we are never going to agree with eachother. That's my point, diversity entails differences of opinion. The only way I can agree is to subjugate myself and accept second-class citizenship of TC, of all things an online discussion forum. I'm sorry, that's not on the cards. Only option is to opt out of this dynamic, which has gone one for ages, and shows no sign of abating.


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## Sid James

science said:


> ...
> It's too bad that I need human society. My great loves - reading, listening to music, travel - are much easier to pursue alone. It's also too bad that I don't already know everything that I want to know, and that some of the things I most want to know are most easily discovered in conversation with other people.


We all need human society, we're social animals. My wish was that things like music could, by their potential to bring people together, be a source of a more positive aspect of humanity not of primitive tribal warfare. I think I once believed that positive or idealist aspect but now I seriously doubt it. I do aim to continue to pursue music and other insterests both alone and together with others, as my own needs dictate.


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## Sid James

I'll wrap this up with four quotes.

The first is Aaron Copland, from an interview in the 1960's (shades of _The Lord of the Flies _there, is that TC now?).

The second is the one I paraphrased by Nelson Mandela, about the insidious nature of implied thought control and imprisonment of the mind (reflecting on the time before he was physically imprisoned for 27 years, when the authorities where attempting to constantly monitor his movements, and also what he wrote and what he said).

The third is by Leonard Stein, an American pupil of Schoenberg's.

The fourth, a speech by Lady Bracknell from Oscar Wilde's _The Importance of Being Earnest_. It sums up the elitist mentality which is linked to the aristocracy, to feudalism. Change a word or phrase here or there, and it may relate to us lowbrow non-trained great unwashed plebs who have the temerity to contribute to discussions of music. Viola!

This is for those on this forum who have told me its me, only me who thinks in a certain way, invalidating me time and time again. For saying I am too preoccupied with history. For saying that not all music can be modern in its time, only some sorts of music which they deem fit to be as such. Of coures, not just me, but many others who have to suffer this pseudo-diversity.

"..._That brings up something that I find very troubling: namely, that composers nowadays seem to have no sense of history whatsoever, and practically no interest in where they came from, or how they got here, or whey we are where we are now. You can't imagine how distressing to me that is. It makes our younger men seem so primitive, like savages on an island who have no conception of how anything happened, and couldn't care less. It may have a healthy side to it, of course, but it seems to me somewhat poverty-stricken to have no curiosity at all as to your own historical background."_
- *Aaron Copland*.

"_Banning not only confines one physically, it imprisons one's spirit. It induces a kind of psychological claustrophobia that makes one yearn for not only freedom of movement but spirited escape. Banning was a dangerous game, for one was not shackled or chained behind bars; the bars where laws and regulations that could easily be violated and often where. One could slip away unseen for short periods of time and have the temporary illusion of freedom. The insidious effect of bans was that at a certain point one began to think that the oppressor was not without but within."_
- *Nelson Mandela*.

"_All music is modern music._"
- *Leo**nard Stein*.

"_I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to riots and acts of violence in Grosvenor Square_."
- Lady Bracknell, in *Oscar Wilde's *_The Importance of Being Earnest_.


----------



## Sid James

Wood said:


> The difficulty is that your attack is so general that it is hard to relate to anything that is actually posted here, and if you choose not to provide examples of this bullying then it is hard to accept your assertion that it exists.
> 
> What is the 'inner circle' on TC?
> 
> I have seen young newbies getting slaughtered for dissing Beethoven and Mozart. They deserve some patience. However, it seems to me that it is the more experienced members who attack _avant garde_ music and its adherents. They do not go away.
> 
> In the context of this thread, 'diversity' doesn't refer to a 'democracy of ideas', just the diversity of past sources for contemporary classical music.
> 
> Democracy v. hierarchy in classical music sounds interesting, but would be preferable in its own thread.


If you can't see it, I can't make you see it. It happens here on a regular basis, sometimes daily, at least weekly. My answers to SeptimalTritone, some guy and violadude where all talking to that atmosphere of stifling invalidation that permeates these threads. I was talked to (or talked about, with regards to the former two) with the premise of no acknowledgement of my position. What I said was deemed to be invalid, to be of no use, to be of no importance. Actually that is kind of what I expect with these topics, so its no big deal.

As regarding your last two sentences, the posts I just wrote above might be of assistance in explaining my position. I've shaken things up which I think has at least let people talk about this topic more and in a broad manner, and now the forum can go on with 'business as usual' without my input.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

Sid James said:


> If you can't see it, I can't make you see it. It happens here on a regular basis, sometimes daily, at least weekly. My answers to SeptimalTritone, some guy and violadude where all talking to that atmosphere of stifling invalidation that permeates these threads. I was talked to (or talked about, with regards to the former two) with the premise of no acknowledgement of my position. What I said was deemed to be invalid, to be of no use, to be of no importance. Actually that is kind of what I expect with these topics, so its no big deal.
> 
> As regarding your last two sentences, the posts I just wrote above might be of assistance in explaining my position. I've shaken things up which I think has at least let people talk about this topic more and in a broad manner, and now the forum can go on with 'business as usual' without my input.


Well, I apologize for... perhaps being a little dismissive of the elitism thing. I think that if people took a more scientific attitude paradigm towards music the concept of elitism would disappear. I.e. "let's explore music and find out what's the most artistically polarizing, deep, and innovative" rather than "the sphere of music culture is factionalized and condescending, and avant-gardists are choking away freedom". Musical development should be thought of similarly to scientific development. It should be a search for truth: in music's case it should be a search for new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression.

Certain music, while 'modern' in the sense of 'recent', doesn't achieve this (new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression). I don't think it's elitist to have this opinion. And after all, the classical/romantic era music we listen to is almost entirely of the new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression sort, like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler... And the most remembered and esteemed composers of the 1950s to the 2000s are the Darmstadt people, like Nono, Berio, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Cage, Boulez, Xenakis... and non-Europeans like Young, Reich, Takemitsu, Carter. They were all forward-thinking. I really don't think it's elitist to say that the forward-thinking spectralists and electro-acoustic composers are our modern 21st century heroes and trailblazers. Those who don't explore it are missing out (note: they aren't less of a human being obviously, they simply are missing out and perhaps should spend more time exploring it, if they wish).

Is what I'm saying... fair?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

tdc said:


> Well I'm not going to respond to a lot of this post because well written as it is it twists a lot of things too far out of the original context in which they were stated. I admit your posts _are_ generally very well written. I often enjoy reading them and agree with some of them. However it seems to me a lot of people confuse nice prose with logic.
> 
> I do think a lot of things that make people grow physically/intellectually/spiritually can be initially uncomfortable or not enjoyable. Is exercise comfortable? Is eating healthy comfortable? Is studying comfortable? I would suggest a large percentage of the most worth while things in life tend to push people out of their comfort zone. A lot of people around here seem to think everything should be made more comfortable for them, if you look at the over all state of our society - you seem to be arguing for the status quo - ignorance can indeed be a very comfortable place.
> 
> A lot of people just like to relax and eat comfort food - they usually end up dying of heart disease.


I think a lot (but not certainly not all) of modernist music is an unwarranted extension of that metaphor.

Being in awesome shape, myself, I don't view acclimating to this music metaphorically as 'exercising vigorously and eating nutrient-dense food.'

I'd see a more apposite metaphor being along the lines of: eating nutrient-deficient GMO food and drinking lots of sodium-fluoride.


----------



## science

SeptimalTritone said:


> Well, I apologize for... perhaps being a little dismissive of the elitism thing. I think that if people took a more scientific attitude paradigm towards music the concept of elitism would disappear. I.e. "let's explore music and find out what's the most artistically polarizing, deep, and innovative" rather than "the sphere of music culture is factionalized and condescending, and avant-gardists are choking away freedom". Musical development should be thought of similarly to scientific development. It should be a search for truth: in music's case it should be a search for new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression.
> 
> Certain music, while 'modern' in the sense of 'recent', doesn't achieve this (new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression). I don't think it's elitist to have this opinion. And after all, the classical/romantic era music we listen to is almost entirely of the new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression sort, like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler... And the most remembered and esteemed composers of the 1950s to the 2000s are the Darmstadt people, like Nono, Berio, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Cage, Boulez, Xenakis... and non-Europeans like Young, Reich, Takemitsu, Carter. They were all forward-thinking. I really don't think it's elitist to say that the forward-thinking spectralists and electro-acoustic composers are our modern 21st century heroes and trailblazers. Those who don't explore it are missing out (note: they aren't less of a human being obviously, they simply are missing out and perhaps should spend more time exploring it, if they wish).
> 
> Is what I'm saying... fair?


When something is polarizing, how do you describe the two groups?

For example, Karl Jenkins has his fans and his haters. How would you describe the two groups?

As another example, Boulez has his fans and his haters. How would you describe the two groups?

I have no doubt - and I cannot believe that in your heart or anyone else's heart there would be any doubt - that in a situation where we weren't self-consciously bending over backwards to try not to look like snobs, most of us here - and especially the "cool" people - would describe the fans of Jenkins and the haters of Boulez in insulting terms.

But that condescension is vital to the culture of classical music, and has been since who knows when. I know that some minority of classical music people rise above it, but they're exceptional and wonderful people. On the whole, we scorn and have long scorned "popular" music, and contrast our music to it. It's like Orientalism defining what it means to be European: we define ourselves and our music via Popularientalism. Then, within the community, we apply the same attitudes to each other according to various strategies: embracing the most modernist music with scorn for less modernist music is one, another is embracing exclusively the most famous composers with scorn for less famous ones, another is embracing the less famous composers with scorn for the fans of only the most famous, etc.

I guess this is fine among ourselves. After all, most of us do it, so must of us deserve no better.

But I've seen it chase away and turn off newbies. Of course that is its intent - the goal is to purify our ranks. It's hazing. It makes us insiders even more elite.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

science said:


> I have no doubt - and I cannot believe that in your heart or anyone else's heart there would be any doubt - that in a situation where we weren't self-consciously bending over backwards to try not to look like snobs, most of us here - and especially the "cool" people - would describe the fans of Jenkins and the haters of Boulez in insulting terms.


Let's for just a moment... be a little bit more fair. If someone (me) sees a huge amount of artistic expression in Boulez and basically none in Jenkins... that that make him a snob?

I vehemently dislike the terms 'snob' and 'elitist'. They are so missing the mark. Classical music distinguishes itself for taking a bit of effort and intensity to listen to, but is rewarding in the end: I therefore very much agree with tdc's position.


----------



## science

SeptimalTritone said:


> Let's for just a moment... be a little bit more fair. If someone (me) sees a huge amount of artistic expression in Boulez and basically none in Jenkins... that that make him a snob?
> 
> I vehemently dislike the terms 'snob' and 'elitist'. They are so missing the mark. Classical music distinguishes itself for taking a bit of effort and intensity to listen to, but is rewarding in the end: I therefore very much agree with tdc's position.


I don't have the kind of authority required to opine about "artistic merit," but I don't enjoy Jenkins' music nearly as much as I enjoy Boulez', and I don't think I'm a snob.

The question really isn't about our attitude to the music, but our attitude towards its fans. It's not hard to see that we look down on people who like Jenkins' music. If we respected them as beings no less human than ourselves, we'd find ways to discuss our opinion of their music without blasting forth our condescension to them as people.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

violadude said:


> This is subjugation:
> 
> View attachment 58094
> 
> 
> This is not:
> 
> View attachment 58095


Well of course its not, as '_subjection (the word I used in my original post)_' isn't '_subjugation_,' (what you imputed to me) no matter how many convoluted tone rows one uses in pronouncing it.

Spelling first. Tone rows later. . . or rather the opposite.


----------



## Woodduck

tdc said:


> Well I'm not going to respond to a lot of this post because well written as it is it twists a lot of things too far out of the original context in which they were stated. I admit your posts _are_ generally very well written. I often enjoy reading them and agree with some of them. However it seems to me a lot of people confuse nice prose with logic.
> 
> I do think a lot of things that make people grow physically/intellectually/spiritually can be initially uncomfortable or not enjoyable. Is exercise comfortable? Is eating healthy comfortable? Is studying comfortable? I would suggest a large percentage of the most worth while things in life tend to push people out of their comfort zone. A lot of people around here seem to think everything should be made more comfortable for them, if you look at the over all state of our society - you seem to be arguing for the status quo - ignorance can indeed be a very comfortable place.
> 
> A lot of people just like to relax and eat comfort food - they usually end up dying of heart disease.


I'm curious as to what points you think I've "twisted out of context." It's not quite fair to say that I've done that, to say that I've "confused nice prose with logic," and yet to decline to demonstrate your point.

Beyond that, I must say that comparing people's disinclination to listen to music they find unappealing to a refusal to follow good health guidelines is goofy. No one's well-being, physical or mental, depends upon listening to music they don't enjoy. It's possible that they might come to enjoy something they don't like now, but that's hardly an urgent matter.

"Eat your spinach, Johnny, so you'll grow big and strong like Daddy" is sound advice.

"Listen to Varese, Howard, so you'll grow intellectually and spiritually"...?

I hope you're laughing now. That really could be good for the mind and spirit.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> I'm curious as to what points you think I've "twisted out of context." It's not quite fair to say that I've done that, to say that I've "confused nice prose with logic," and yet to decline to demonstrate your point.
> 
> Beyond that, I must say that comparing people's disinclination to listen to music they find unappealing to a refusal to follow good health guidelines is goofy. No one's well-being, physical or mental, depends upon listening to music they don't enjoy. It's possible that they might come to enjoy something they don't like now, but that's hardly an urgent matter.
> 
> "Eat your spinach, Johnny, so you'll grow big and strong like Daddy" is sound advice.
> 
> "Listen to Varese, Howard, so you'll grow intellectually and spiritually"...?
> 
> I hope you're laughing now. That really could be good for the mind and spirit.


That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. . . or even seriousness.


----------



## KenOC

"A lot of people just like to relax and eat comfort food - they usually end up dying of heart disease."

Hey bro, you talkin' about me? Just pass me that cheese and mac sandwich and another bowl of chili! I just had my checkup and the doc said...well, never mind what he said. What does he know anyway? :lol:


----------



## Woodduck

SeptimalTritone said:


> Well, I apologize for... perhaps being a little dismissive of the elitism thing. I think that if people took *a more scientific attitude paradigm towards music* the concept of elitism would disappear. *I.e. "let's **explore music and find out what's the most artistically polarizing, deep, and innovative"* rather than "the sphere of music culture is factionalized and condescending, and avant-gardists are choking away freedom". *Musical development should be thought of similarly to scientific development. It should be a search for truth: in music's case it should be a search for new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression. *
> 
> Certain music, while 'modern' in the sense of 'recent', doesn't achieve this (new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression). I don't think it's elitist to have this opinion. And after all, *the classical/romantic era music we listen to is almost entirely of the new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression sort, like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler...* And the most remembered and esteemed composers of the 1950s to the 2000s are the Darmstadt people, like Nono, Berio, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Cage, Boulez, Xenakis... and non-Europeans like Young, Reich, Takemitsu, Carter. They were all forward-thinking. I really don't think it's elitist to say that *the forward-thinking spectralists and electro-acoustic composers are our modern 21st century heroes and trailblazers. Those who don't explore it are missing out* (note: they aren't less of a human being obviously, they simply are missing out and perhaps should spend more time exploring it, if they wish).


There are some heavy-duty assumptions here, SeptimalT. May I ask you a personal question? Are you a composer, or a serious creative artist of any kind? If you are, does what you've said above describe your motives and purposes for making art? And if you are not, do you believe that such motives and purposes are relevant and necessary for successful and meaningful artistic creation?


----------



## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> "A lot of people just like to relax and eat comfort food - they usually end up dying of heart disease."
> 
> Hey bro, you talkin' about me? Just pass me that cheese and mac sandwich and another bowl of chili! I just had my checkup and the doc said...well, never mind what he said. What does he know anyway? :lol:


If he prescribes Birtwistle you'd better listen to him.


----------



## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> If he prescribes Birtwistle you'd better listen to him.


If he prescribes Birtwistle, my HMO allows me to change my primary doctor. Second opinion, please!


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> If he prescribes Birtwistle you'd better listen to him.


That'd only induce permanent nausea.


----------



## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> If he prescribes Birtwistle, my HMO allows me to change my primary doctor. Second opinion, please!


Ferneyhough?.....


----------



## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> Ferneyhough?.....


OK, third opinion seems called for.


----------



## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> OK, third opinion seems called for.


Awww, just go eat your mac and cheese.


----------



## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> Awww, just go eat your mac and cheese.


Yum .............................


----------



## Sid James

This is my last score I'll settle here. Ever since I talked to this member who I have quoted below, I was scorned for professing enjoyment of *Andrew Lloyd Webber's* music. I'm not fanatical about him, but I like his music and I read a book about him fairly recently. ALW is just as valid as any other 20th century composer. He was, early on largely accepted by the establishment for _Jesus Christ Superstar_. One critic said he could hear in it influences of not only the usual suspects (eg. the great opera composers, especially Wagner's leitmotif system and the tune from Mendelssohn's _Violin Concerto_, and of course rock) but also Ligeti (in the hazy orchestral postlude that ends the musical). On his visit to London, Shostakovich said he liked it, and he saw it twice there.

Things began to go sour when ALW got successive hits, admitted to enjoying the money that came from composing, and forming his own record label to get the maximum profits. The latter is important, because in America duing the 1950's and '60's, all those big Hollywood musicals made massive amounts of money for the major recording companies that was subsequently channelled back into making 'highbrow' classical recordings. Chances are that some of our favourite recordings from that era where made on the back of earnings from musicals like _The King and I, West Side Story _and _My Fair Lady_. So Andrew's cardinal sin is that he didn't want to share, and potentially have Decca or EMI using some of his musicals to fund other things. He only recorded his _Requiem_ with EMI.

But this tall poppy syndrome applies to many composers who garner success nowadays. There are elements of the classical establishment who aren't happy with the situation. In the end though, with enough success and prestige, they become establishment anyway.

I can go on about why ALW's work is just as valid and of its time as any other composer of the late 20th century. Whether his musicals are 'classical' or not can be disputed. But he's a classical composer in terms of drawing upon many classical influences, including Wagner, Puccini, Prokofiev, Britten, and also integrating that with other approaches. He always edited and reworked his music, he is a perfectionist just like any other composer. He also took risks, for example putting all of his money into _Cats_. He could have been bankrupted if it had failed, but it succeeded and ran on Broadway for something like 30 years. Nobody can say that ALW didn't believe in his own talent, despite his many detractors and people saying he wouldn't amount to anything. Growing up in a loving but dysfunctional family, his brother the cellist Julian said that they could have easily become delinquents given the circumstances of their youth.

I went to a public lecture about music of the Classical Era, including Mozart's operas, and the speaker argued that Andrew Lloyd Webber was today's nearest equivalent of Mozart. This has, naturally, been invalidated before by the member who I am quoting.

I have probably said these things elsewhere on the forum, most likely to this very member when we where on speaking terms. I have said similar things about Rachmaninov, Grieg, Sibelius and even Schoenberg, how they where easily amongst the most maligned composers of the first half of the 20th century. Modernists and Modernist ideology was to blame for that. In light of this, I would not call myself a Modernist just as I wouldn't call myself a Stalinist or supporter of Apartheid. This ideology has been the most virulently toxic of all of the cornucopia of not so nice ideologies to do with classical music. So much for notions like progress and purity. For me these are not about music but agendas to do with music.



PetrB said:


> ...
> Some of the arguments for it are embedded in that mentality where nothing should be criticized, ever, any and all judgement should be suspended, and the advocating of, say, *Andrew Lloyd Weber's* work being as 'valid' _and valuable, it seems,_ as the works of Beethoven. This 'agenda' would have us believe "it is all the same," "all cultures and their artworks are of equal value," and a whole lot of silly and yet dangerous notions. ....[/B]


----------



## dgee

Haha woody and Ken - looks like normal service has resumed. It's funny because "the listener" doesn't like Birtwistle and Ferneyhough, amirite. And that means there's no ideology, just a bit of joking around

And now an overly sensitive modernism type with no sense of humour has spoilt it all by getting their nose out of joint about it.


----------



## violadude

Let's make a thread where everyone can just **** on contemporary composers so everyone can get it out of their system and over with.


----------



## dgee

violadude said:


> Let's make a thread where everyone can just **** on contemporary composers so everyone can get it out of their system and over with.


I've thought about starting one - it could be called "What did modern music do to you?" and we can at last get to the bottom of the worst lurid horrors of modern music - no moderation, no holds barred, no logic, no reprisals. Just let your worst prejudices all hang out

I think it would be highly therapeutic, but I don't see it as a lasting solution

Of course it has been suggested on TC before that maybe modern music enthusiasts would be more comfortable setting up their own forum and then the wouldn't have to bother the normals. I've looked at existing ones but their just not very active unfortunately


----------



## KenOC

violadude said:


> Let's make a thread where everyone can just **** on contemporary composers so everyone can get it out of their system and over with.


Well, I admit I don't much like the music of Birtwistle. And I don't much like the music of Ferneyhough either. If that's "dumping" on their music then I guess dumping it will be. But why should you take offense at what I like or don't? Question to dgee as well.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

KenOC said:


> Well, I admit I don't much like the music of Birtwistle. And I don't much like the music of Ferneyhough either. If that's "dumping" on their music then I guess dumping it will be. But why should you take offense at what I like or don't? Question to dgee as well.


"One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms."

- H.L. Mencken


----------



## arpeggio

*Andrew Lloyd Webber*

Sid James,

Many of us here enjoy Andrew Lloyd Webber. _Cats_ and _Phantom_ are two of my favorite shows. As long as those of us who appreciate the music of Mr. Webber can carry on a positive exchange concerning his music, who cares what others may think.

Do you recall that 'Some Guy' and I had a running feud concerning the music of Bax? I love Bax. What can I say about 'Some Guy's' ears.

As long as we are not prohibited talking about the music we enjoy, so what?


----------



## dgee

I don't care and I don't take offence - it's just tiresome. 

Anyway, if I was feeling sick and a medical officer prescribed me listening to Verdi or Shostakovich quartets I guess I'd just hope there was another option and it wasn't John Adams! :lol:

Is that how it works?

Peace dudes


----------



## KenOC

"Well Mr. dgee, I'm afraid it's Shostakovich quartets for you for the next month, three times daily before meals. Otherwise, it's Adams. Your choice."


----------



## Woodduck

Dgee writes:

_"Haha woody and Ken - looks like normal service has resumed. It's funny because "the listener" doesn't like Birtwistle and Ferneyhough, amirite. And that means there's no ideology, just a bit of joking around."_

Violadude writes:

_"Let's make a thread where everyone can just **** on contemporary composers so everyone can get it out of their system and over with."_

And now I write:

You cannot be serious.

Some lighthearted joking around containing the names of two contemporary composers, and suddenly the discussion is about ****ing on contemporary music?

Did either of you bother to notice that the levity came in response to another member who, trying to _praise_ contemporary music, compared listening to difficult modern music to eating health food, possibly unpleasant but _good for us?_ Where was the horror over that bit of absurdity, which is far more insulting to music than anything Ken or I said?

Since when is joking about a composer, or for that matter expressing outright distaste for a composer, "ideology"? Can you honestly not understand the difference? Are you that deeply in the dark about what real discussion of ideas, as opposed to spouting prejudices and retreating into clan loyalties, looks like?

Here is a perfect demonstration of why real discussion is next to impossible here. No offense intended, but hair-trigger defensiveness and gang warfare at this level really is juvenile.

Watch out. Eotvos may be the next health food.

(It's all right. No one's looking. You may laugh.)


----------



## violadude

Woodduck said:


> Dgee writes:
> 
> _"Haha woody and Ken - looks like normal service has resumed. It's funny because "the listener" doesn't like Birtwistle and Ferneyhough, amirite. And that means there's no ideology, just a bit of joking around."_
> 
> Violadude writes:
> 
> _"Let's make a thread where everyone can just **** on contemporary composers so everyone can get it out of their system and over with."_
> 
> And now I write:
> 
> You cannot be serious.
> 
> Some lighthearted joking around containing the names of two contemporary composers, and suddenly the discussion is about ****ing on contemporary music?
> 
> Did either of you bother to notice that the levity came in response to another member who, trying to _praise_ contemporary music, compared listening to difficult modern music to eating health food, possibly unpleasant but _good for us?_ Where was the horror over that bit of absurdity, which is far more insulting to music than anything Ken or I said?
> 
> Since when is joking about a composer, or for that matter expressing outright distaste for a composer, "ideology"? Can you honestly not understand the difference? Are you that deeply in the dark about what real ideas, as opposed to prejudices and clan loyalties, look like?
> 
> Here is a perfect demonstration of why real discussion is next to impossible here. No offense intended, but hair-trigger defensiveness and gang warfare at this level really is juvenile.
> 
> Watch out. Eotvos may be the next health food. (It's all right. No one's looking. You may laugh.)


I wasn't responding to that person in particular. Just speaking in general.


----------



## Sid James

Just to note for previous or future posters here, I will now not reply to anybody's replies to me. 

I don't deny that I used some guy's own thread as a platform for a discussion about whether or not this forum is a receptive place for diversity of opinions on modern/contemporary music. The moderator mmsbls didn't think it a problem, so it shouldn't be a problem.

The problem I had with the likes of some guy and petrb is that I am a listener of music, including new or newer classical music, but I don't go by the script of what such a listener should or shouldn't think. I don't go with the Lady Bracknell type elitism either, in fact I hate it, and I think it sells this music (and all music) short.

I can give a link to the tussles that led to my ignoring them and not talking to them (and a few others) early last year, but as I said to Wood that kind of thing is out of the question here.

This is my last post on this thread, and on any other thread. I found if I can't come here without anything but memories of those sorts of incidents, of being scorned and so on, I won't come at all. If I can't come without hate and anger to a website that should be about something I enjoy, and a recreational pursuit in itself, its no use forcing it. If I can't come without being given total freedom within the rules I agreed to when I signed up - not implied rules made by the unelected 'putative' TC emperor of the moment - again, its no use being here.

I think my use of it as a platform has just pushed out the thread a bit, so what? People had some conversations here that I think where worth having. They should have been had long ago, and I could have made such thread as Wood imputed, but again self censorship prevented that, after years of the tactics and agendas I attempted to expose here.

Good luck to all and I hope that 2015 will be a better year for TC than this year has been. As I said, whether it is or not doesn't make a difference to me personally.


----------



## science

dgee said:


> I don't care and I don't take offence - it's just tiresome.
> 
> Anyway, if I was feeling sick and a medical officer prescribed me listening to Verdi or Shostakovich quartets I guess I'd just hope there was another option and it wasn't John Adams! :lol:
> 
> Is that how it works?
> 
> Peace dudes


It doesn't work unless you do it against a composer someone actually despises. Try Higdon, Cage, Whitacre, and Stockhausen. That's good for a laugh.


----------



## KenOC

Sid, chill out a bit, please. This is just an Internet forum, a bunch of electrons being pushed around by people who may or may not actually exist! We're all here to play bumper cars, nothing else.


----------



## science

But seriously, it blows my mind to think that people who enjoy the music of Birtwistle, Ferneyhough, Cage, Stockhausen - the cultural elite among the cultural elite - would care what people who acknowledge themselves as culturally inferior think. You're at the dang top of the heap. You're winning. You've won. So why can't you just relax? No need to push everyone else down all the time.


----------



## dgee

I'm sorry for demonstrating why a real discussion like the one you and Ken were having is impossible on TC

I guess?


----------



## science

dgee said:


> I'm sorry for demonstrating why a real discussion like the one you and Ken were having is impossible on TC
> 
> I guess?


Is this "you" supposed to be me?


----------



## Woodduck

violadude said:


> I wasn't responding to that person in particular. Just speaking in general.


Excuse me if I misconstrued your reference. But I have to wonder: why here, and why now, on this thread? Do you think dislike of contemporary music is motivating the conversation? Do you perceive people dumping on it? Can contemporary music itself not be separated from people's ideas about what it is or should be? Is it possible to like contemporary music and yet disagree with the attitudes of people who claim to speak for it? Do you think anyone has the right to speak for it?

Perhaps none of these things matter to you. But they are interesting to some of us here. If you do think that we're just ****ing on contemporary music, you may be doing us an injustice.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> Is it possible to like contemporary music and yet disagree with the attitudes of people who claim to speak for it? Do you think anyone has the right to speak for it?


Yes, its self-appointed advocates have every right to be what they make themselves.

It is also possible to enjoy their music without sharing their attitudes to fans of other music but it is a lonely place to be.


----------



## dgee

Woodduck said:


> Excuse me if I misconstrued your reference. But I have to wonder: why here, and why now, on this thread? Do you think dislike of contemporary music is motivating the conversation? Do you perceive people dumping on it? Can contemporary music itself not be separated from people's ideas about what it is or should be? Is it possible to like contemporary music and yet disagree with the attitudes of people who claim to speak for it? Do you think anyone has the right to speak for it?
> 
> Perhaps none of these things matter to you. But they are interesting to some of us here. If you do think that we're just ****ing on contemporary music, you may be doing us an injustice.


What strikes me is that there is a bunch of members with no genuine interest in contemporary music (they don't seem to listen or follow or enjoy in any wide-ranging sense) that are active in discussions about contemporary music at the most general level. At best it seems like an activity to kick around the issue of contemporary music in general highlighting its relative unpopularity or perceived difficulty and attendant issues (often strawmen) - at worst it can look like trolling or concern trolling (at least to my suspicious mind!)

Once again - let's just listen with our ears! Contemporary music doesn't need to be treated as an amorphous troubling blob or an avant garde attitude problem (which is certainly well removed from where music is in 2014 anyway) - it's just a bunch of pieces of good, bad and indifferent quality

To some degree, if you don't particularly like it and don't know terribly much about it, maybe leaving the subject alone is a good move. That's reason enough for me to not get involved in a discussion of early music, for example.

And now:

Why are you interested in discussing contemporary music? As someone who doesn't appear to like it much or follow it closely? Forgive me if that seems presumptuous


----------



## science

dgee said:


> What strikes me is that there is a bunch of members with no genuine interest in contemporary music (they don't seem to listen or follow or enjoy in any wide-ranging sense) that are active in discussions about contemporary music at the most general level. At best it seems like an activity to kick around the issue of contemporary music in general highlighting its relative unpopularity or perceived difficulty and attendant issues (often strawmen) - at worst it can look like trolling or concern trolling (at least to my suspicious mind!)
> 
> Once again - let's just listen with our ears! Contemporary music doesn't need to be treated as an amorphous troubling blob or an avant garde attitude problem (which is certainly well removed from where music is in 2014 anyway) - it's just a bunch of pieces of good, bad and indifferent quality
> 
> To some degree, if you don't particularly like it and don't know terribly much about it, maybe leaving the subject alone is a good move. That's reason enough for me to not get involved in a discussion of early music, for example.
> 
> And now:
> 
> Why are you interested in discussing contemporary music? As someone who doesn't appear to like it much or follow it closely? Forgive me if that seems presumptuous


Its lack of popularity and its perceived difficulty are virtues, as we all know.

You've won, dude. You're at the top. Every time someone admits that they don't know or don't like your music, you win again.

You've got to let people console themselves with some self-deprecating humor.


----------



## dgee

science said:


> Its lack of popularity and its perceived difficulty are virtues, as we all know.
> 
> You've won, dude. You're at the top. Every time someone admits that they don't know or don't like your music, you win again.
> 
> You've got to let people console themselves with some self-deprecating humor.


I think you're winning harder bro! You must be loving this


----------



## science

dgee said:


> I think you're winning harder bro! You must be loving this


Maybe I am in some sense, but I'm definitely not making any friends among the cool people.


----------



## Blancrocher

science said:


> Maybe I am in some sense, but I'm definitely not making any friends among the cool people.


Me neither--I think it's because I obsessively listen to and read about classical music, and seek out others who do the same. At least, that's what Mme Blancrocher tells me.


----------



## science

Blancrocher said:


> Me neither--I think it's because I obsessively listen to and read about classical music, and seek out others who do the same. At least, that's what Mme Blancrocher tells me.


Of course the cool people in one context might not be the cool people in another context.


----------



## dgee

science said:


> Maybe I am in some sense, but I'm definitely not making any friends among the cool people.


I just don't understand this. I love it when people like contemporary music and that will happen by listening on a piece by piece basis with an open mind, not taking a general attitude to the whole and characterising it as an elite exercise with strict rules and punishments. It's so totally not - meet composers, go to contemporary music shows. Most friendly atmosphere you'll find at concerts anywhere! I hate seeing it misrepresented by people who don't and won't take part in it


----------



## science

dgee said:


> I just don't understand this. I love it when people like contemporary music and that will happen by listening on a piece by piece basis with an open mind, not taking a general attitude to the whole and characterising it as an elite exercise with strict rules and punishments. It's so totally not - meet composers, go to contemporary music shows. Most friendly atmosphere you'll find at concerts anywhere! I hate seeing it misrepresented by people who don't and won't take part in it


Yeah, people are totally different in real life than we are online.

And besides, in a context like that, you're all insiders already.

If one really wants people to share ones pleasure in music with others, one will go out of one's way to be kind to them when they express frustration or disappointment with themselves, even in the form of a joke. If, instead, one wants to make the lines stronger, to emphasize their inferiority, one will snap at them, such as a counter joke at their expense.


----------



## Nereffid

SeptimalTritone said:


> Well, I apologize for... perhaps being a little dismissive of the elitism thing. I think that if people took a more scientific attitude paradigm towards music the concept of elitism would disappear. I.e. "let's explore music and find out what's the most artistically polarizing, deep, and innovative" rather than "the sphere of music culture is factionalized and condescending, and avant-gardists are choking away freedom". Musical development should be thought of similarly to scientific development. It should be a search for truth: in music's case it should be a search for new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression.
> 
> Certain music, while 'modern' in the sense of 'recent', doesn't achieve this (new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression). I don't think it's elitist to have this opinion. And after all, the classical/romantic era music we listen to is almost entirely of the new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression sort, like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler... And the most remembered and esteemed composers of the 1950s to the 2000s are the Darmstadt people, like Nono, Berio, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Cage, Boulez, Xenakis... and non-Europeans like Young, Reich, Takemitsu, Carter. They were all forward-thinking. I really don't think it's elitist to say that the forward-thinking spectralists and electro-acoustic composers are our modern 21st century heroes and trailblazers. Those who don't explore it are missing out (note: they aren't less of a human being obviously, they simply are missing out and perhaps should spend more time exploring it, if they wish).
> 
> Is what I'm saying... fair?


I disagree with your opinion that "Musical development should be thought of similarly to scientific development", and I can't imagine I'm the only one here who disagrees. I don't think it's an elitist opinion, but it's the sort of thing that can encourage elitist thought among those inclined that way.

Your list of "most remembered and esteemed composers of the 1950s to 2000s"... well, according to my "parallel universes" theory of music, there are many minds in which they are most certainly _not_ the most remembered and esteemed. Personally I think the world of classical music is now too fragmented for such a list to be compiled, or at least so _narrow_ a list (for a given value of "narrow", natch). And because there's less general agreement on these names compared with the names from the classical/romantic era, those who don't agree with your list may feel entitled to ask why these names and not others, and again this can lead to the suspicion of elitism.

Finally, your point about people "missing out". You presumably didn't notice a much earlier post by me in which I asked you why you felt frustrated that people didn't like certain music, and this is the same kind of thing I'm curious about. So people "miss out", so what? There's a billion other things people don't do. Again, the sensitive reader may read your statement that they're "missing out" to mean that this is music they _should_ listen to, that what you're saying is that there's a spectralism-shaped hole in their souls, and thus you may be accused of a zealous form of nannying.

Let me be clear, I don't think you are an elitist or snob. It's pretty much all about tone as far as I'm concerned, and I personally don't detect an offensive tone in what you write. But I merely see your opinion as one among many valid ones; and the more anyone wishes to assert such an opinion, the more inclined I am to say "yes, but..."


----------



## science

Nereffid said:


> Your list of "most remembered and esteemed composers of the 1950s to 2000s"... well, according to my "parallel universes" theory of music, there are many minds in which they are most certainly _not_ the most remembered and esteemed. Personally I think the world of classical music is now too fragmented for such a list to be compiled, or at least so _narrow_ a list (for a given value of "narrow", natch).


I think for now he's given the right list, and in our hearts we all know it. We're all aware of the social dynamics of music appreciation (and other cultural appreciation) in the contemporary Western world.

We all know that, in the real world (as opposed to say, middle school, or, say, a marketing department trying to sell cigarettes), the coolest music isn't the most popular. We all know that the most elite music is classical music. No one can plausibly scorn someone for liking classical music: it's reverse snobbery at best. Every time one person say, "I like rap," and the other person says, "I like classical music," a cultural hierarchy has been established, and outside of some unusual (and not at all elite) places, the classical music fan is at the top of that hierarchy. The fact that Eminem sells more albums than Enescu reinforces this hierarchy.

We can see it with other things too. One guy says he likes Harlequin romances, the other says he likes James Joyce. We see who wins that exchange. If someone admits they don't like James Joyce, makes a joke about _Finnegan's Wake_, it's not an effective attack on James Joyce.

One guy says he likes Thomas Kinkade, the other says he likes Jackson Pollock - we know who wins. The Kinkade fan's joke about Pollock doesn't change a thing, doesn't threaten the Pollock fan's status in any way.

Note that this doesn't mean that someone necessarily chooses to like Stravinsky (or Joyce or Pollock or anything else) simply because of the status attached to them. That may or may not be the case, depending on the individual. But what it does mean is that we know how the hierarchy works.

And the pattern repeats itself microcosmically within the communities. One guy says he likes Stravinsky, the other says he likes Ferneyhough, and in most contexts where the name "Ferneyhough" is known, the latter guy is recognized as the winner of that situation.

We all know this.

So how does one interact with people who are below one in a hierarchy?

Well, I guess it depends on one's goals.


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## Blancrocher

*Post thanking people for repertoire suggestions deleted, since why should I thank them for all the time and money they've cost me?*


----------



## Guest

science said:


> Every time one person say, "I like rap," and the other person says, "I like classical music," a cultural hierarchy has been established, and outside of some unusual (and not at all elite) places, the classical music fan is at the top of that hierarchy. The fact that Eminem sells more albums than Enescu reinforces this hierarchy.





science said:


> wins





science said:


> wins





science said:


> the winner





science said:


> We all know this.


No, we don't all know this. "This" is a distinct reading of the situation and not the situation itself, which can be read in many ways.

Further, I think that framing the discussion in terms of winning and status is going to inevitably mean that everyone loses.


----------



## science

some guy said:


> No, we don't all know this. "This" is a distinct reading of the situation and not the situation itself, which can be read in many ways.
> 
> Further, I think that framing the discussion in terms of winning and status is going to inevitably mean that everyone loses.


It really doesn't matter how we choose to frame the discussion. We are not free in this regard. The word "win" isn't very important either. The reality is there implicitly, relentless and constant and inevitable, no matter what we'd prefer, or how we choose to talk about it.

I know we are uncomfortable talking about this kind of thing, in part because denying it is at least occasionally part of a strategy of maintaining it.


----------



## Guest

"Heads I win; tails you lose."

Who wants to play?


----------



## Petwhac

dgee said:


> What strikes me is that there is a bunch of members with no genuine interest in contemporary music (they don't seem to listen or follow or enjoy in any wide-ranging sense) that are active in discussions about contemporary music at the most general level. At best it seems like an activity to kick around the issue of contemporary music in general highlighting its relative unpopularity or perceived difficulty and attendant issues (often strawmen) - at worst it can look like trolling or concern trolling (at least to my suspicious mind!)
> 
> *Once again - let's just listen with our ears! Contemporary music doesn't need to be treated as an amorphous troubling blob or an avant garde attitude problem (which is certainly well removed from where music is in 2014 anyway) - it's just a bunch of pieces of good, bad and indifferent quality
> *
> To some degree, if you don't particularly like it and don't know terribly much about it, maybe leaving the subject alone is a good move. That's reason enough for me to not get involved in a discussion of early music, for example.
> 
> And now:
> 
> Why are you interested in discussing contemporary music? As someone who doesn't appear to like it much or follow it closely? Forgive me if that seems presumptuous


I agree with the paragraph in (my) bold and I think most people follow your practice of not getting involved in discussions of music they have little interest in.
However, this thread was very specifically designed to question the _validity_ of music that some people are very fond of. Here's a reminder of the OP:

It's a nice thing. Everybody likes it. Nobody wants to argue against it.

In practice, however, it has come up recently most frequently to defend the practice of only one kind of music, and the diversity consists almost entirely of styles from the past, often a quite distant past.

Even more oddly, if anyone wants to suggest that imitating the stylistic mannerisms of the past is maybe not as valid as other ways of going about the creating of art, that person is instantly accused of being against diversity.

Hmmm. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but it does seem to me that one thing is less diverse than many things.

There shouldn't be one rule for fans of A and another for fans of B.

Personally, I don't think there is anything wrong with expressing a robust dislike or like of any music and it is normal that one often tries to find a justification for one's taste.


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## SeptimalTritone

Nereffid said:


> I disagree with your opinion that "Musical development should be thought of similarly to scientific development", and I can't imagine I'm the only one here who disagrees. I don't think it's an elitist opinion, but it's the sort of thing that can encourage elitist thought among those inclined that way.
> 
> Your list of "most remembered and esteemed composers of the 1950s to 2000s"... well, according to my "parallel universes" theory of music, there are many minds in which they are most certainly _not_ the most remembered and esteemed. Personally I think the world of classical music is now too fragmented for such a list to be compiled, or at least so _narrow_ a list (for a given value of "narrow", natch). And because there's less general agreement on these names compared with the names from the classical/romantic era, those who don't agree with your list may feel entitled to ask why these names and not others, and again this can lead to the suspicion of elitism.


In my opinion, the paradigm "Musical development should be thought of similarly to scientific development" leads to the best music. Thank God that people like Ives and Debussy and Schoenberg and Stravinsky and Webern took that courageous leap of faith to make a new development into a new sonic/narrative world. These early 20th century people are _definitely_ remembered, and I think that my list of late 20th century people will likely be remembered as well (although perhaps more time is needed for it to sink in).

I thought my late 20th century list was reasonably diverse and included everyone from serialism to minimalism to electronic music to music with a lot of consonant triads to music with a lot of percussion to music with a lot of dissonant chords. I forgot Ligeti and Scelsi and of course Stravinsky (his late serial period is outstanding and it's post 1950)... and I want to give more praise to Webern, the dude who's narrative paradigm started it all (even though he died before 1950). Did I forget names (beyond composers similar to the ones in my list)? I'm actually a beginner (haven't listened to contemporary music for more than half a year), so perhaps I overlooked major developments in music.



Nereffid said:


> Finally, your point about people "missing out". You presumably didn't notice a much earlier post by me in which I asked you why you felt frustrated that people didn't like certain music, and this is the same kind of thing I'm curious about. So people "miss out", so what? There's a billion other things people don't do. Again, the sensitive reader may read your statement that they're "missing out" to mean that this is music they _should_ listen to, that what you're saying is that there's a spectralism-shaped hole in their souls, and thus you may be accused of a zealous form of nannying.
> 
> Let me be clear, I don't think you are an elitist or snob. It's pretty much all about tone as far as I'm concerned, and I personally don't detect an offensive tone in what you write. But I merely see your opinion as one among many valid ones; and the more anyone wishes to assert such an opinion, the more inclined I am to say "yes, but..."


I like you  You're very respectful. You're a good guy.

In KenOC's thread I mentioned that things get very convoluted when discussing modern music... I often can't tell whether the main issue is musical quality judgements or artistic paradigm disagreements or personal conflicts. I do think though that in the Alma Deutscher thread, a lot of people's opinions would be changed if they gave contemporary music more time and effort. For example, they want to use "lack of popularity" as a negative for contemporary classical, but not classical in general. Such a statement can only arise if one likes classical, but not contemporary classical. So therefore I reply: "give contemporary music more time and effort!"

I also think people view our esteemed member some guy as a giant villain/elitist/bogeyman. This is super unfair. I think that more listening to contemporary classical, and more understanding of music as scientific growth, will give people a better understanding of his position. And: the concept of elitism would disappear.

It's like: in physics we're working on making a quantum computer and doing new experiments and making new theoretical proposals. We're not redoing old stuff. Having this mentality in physics and the math/science/engineering fields is not 'elitist', and therefore it shouldn't be 'elitist' in music.

And finally, nobody is forced to listen to contemporary classical. But if you want to _discuss_ the current/future state of classical composition, then you really should listen to what contemporary composers have done in the past 70 years! And you should make an effort to get a sense of the merits of what they are doing!


----------



## Jobis

I think many composers are merely seeking to create work that is 'beautiful', whatever that means to them; sometimes at the expense of innovation and progress (if the composer lacks imagination that is). We can't forget that each individual has their own ideal of beauty, however trite or banal it may seem to us, but in the case of Part for example, the important thing is that a great deal of people subscribe to his aesthetic ideal. I read that as of 2013 he was the most performed classical composer for 3 years consecutively. We cannot ignore the significance of this. The elite will always be the elite, but that doesn't mean they are the only demographic whose opinions matter.

I wonder also, how you feel about ancient traditions, Some Guy; indonesian gamelan, for example; which is hardly innovative (to the degree of western classical music) but is still culturally significant and something that by all accounts ought not to change. It would be cool to hear your take on such phenomena.


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## SeptimalTritone

Woodduck said:


> There are some heavy-duty assumptions here, SeptimalT. May I ask you a personal question? Are you a composer, or a serious creative artist of any kind? If you are, does what you've said above describe your motives and purposes for making art? And if you are not, do you believe that such motives and purposes are relevant and necessary for successful and meaningful artistic creation?


I'm a physics major  My composition skills are very rudimentary: I'm no serious creative artist. I learned at school that if someone knows more than me, I should sincerely try to learn from their experiences. Therefore if somebody says Webern and Stockhausen are revolutionary, I try to get into Webern and Stockhausen and see why they are so special. Their sonic/narrative world is very different from anything before it, so it takes time to get used to.

For your last sentence, see my above post.


----------



## Guest

Petwhac said:


> I think most people follow your practice of not getting involved in discussions of music they have little interest in.


Very cleverly worded. Many people do indeed get involved in discussions of music that they are "interested in" because they hate it so. Mostly prior to any experience of it, too, just by the way.



Petwhac said:


> However, this thread was very specifically designed to question the _validity_ of music that some people are very fond of.


And this is as good a sample of what makes me throw my hands in the air in despair. So if that was your goal, good job!!

Anyway what you quoted does not quite say what you say it says.

Stylistic diversity is the topic, right? And I started out by saying "It's a nice thing. Everybody likes it. Nobody wants to argue against it." We're all agreed, in other words, that "stylistic diversity" is desirable. And everyone, no matter what side of the "modernist" discussion they're on, uses "stylistic diversity" to support their position. So I noted how the actual content of the words can change depending on who's saying them:

"In practice, however, it has come up recently most frequently to defend the practice of only one kind of music, and the diversity consists almost entirely of styles from the past, often a quite distant past." One thing, not many things. And this one thing absolutely has to be considered or the genuine diversity of all the other things on the list is called into question, and the person who wants only to exclude that one thing from the list of all the many other things is accused of really being for only one thing.

Wow! So one equals many, hence many has of course to equal one. It's just math!

But then we get to the crux of it, with the bolded remark: "Even more oddly, if anyone wants to suggest that imitating the stylistic mannerisms of the past is maybe not as valid as other ways of going about the creating of art, that person is instantly accused of being against diversity."

Now that looks to me (of course, I'm the one who said it, so...) like what is at issue here is an argumentative tactic, not any conclusion about the validity of any particular style of music. Why, I'm not even sure that "valid" is a valid word to use to describe music. I used it, for instance, to talk about practice, about compositional decisions. And no, just for the record, I don't think that that one practice is as valid as any of the many other practices. But that's not what the bolded section is about at all. It's about what happens in the discussion if anyone advances that proposition: that advancing that is enough to have one called out as being against diversity.

And I found that situation to be odd.

"Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but it does seem to me that one thing is less diverse than many things."



Petwhac said:


> There shouldn't be one rule for fans of A and another for fans of B.


My point. And what the thread was specifically designed to point out.



Petwhac said:


> Personally, I don't think there is anything wrong with expressing a robust dislike or like of any music and it is normal that one often tries to find a justification for one's taste.


You lost me here. So if I had done as you interpreted and specifically designed this thread to question the validity of music that some people are very fond of, that would have been OK with you? Officially confused I am.


----------



## Nereffid

SeptimalTritone said:


> In my opinion, the paradigm "Musical development should be thought of similarly to scientific development" leads to the best music. Thank God that people like Ives and Debussy and Schoenberg and Stravinsky and Webern took that courageous leap of faith to make a new development into a new sonic/narrative world. These early 20th century people are _definitely_ remembered, and I think that my list of late 20th century people will likely be remembered as well (although perhaps more time is needed for it to sink in).
> 
> I thought my late 20th century list was reasonably diverse and included everyone from serialism to minimalism to electronic music to music with a lot of consonant triads to music with a lot of percussion to music with a lot of dissonant chords. I forgot Ligeti and Scelsi and of course Stravinsky (his late serial period is outstanding and it's post 1950)... and I want to give more praise to Webern, the dude who's narrative paradigm started it all (even though he died before 1950). Did I forget names (beyond composers similar to the ones in my list)? I'm actually a beginner (haven't listened to contemporary music for more than half a year), so perhaps I overlooked major developments in music.


Oh, I have nothing against musical development - I'm all for it! I just don't see it as being akin to scientific development, because I don't see music as something that explores "truth". You said in your previous post "it should be a search for new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression". Whereas scientific development implies an _improvement_ on what we understand, for me musical development is more of an _addition_. Back in the 1980s a lot of music listeners discovered a stunning new form of "deep sonic/narrative expression"; the composer was one Hildegard von Bingen. As I'm sure you'll agree, the fact that the music is over 800 years old doesn't lessen its value, but to my mind a view of musical development that is couched in terms of _progress_ can imply that Hildegard has been _superceded_ by what's come since.
Obviously for there to be more different music, there has to be development, that's a given. But there are many views on which developments are interesting or good, and on how much development one has a right to expect at any given time. Diversity!

As regards your list of composers, you've somewhat missed my point. There's absolutely nothing wrong with your list... if one approaches the list _from your point of view_. You can add to it to your own satisfaction (or mine!) but the fact remains that there are people who see few if any of those composers as having contributed anything of value to music. Though I might not agree with them, I don't mind that they hold that opinion.



SeptimalTritone said:


> I often can't tell whether the main issue is musical quality judgements or artistic paradigm disagreements or personal conflicts.


Having spent a bit of time on TC now and read a lot of intelligent people say a lot of contradictory things, I'm happy to say that I have no truck with the notion of objective standards. So as far as I'm concerned _none_ of these issues are musical quality judgements and _all_ are, ultimately, personality conflicts. Sure, they might _appear_ to be arguments about musical quality but that can only ever boil down to "I like this and not that".


----------



## Nereffid

SeptimalTritone said:


> I learned at school that if someone knows more than me, I should sincerely try to learn from their experiences. Therefore if somebody says Webern and Stockhausen are revolutionary, I try to get into Webern and Stockhausen and see why they are so special. Their sonic/narrative world is very different from anything before it, so it takes time to get used to.


Should have put this with my previous reply, but let me add that I agree with all this _except_ when you say "see why they are so special", I would instead say "see why people think they are so special".


----------



## Marschallin Blair

some guy said:


> "Heads I win; tails you lose."
> 
> Who wants to play?


One has to _be_ a 'player' first.


----------



## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> Having spent a bit of time on TC now and read a lot of intelligent people say a lot of contradictory things, I'm happy to say that I have no truck with the notion of objective standards. So as far as I'm concerned _none_ of these issues are musical quality judgements and _all_ are, ultimately, personality conflicts. Sure, they might _appear_ to be arguments about musical quality but that can only ever boil down to "I like this and not that".


I disagree with you here, because I fail to see how people's having individual taste is in contradiction to the existence of objective standards.

Our views are of course colored by our own biases, but I think that we all approach music from a similar aesthetic paradigm, and it is a difference in perceptions and tastes that results in widely varying reactions to some things. But not all: why do you think there is so much agreement about certain things? There may be some who enjoy listening to Louis Spohr, perhaps more than Beethoven, but is there anyone who thinks that he was a better composer than Beethoven?


----------



## SeptimalTritone

Nereffid said:


> Oh, I have nothing against musical development - I'm all for it! I just don't see it as being akin to scientific development, because I don't see music as something that explores "truth". You said in your previous post "it should be a search for new polarizing and deep sonic/narrative expression". Whereas scientific development implies an _improvement_ on what we understand, for me musical development is more of an _addition_. Back in the 1980s a lot of music listeners discovered a stunning new form of "deep sonic/narrative expression"; the composer was one Hildegard von Bingen. As I'm sure you'll agree, the fact that the music is over 800 years old doesn't lessen its value, but to my mind a view of musical development that is couched in terms of _progress_ can imply that Hildegard has been _superceded_ by what's come since.
> Obviously for there to be more different music, there has to be development, that's a given. But there are many views on which developments are interesting or good, and on how much development one has a right to expect at any given time. Diversity!
> 
> As regards your list of composers, you've somewhat missed my point. There's absolutely nothing wrong with your list... if one approaches the list _from your point of view_. You can add to it to your own satisfaction (or mine!) but the fact remains that there are people who see few if any of those composers as having contributed anything of value to music. Though I might not agree with them, I don't mind that they hold that opinion.


I see what your saying. But I don't completely agree with "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". I think that complete relativism or "everything is up to opinion" is not right.

I would like to eventually lay down a philosophy of art/music that isn't 100% relative and has at least _some_ objective parts. This is not easy though. When I took philosophy of science I learned how difficult it was to move away form 100% anti-realism or 100% extreme Kantianism. But I think it somehow must be done.


----------



## Nereffid

MacLeod some time back used the phrase "collective subjectivity", and that's where I'm coming from.

We all have similar brains, but not identical ones. The music produced by certain composers resonates with a larger number of people thanks to shared brain similarities. By "brains" I also include cultural/environmental factors - _everything_ that contributes to our thought processes; and so widely shared similarities get reinforced by cultural transmission. Whatever it is went on in Beethoven's brain when he composed music resonates with what goes on in a large number of people's brains when they listen to it; Spohr, not so much. But no individual brain is more valid than any other individual brain.

So if Bob _prefers_ Spohr to Beethoven, it's because Spohr's music resonates better in Bob's brain than Beethoven's does. Bob knows he's out of step with most other listeners, but his preference for Spohr remains valid. The very fact that the great majority of people prefer Beethoven to Spohr may well be enough to put Bob off any claim for Spohr being _better_, because by saying that Bob's challenging a strong paradigm that he himself probably believes in anyway. So although Bob really does prefer Spohr he'll concede (reluctantly? happily?) that Beethoven's better. Which of course reinforces the paradigm even further.

So yeah, I believe in "complete relativism" but only in terms of what goes on inside individual brains. There are culturally agreed "standards" that everyone inevitably has to take into account.


----------



## violadude

Nereffid said:


> MacLeod some time back used the phrase "collective subjectivity", and that's where I'm coming from.
> 
> We all have similar brains, but not identical ones. The music produced by certain composers resonates with a larger number of people thanks to shared brain similarities. By "brains" I also include cultural/environmental factors - _everything_ that contributes to our thought processes; and so widely shared similarities get reinforced by cultural transmission. Whatever it is went on in Beethoven's brain when he composed music resonates with what goes on in a large number of people's brains when they listen to it; Spohr, not so much. But no individual brain is more valid than any other individual brain.
> 
> So if Bob _prefers_ Spohr to Beethoven, it's because Spohr's music resonates better in Bob's brain than Beethoven's does. Bob knows he's out of step with most other listeners, but his preference for Spohr remains valid. The very fact that the great majority of people prefer Beethoven to Spohr may well be enough to put Bob off any claim for Spohr being _better_, because by saying that Bob's challenging a strong paradigm that he himself probably believes in anyway. So although Bob really does prefer Spohr he'll concede (reluctantly? happily?) that Beethoven's better. Which of course reinforces the paradigm even further.
> 
> So yeah, I believe in "complete relativism" but only in terms of what goes on inside individual brains. There are culturally agreed "standards" that everyone inevitably has to take into account.


So, what you're saying is in essence, outside of cultural standards combined with our individual perception

This:






is just as good as this:






And in no way is one objectively more musically vapid than the other?


----------



## Jobis

violadude said:


> So, what you're saying is in essence, outside of cultural standards combined with our individual perception
> 
> This:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> is just as good as this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And in no way is one objectively more musically vapid than the other?


Why even ask?

If we want to rank music at all we ought to rank it in the context of that composer's wider works; Lil Jon is not Beethoven, is not living in the era of Beethoven, is not trying to be Beethoven, probably never listens to Beethoven. Its like saying apples are objectively better than oranges.


----------



## violadude

Jobis said:


> Why even ask?
> 
> If we want to rank music at all we ought to rank it in the context of that composer's wider works; Lil Jon is not Beethoven, is not living in the era of Beethoven, is not trying to be Beethoven, probably never listens to Beethoven. Its like saying apples are objectively better than oranges.


Well, I asked because that's what we're talking about.


----------



## Jobis

violadude said:


> Well, I asked because that's what we're talking about.


You could spend your lifetime answering that question, and still not fully account for everything.


----------



## Nereffid

Jobis said:


> Why even ask?
> 
> If we want to rank music at all we ought to rank it in the context of that composer's wider works; Lil Jon is not Beethoven, is not living in the era of Beethoven, is not trying to be Beethoven, probably never listens to Beethoven. Its like saying apples are objectively better than oranges.


Well, I was thinking it's like saying chalk is objectively better than cheese, or vice versa.

What goes on inside the head of the person who enjoys the Beethoven quartet is no more or less valid than what goes on inside the head of the person who enjoys Lil Jon.
So yes, in that sense the Beethoven and Lil John are equally "good", because "good" is not a single fixed point, it changes with the context.


----------



## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> What goes on inside the head of the person who enjoys the Beethoven quartet is no more or less valid than what goes on inside the head of the person who enjoys Lil Jon.
> So yes, in that sense the Beethoven and Lil John are equally "good", because "good" is not a single fixed point, it changes with the context.


But that sense is not the one under discussion. We are talking about what goes on in the music, not in the mind of the listener. Of course all perspectives are equally valid in that they constitute a view of the music.

That said, I prefer not to make judgments like this across genres and traditions.


----------



## scratchgolf

When the Lang Lang thread was alive and well, one particular poster felt the need to defend Lang Lang to the bitter end, suggesting everyone who slighted him was jealous of his popularity and income. Justin Bieber's name tends to surface here with regularity in the "Is what's popular necessarily better?" debate. If you can find even 1 person who claims Bieber is better quality music than Beethoven, then is their opinion not valid? Agree or disagree, shots at Bieber or Kanye West pass through without a hint of opposition, yet shots at Cage or Stockhausen are met with strong opposition. If opinion is the only thing that truly matters in music then why would someone who protests the claim that Bach is superior to Cage as a "given" not bat an eye when someone claims Bach is superior to Bieber? It's either 100% debatable or 100% set in stone. Any gray area, in this case, leads to contradiction. I haven't listened to enough Cage or Bieber to have an opinion on either. If asked, I'd say Bach was superior to both. That's my opinion, and an opinion based on my limited knowledge of the other two. So why would someone champion Cage, claiming I haven't invested enough time in him, when I've probably invested more time in Cage then they have in Bieber, yet they'd willingly dismiss Bieber as "crap". I'm guilty of these things too. I just find it odd when others pretend they aren't.


----------



## Jobis

Nereffid said:


> Well, I was thinking it's like saying chalk is objectively better than cheese, or vice versa.
> 
> What goes on inside the head of the person who enjoys the Beethoven quartet is no more or less valid than what goes on inside the head of the person who enjoys Lil Jon.
> So yes, in that sense the Beethoven and Lil John are equally "good", because "good" is not a single fixed point, it changes with the context.


That's true, but I would say that their goodness doesn't really change as such, they just exhibit different aspects of 'goodness' or 'beauty', with obvious overlap because they are pieces of music. I think the effect on the listener is important but something extra; music itself is objectively good even if no human is around to get any satisfaction out of it.

To reign it in closer to the thread topic, there is understandable frustration when lots of artists want to express the same aspect of goodness, and narrow our concept of beauty down to a tiny, human ideal. We're still quite tribalistic, (tribal?) and like to stick with the group, with accepted standards, rather than exploring further afield. However I believe change is only a means of discovery, not an end in itself, otherwise we run the risk of just seeking constant novelty.


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> But that sense is not the one under discussion. We are talking about what goes on in the music, not in the mind of the listener. Of course all perspectives are equally valid in that they constitute a view of the music.
> 
> That said, I prefer not to make judgments like this across genres and traditions.


Yes, we can talk about what goes on in the music, but we then have to agree on what _should_ be going on in the music. Which is where the widely-agreed-upon-but-not-unanimous cultural standards come in.

What if we could somehow ask, say, 100 composers of the Franco-Flemish school to decide whether Spohr or Beethoven was better? Are you confident enough in objective standards to be certain they'd overwhelmingly say Beethoven? Or would you be more inclined to say that our standards are not the same as theirs?


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## Nereffid

Jobis said:


> That's true, but I would say that their goodness doesn't really change as such, they just exhibit different aspects of 'goodness' or 'beauty', with obvious overlap because they are pieces of music.


Yes, sorry, that was actually what I meant.



Jobis said:


> I think the effect on the listener is important but something extra; music itself is objectively good even if no human is around to get any satisfaction out of it.


Nope, can't agree with this one at all! There's nothing inherently "good" about music; goodness is something we confer on it, by consensus or otherwise.


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## science

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. In college, when I hardly knew anything about classical music, I was close to a Curtis alum (funny story: Hilary Hahn came over to my house with her one day, and my dad, who had no idea who she was, thought Miss Hahn had a crush on me) - I cannot remember her even implying anything demeaning about classic rock or hip hop, though judging by her CD collection she wasn't a fan of any of that. 

But for some reason it happens on the internet all the time.


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## Jobis

Nereffid said:


> Yes, sorry, that was actually what I meant.
> 
> Nope, can't agree with this one at all! There's nothing inherently "good" about music; goodness is something we confer on it, by consensus or otherwise.


I can't blame you, its probably a difference in world-view.


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> Yes, we can talk about what goes on in the music, but we then have to agree on what _should_ be going on in the music. Which is where the widely-agreed-upon-but-not-unanimous cultural standards come in.
> 
> What if we could somehow ask, say, 100 composers of the Franco-Flemish school to decide whether Spohr or Beethoven was better? Are you confident enough in objective standards to be certain they'd overwhelmingly say Beethoven? Or would you be more inclined to say that our standards are not the same as theirs?


I'd be inclined to say that they don't have the same perspective that we do today. Their ideas about what music is and what constitutes coherence, let alone beauty or aesthetic worthiness would, no doubt, lead them to pronounce both Beethoven and Spohr nonsense at best.

Furthermore, a majority of any kind does not constitute objectivity. If 100 composers of the Franco-Flemish school dismiss Beethoven and/or Spohr, it does nothing whatsoever to change the music. Greatness is never a simple matter of yes/no, but rather a "greatness in" for which we need to take the art by its own rules.

Likewise, I am inclined to believe that in the future, the aesthetic battles of today will appear trivial and incomprehensible, while the great music that survives will be viewed as obviously and uncontrovertibly great. They will have a perspective on the present that we today cannot possibly have.


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## Blake

scratchgolf said:


> When the Lang Lang thread was alive and well, one particular poster felt the need to defend Lang Lang to the bitter end, suggesting everyone who slighted him was jealous of his popularity and income. Justin Bieber's name tends to surface here with regularity in the "Is what's popular necessarily better?" debate. If you can find even 1 person who claims Bieber is better quality music than Beethoven, then is their opinion not valid? Agree or disagree, shots at Bieber or Kanye West pass through without a hint of opposition, yet shots at Cage or Stockhausen are met with strong opposition. If opinion is the only thing that truly matters in music then why would someone who protests the claim that Bach is superior to Cage as a "given" not bat an eye when someone claims Bach is superior to Bieber? It's either 100% debatable or 100% set in stone. Any gray area, in this case, leads to contradiction. I haven't listened to enough Cage or Bieber to have an opinion on either. If asked, I'd say Bach was superior to both. That's my opinion, and an opinion based on my limited knowledge of the other two. So why would someone champion Cage, claiming I haven't invested enough time in him, when I've probably invested more time in Cage then they have in Bieber, yet they'd willingly dismiss Bieber as "crap". I'm guilty of these things too. I just find it odd when others pretend they aren't.


No one argues because virtually everyone agrees that Bach's music is superior to Beiber's.

It would be like arguing that Burger King's food is superior to El Bulli's. It's an absurdity.


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## scratchgolf

Vesuvius said:


> No one argues because virtually everyone agrees that Bach's music is superior to Beiber's.
> 
> It would be like arguing that Burger King's food is superior to El Bulli's. It's an absurdity.


But that's the point I'm making. Virtually everyone agrees but what about those who don't? When something is considered to be a universal truth, how do we deal with those that disagree? And if we're willing to question the validity of their claim, how will we respond when someone questions ours? If I were to make a new thread titled "Why is Beethoven Superior to Stockhausen" the conversation would go the direction many have before. People would ask "How?" or "On what grounds?" or "How familiar are you with Stockhausen" or "Why? Because Stockhausen isn't pretty?". If I were to create another thread titled "Why is Beethoven Superior to Justin Bieber" I'd maybe get a few side comments but the thread would soon die. If you asked me personally why I prefer Beethoven to Stockhausen, and I'm being honest here, I'd say I'm more familiar with Beethoven and I like the way his music sounds. I'd also mention that I'm not too familiar with Stockhausen and haven't liked what I've heard. If you were to then ask me if I prefer Stockhausen to Bieber, I'd probably defend Stockhausen and dismiss Bieber as crap. In doing so, I'd be guilty of what many of us are guilty of. That would be agreeing that everyone's opinions are valid, as long as we agree with them. And, like I stated before, I'm guilty of this as well. I think, to an extent, we all are.

Edit: I felt the need to include that my main reason for choosing Stockhausen over Bieber is I have interest in Stockhausen and eventually exploring his music further. I have no such interest in the music of Justin Bieber.


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## Jobis

scratchgolf said:


> But that's the point I'm making. Virtually everyone agrees but what about those who don't? When something is considered to be a universal truth, how do we deal with those that disagree? And if we're willing to question the validity of their claim, how will we respond when someone questions ours? If I were to make a new thread titled "Why is Beethoven Superior to Stockhausen" the conversation would go the direction many have before. People would ask "How?" or "On what grounds?" or "How familiar are you with Stockhausen" or "Why? Because Stockhausen isn't pretty?". If I were to create another thread titled "Why is Beethoven Superior to Justin Bieber" I'd maybe get a few side comments but the thread would soon die. If you asked me personally why I prefer Beethoven to Stockhausen, and I'm being honest here, I'd say I'm more familiar with Beethoven and I like the way his music sounds. I'd also mention that I'm not too familiar with Stockhausen and haven't liked what I've heard. If you were to then ask me if I prefer Stockhausen to Bieber, I'd probably defend Stockhausen and dismiss Bieber as crap. In doing so, I'd be guilty of what many of us are guilty of. That would be agreeing that everyone's opinions are valid, as long as we agree with them. And, like I stated before, I'm guilty of this as well. I think, to an extent, we all are.
> 
> Edit: I felt the need to include that my main reason for choosing Stockhausen over Bieber is I have interest in Stockhausen and eventually exploring his music further. I have no such interest in the music of Justin Bieber.


There is an easy explanation:

Beiber's music is simpler and not as imaginative as Stockhausen's or Beethoven's. That is not to criticise the music itself, but just stating facts which justify our likes and dislikes, (or indifferences). To call it 'crap' is a lazy, inarticulate way of saying this.


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## scratchgolf

Jobis said:


> There is an easy explanation:
> 
> Beiber's music is simpler and not as imaginative as Stockhausen's or Beethoven's. That is not to criticise the music itself, but just stating facts which justify our likes and dislikes, (or indifferences). To call it 'crap' is a lazy, inarticulate way of saying this.


Once again, if someone claims Bieber is less imaginative than Stockhausen, who will argue this? If someone claims Beethoven is more imaginative than Stockhausen, they're greeted with "Define imaginative" or "according to whom?" or "In what way?". I'm using myself as an example here because I don't take these stances in conversation. I've seen it multiple times and others have as well. I'm not saying I agree or disagree. I'm saying it happens here with regularity.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> Furthermore, a majority of any kind does not constitute objectivity. If 100 composers of the Franco-Flemish school dismiss Beethoven and/or Spohr, it does nothing whatsoever to change the music.


I never said a majority constitutes objectivity. I brought up the idea of "100 composers" because you said "why do you think there is so much agreement about certain things? There may be some who enjoy listening to Louis Spohr, perhaps more than Beethoven, but is there anyone who thinks that he was a better composer than Beethoven?". You suggested the existence of a consensus about Beethoven, and all I was doing was pivoting off that.


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## Nereffid

Jobis said:


> I can't blame you, its probably a difference in world-view.


Ex-actly!
That's why I said I didn't agree with you, not that you were wrong! :tiphat:


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## scratchgolf

Perhaps I'm just really bad a playing Devil's advocate. I'll now return to the "Would You Trade" thread.


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## Woodduck

dgee said:


> What strikes me is that *there is a bunch of members with no genuine interest in contemporary music* (they don't seem to listen or follow or enjoy in any wide-ranging sense) that are active in discussions about contemporary music at the most general level. At best it seems like an activity to kick around the issue of contemporary music in general *highlighting its relative unpopularity or perceived difficulty* and attendant issues (often strawmen) - at worst it can look like trolling or concern trolling (at least to my suspicious mind!)
> 
> Once again - let's just listen with our ears! *Contemporary music doesn't need to be treated as an amorphous troubling blob or an avant garde attitude problem (which is certainly well removed from where music is in 2014 anyway) - it's just a bunch of pieces of good, bad and indifferent quality*
> 
> To some degree, *if you don't particularly like it and don't know terribly much about it, maybe leaving the subject alone is a good move.* That's reason enough for me to not get involved in a discussion of early music, for example.
> 
> And now:
> 
> *Why are you interested in discussing contemporary music? As someone who doesn't appear to like it much or follow it closely? *Forgive me if that seems presumptuous


I think you're asking a serious question here, so I'll give a serious answer.

I'm interested in music. Period. I've been, in my 65 years, a singer (solo and choral), a pianist, an organist, a listener, an occasional composer, and a record collector. I've devoted a good deal of time to reading about areas of music that interest me, and I've enjoyed writing about music and talking about it when opportunities have arisen. Had my life moved in a different direction I might have been a music reviewer. As it turned out, I spent about thirty years working as a piano accompanist for ballet, improvising music for classes at Pacific Northwest Ballet and other schools in Seattle and in other areas of the country. My musical activities have now tapered off sharply, and I am not surrounded by musicians or by people with whom I can talk about music. TalkClassical helps to compensate for that lack.

I'm a visual artist (drawing and painting) as well as a musician. In my twenties I thought it might become a career. It hasn't, but I still paint occasioinally and have retained an interest in the visual arts as such.

My broad interest in the arts, in culture, in philosophy, in many things, and the pleasure I take in talking and writing about the things that interest me, is reason enough for me to want to engage when serious-seeming questions of musical culture or aesthetic philosophy arise. There isn't as much of that around me as there once was. I miss it very much.

I can't speak fo any other member here, but I'm not in this conversation to discuss whatever is being offered as "classical music" to the world at this moment (which I think is more precise than to say merely "contemporary music," a much wider category). I'm not uninterested in it, I listen occasionally, I sometimes like what I hear, I often do not. I don't worry about it. I don't care who likes what or why, and I don't criticize people who like what I don't or don't like what I do. I do have strong opinions about things I hear, but I keep specific opinions to myself most of the time unless the context of the conversation makes expressing them useful or enjoyable (and yes, I enjoy a good joke about 4'33" - or about Wagner). But my point is: I don't want to talk about anyone's taste in music on this forum, and that's not what I've been talking about.

This thread raises issues of philosophical and cultural import. I am drawn to those like a moth to a flame (and they can, clearly, be just as hazardous!). But this one drew me particularly because it was not the beginning, but merely a continuation, of a dispute which began on the "Alma Deutscher" thread, a dispute I was prepared to continue when the thread was closed. I broached a goodly number of ideas on that thread which were not very well addressed, but were in some respects misunderstood and mischaracterized. The present thread was clearly offered as an attempt to keep the flame alive - and I, susceptible moth that I am, flew back in.

The discussion of Alma Deutcher was not, for me, fundamentally a discussion of "contemporary music" - i.e. of any music being written now - but of musical creativity and culture and, as a corollary issue, of who gets to decide what music is or should be and who speaks for its creators. These subjects are not new in our time. I have opinions about them. I offered some of these opinions there, and I'm offering them here. That, I think, is what we do here - some of us, anyway.

I'm not particularly pleased with the way this discussion has gone. The reason is exemplified by your post and those leading up to it: some here - specifically enthusiasts of contemporary music - appear to want to simplify the issue and turn it into, not even a discussion of contemporary music (which it already is not), but an attempt to denigrate it. This enables them to portray those who take issue with ideologies and orthodoxies around the subject precisely as those very ideologies and orthodoxies have always portrayed them: as persecutors of contemporary music, as ignorant reactionaries, or as irrelevant gadflies, and in any case as unworthy of serious consideration.

And so you suggest to me that since I don't appear to care much for contemporary music I should, maybe, stop talking about it.

Well, the fact is that I am not talking about it. You are. And the "club" is - the self-styled defenders of "real" contemporary music, the cluster of mutual backslappers who rush to give each other 'likes" whenever they think their "side" has scored a point, no matter how trivial or misconceived the "point" may be.

But I am not in this for "points." I don't need "likes." I have no "side." The entire thrust of my argument about art and culture is that sides - divisions, doctrines, manifestos, ideologies - are illegitimate and contrary to the needs and nature of art and artists, in any period but most conspicuously in ours, when "diversity" - the proposed subject of this thread - has reached a level unprecedented in history and the movement of musical culture is not so much forward as outward. I have perceived in the OP of this thread and others an attempt to limit the definition of what constitutes legitimate art, and artistic taste, in our time, and to disparage both the artist and the audiences who do not accept that definition. Well, I am both artist and audience, and I do not accept that limitation or that disparagement. And I've chosen to speak on behalf of any others who don't. Those others can "like" me or not.

When you say: "Contemporary music doesn't need to be treated as an amorphous troubling blob or an avant garde attitude problem (which is certainly well removed from where music is in 2014 anyway) - it's just a bunch of pieces of good, bad and indifferent quality," I am in complete agreement. That is, in fact, an essential element of what I have been trying to get across. My suggestion is that you address that statement to the originator of this thread, for whom contemporary music - and the questions of what it ought to be, who is writing it and who isn't, and what sort of people like it or don't - appears to be a very "troubling" source of a very persistent "attitude problem."


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## Guest

scratchgolf said:


> Once again, if someone claims Bieber is less imaginative than Stockhausen, who will argue this? If someone claims Beethoven is more imaginative than Stockhausen, they're greeted with "Define imaginative" or "according to whom?" or "In what way?".


Because Beethoven and Stockhausen occupy the same musical universe and are therefore more or less comparable. (In the sense that apples and oranges are comparable. Which they totally are. Apples and tables, um, not so much. Hegelian philosophy and oranges, also not so much. Apples and oranges, even apples and pineapples. Much easier.)

Stockhausen and Bieber aren't comparable. Of course, if someone were to claim that Bieber was more imaginative than Stockhausen, you know, along the lines of say Deutscher or Greenberg being more imaginative than [anonymous] avant-garde composers, then you might get yourself some questions.


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## mmsbls

SeptimalTritone said:


> It's like: in physics we're working on making a quantum computer and doing new experiments and making new theoretical proposals. We're not redoing old stuff. Having this mentality in physics and the math/science/engineering fields is not 'elitist', and therefore it shouldn't be 'elitist' in music.


I agree with essentially everything you said. I also agree with the above, but I once made an analogy similar to this but with a different conclusion. While it's true that research in physics is focused on new physics and things we don't know, the vast majority of _work_ in science is focused on old science. For example Newton's laws are centuries old but are probably used as much or more than just about any physics theory.

In music composers are usually focused on new music, but listeners can "use" older music and generally listen to old music much more than new music. So Newton's laws and older music are present and "useful" today as much as (or more than) newer physics or music.

I was actually criticized strongly for making this analogy with the poster saying it was an awful analogy to support my hatred of modern music. I will say that "modernists" do sometimes attack too quickly without perhaps trying to understand posts better. I think maybe they sometimes lash out too quickly because they assume that posts related to modern music (and some not related at all) are attacks on modern music rather than simply expressing other thoughts.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> My suggestion is that you address that statement to the originator of this thread, for whom contemporary music - and the questions of what it ought to be, who is writing it and who isn't, and what sort of people like it or don't - appears to be a very "troubling" source of a very persistent "attitude problem."


Hi. Originator of this thread here, to speak for himself. (I know, what a concept!)

Contemporary music for me is a source of continuous joy and delight.

It does seem to **** a lot of people off, but I have been at some pains over the past several years to emphasize that any attitude problem there is is historically quite old (over two hundred years) and almost always precedes experience.

And it has nothing--I wonder how many times I will say this before I accept the inevitable--to do with what people like or dislike or with any denigrating of those people. It has only to do with how people talk about things, what things are reasonable in a conversation and what things are unreasonable, what things are intelligent and thoughtful and what things are knee-jerk reactions. Of course, it is always possible that someone reacting with the jerk of a knee will not be particularly pleased at being called out. That happens. But, be fair, if you make unsubstantiated assertions, eventually someone's gonna at least want some substantiation. And that desire is not bullying or controlling or evidence of some list of requirements for the secret club. It's just plain common sense. A conclusion is a thing that is not sufficient in and of itself. It needs support.

Anyway, attitudes that precede experience are not good attitudes to have, I don't think. What happens, predictably, is that when the experiences do come, they simply confirm the attitudes. Of course. I think it's gonna be bad before I hear it. I hear it. It's bad. Quod erat demonstrandum. Except not. All that's been demonstrated is that the attitude has poisoned the experience.

I think it's OK to be concerned about that kind of thing.

I have no idea what contemporary music ought to be. I have only one, very circumscribed opinion about one thing that is probably something that contemporary music ought not to be. And for wanting one particular thing to be off the list, and having absolutely no power over its inclusion or expulsion, I get half the board jumping down my throat for being anti-diversity.

Now that's comedy!


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## binkley

SeptimalTritone said:


> It's like: in physics we're working on making a quantum computer and doing new experiments and making new theoretical proposals. We're not redoing old stuff. Having this mentality in physics and the math/science/engineering fields is not 'elitist', and therefore it shouldn't be 'elitist' in music.


To the extent you can apply this to music, I think it undercuts your point. Engineering and applied sciences are different from basic science -- no less important, no less valid, but different. Basic sciences advance fundamental knowledge in their fields, applied sciences use that knowledge to produce new and useful technologies. To the extent your analogy is apt, the avant-gardists are the basic scientists, always pushing the envelope, while the folks on Science's growing list in that other thread are the applied scientists, taking both new and old to create music that is more useful to orchestra directors and recording companies. And just like basic and applied scientists, there's no reason their efforts can't be complementary.

Where I think your science/music analogy falls short is in the absence of constraints on musical progress relative to scientific progress. Scientific progress is always constrained by past observations and theories. Even the most dramatic paradigm shifts must be consistent with the past: Einstein, Schrödinger, et al. were revolutionaries, but their theories had to (and did) fully account for Newton, even as they upended him and pushed beyond.

But if the 20th century showed us anything, it's that there are few such constraints on music. Continue along the same path as the previous century (Strauss, Rachmaninoff, etc.). Or don't. Start down that path, but take it places no one dreamed of before (Schoenberg and his students). Or don't. Write music that is completely new, but pays homage to the old forms (middle Stravinsky). Or don't. Reinterpret the folk traditions of your homeland (Bartók, early Stravinsky, Villa-Lobos, etc.). Or don't. Write music for The People (Shostakovich, Copland, etc.). Or don't. Redefine music entirely (Cage, Stockhausen, etc.). Or don't.

With the possible exception of the Second Vienna School, I don't see much that resembles scientific progress there. And I see very little to support the idea that there are _a priori_ "correct" or "incorrect" paths for a composer to choose.


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## ArtMusic

A composer or artist (there are musical artists who prefer not to label themselves as "composer" per se) today are more free than ever compared with classical composers right up to Shostakovich to compose freely. Such is the casue of the stylistic diversity we have today. Freedom to express as far as the composer/musical artists are concerned.


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## Blake

scratchgolf said:


> But that's the point I'm making. Virtually everyone agrees but what about those who don't? When something is considered to be a universal truth, how do we deal with those that disagree? And if we're willing to question the validity of their claim, how will we respond when someone questions ours? If I were to make a new thread titled "Why is Beethoven Superior to Stockhausen" the conversation would go the direction many have before. People would ask "How?" or "On what grounds?" or "How familiar are you with Stockhausen" or "Why? Because Stockhausen isn't pretty?". If I were to create another thread titled "Why is Beethoven Superior to Justin Bieber" I'd maybe get a few side comments but the thread would soon die. If you asked me personally why I prefer Beethoven to Stockhausen, and I'm being honest here, I'd say I'm more familiar with Beethoven and I like the way his music sounds. I'd also mention that I'm not too familiar with Stockhausen and haven't liked what I've heard. If you were to then ask me if I prefer Stockhausen to Bieber, I'd probably defend Stockhausen and dismiss Bieber as crap. In doing so, I'd be guilty of what many of us are guilty of. That would be agreeing that everyone's opinions are valid, as long as we agree with them. And, like I stated before, I'm guilty of this as well. I think, to an extent, we all are.
> 
> Edit: I felt the need to include that my main reason for choosing Stockhausen over Bieber is I have interest in Stockhausen and eventually exploring his music further. I have no such interest in the music of Justin Bieber.


This is usually when impersonal conversation becomes beneficial. It's okay if someone likes Beiber more than Bach, if it so suits their disposition. But when we're talking about "better", at least for me, I'm thinking about the level of musical mastery that it requires to make such a piece. So a pragmatic discourse could only entail the musical structure, and all it takes is a glance at a score to see that Bach's music requires a much higher command of knowledge.

And it's nothing personal... some minds are greater than others. I sure as hell can't do what Bach did. But people identify so strongly with their ability that this becomes a sour subject.


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## Woodduck

some guy said:


> Because Beethoven and Stockhausen occupy the same musical universe and are therefore more or less comparable. (In the sense that apples and oranges are comparable. Which they totally are. Apples and tables, um, not so much. Hegelian philosophy and oranges, also not so much. Apples and oranges, even apples and pineapples. Much easier.)
> 
> Stockhausen and Bieber aren't comparable. Of course, if someone were to claim that Bieber was more imaginative than Stockhausen, you know, along the lines of say Deutscher or Greenberg being more imaginative than [anonymous] avant-garde composers, then you might get yourself some questions.


#1. Beethoven's _"Archduke" Trio_ and Stockhausen's _Stimmung_ occupy the "same musical universe"? What universe is that? The one called "classical music?" Is that a universe - or is it an impossibly broad, fuzzy, expedient category containing works from over a millennium which may have not one audible feature in common?

Beethoven would feel far more at home with Justin Bieber than with Stockhausen. Guaranteed.

#2. Who ever suggested that Deutscher or Greenberg were more imaginative than avant garde composers?

All we're left with here is that Beethoven and Stockhausen are more imaginative than Justin Bieber. Granted.But imaginativeness may or may not be a significant value. It all depends on what's being imagined. It's conceivable - no, it's inevitable - that some less imaginative things may be of finer workmanship, deeper expressiveness, and more enduring interest, than some more imaginative things. I've seen some pretty imaginative things on TV that I had to judge as ultimately a waste of my time, and met some pretty imaginative people I couldn't stand. And - back to music - there are simple folk songs, composed most likely in a burst of deeply felt inspiration, that have long outranked in people's affections, and outlasted, a lot of convoluted classical productions into which composers' imaginations have crammed everything but the kitchen sink.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Beethoven would feel far more at home with Justin Bieber than with Stockhausen. Guaranteed.


Hard to disprove this. Beethoven being quite safely dead and all. As is Stockhausen. But equally hard to prove. I say we give this one a miss.



Woodduck said:


> Who ever suggested that Deutscher or Greenberg were more imaginative than avant garde composers?


Well, if you read what I wrote, you will see a particular pattern starting with "if." "If someone were to claim...." This is called the subjunctive, and it's used to set up hypotheticals. My point was not to claim that anyone has indeed ever suggested that Deutscher or Greenberg is indeed more imaginative than avant-garde composers, that's what the word "if" signals, but to say that _if_ they had, then there would be a consequence. The point of all that was to point (!) to the consequence. Which was that you might get some questions. Period. No hidden message about the relative value of imaginativeness or about the relative values of workmanship or expressiveness or enduring interest or anything else. Just if this, then that, in response to something equally simple, that if anyone were to argue that Bieber were less imaginative than Stockhausen, then there would be no argument.

Nothing in any of that about any putative imaginativeness of any of those people.



Woodduck said:


> ...a lot of convoluted classical productions into which composers' imaginations have crammed everything but the kitchen sink.


Such as?


----------



## Petwhac

some guy said:


> You lost me here. So if I had done as you interpreted and specifically designed this thread to question the validity of music that some people are very fond of, that would have been OK with you? Officially confused I am.


It's alright, I kind of lost myself!
I was trying to say, in response to something dgee said, that I'm not aware of that much trolling in threads that are about particular contemporary composers or styles. 
I guess I don't follow enough threads to notice anyone being accused of being against diversity when they criticise imitative music.

I myself have stated that I don't rate pastiche as a serious pursuit for a composer and I haven't, to my knowledge, been accused of being against diversity. And while I don't think pastiche is particularly worth my time as a listener, I do not buy into the idea that music progresses or should progress like a science. That is an idea that I find very prevalent in these threads.


----------



## mmsbls

dgee said:


> Why are you interested in discussing contemporary music? As someone who doesn't appear to like it much or follow it closely? Forgive me if that seems presumptuous


You wrote this to Woodduck, and he gave a very detailed answer. I would like to share a somewhat different answer to the same question.

When I first came here, I did not like much modern or contemporary music. I knew relatively little about contemporary music, yet I had many more questions about modern/contemporary music than anything else. I was intrigued by how people respond to music especially changing music. Some questions were straightforward about finding new composers. But others were questions such as why it's so much harder to enjoy modern music (for many people). I found that question absolutely fascinating and still do. The problem, of course, is that it's fairly difficult to ask that question without some assuming you hate modern music and are posting simply to degrade the genre, others chiming in about how truly awful modern music is, and "fights" breaking out. Isn't that a shame?

I have many such questions about modern music. Does serial music sometimes adversely constrain the composer's aesthetic output? Is there a limit to how much change in musical style an average listener can assimilate? What is and what isn't music?

I'd love to be able to explore questions such as those, but from experience, the questions would be misunderstood (or more precisely my motivation for asking them would be misunderstood) and the thread would make little progress. Isn't that a huge shame?

Anyway, there are many reasons why someone who doesn't enjoy modern/contemporary music might be interested in discussing such music.


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## aleazk

mmsbls said:


> I have many such questions about modern music. Does serial music sometimes adversely constrain the composer's aesthetic output? Is there a limit to how much change in musical style an average listener can assimilate? What is and what isn't music?
> 
> I'd love to be able to explore questions such as those, but from experience, the questions would be misunderstood (or more precisely my motivation for asking them would be misunderstood) and the thread would make little progress. Isn't that a huge shame?


But are not the answers to these questions kind of obvious? To 1), yes, as Boulez himself said eons ago, and reflected in the fact that nobody composes in strict serialism today (these are facts that have very little to do with the contemporary music position we defend, though; nobody is preaching a revival of serialism); to 2), yes, when you mess with the basic foundations of old music, like tonal harmony, melody, etc. (happens in most disciplines, it should be relevant to artists because?, I think it's something that listeners should have in mind, not artists); to 3), I have no intention to preassume a definition, let the artists produce and we will decide afterwards.

To ask them again and again seems like beating a dead horse to me. We already discussed this, and I told you that you often seem to ask these questions in the most inopportune contexts, that's why you get the answers you get. Make a new thread and explain yourself clearly there. That would be the best for all, rather than making accusations that they "don't understand science or how scientists think", that's a little snobbish...


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## dgee

I don't necessarily agree with aleazk's answers but 1) is a highly technical question in which a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Treating the whole range of serialism as a monolith is obviously incorrect so that hampers us at the start. I've read Harvey on Stockhausen and lots of Boulez on his own work and I don't have a handle on how serialism works broadly. So how useful is discussing this on TC where a lot of people will claim that its "more maths than music"? Conversely - how much did sonata form and the classical style constrain Mozart? Maybe it's best to have the music speak for itself?

The other questions I'm not terribly interested in so I can't help much. I'll also point out that all three of those questions move away from discussing actual musical works to an area of generalism I'm not overly comfortable in. Woodduck seems to want a discussion on a different level all together about aesthetics, philosophy of art and sundry social dynamics. That's way above my pay grade 

I think when discussion gets too unmoored from actual of pieces of music it suffers - certainly my input does. Maybe a cue for me to refrain from entering such conversations


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## Johannes V

Why is it that only classical music seems to have this problem?

No one says: _Finnegans Wake was written, how dare you write a novel with narrative structure!_

No one accosts Annigoni for having painted "realist [an abominable term]" art. Nor Nerdrum. Nor Frank Mason. Nor any other of today's truly skilled "realist" masters (how often this word is thrown around!)

Rarely is classical architecture dismissed pastiche (except by disgruntled modernists).

I daresay this composition is most authentic, regardless of the fact that it is somewhat "behind the times": 




Stylistic diversity is the ability to look at works composed in a "pastiche" style, and to not dismiss them off hand, but instead give them the proper time of study, and, with the rigour that is required of any such study of high art, be able to regard whether or not they are doing anything masterful with the style. Perhaps we have reached the unlikely point of complete stylistic depletion, however I find that above unbelievable. I can only imagine with disappointment someone coming upon a work that, in its details, is doing something quite skilled, but, as a result of its being in a style (or perhaps merely perceived as such by an undiscerning or uncaring eye) which has since seen its day, dismisses it as something pastiche or nostalgic.

A superficial study of Tolstoy's style would likely show nothing of interest, however, had one given it the due diligence it rightly deserves, one would see how brilliantly wrong one is. Tolstoy is a master of his art.

It behooves one to take all high art seriously, lest one dismiss a gem.

To my mind, it seems as though it is only in music that innovation is prized over technical mastery. Were one today to write a novel possessing equal technical mastery as, say, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, no objection would be raised and it would likely be lauded.

Is it fair to compare music to other media? Perhaps not, but I suppose it is too late.

Art is art is art is art is technical skill, not originality.


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## aleazk

Johannes V said:


> To my mind, it seems as though it is only in music that innovation is prized over technical mastery.


Sorry, boring cliché notion. Try again.

Is the Rite of Spring technically deficient? is Ligeti's Piano Concerto technically deficient? and, please, don't post Cage's 4'33'' as the epitome example of the decadency of modern music as a whole, that's just foolish.


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## aleazk

dgee said:


> I don't necessarily agree with aleazk's answers but 1) is a highly technical question in which a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Treating the whole range of serialism as a monolith is obviously incorrect so that hampers us at the start. I've read Harvey on Stockhausen and lots of Boulez on his own work and I don't have a handle on how serialism works broadly. So how useful is discussing this on TC where a lot of people will claim that its "more maths than music"? Conversely - how much did sonata form and the classical style constrain Mozart? Maybe it's best to have the music speak for itself?
> 
> The other questions I'm not terribly interested in so I can't help much. I'll also point out that all three of those questions move away from discussing actual musical works to an area of generalism I'm not overly comfortable in. Woodduck seems to want a discussion on a different level all together about aesthetics, philosophy of art and sundry social dynamics. That's way above my pay grade
> 
> I think when discussion gets too unmoored from actual of pieces of music it suffers - certainly my input does. Maybe a cue for me to refrain from entering such conversations


In general, I agree with you. But I'm just playing their game and making these concessions, since those answers are still innocuous regarding the topic in discussion. As you notice, "how much did sonata form and the classical style constrain Mozart?" or, as I said, "happens in most disciplines, it should be relevant to artists because?, I think it's something that listeners should have in mind, not artists".

Give the dogs the crust of bread


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## Johannes V

I am not saying that they aren't, in fact I adore all those mentioned (except for perhaps 4'33" which I consider performance art and not such that I should particularly care for it). I am simply saying that more care in music is placed on innovation (which often produced something which was then used masterfully), than in other art forms. But perhaps this is due to the more formal (and thus almost scientific) nature of music.


----------



## DiesIraeCX

aleazk said:


> In general, I agree with you. But I'm just playing their game and making these concessions, since those answers are still innocuous regarding the topic in discussion. As you notice, "how much did sonata form and the classical style constrain Mozart?" or, as I said, "happens in most disciplines, it should be relevant to artists because?, I think it's something that listeners should have in mind, not artists".
> 
> *Give the dogs the crust of bread *


Was that necessary? Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what you meant by that. Could you explain, for little ol' me?


----------



## aleazk

Johannes V said:


> I am not saying that they aren't, in fact I adore all those mentioned (except for perhaps 4'33" which I consider performance art and not such that I should particularly care for it). I am simply saying that more care in music is placed on innovation (which often produced something which was then used masterfully), than in other art forms.


But I don't agree with that!

I think that in all the pieces we consider modern masterpieces, equal care is put in technique and innovation. Of course, there are also minor pieces revolving around. But that happens in all periods. I do agree, though, that innovation has a big role. Is that bad per se? I think it is fantastic. In any case, it only makes music a more exciting field for that matter! I don't care for poorly crafted pieces. Time will make them disappear, as it did with the minor pieces of older styles.


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## aleazk

DiesIraeVIX said:


> Could you explain, for little ol' me?


Give the dogs the crust of bread


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## mmsbls

aleazk said:


> But are not the answers to these questions kind of obvious? To 1), yes, as Boulez himself said eons ago, and reflected in the fact that nobody composes in strict serialism today (these are facts that have very little to do with the contemporary music position we defend, though, nobody is preaching a revival of serialism); to 2), yes, when you mess with the basic foundations of old music, like tonal harmony, melody, etc. (happens in most disciplines, it should be relevant to artists because?, I think it's something that listeners should have in mind, not artists); to 3), I have no intention to preassume a definition, let the artists produce and we will decide afterwards.
> 
> To ask them again and again seems like beating a dead horse to me.


I had to laugh when reading your reply because technically you are correct with your yes and no answers to the first 2 questions. They were couched in terms of "yes' or "no", but I never thought anyone would interpret them that way. The third question is not at all obvious and will likely never have a complete answer. I don't presume a definition, but I would love to engage others in a philosophical discussion. And the "we will decide afterwards" sounds like exactly that philosophical debate.

So, yes, maybe I should have been more explicit. Sorry. Is there a limit to how much change in musical style an average listener can assimilate? Does the limit depend on how much change has occurred previously or is is it relatively fixed in some sense? How much can societal factors affect the limit? Does exposure to (some/many) years of music lessons affect the limit? How and why? Do certain types of music exposure increase or decrease the limit? Does exposure to certain modern music affect the limit with respect to different modern music? This last question is especially interesting to me.

I could go on and on, but I don't think I'm beating a dead horse. If you've seen these questions repeatedly asked and answered, please tell me where. Also each of the questions above can be easily misunderstood especially if someone assumes a motivation completely different from mine.

You made 2 comments:

"these are facts that have very little to do with the contemporary music position we defend, though, nobody is preaching a revival of serialism"

"it should be relevant to artists because?, I think it's something that listeners should have in mind, not artists"

What does that fact that nobody is preaching a revival of serialism have to do with wanting to better understand the constraints of the practice?

Limits on musical change is not something that listeners _or_ artists _should_ have in mind. What does being relevant to artists have to do with any of these questions? People who are very curious about the nature of music and the psychological response to it simply _could_ have "it" in mind.


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## Johannes V

Are you saying (and I don't mean to straw man, but I see this as being implied) that literature has a similar sense of progression? That it places it equal stress upon the new? In a certain sense it does, and there is no doubt that during modernism there was a great upheaval of sorts, but that all more or less settled down and allowed for a plurality of voices, whether experimental or superficially conventional. The same can be said of painting.


----------



## Blake

If it weren't for all the great innovators, past and present, what would the other guys have to copy?


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## aleazk

mmsbls said:


> I had to laugh when reading your reply because technically you are correct with your yes and no answers to the first 2 questions. They were couched in terms of "yes' or "no", but I never thought anyone would interpret them that way. The third question is not at all obvious and will likely never have a complete answer. I don't presume a definition, but I would love to engage others in a philosophical discussion. And the "we will decide afterwards" sounds like exactly that philosophical debate.
> 
> So, yes, maybe I should have been more explicit. Sorry. Is there a limit to how much change in musical style an average listener can assimilate? Does the limit depend on how much change has occurred previously or is is it relatively fixed in some sense? How much can societal factors affect the limit? Does exposure to (some/many) years of music lessons affect the limit? How and why? Do certain types of music exposure increase or decrease the limit? Does exposure to certain modern music affect the limit with respect to different modern music? This last question is especially interesting to me.
> 
> I could go on and on, but I don't think I'm beating a dead horse. If you've seen these questions repeatedly asked and answered, please tell me where. Also each of the questions above can be easily misunderstood especially if someone assumes a motivation completely different from mine.


Fantastic, just make a new thread, explain yourself cleary, and nobody will misunderstand you. As I told you before, I actually understand you, but you seem to keep stumbling over the same stone again and again, and you look surprised and accuse others of not understanding "the way scientists think" (you made that comment some time ago and, as a colleague physicist, it made me cringe). I don't think that's the more wise way of procedure. I'm surprised that someone like you do such things. Make the new threads and it will work better, as I told you before many times.



mmsbls said:


> made 2 comments:
> 
> "these are facts that have very little to do with the contemporary music position we defend, though, nobody is preaching a revival of serialism"
> 
> "it should be relevant to artists because?, I think it's something that listeners should have in mind, not artists"
> 
> What does that fact that nobody is preaching a revival of serialism have to do with wanting to better understand the constraints of the practice?
> 
> Limits on musical change is not something that listeners _or_ artists _should_ have in mind. What does being relevant to artists have to do with any of these questions? People who are very curious about the nature of music and the psychological response to it simply _could_ have "it" in mind.


My comments were actually in the context of the thread, I wanted to mention it after giving you the answers you wanted.

"Limits on musical change is not something that listeners _should_ have in mind"

I was speaking of the fact that because the foundations change, listeners should have this in mind in case they find the music inaccessible at the first exposures. Is that really polemic? as far as I know, that's precisely what you and I did it, and we started to enjoy modern music after that.


----------



## Ludric

Petwhac said:


> It's alright, I kind of lost myself!
> I was trying to say, in response to something dgee said, that I'm not aware of that much trolling in threads that are about particular contemporary composers or styles.
> I guess I don't follow enough threads to notice anyone being accused of being against diversity when they criticise imitative music.
> 
> I myself have stated that I don't rate pastiche as a serious pursuit for a composer and I haven't, to my knowledge, been accused of being against diversity. And while I don't think pastiche is particularly worth my time as a listener, I do not buy into the idea that music progresses or should progress like a science. That is an idea that I find very prevalent in these threads.


The statement that composers who write in an older style are simply creating works of mere pastiche is one that I've seen thrown around quite a lot here, but does that statement have any merit? If you ask any of these composers why they write in an older style then you would find that many of them are simply composing in a musical style that speaks to them the clearest. More importantly, when they compose music they are simply writing down what comes to them naturally - and what that is happens to be largely influenced by whatever music they enjoy and listen to the most. To call it pastiche would be to say these composers are deliberately going out of their way to imitate an older composer. They are not "pursuing pastiche" as a goal, but rather are using a musical language they are familiar with.

As for the original topic of this thread, diversity in style is simply not something important to me in music. I don't argue against diversity, but at the same time I don't see it as something that needs to be actively pursued. What's important to me is substance - what does the music say? Does it reveal something profound? Does it move the emotions in a deep and meaningful way? Does it inspire the listener? The question of "does this music break new ground stylistically?" is simply not a question I ask myself and it does not play a role in how I value music. Of course, these are just my own views on this matter - everyone listens to (or creates) music for different reasons and likewise bring in their own criteria when judging the value of music.


----------



## mmsbls

dgee said:


> I don't necessarily agree with aleazk's answers but 1) is a highly technical question in which a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Treating the whole range of serialism as a monolith is obviously incorrect so that hampers us at the start. I've read Harvey on Stockhausen and lots of Boulez on his own work and I don't have a handle on how serialism works broadly. So how useful is discussing this on TC where a lot of people will claim that its "more maths than music"? Conversely - how much did sonata form and the classical style constrain Mozart? Maybe it's best to have the music speak for itself?
> 
> The other questions I'm not terribly interested in so I can't help much. I'll also point out that all three of those questions move away from discussing actual musical works to an area of generalism I'm not overly comfortable in. Woodduck seems to want a discussion on a different level all together about aesthetics, philosophy of art and sundry social dynamics. That's way above my pay grade
> 
> I think when discussion gets too unmoored from actual of pieces of music it suffers - certainly my input does. Maybe a cue for me to refrain from entering such conversations


First, thanks for taking my questions seriously. I do understand that many on TC are not really interested in these kinds of questions, but maybe some are. I'm a scientist, and these things just seem natural to me. I actually think that "how much did sonata form and the classical style constrain Mozart?" is a fascinating question. I view both questions (about serialism and Mozart) in a similar vein. For some it may be best to let the music speak for itself. For others of us we like the music and are fascinated with other aspects.

There was a time a few years ago when these questions would get a modest audience on TC and perhaps generate a nice discussion. Some members have left, and maybe there's just not the interest.


----------



## aleazk

Johannes V said:


> Are you saying (and I don't mean to straw man, but I see this as being implied) that literature has a similar sense of progression? That it places it equal stress upon the new? In a certain sense it does, and there is no doubt that during modernism there was a great upheaval of sorts, but that all more or less settled down and allowed for a plurality of voices, whether experimental or superficially conventional. The same can be said of painting.


No, I actually was accepting and building on what you said (that innovation has a big role in music). I don't agree with the proposition that "it's prized over technical mastery", like if we were some kind of brainless individuals, "oh, look, it's new, therefore it has bo be good!". That kind of comments really put me off in these discussions, it is a gratuitous insult. Perhaps that's not what you mean, but with that particular wording, I interpreted it in that way.


----------



## Woodduck

Johannes V said:


> *Why is it that only classical music seems to have this problem?*
> 
> No one says: _Finnegans Wake was written, how dare you write a novel with narrative structure!_
> 
> No one accosts Annigoni for having painted "realist [an abominable term]" art. Nor Nerdrum. Nor Frank Mason. Nor any other of today's truly skilled "realist" masters (how often this word is thrown around!)
> 
> Rarely is classical architecture dismissed pastiche (except by disgruntled modernists).
> 
> I daresay this composition is most authentic, regardless of the fact that it is somewhat "behind the times":
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Stylistic diversity is the ability to look at works composed in a "pastiche" style, and to not dismiss them off hand, but instead give them the proper time of study, and, with the rigour that is required of any such study of high art, be able to regard whether or not they are doing anything masterful with the style. Perhaps we have reached the unlikely point of complete stylistic depletion, however I find that above unbelievable. I can only imagine with disappointment someone coming upon a work that, in its details, is doing something quite skilled, but, as a result of its being in a style (or perhaps merely perceived as such by an undiscerning or uncaring eye) which has since seen its day, dismisses it as something pastiche or nostalgic.
> 
> A superficial study of Tolstoy's style would likely show nothing of interest, however, had one given it the due diligence it rightly deserves, one would see how brilliantly wrong one is. Tolstoy is a master of his art.
> 
> It behooves one to take all high art seriously, lest one dismiss a gem.
> 
> To my mind, it seems as though it is only in music that innovation is prized over technical mastery. Were one today to write a novel possessing equal technical mastery as, say, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, no objection would be raised and it would likely be lauded.
> 
> Is it fair to compare music to other media? Perhaps not, but I suppose it is too late.
> 
> Art is art is art is art is technical skill, not originality.


Thank you for your opening question. I've wondered about it too.

There was some unease when representationalism started working its way back into painting after the abstractionists' grand historical mission to make it vanish peaked and then devolved into pop art, op art, installations, conceptual art, happenings, and all manner of other exhibitions which had a lot of young artists sitting in front of their canvases thinking "What the hell? Is _this_ what I'm supposed to be doing?" At a certain point the forbiddens of representational illusion and depth perspective began to look awfully attractive again, and Clement Greeberg turned over in his grave (or leapt into it) and realized in despair that his hymns to the "flatness" of the picture plane and "all-over" paintings "about paint" were losing their appeal to moderns - and that, in fact, the very notion of "modernity" was undergoing a bit of deconstruction.

As far as I'm aware, no one is now complaining that painting, because it once more uses centuries-old techniques, has become a "pastiche" of the past - because, of course, it hasn't, and it never will. Painters didn't become "uncreative," they didn't block the "progress" of art, when the aesthetics of the mid-twentieth century felt to them like a dead end and they began to realize that some of the concepts and techniques of old masters from long ago still spoke to them and inspired them, and could still be used in ways that felt personal and timely.

Granting that all the arts are subject to fashion and a certain amount of squabbling among the advocates of this or that style, it does appear that music - "classical" music - remains more embroiled in theoretical discord than the other arts today. Nobody talks about what painters and writers should or should not be creating, what direction the art is presumed to be going in or ought to be going in, or how far back into history or how far afield culturally an artist of integrity may reach for inspiration. So why have these questions come up here? Is music different?

On the face of it, I can't see where it's unfair to compare music with the other arts in this respect. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who thinks it is.


----------



## aleazk

"So why have these questions come up here? Is music different? "

That's indeed interesting, and more to the point.

I will make a guess. The key is that they are very different mediums.

In literature, you have to say something that is going to be read and interpreted intellectually. It has to be intelligible to the language centers of the brains in a very narrow and precise way.

In music, things are interpreted in a more visceral way. That gives you a lot of room to make whatever you want insofar it produces an interesting visceral reaction. I call that 'a musical experience'. And I would call 'music' to whatever produced it. And, of course, composers of music will love to explore that particular and unique aspect of their field.

After all, is not "music when the words end"?


----------



## Johannes V

Well I should think that a comparison in this case would probably be apt. 

One cannot expect all people (even those of good education or higher aspirations) to want to read and understand Finnegans Wake regardless of the fact that it is both very erudite and lovely when read aloud. It simply does not have the more concrete structure that many people are so used to and fond of. Does that make works of more traditional natures less valuable? Not at all. Should people dismiss Finnegans Wake as mere gibberish? Surely not. 

If I am to draw a further and more suspect comparison, we may even compare early "atonal" and Neoclassical musics to Ulysess, which is very experimental yet remain concrete enough to have wider appeal. But, as some people still find composers like Bartok or even the late Romantics too much, so too will others find Ulysses challenging. 

There is no doubt, as it seems to me, that Hard Times is more accessible than Ulysses, and Ulysses more than the Wake. I do not believe that men, upon initial publication, had to mentally "adjust" themselves to enjoy Dumas, nor to Dickens, but that surely Ulysses, at the time of publishing and today, still requires some adjustment to enjoy. And this is doubly true of the Wake.

Edit: I apologize for all the literary reference.


----------



## dgee

I think "innovation" is being used to mean "modernist style" and then it's perceived that this is being privileged by some as the only acceptable way to write music now. I'm not sure this accurately reflects the OP or any discussions happening in the real world of music. I don't see a theoretical discord in classical music (contemporary art music or whatever) at the moment - maybe 40-50 years ago you might get some joy. Once again I can't help but feel these assertions about music that don't reflect reality are ill-informed at best, possibly disingenuous

PS: I found Alma Deutscher's music was of little interest in terms of quality or interest and that was probably the number one issue of the eponymous thread for people who didn't like it 

PPS: I also don't think that these issues are limited to music - think of controversy regarding Quinlan Terry in architecture, Poundbury and Seaside, Florida in urban design!


----------



## Johannes V

Well, I believe this sort of controversy is more pronounced in architecture than literature, but certainly it is more so than either of those in discussions regarding music on this forum. 

At any rate, architecture is more simple than music. Architecture is for the common person, which not necessarily so with non-public arts (if one can make that distinction). If what I have read is true, some seventy percent of British people prefer classical architecture to the modern, hence something like Poundbury seems like a wise thing.

Not to mention the fact that classical architecture is in the long run more sustainable than many modern constructions, even when one accounts for repairs. 

Music cannot be reduced to such pragmatic dealings.


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## Woodduck

aleazk said:


> "So why have these questions come up here? Is music different? "
> 
> That's indeed interesting, and more to the point.
> 
> I will make a guess. The key is that they are very different mediums.
> 
> In literature, you have to say something that is going to be read and interpreted intellectually. It has to be intelligible to the language centers of the brains in a very narrow and precise way.
> 
> In music, things are interpreted in a more visceral way. That gives you a lot of room to make whatever you want insofar it produces an interesting visceral reaction. I call that 'a musical experience'. And I would call 'music' to whatever produced it. And, of course, composers of music will love to explore that particular and unique aspect of their field.
> 
> After all, is not "music when the words end"?


It's true that each art conveys its message by different means. Literature - prose literature - is the most directly conceptual of the arts, using words mostly for their literal meaning but also, in its finer forms, attending to the aesthetics of language and to structure. Poetry uses words too, but less literally or more connotatively, and may draw upon some of the qualities of music: sound, meter, and other formal devices which have both audible and visual effect. Painting and sculpture may represent the visual world rather literally, more freely, or scarcely at all, and use visual forms and effects of color, light and texture for expressive purposes. Music is predominantly nondescriptive of external reality, its forms are set forth as patterns of sound in time, and it aims at evoking feelings directly rather than through concepts and images.

All this seems easy to understand. But all the arts, no matter how much or how little they involve or work through our conceptual faculties, employ abstract _forms_ which must strike us as significant, as meaningful, as expressive of something, no matter how elusive, if we are to feel that we are experiencing _art_ and not mere description or journalism or, in the case of music, noise. There is this substratum of _significant form_ which appeals to a substratum of feeling in us. And the formal qualities which have been employed in making any art meaningful - in making it _art_ - have changed over time, subject to societal taste and individual creativity.

I'm not convinced that this basic element of art - the formal element - should not make the arts more similar than different in how we view them philosophically and culturally, and in what we expect of each of them in relation to our time. If there really is a difference in how our relation to the artistic past is viewed between music and other arts, I don't feel as if citing the differences between the arts explains it.

One thought: this whole matter of the relation of composers to the musical past has arisen on a "classical" music forum. I don't often listen to or follow popular music, jazz, ethnic music, or any other musical field. I would be very curious how musicians in these other branches of the art look upon their history and the question of the present-day validity of past styles. Perhaps they would offer a variety of viewpoints.


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## Guest

Not to pile on you, mms, but I have a contribution to this side discussion as well. And it might help with understanding why you're getting some responses that surprise or dismay you.



mmsbls said:


> So, yes, maybe I should have been more explicit. Sorry.


For me it is not your level of explicitness, it's the assumptions. And I reject the assumptions, to whit:



mmsbls said:


> Is there a limit to how much change in musical style an average listener can assimilate?


There is really no such category as "average listener," and so there is no question of there being limits or not.

Each individual may have limits, but these will necessarily be personal and possibly changable as well.



mmsbls said:


> Does the limit depend on how much change has occurred previously or is is it relatively fixed in some sense? How much can societal factors affect the limit? Does exposure to (some/many) years of music lessons affect the limit? How and why? Do certain types of music exposure increase or decrease the limit? Does exposure to certain modern music affect the limit with respect to different modern music?


Aside from "limit" referring to a nonexistent context (to a nonexistent category), there is something else going on here of concern, and that is the focus. Or, that is, the shift of focus. In each question the focus is different. In the first question, there's a shift of focus inside the question as well. Even if one grants that "the limit" is a real thing (it's not!!), these shifts make this group of questions impossible to deal with as a group.

Unfortunately, dealing with them one by one is also fraught with peril.

Take the question "Does exposure to... music lessons affect the limit?" Again, granting temporarily that "the limit" is a real thing, "exposure to music lessons" could indeed "affect" it. But how? One person could get a sense from music lessons that there are permanent values in music and that any music that divagates from those values is necessarily bad. Another person could get from music lessons that things change over time. They have always changed, and they will continue to change. That change is at least inevitable if not desirable. Those are only two of possibly numberless possibilities.

I think, in short, that you have gotten yourself into a context where there are too many variables for conducting any sort of useful scientific study. And too many chimerical categories.


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## mmsbls

some guy said:


> Not to pile on you, mms, but I have a contribution to this side discussion as well.


Sorry for the late response (I've been a bit busy). I certainly don't consider this piling on just because you disagree. Thanks for your thoughts.



some guy said:


> There is really no such category as "average listener," and so there is no question of there being limits or not.
> 
> Each individual may have limits, but these will necessarily be personal and possibly changable as well.


Yes, we've had this disagreement about average before. I think it likely is better to think in terms of a distribution rather than an average in many cases. And, yes, people's listening certainly can, and (luckily for me) often does, change.



some guy said:


> I think, in short, that you have gotten yourself into a context where there are too many variables for conducting any sort of useful scientific study. And too many chimerical categories.


Well, yes. I think I agree with you and dgee. My questions were a bit too nebulous especially for a forum (and maybe anywhere). I also think "limit" is the wrong term. Limits suggested impossibility. Some people might have limits, but I think "barriers" is a better term. Some have fairly low barriers and others have higher ones.

And rather than ask a theoretical question that's hard or impossible to answer and does not necessarily lead anywhere, maybe it's better to focus on specific questions with practical implications. So instead of asking, "Does exposure to certain modern music affect the limit with respect to different modern music?", maybe I should ask questions such as "If someone finds that composer X is hard to appreciate, which other composers could act as a bridge to that language/style?" And in my case I would put Xenakis in for X.


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## aleazk

mmsbls said:


> ...And in my case I would put Xenakis in for X.


Well, for this, nothing really, just listen to it, I think it's 'accessible'. Perhaps Stravinsky's Rite.


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## hpowders

Sid James said:


> This is my last score I'll settle here. Ever since I talked to this member who I have quoted below, I was scorned for professing enjoyment of *Andrew Lloyd Webber's* music. I'm not fanatical about him, but I like his music and I read a book about him fairly recently. ALW is just as valid as any other 20th century composer. He was, early on largely accepted by the establishment for _Jesus Christ Superstar_. One critic said he could hear in it influences of not only the usual suspects (eg. the great opera composers, especially Wagner's leitmotif system and the tune from Mendelssohn's _Violin Concerto_, and of course rock) but also Ligeti (in the hazy orchestral postlude that ends the musical). On his visit to London, Shostakovich said he liked it, and he saw it twice there.
> 
> Things began to go sour when ALW got successive hits, admitted to enjoying the money that came from composing, and forming his own record label to get the maximum profits. The latter is important, because in America duing the 1950's and '60's, all those big Hollywood musicals made massive amounts of money for the major recording companies that was subsequently channelled back into making 'highbrow' classical recordings. Chances are that some of our favourite recordings from that era where made on the back of earnings from musicals like _The King and I, West Side Story _and _My Fair Lady_. So Andrew's cardinal sin is that he didn't want to share, and potentially have Decca or EMI using some of his musicals to fund other things. He only recorded his _Requiem_ with EMI.
> 
> But this tall poppy syndrome applies to many composers who garner success nowadays. There are elements of the classical establishment who aren't happy with the situation. In the end though, with enough success and prestige, they become establishment anyway.
> 
> I can go on about why ALW's work is just as valid and of its time as any other composer of the late 20th century. Whether his musicals are 'classical' or not can be disputed. But he's a classical composer in terms of drawing upon many classical influences, including Wagner, Puccini, Prokofiev, Britten, and also integrating that with other approaches. He always edited and reworked his music, he is a perfectionist just like any other composer. He also took risks, for example putting all of his money into _Cats_. He could have been bankrupted if it had failed, but it succeeded and ran on Broadway for something like 30 years. Nobody can say that ALW didn't believe in his own talent, despite his many detractors and people saying he wouldn't amount to anything. Growing up in a loving but dysfunctional family, his brother the cellist Julian said that they could have easily become delinquents given the circumstances of their youth.
> 
> I went to a public lecture about music of the Classical Era, including Mozart's operas, and the speaker argued that Andrew Lloyd Webber was today's nearest equivalent of Mozart. This has, naturally, been invalidated before by the member who I am quoting.
> 
> I have probably said these things elsewhere on the forum, most likely to this very member when we where on speaking terms. I have said similar things about Rachmaninov, Grieg, Sibelius and even Schoenberg, how they where easily amongst the most maligned composers of the first half of the 20th century. Modernists and Modernist ideology was to blame for that. In light of this, I would not call myself a Modernist just as I wouldn't call myself a Stalinist or supporter of Apartheid. This ideology has been the most virulently toxic of all of the cornucopia of not so nice ideologies to do with classical music. So much for notions like progress and purity. For me these are not about music but agendas to do with music.


I've written many times "like what you like". I don't see what the big deal is in liking any composer you want to like without getting hassled around here.


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## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I think it likely is better to think in terms of a distribution rather than an average in many cases. And, yes, people's listening certainly can, and (luckily for me) often does, change.


True enough!



mmsbls said:


> I also think "limit" is the wrong term. Limits suggested impossibility. Some people might have limits, but I think "barriers" is a better term. Some have fairly low barriers and others have higher ones.


Ah, yes. Much better. Barriers can be made permanent, but they needn't be.



mmsbls said:


> "If someone finds that composer X is hard to appreciate, which other composers could act as a bridge to that language/style?" And in my case I would put Xenakis in for X.


Here you identify one of my limitations (!). I have always been a fairly voracious listener. And I inevitably run into composers that I don't like at first (and ones that I come to dislike over time, too). But I'm voracious because I'm interested in music and want to hear a lot of it. And I know, from experience, that initial likes and dislikes are no more than that, initial. Some (most) turn out to be permanent, but while they're initial, they're valueless as any guide to the future. So I just keep listening, to everything, leaving some things to the side for the moment, coming back to them, leaving them again, maybe. I'd love to be able to say with some confidence that if you listen to some early Ligeti, you'll be able to more easily appreciate Xenakis. But I can't. For all I know, early Ligeti will be just as hard to appreciate.

So what I usually say is, listen to some, set it aside, listen again, repeat. You may never like Xenakis, however. I have never liked Davidovsky. Still, I remain intrigued by the whole bridge idea, and will always read what other people say about bridge composers.


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## Guest

hpowders said:


> I've written many times "like what you like". I don't see what the big deal is in liking any composer you want to like without getting hassled around here.


There is very little, if any, hassling for liking or not liking.

There is very much, quite a lot actually, of claiming that there's hassling for liking or not liking.

False claims or unsupported assertions will be reacted to. Like "no melody in Schoenberg." Or "Cage is a charlatan." And even things like "I run fleeing from any modern music," since it's clear that that is intended as a judgment. And any judgment can be questioned.

No, I don't think that "hassle" is at all the right word for what actually happens. What I do think is that quite a number of posters are quite persistent in insisting on being able to make false claims or unsupported assertions or random disses without there being any sort of pushback. Well, come on. That's hardly likely. If you make some statement about composers who write music to be listened to, with the clear implication that the "avant-garde" composers are not doing that, then you are going to get a response.

Being disagreed with and being called out for making sweeping generalizations or unsupported assertions is hardly being hassled.

Being hassled is something quite other. You know, more like being constantly accused of hassling.


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## Blake

some guy said:


> There is very little, if any, hassling for liking or not liking.
> 
> There is very much, quite a lot actually, of claiming that there's hassling for liking or not liking.


Yea, I was wondering about that. If anything it's the modern guys that take the most flack, because they like everything... so what are they going to talk against? It's the more conservative type that causes the most grief... as they only like a particular tradition, and fight against all others.

This applies to the entire world, actually. Haha


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## SeptimalTritone

aleazk said:


> Well, for this, nothing really, just listen to it, I think it's 'accessible'. Perhaps Stravinsky's Rite.


Hmm... Pleiades is a very good piece, but it's entirely percussive.

Eonta for piano and small brass ensemble (1962) is a much better initial piece with lots of energy from the piano and beautiful dissonant colors from the trumpets, as are the four string quartets, which I talked about in a current listening post a while back. Let me know what you think of these mmsbls!


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## mmsbls

Well, I did a bit of listening to Xenakis probably for the first time in probably close to 2 years. The Pleiades is definitely accessible. I prefer the portions that have percussion instruments in addition to just drums. 

I listened to the quartets Tetora and ST/4. Honestly, I found Tetora a bit boring, but ST/4 was much more interesting with portions that were quite fun. 

My favorite was Eonta. I followed the score and was a bit blown away by the amazing dynamic range. I really can't imagine playing the piano part with ppp and ff in alternate hands and moving so quickly from ppp to fff. I did enjoy the brass for much of the piece. My one "complaint", if I'm allowed to have one, is that the brass often drowns out the piano. I'm not sure if other versions bring out the piano more, but when the brass is playing fff, I just can't see how the piano can be heard at all well. 

Clearly, my listening to other music during the past couple of years has allowed me to hear Xenakis differently and in a more positive manner. I will go back to listen to works such as Pithoprakta, Persepolis, and Rebounds. I actually saw a past post of mine where I mentioned liking Rebounds. I did not remember that.


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## aleazk

mmsbls said:


> Well, I did a bit of listening to Xenakis probably for the first time in probably close to 2 years. The Pleiades is definitely accessible. I prefer the portions that have percussion instruments in addition to just drums.
> 
> I listened to the quartets Tetora and ST/4. Honestly, I found Tetora a bit boring, but ST/4 was much more interesting with portions that were quite fun.
> 
> My favorite was Eonta. I followed the score and was a bit blown away by the amazing dynamic range. I really can't imagine playing the piano part with ppp and ff in alternate hands and moving so quickly from ppp to fff. I did enjoy the brass for much of the piece. My one "complaint", if I'm allowed to have one, is that the brass often drowns out the piano. I'm not sure if other versions bring out the piano more, but when the brass is playing fff, I just can't see how the piano can be heard at all well.
> 
> Clearly, my listening to other music during the past couple of years has allowed me to hear Xenakis differently and in a more positive manner. I will go back to listen to works such as Pithoprakta, Persepolis, and Rebounds. I actually saw a past post of mine where I mentioned liking Rebounds. I did not remember that.


Interesting. I suggested the percussion piece deliberately to see your reaction. Perhaps you are 'accustoming to dissonance' after all.


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## mmsbls

aleazk said:


> Interesting. I suggested the percussion piece deliberately to see your reaction. Perhaps you are 'accustoming to dissonance' after all.


What's really fascinating about dissonance is how one's response changes. We had a thread on TC about a study that looked at training the brain to change one's response to dissonance. Once people became more accustomed to certain chords, they found them less dissonant. Technically, the chords have just as much beating and have not changed their objective dissonance, but the brain "became familiar" with the chord and reacted differently. Intellectually, you can "hear" the dissonance, but you can't hear it as unpleasantly as before.

When one finds music very dissonant, it almost doesn't matter what else is happening with the music. The dissonance just blows you away, and you can only focus on that aspect making the experience unpleasant (at least for me). But when you "get accustomed to the dissonance", the rest of the work can open up.


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## Guest

I don't remember ever being put off by tight harmonies (as a former band director liked to phrase it). I remember thinking the passing tones in baroque music were quite cool. And I banged away on the old upright piano at my grandparents and enjoyed all the sounds it made. I spent a lot of time inside the thing, too, so when I first heard of Cowell and Cage, I was already ready to enjoy their harp music. (As it were.)

I also remember liking modulation a lot, especially from major to minor or from one minor to another. (Of course Schubert was a great favorite of mine. Still is.) I was always a bit disappointed when pieces changed from minor to major, though, especially (predictably) to end a piece or a movement. Always seemed a bit of a let down, even if the intent (with sometimes the whole orchestra joining triumphantly in) is to pump you up. Minor just always seemed more interesting musically.

I played trumpet, too, and recall having a lot of fun making all sorts of different noises with that, playing with the different tubes and swapping out the valves (even though that was streng verboten). When I first saw a trumpet player doing a contemporary piece, which was only about ten years ago, I was immediately taken back to my childhood and all the things I used to do just playing around. Even my idea to change the whole sound and all the relations between the valves by putting a rubber tube between the mouthpiece and the horn was there, part of the ordinary appliances of a contemporary player.

When I first started listening to twentieth century music as such, I was more taken with rhythm than anything else. I noticed that harmonies got tighter and tighter as time went on, but I was already fine with that. What really caught my attention was asymmetrical rhythms. For the first couple of months with my new-found love, it was rhythmical complexity and eccentricity that really floated my boat. Then I heard Varese's _Poeme electronique._

Electricity is our friend.


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## PetrB

Vesuvius said:


> If it weren't for all the great innovators, past and present, what would the other guys have to copy?


Even the famed 'conservative' composers, ala Bach, Brahms, etc. were somehow _innovative,_ and it is pretty much fact that the composers most valued, from the earliest written pieces in music history to the latest, were all at a peak of skill in some "musical development," whether conservative, like Bach, who then refined what that style was (to the hilt), or innovative, like mid to late Mozart or a good deal of Beethoven, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, etc.

I think those who like to tip the balance of argument to 'innovation regardless of quality' hope to ignite a straw effigy, the effigy stemming from their personal tastes, certainly their habitual conditioning in music, and their expectations of it... often leading to lashing out or even a bit of anger. Seeing that enough people extol / love a kind of music you don't like / understand is probably enough to bruise the ego of one who thinks they know classical and are deep in it 

I personally loathe the "aesthetic" argument that tonal is "superior," and wonder how people can possibly arrive at such a conclusion. Many of those with such opinions have the tiniest handle on musical / compositional techniques, anyway (why should they need to, really?) -- but then maybe best not to speak much about what one does not know or does not understand?

The "atonal = amusical and/or not music" argument is about as old and far deader than the actual musical comp techniques. As usual, whether late renaissance, baroque, classical, later music, the music is only as good and expressive as the ability of the one holding the quill / pen over the manuscript paper.

I'm convinced, after a few years' reading on this forum, that near 100% of the resistance to 20th century or contemporary is from preconditioning and thoughts in the realms of 'set' expectations and tastes, and nothing whatsoever to do with the validity or 'aesthetic' of the music per se. This leaves us with that highly unpopular point that often, whether it was late Beethoven to his contemporaries, or a 20th or 21st century work to its contemporaries, it is the listeners, not the music.


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## PetrB

some guy said:


> I don't remember ever being put off by tight harmonies (as a former band director liked to phrase it). I remember thinking the passing tones in baroque music were quite cool. And I banged away on the old upright piano at my grandparents and enjoyed all the sounds it made. I spent a lot of time inside the thing, too, so when I first heard of Cowell and Cage, I was already ready to enjoy their harp music. (As it were.)
> 
> I also remember liking modulation a lot, especially from major to minor or from one minor to another. (Of course Schubert was a great favorite of mine. Still is.) I was always a bit disappointed when pieces changed from minor to major, though, especially (predictably) to end a piece or a movement. Always seemed a bit of a let down, even if the intent (with sometimes the whole orchestra joining triumphantly in) is to pump you up. Minor just always seemed more interesting musically.
> 
> I played trumpet, too, and recall having a lot of fun making all sorts of different noises with that, playing with the different tubes and swapping out the valves (even though that was streng verboten). When I first saw a trumpet player doing a contemporary piece, which was only about ten years ago, I was immediately taken back to my childhood and all the things I used to do just playing around. Even my idea to change the whole sound and all the relations between the valves by putting a rubber tube between the mouthpiece and the horn was there, part of the ordinary appliances of a contemporary player.
> 
> When I first started listening to twentieth century music as such, I was more taken with rhythm than anything else. I noticed that harmonies got tighter and tighter as time went on, but I was already fine with that. What really caught my attention was asymmetrical rhythms. For the first couple of months with my new-found love, it was rhythmical complexity and eccentricity that really floated my boat. Then I heard Varese's _Poeme electronique._
> 
> Electricity is our friend.


The drift here, I think, points to something prime and very important, and somewhat explains the difference between the more musically adventurous and those more bound by conditioning and listening habits which lead to set expectations:

If this aspect is present, preconditioning and set expectations of what music is / should be become a "no barriers" where others have some, or many, barriers. The aspect _*is a primal love and fascination with sound and timbre, period.*_ From that, love of organized "sound events" of just about any sort follow This leads a listener into any / many realms where a more relatively staid listener who is conditioned to / wants 'tonality' and 'recognizable syntax and form' has a far lesser chance of getting through their own "barriers."

Unfortunately, I think this one aspect of loving sound and timbre in their own rights is innate, and can not be given, taught or otherwise imparted, and those without it cannot be 'changed.'


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## Marschallin Blair

PetrB said:


> The drift here, I think, points to something prime and very important, and somewhat explains the difference between the more musically adventurous and those more bound by conditioning and listening habits which lead to set expectations:
> 
> If this aspect is present, preconditioning and set expectations of what music is / should be become a "no barriers" where others have some, or many, barriers. The aspect _*is a primal love and fascination with sound and timbre, period.*_ From that, love of organized "sound events" of just about any sort follow This leads a listener into any / many realms where a more relatively staid listener who is conditioned to / wants 'tonality' and 'recognizable syntax and form' has a far lesser chance of getting through their own "barriers."
> 
> Unfortunately, I think this one aspect of loving sound and timbre in their own rights is innate, and can not be given, taught or otherwise imparted, and those without it cannot be 'changed.'


"Bound by _conditioning_?"-- sure, to those unbound by _taste_.


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## KenOC

In reading some of these posts, I am reminded again of the tragedy of ADS (Audience Deficiency Syndrome). What music badly needs is better listeners! Sadly, as pointed out here already, the exquisite musical sensitivities of some of our members cannot be taught. The future, then, seems bleak.

(I omitted the wry sarcasm emoticon because...well...there isn't one.)


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## Marschallin Blair

KenOC said:


> In reading some of these posts, I am reminded again of the tragedy of ADS (Audience Deficiency Syndrome). What music badly needs is better listeners! Sadly, as pointed out here already, the exquisite musical sensitivities of some of our members cannot be taught. The future, then, seems bleak.


As long as people think, and love, and feel there will be an audience for classical music.

And for suchlike people, there's_ always_ hope.


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## Blake

PetrB said:


> Even the famed 'conservative' composers, ala Bach, Brahms, etc. were somehow _innovative,_ and it is pretty much fact that the composers most valued, from the earliest written pieces in music history to the latest, were all at a peak of skill in some "musical development," whether conservative, like Bach, who then refined what that style was (to the hilt), or innovative, like mid to late Mozart or a good deal of Beethoven, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, etc.


For sure. But that's the kicker - "conservative" composers like Bach and Brahms weren't really so conservative. Sometimes we can be a bit too literal with terminology... ruling out all the grey areas of life, which is mostly what life is. Shades... many shades.

Conservatism and liberalism seem to be more of an attitude. Using past methods to ignite new expressions is innovation. Copying past methods due to the fear of change is conservatism.


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## Woodduck

PetrB said:


> The drift here, I think, points to something prime and very important, and somewhat explains the difference between the more musically adventurous and those more bound by conditioning and listening habits which lead to set expectations:
> 
> If this aspect is present, preconditioning and set expectations of what music is / should be become a "no barriers" where others have some, or many, barriers. The aspect _*is a primal love and fascination with sound and timbre, period.*_ From that, love of organized "sound events" of just about any sort follow This leads a listener into any / many realms where a more relatively staid listener who is conditioned to / wants 'tonality' and 'recognizable syntax and form' has a far lesser chance of getting through their own "barriers."
> 
> Unfortunately, I think this one aspect of loving sound and timbre in their own rights is innate, and can not be given, taught or otherwise imparted, and those without it cannot be 'changed.'


I think your observation here about people differing in the level of their enjoyment of sound as such is a useful one in understanding people's musical tastes. This same difference almost certainly accounts for differences in the styles of various composers, specifically with respect to their use of timbre as an element in their music. We have composers, and not only modern composers, for whom instrumental color and sonority is a primary component of their thinking - Rameau, Berlioz, Mahler, Ravel, Messiaen - and others for whom it is normally quite subordinate to formal structure - Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Rubbra. I believe this difference is largely "temperamental," and basically neurological: I think different brains are differently organized, and that this is probably at least as much genetically as environmentally determined. We find a precisely parallel difference in the visual arts, where we find artists for whom the sensations of color are a central preoccupation - Titian, Delacroix, Monet, Van Gogh, Rothko - and others who concentrate on line and form - Michelangelo, Ingres, Manet, Cezanne, Picasso. The difference has been described as sensual versus intellectual; sometimes it's characterized as feeling versus thinking, but I'd question whether the former type of art proceeds from, or expresses, "feelings" any deeper or more meaningful than does the latter. It's a matter of emphasis, of what aspects of experience the individual is attracted to, and which of his faculties are highest-functioning.

I'm not sure what your thinking is here, as you seem to disagree with yourself when you say that you think the difference in people's perception of sound and timbre as such is "innate," but also say that people are "bound by their conditioning" to have "barriers" to the appreciation of unfamiliar music. Perhaps you're making two different points and running them together. I'm sure that people's resistance to the unfamiliar is both conditioned and innate; but the main reason I want to comment on this is to counter the frequent suggestion - frequent among those who claim to have no "barriers" of the above sort - that people who do not enjoy certain kids of music are simply "conditioned" not to, and probably need only devote more time and effort to listening to music that displeases them to come to appreciate and overcome their dislike. As a lifelong listener to a great diversity of music, as well as a visual artist with strong stylistic tendencies, I can attest, as one who is more at the "formal/intellectual" end of the spectrum I've described, that sound as such, and color as such, although I can appreciate their effective use in music and art, have never been particularly engaging to me (at least not since I gave up my coloring books and my last box of Crayolas). In general, I have always loved art in which expression is primarily a function of strong, clear form - whether it be clean lines and shapes in visual art or ingeniously plotted tonal structures in music - and have felt little identification with bold "color fields" and "atmosphere" in painting or with a major focus on instrumental timbre and other sonic "effects" in music. This is clearly an innate predilection, a defining quality of my intellectual/emotional constitution, which will determine my tastes to a high degree regardless of how much I come to "understand" artistic styles which are not as characteristic an expression of my nature. I suspect I could gaze at Rothko and listen to Stockhausen daily for the rest of my life and never be more deeply touched by them than I am right now, which in both cases is not very deeply.

I don't think the particular distinction I've drawn is anything more than an example (although it's probably a rather basic one) of how people can be innately different, and not merely "conditioned" or "prejudiced," in their artistic tastes. But I think it may help to explain the very personal passion people feel about those tastes, and it might serve as a caution to any of us, of any musical persuasion, against making assumptions about the capacities, attitudes, and intentions of those whose perceptions of music differ from our own.


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## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> I think your observation here about people differing in the level of their enjoyment of sound as such is a useful one in understanding people's musical tastes. This same difference almost certainly accounts for differences in the styles of various composers, specifically with respect to their use of timbre as an element in their music. We have composers, and not only modern composers, for whom instrumental color and sonority is a primary component of their thinking - Rameau, Berlioz, Mahler, Ravel, Messiaen - and others for whom it is normally quite subordinate to formal structure - Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Rubbra. I believe this difference is largely "temperamental," and basically neurological: I think different brains are differently organized, and that this is probably at least as much genetically as environmentally determined. We find a precisely parallel difference in the visual arts, where we find artists for whom the sensations of color are a central preoccupation - Titian, Delacroix, Monet, Van Gogh, Rothko - and others who concentrate on line and form - Michelangelo, Ingres, Manet, Cezanne, Picasso. The difference has been described as sensual versus intellectual; sometimes it's characterized as feeling versus thinking, but I'd question whether the former type of art proceeds from, or expresses, "feelings" any deeper or more meaningful than does the latter. It's a matter of emphasis, of what aspects of experience the individual is attracted to, and which of his faculties are highest-functioning.
> 
> I'm not sure what your thinking is here, as you seem to disagree with yourself when you say that you think the difference in people's perception of sound and timbre as such is "innate," but also say that people are "bound by their conditioning" to have "barriers" to the appreciation of unfamiliar music. Perhaps you're making two different points and running them together. I'm sure that people's resistance to the unfamiliar is both conditioned and innate; but the main reason I want to comment on this is to counter the frequent suggestion - frequent among those who claim to have no "barriers" of the above sort - that people who do not enjoy certain kids of music are simply "conditioned" not to, and probably need only devote more time and effort to listening to music that displeases them to come to appreciate and overcome their dislike. As a lifelong listener to a great diversity of music, as well as a visual artist with strong stylistic tendencies, I can attest, being more at the "formal/intellectual" end of the spectrum I've described, that sound as such, and color as such, although I can appreciate their effective use in music and art, have never been particularly engaging to me (at least not since I gave up my coloring books and my last box of Crayolas). In general, I have always loved art in which expression is primarily a function of strong, clear form - whether it be clean lines and shapes in visual art or ingeniously plotted tonal structures in music - and have felt little identification with bold "color fields" and "atmosphere" in painting or focus on instrumental timbre and other sonic "effects" in music. This is clearly an innate predilection, a defining quality of my intellectual/emotional structure, which will determine my tastes to a high degree regardless of how much I come to "understand" artistic styles which are not as characteristic an expression of my nature. I suspect I could gaze at Rothko and listen to Stockhausen daily for the rest of my life and never be more deeply touched by them than I am right now, which in both cases is not very deeply.
> 
> I don't think the particular distinction I've drawn is anything more than an example (although it's probably a rather basic one) of how people can be innately different, and not merely "conditioned" or "prejudiced," in their artistic tastes. But I think it may help to explain the very personal passion people feel about those tastes, and it might serve as a caution to any of us, of any musical persuasion, against making assumptions about the capacities, attitudes, and intentions of those whose perceptions of music differ from our own.


. . . I think I understand what's being said-- "Head's: I win; tales: ;you lose."

If people don't like this music, it couldn't possibly be because they come to an_ informed _but contrary aesthetic conclusion--- no, it must be that "they don't get it"-- whether congenitally or by conditioning.

This reminds me of Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) in Oliver Stone's movie _The Doors_, where a journalist asks Jim what he thinks of the less than stellar reviews of his (badly written) poetry by the critics--- to which Jim jadedly replies, "I guess they didn't understand it."









P.S., I read this post of Woodduck's twice by the way, I enjoyed it so much. I got back from a late run by the beach and was reading this while stuffing my mouth with this early Christmas gift of homemade candy (oops! I opened it _;D_) that puts Godiva and See's to_ shame_.

_Heaven._

Thanks for rush, Duck (that is, for the thoughts and not the candy).


----------



## PetrB

Marschallin Blair said:


> "Bound by _conditioning_?"-- sure, to those unbound by _taste_.
> 
> View attachment 58657


Well, at least you said plain old 'taste.' lol... which is, er, what exactly, except something developed by a lot of 'conditioning.'

Sure, you and others have _a great sense of good taste_... but there the _Taste Card_ as a card to play in any game both begins and ends; your great sense of good taste does not embrace some music which _my_ great sense of good taste does... and vice versa 

I don't quite get 'unbound taste,' i.e. it reads to me as if it implies some sort of lack of discernment where "its all _equally_ good ?"


----------



## PetrB

Woodduck said:


> I think your observation here about people differing in the level of their enjoyment of sound as such is a useful one in understanding people's musical tastes. This same difference almost certainly accounts for differences in the styles of various composers, specifically with respect to their use of timbre as an element in their music. We have composers, and not only modern composers, for whom instrumental color and sonority is a primary component of their thinking - Rameau, Berlioz, Mahler, Ravel, Messiaen - and others for whom it is normally quite subordinate to formal structure - Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Rubbra. I believe this difference is largely "temperamental," and basically neurological: I think different brains are differently organized, and that this is probably at least as much genetically as environmentally determined. We find a precisely parallel difference in the visual arts, where we find artists for whom the sensations of color are a central preoccupation - Titian, Delacroix, Monet, Van Gogh, Rothko - and others who concentrate on line and form - Michelangelo, Ingres, Manet, Cezanne, Picasso. The difference has been described as sensual versus intellectual; sometimes it's characterized as feeling versus thinking, but I'd question whether the former type of art proceeds from, or expresses, "feelings" any deeper or more meaningful than does the latter. It's a matter of emphasis, of what aspects of experience the individual is attracted to, and which of his faculties are highest-functioning.
> 
> I'm not sure what your thinking is here, as you seem to disagree with yourself when you say that you think the difference in people's perception of sound and timbre as such is "innate," but also say that people are "bound by their conditioning" to have "barriers" to the appreciation of unfamiliar music. Perhaps you're making two different points and running them together. I'm sure that people's resistance to the unfamiliar is both conditioned and innate; but the main reason I want to comment on this is to counter the frequent suggestion - frequent among those who claim to have no "barriers" of the above sort - that people who do not enjoy certain kids of music are simply "conditioned" not to, and probably need only devote more time and effort to listening to music that displeases them to come to appreciate and overcome their dislike. As a lifelong listener to a great diversity of music, as well as a visual artist with strong stylistic tendencies, I can attest, as one who is more at the "formal/intellectual" end of the spectrum I've described, that sound as such, and color as such, although I can appreciate their effective use in music and art, have never been particularly engaging to me (at least not since I gave up my coloring books and my last box of Crayolas). In general, I have always loved art in which expression is primarily a function of strong, clear form - whether it be clean lines and shapes in visual art or ingeniously plotted tonal structures in music - and have felt little identification with bold "color fields" and "atmosphere" in painting or with a major focus on instrumental timbre and other sonic "effects" in music. This is clearly an innate predilection, a defining quality of my intellectual/emotional constitution, which will determine my tastes to a high degree regardless of how much I come to "understand" artistic styles which are not as characteristic an expression of my nature. I suspect I could gaze at Rothko and listen to Stockhausen daily for the rest of my life and never be more deeply touched by them than I am right now, which in both cases is not very deeply.
> 
> I don't think the particular distinction I've drawn is anything more than an example (although it's probably a rather basic one) of how people can be innately different, and not merely "conditioned" or "prejudiced," in their artistic tastes. But I think it may help to explain the very personal passion people feel about those tastes, and it might serve as a caution to any of us, of any musical persuasion, against making assumptions about the capacities, attitudes, and intentions of those whose perceptions of music differ from our own.


I would not dare second guess what makes one individual more attracted to formalism, the other to something less 'classically' formal... but do agree there seem to be marked preferences, at least more toward one than the other, if not entirely for one and finding the other 'nothing for them.' Those preferences may just be innate, or from some very early conditioning... or simply a psychology where a clear and up-front sense of order is very much wanted / needed, where another person is much less wanting / needing the formalist order, are more literally comfortable without needing the structure.

Too, though, there is a sense of order and structure from the Baroque, classical and romantic eras, and if those were one's first exposure, and liking of that rep followed and was pursued, it could be pointed out that the 'conditioning' was achieved through that first exposure, and pursuing -- at the time -- to the music which first appealed and which one then pursued. Enough time gone by with that, and a 'sudden' shift to listening to later rep which operates outside the older formalist parameters can jar,confuse, and perhaps... never be directly appreciated.

My tastes in visual art and music do, though, encompass both the earlier formalist periods and works and the later, and I truly have 'no trouble,' with either... and I'm certain I am not the only one who loves and gets great pleasure from the very different approaches from era to era in each medium -- to the point where I would not ever wish to have to 'give up one for the other.'


----------



## PetrB

Vesuvius said:


> For sure. But that's the kicker - "conservative" composers like Bach and Brahms weren't really so conservative. Sometimes we can be a bit too literal with terminology... ruling out all the grey areas of life, which is mostly what life is. Shades... many shades.
> 
> Conservatism and liberalism seem to be more of an attitude. Using past methods to ignite new expressions is innovation. Copying past methods due to the fear of change is conservatism.


I revel in the ongoing usage of either "Conservative" or "Liberal." Zs in politics so is it in matters aesthetic, the most often one hears or reads either word it is used by someone 'from the other camp' and given an inflection of being despicably off the right path


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## Blake

PetrB said:


> I revel in the ongoing usage of either "Conservative" or "Liberal." Zs in politics so is it in matters aesthetic, the most often one hears or reads either word it is used by someone 'from the other camp' and given an inflection of being despicably off the right path


That's why overtly literal communication is a complete bore. There needs to be a certain level of intuition to see what these terms are being used to point to in any given environment. Words are road-signs... not the destination.


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## Johannes V

Only one living in complete ignorance of the past (that is to say the past pre-renaissance) would ever claim someone composing in somewhat archaic styles is composing in fashion not worth serious "artistic" deliberation. Too often does one hear something to the effect of "this is simply not in a living IDIOM." And since such a comparison to language is often made, so too will make I the comparison. It is no coincidence that for most of human history, languages generally considered to be of high artistic stock were not only archaic in nature, but, as a rule, remained unspoken by the general population. Sumerian, for instance, whose roots may be traced to 2700 BCE, "died" as vulgar, transient tongue by approximately 1800 BCE, but was, due its teaching in schools, continued as the language of religious rites and literature unto roughly the third century BCE. A similar trend can be observed in the later Babylonian which surpassed it. All writings of serious literary works were by no means written in the vulgar and changing vernacular, but based entirely on 16th century BCE Babylonian canon. And this language, this ossified, "old fashioned" relic, was then later used as the sole literary language of the Assyrians (who had since superseded the Babylonians) until the 6th century BCE! Again this trend arises elsewhere, in the Persian Empire, for instance, where Aramaic became the lingua franca, despite the fact that it is archaic, and despite the fact that it was spoken by scarcely any laymen. The most pressing example to my mind is Homer, whose language was, I should hope it unsurprising by now, completely archaic and spoken by scarcely anyone. Homer's language was a special, archaic, poetic tongue, a language of itinerant rhapsodes, possessing a character that had long since fallen into oblivion in the vernacular. And I haven't even brought up Latin, which had essential ossified by 1st century BCE! The state of contemporary art as something which must change to suit the demands of the times is almost literally prehistoric, for only in such a period of complete intellectual darkness is idiomatic development held at the fore of culture; the only difference is that while prehistory was the unfortunate subject of its physical conditions, we deliberately will it! It is worse with "serious" European music because it was born into an already modernizing climate. What is common with most classical language developments is the fact that a literary language is nearly always developed from a canon (which is, admittedly, quite often an elevated and lofty vernacular) and is continued until the unfortunate winds of history assail them, or the vernacular develops to the point where it may too be elevated and fixed, as is the case with Pushkin and Dante. The ultimate point is that all very living artistic traditions for most of history were based on and in reverence to a fixed, generally "archaic" canon, which lives not in the fact that represents the passing and vulgar concerns of the time (although all things necessarily do), but on the fact that they embody concerns, eternal and changeless, not only in mere sentiment, but also in the grandeur of form, and that they were continued.


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## millionrainbows

Music is a science, as well as AN ART. This is why Greeks included it in their Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Astronomy, Geometry, and Music.

Music has mathematical underpinnings. Music is also physics; physical vibration.

Vibrations can not only be heard; they can be counted and measured.

To reduce music to being a matter of different "styles" is a shallow view.


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## Petwhac

millionrainbows said:


> Music is a science, as well as AN ART. This is why Greeks included it in their Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Astronomy, Geometry, and Music.
> 
> Music has mathematical underpinnings. Music is also physics; physical vibration.
> 
> Vibrations can not only be heard; they can be counted and measured.
> 
> To reduce music to being a matter of different "styles" is a shallow view.


But to say that music is a manifestation of physical and mathematical laws does nothing to enhance our appreciation or understanding of it's attractions. Visual art is also about frequencies which can be counted. Everything in nature is physics and mathematics at work, isn't it?


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## clavichorder

Blake said:


> Yea, I was wondering about that. If anything it's the modern guys that take the most flack, because they like everything... so what are they going to talk against? It's the more conservative type that causes the most grief... as they only like a particular tradition, and fight against all others.
> 
> This applies to the entire world, actually. Haha


I disagree. Its the extremists on either end of the spectrum that tend to put others down.


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## Guest

some guy said:


> It's a nice thing. Everybody likes it. Nobody wants to argue against it.
> 
> In practice, however, it has come up recently most frequently to defend the practice of only one kind of music, and the diversity consists almost entirely of styles from the past, often a quite distant past.
> 
> Even more oddly, if anyone wants to suggest that imitating the stylistic mannerisms of the past is maybe not as valid as other ways of going about the creating of art, that person is instantly accused of being against diversity.
> 
> Hmmm. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but it does seem to me that one thing is less diverse than many things.


An interesting idea that 'stylistic diversity' is actually copying music from the past. Do we agree?


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## KenOC

Tulse said:


> An interesting idea that 'stylistic diversity' is actually copying music from the past. Do we agree?


That's certainly easier than copying music from the future.


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## Enthusiast

I suppose a composer, say, who seems not to have a distinctive voice but is adept at adopting a range of voices is likely to be borrowing. But I don't think that is where some guy was coming from. He seems to be talking about music now and the amazing diversity of styles and approaches that characterises new music. This was something that was already very evident by 1920 and the diversification has flourished a lot since then. Isn't this a flowering? It is true that many of the styles available seem to borrow this or that from past styles. But does (did) some guy want to go back to a single tradition ("the great tradition") with one or two great masters and then those who come next hopefully include one or two more who produce something in the new style and inherit the mantle? Well, he may have wanted it but it is not what has been happening.It is not the story of our time.

I suppose the various angry avant gardists over time (Bartok about Shostakovich, Boulez about ... Shostakovich etc.) were arguing for a single tradition (and for the crown within it!) but I don't think that's how things are now.

Probably, what I have just written has been said already in the 21 pages that precede this one. I must confess I lacked the time and energy to read them!


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## Merl

I don't like Diversity. They're crap dancers and the little one with the fuzzy hair gets on my nerves with his somersault s. All I know is I like that choon that goes 'da-da-da-daaaahhh' and the song that Breville and Spleen skated to.


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## science

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. In college, when I hardly knew anything about classical music, I was close to a Curtis alum (funny story: Hilary Hahn came over to my house with her one day, and my dad, who had no idea who she was, thought Miss Hahn had a crush on me) - I cannot remember her even implying anything demeaning about classic rock or hip hop, though judging by her CD collection she wasn't a fan of any of that.
> 
> But for some reason it happens on the internet all the time.


This dude had it figured out.


----------



## Nereffid

Nereffid said:


> Yes, we can talk about what goes on in the music, but we then have to agree on what _should_ be going on in the music. Which is where the widely-agreed-upon-but-not-unanimous cultural standards come in.
> 
> What if we could somehow ask, say, 100 composers of the Franco-Flemish school to decide whether Spohr or Beethoven was better? Are you confident enough in objective standards to be certain they'd overwhelmingly say Beethoven? Or would you be more inclined to say that our standards are not the same as theirs?





Mahlerian said:


> I'd be inclined to say that they don't have the same perspective that we do today. Their ideas about what music is and what constitutes coherence, let alone beauty or aesthetic worthiness would, no doubt, lead them to pronounce both Beethoven and Spohr nonsense at best.
> 
> Furthermore, a majority of any kind does not constitute objectivity. If 100 composers of the Franco-Flemish school dismiss Beethoven and/or Spohr, it does nothing whatsoever to change the music. Greatness is never a simple matter of yes/no, but rather a "greatness in" for which we need to take the art by its own rules.
> 
> Likewise, I am inclined to believe that in the future, the aesthetic battles of today will appear trivial and incomprehensible, while the great music that survives will be viewed as obviously and uncontrovertibly great. They will have a perspective on the present that we today cannot possibly have.


Interesting to revisit what I wrote three-and-a-half years ago, as the topic has come up again lately. So I still have the same view, and I'd forgotten about my reference here to the Franco-Flemish composers - I had thought about making some sort of similar argument a few weeks ago too!

It strikes me here that Mahlerian's "they don't have the same perspective that we do today" is actually a strong argument _against_ the idea of objective standards, as it clearly suggests that artistic judgement is context dependent.


----------



## Woodduck

Nereffid said:


> Interesting to revisit what I wrote three-and-a-half years ago, as the topic has come up again lately. So I still have the same view, and I'd forgotten about my reference here to the Franco-Flemish composers - I had thought about making some sort of similar argument a few weeks ago too!
> 
> It strikes me here that Mahlerian's "they don't have the same perspective that we do today" is actually *a strong argument against the idea of objective standards, as it clearly suggests that artistic judgement is context dependent.*


Are we back to this? Why must it be "either/or"- as in "artistic judgement is context dependent"? Is that another term for the ubiquitous "subjective"?

_All _judgment is context dependent - but that's not an argument against the presence of objectively existing and recognizable factors which guide artistic judgment. Neither is the absence of unanimity; objectivity doesn't require it. Beethoven - or Josquin - knew when he did a good job, and we can know it too. The fact that Donald Trump doesn't know it is irrelevant and proves nothing except what we've already noticed about Donald Trump.

This campaign to deny objective reality and turn all artistic values into coincidences of subjectivity is just bizarre.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> Are we back to this? Why must it be "either/or"- as in "artistic judgement is context dependent"? Is that another term for the ubiquitous "subjective"?
> 
> _All _judgment is context dependent - but that's not an argument against the presence of objectively existing and recognizable factors which guide artistic judgment. Neither is the absence of unanimity; objectivity doesn't require it. Beethoven - or Josquin - knew when he did a good job, and we can know it too. The fact that Donald Trump doesn't know it is irrelevant and proves nothing except what we've already noticed about Donald Trump.
> 
> This campaign to deny objective reality and turn all artistic values into coincidences of subjectivity is just bizarre.


Technically, if judgment is "context dependent" then that would be relativity by definition; meaning the judgment is relative to the context. Whether it's more subjective or objective depends on what aspect the context is changing, and since the object hasn't changed, it's clearly the subject that's different in each context. So if you're now declaring that judgment is context dependent, you're essentially siding with the subjectivists without knowing it.

Nobody is denying objective reality at all; what we're saying is that objective reality does not solely effect judgment. So there can be "objectively existing recognizable factors" but they cannot guide artistic judgment without one deciding those factors are worth guiding one's judgment. Objectivity doesn't require unanimity, but everyone agrees that with objectively existing things or causes that there's only one right answer; there's no unanimity on whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, but everyone agrees that either it does or doesn't. We don't have that agreement in the realm of art. Beethoven and Josquin knew when they had accomplished their goal; whether it was "good" is, as you said, context dependent. If the context is only Beethoven or Josquin's judgment, then the answer is it was good; if the context is otherwise, then you must specify the context. That context could be as small as the individual judgments of everyone who's ever heard them, or as large as the general opinion of the entire Western world. I dare say William McGonagall "knew" when he'd done "good work" too; what does it mean if everyone happens to disagree?

I also dare say nobody is arguing that artistic values are due to "coincidences of subjectivity;" I'm sure there are some psychological/neurological/cognitive reasons why individuals have the values they do, why there are large, general commonalities of values across most people, why there are cultural differences, and even differences within cultures. There's a relativity new field called Neuroaesthetics that's attempting to bridge the gap between aesthetics and neuroscience. I've yet to research it, but as I suggested in the other thread, if you're looking to find answers about why our values are what they are, that's the place to be looking.


----------



## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Technically, if judgment is "context dependent" then that would be relativity by definition; meaning the judgment is relative to the context. Whether it's more subjective or objective depends on what aspect the context is changing, and since the object hasn't changed, it's clearly the subject that's different in each context. So if you're now declaring that judgment is context dependent, you're essentially siding with the subjectivists without knowing it.
> 
> Nobody is denying objective reality at all; what we're saying is that objective reality does not solely effect judgment. So there can be "objectively existing recognizable factors" but they cannot guide artistic judgment without one deciding those factors are worth guiding one's judgment. Objectivity doesn't require unanimity, but everyone agrees that with objectively existing things or causes that there's only one right answer; there's no unanimity on whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, but everyone agrees that either it does or doesn't. We don't have that agreement in the realm of art. Beethoven and Josquin knew when they had accomplished their goal; whether it was "good" is, as you said, context dependent. If the context is only Beethoven or Josquin's judgment, then the answer is it was good; if the context is otherwise, then you must specify the context. That context could be as small as the individual judgments of everyone who's ever heard them, or as large as the general opinion of the entire Western world. I dare say William McGonagall "knew" when he'd done "good work" too; what does it mean if everyone happens to disagree?
> 
> I also dare say nobody is arguing that artistic values are due to "coincidences of subjectivity;" I'm sure there are some psychological/neurological/cognitive reasons why individuals have the values they do, why there are large, general commonalities of values across most people, why there are cultural differences, and even differences within cultures. There's a relativity new field called Neuroaesthetics that's attempting to bridge the gap between aesthetics and neuroscience. I've yet to research it, but as I suggested in the other thread, if you're looking to find answers about why our values are what they are, that's the place to be looking.


Since neither I nor anyone else has suggested that all aesthetic judgments are statements of scientific fact, much less provable propositions, this constant harping on the subjectivity of such judgments is just breaking wind. Said harping gets us absolutely nowhere in understanding either art or the human animal that makes and appreciates art.

Your last paragraph reveals at least some inkling that there must be an objective - biological, neurological - basis for aesthetic perception, which ought to be rather obvious. That's more than most of the discussion here has done.

I don't know the work of William McGonagall - it may be good in some respects and not in others - but he could only have known he did good work if he actually did good work. "Knowing" that you've done "good work" is not the same as knowing that you've done good work. And if everyone disagrees with you, you need only suspect that your judgment is faulty, not that "it's all subjective."


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## Ziggabea

Without diversity, music would be boring


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## Nereffid

Woodduck said:


> This campaign to deny objective reality and turn all artistic values into *coincidences *of subjectivity is just bizarre.


They are "coincidences" in the same sense that evolution is "random".


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## DeepR

I have nothing to complain about when it comes to diversity in classical music.
The opening post was part of a thought police crusade of a former member to gain acceptance for modern music.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> Since neither I nor anyone else has suggested that all aesthetic judgments are statements of scientific fact, much less provable propositions, this constant harping on the subjectivity of such judgments is just breaking wind. Said harping gets us absolutely nowhere in understanding either art or the human animal that makes and appreciates art.
> 
> Your last paragraph reveals at least some inkling that there must be an objective - biological, neurological - basis for aesthetic perception, which ought to be rather obvious. That's more than most of the discussion here has done.
> 
> I don't know the work of William McGonagall - it may be good in some respects and not in others - but he could only have known he did good work if he actually did good work. "Knowing" that you've done "good work" is not the same as knowing that you've done good work. And if everyone disagrees with you, you need only suspect that your judgment is faulty, not that "it's all subjective."


You seemed to be arguing in the past that aesthetic judgments weren't subjective, but comments like "all judgment is context dependent" seem as if you're admitting the subjectivity you were previously denying; so your comments are a bit confusing. As I mentioned in the other thread, you can't get anywhere with "understanding" art nor the humans that make and appreciate art without first knowing where to look for the answers to your questions.

There's a biological/neurological basis for every feeling/thought/perception we have; to argue that having such a basis would make such things objective would be to massacre the distinction between subjective and objective. You'd essentially be making subjectivity a meaningless concept. There's a neurological/biological basis why most humans prefer sugar to vegetables (sugar has more calories, aids in storing fat, helps prevent starvation, etc.); that hardly makes our preference for sugar objective.

McGonagall is probably the only poet famous for being so awful that he's funny (in the same class as, say, the films of Ed Wood). But, again, your statement about him falsely presumes that the "good work" is inherent in the object rather than in the subject. McGonagall (like everyone) had his own aesthetic standards that lead him to think he did good work; apparently, to him, if it rhymed and if he had expressed his thoughts or told his story as clear as possible, then he'd done good work. That most everyone else disagreed is of no consequence to the relativism ("All judgment is context dependent") that you admitted exists; "everyone else" just another context-dependent relative judgment. The only difference between him and a Beethoven is that when Beethoven felt he'd done good work, more people agreed with him; and I don't think you're basing you're objectively "good work" on what most people think.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> You seemed to be arguing in the past that aesthetic judgments weren't subjective, but comments like "all judgment is context dependent" seem as if you're admitting the subjectivity you were previously denying; so your comments are a bit confusing. As I mentioned in the other thread, you can't get anywhere with "understanding" art nor the humans that make and appreciate art without first knowing where to look for the answers to your questions.
> 
> There's a biological/neurological basis for every feeling/thought/perception we have; to argue that having such a basis would make such things objective would be to massacre the distinction between subjective and objective. You'd essentially be making subjectivity a meaningless concept. There's a neurological/biological basis why most humans prefer sugar to vegetables (sugar has more calories, aids in storing fat, helps prevent starvation, etc.); that hardly makes our preference for sugar objective.
> 
> McGonagall is probably the only poet famous for being so awful that he's funny (in the same class as, say, the films of Ed Wood). But, again, your statement about him falsely presumes that the "good work" is inherent in the object rather than in the subject. McGonagall (like everyone) had his own aesthetic standards that lead him to think he did good work; apparently, to him, if it rhymed and if he had expressed his thoughts or told his story as clear as possible, then he'd done good work. That most everyone else disagreed is of no consequence to the relativism ("All judgment is context dependent") that you admitted exists; "everyone else" just another context-dependent relative judgment. The only difference between him and a Beethoven is that when Beethoven felt he'd done good work, more people agreed with him; and I don't think you're basing you're objectively "good work" on what most people think.


The difference between Beethoven and McGonagall is that Beethoven's work is great and he knew it, and McGonagall's is mediocre and he didn't know it (or maybe he did and didn't care). The idea that neither Beethoven nor McGonagall - nor we - could judge the stature of their art without taking a worldwide poll to see how many people like it is ludicrous. No one lives that way, including you. It happens, of course, that humans have the ability (variable, like all abilities) to distinguish good from bad art, and so Beethoven's reputation will predictably be higher and his work will endure. Bad art will likely have its own following, of course, but we owe it no notice or acclaim no matter who that following consists of.

I've insisted since the beginning of this discussion that artistic judgments are both "subjective" and "objective," while trying to avoid those dichotomous terms and point instead to the factors in art and in the perception of it (including the artist's perception as he creates) which are responsible for the fact that aesthetic perception exists and takes certain forms. It is not coincidental or arbitrary that humans all over the world from time immemorial have created art that exhibits certain traits which can be and are understood and valued across widely divergent cultures over ages of time. The "art is subjective," or "it's thinking that makes it so," refrain sung here in monotonous chorus takes us exactly nowhere in understanding these hard, _objective_ facts. Everyone knows that individuals can have virtually any feeling or opinion about _anything._ My response to that is, "So what?"

As for "where to look for the answers to your questions," let me first point out that if one begins with the assumption that artistic perception and evaluation is "all subjective" one is unlikely to ask any meaningful questions or look anywhere. I should think that by now I've made it clear where _I_ look. But, to offer a handy digest, I look first to my own experience as an artist: what I do, and why and how I do it. Then I look to the general experience of artists, on the reasonable assumption that artists know more about the nature of artistic thinking than most other people. I look next to the experience and testimony of those who've made it their business to know and appreciate art, on the assumption that they know more about the subject than members of the general population. And then I look at art as it exists across cultures and through time, to see what artistic values exist in what cultural contexts, with particular attention to those values that transcend culture and time. Concurrent with this first- and second-hand experience of art and its making, I look to those who theorize about art and aesthetics from the standpoint of various disciplines, including psychology, in which the concept of cross-domain mapping has been fruitful in calling our attention to the underlying psychic "forms," or patterns of psycho-physical perceptual experience, which visual or musical composition abstracts and re-presents to consciousness in its re-creation of reality according to the expressive intent of the artist. As a working artist in both visual and musical media, I know that these psychic patterns exist, that they cross "domains" from one perceptual mode to another, and that they are fundamental elements of art's "language" which enables abstract visual and aural information to communicate and evoke affective responses and aesthetic pleasure. The full range of this phenomenon is for neurological science to discover and explain, but no science is needed to prove its existence, its fundamental importance, or its power.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> The difference between Beethoven and McGonagall is that Beethoven's work is great and he knew it, and McGonagall's is mediocre and he didn't know it (or maybe he did and didn't care). The idea that neither Beethoven nor McGonagall - nor we - could judge the stature of their art without taking a worldwide poll to see how many people like it is ludicrous. No one lives that way, including you. It happens, of course, that humans have the ability (variable, like all abilities) to distinguish good from bad art, and so Beethoven's reputation will predictably be higher and his work will endure. Bad art will likely have its own following, of course, but we owe it no notice or acclaim no matter who that following consists of.
> 
> I've insisted since the beginning of this discussion that artistic judgments are both "subjective" and "objective," while trying to avoid those dichotomous terms and point instead to the factors in art and in the perception of it (including the artist's perception as he creates) which are responsible for the fact that aesthetic perception exists and takes certain forms. It is not coincidental or arbitrary that humans all over the world from time immemorial have created art that exhibits certain traits which can be and are understood and valued across widely divergent cultures over ages of time. The "art is subjective," or "it's thinking that makes it so," refrain sung here in monotonous chorus takes us exactly nowhere in understanding these hard, _objective_ facts. Everyone knows that individuals can have virtually any feeling or opinion about _anything._ My response to that is, "So what?"
> 
> As for "where to look for the answers to your questions," let me first point out that if one begins with the assumption that artistic perception and evaluation is "all subjective" one is unlikely to ask any meaningful questions or look anywhere. I should think that by now I've made it clear where _I_ look. But, to offer a handy digest, I look first to my own experience as an artist: what I do, and why and how I do it. Then I look to the general experience of artists, on the reasonable assumption that artists know more about the nature of artistic thinking than most other people. I look next to the experience and testimony of those who've made it their business to know and appreciate art, on the assumption that they know more about the subject than members of the general population. And then I look at art as it exists across cultures and through time, to see what artistic values exist in what cultural contexts, with particular attention to those values that transcend culture and time. Concurrent with this first- and second-hand experience of art and its making, I look to those who theorize about art and aesthetics from the standpoint of various disciplines, including psychology, in which the concept of cross-domain mapping has been fruitful in calling our attention to the underlying psychic "forms," or patterns of psycho-physical perceptual experience, which visual or musical composition abstracts and re-presents to consciousness in its re-creation of reality according to the expressive intent of the artist. As a working artist in both visual and musical media, I know that these psychic patterns exist, that they cross "domains" from one perceptual mode to another, and that they are fundamental elements of art's "language" which enables abstract visual and aural information to communicate and evoke affective responses and aesthetic pleasure. The full range of this phenomenon is for neurological science to discover and explain, but no science is needed to prove its existence, its fundamental importance, or its power.


But where's the "context dependence" in all that McGonagall/Beethoven talk? What context does their "greatness/badness" depend on, and what did Beethoven know that McGonagall didn't? Be specific, not vague.

The "idea" isn't about taking a worldwide poll, the "idea" is what you originally said: that the judgment of aesthetic greatness is context dependent, and there are potentially billions of different contexts depending on how you want to divide the judgment up. Speaking about greatness independent of that context makes no sense, as you yourself admitted. You seem to want to have your cake and eat it too; simultaneously say that the judgment of greatness is context dependent, but then speak about greatness and "knowing it" without reference to any such context. Of course I make aesthetic judgments all the time, but those judgments are also context dependent, the context being my own values and tastes, which themselves are at least partially dependent on my socio-historical-cultural context, and like all humans dependent on the context of evolutionary neurobiology. The things that go into making up the values and standards by which individuals and cultures judge art by is incredibly complex, and trying to speak of greatness without reference to these standards-and understanding that these standards are ultimately subjective-is utterly futile. The "we/they just know" is an awful argument as it can be made by anyone who thinks they know anything, regardless of whether what they think they know is wrong or even unknowable.

The only "objective" part in aesthetic judgments is the object being judged, but no mere statements of facts about any objects necessitates any given judgment; the latter part completely depends on what objective elements we value and disvalue, and such valuations exist entirely in the human mind, and are therefore subjective by definition. I agree that our values are not arbitrary, but as I said earlier, not being coincidental or arbitrary doesn't make them objective. As I said, if you want to get somewhere in understanding why such things happen, then you need to understand what's common about human subjectivity that creates this commonality of values, and that would be in the fields of cognitive and neuroscience, two fields that deal with human subjectivity in a scientific fashion.

Your last paragraph seems founded on the fallacious assumption that human subjectivity can't be studied, and as I suggested with cognitive/neuroscience that's simply false. The thing that creates our subjective experience-the human brain-is an object in itself and can be studied by others outside ourselves who correlate their findings with our stated experiences. Even beyond that, the notion that we can't ask questions about subjective things is absurd on its face; If I ask you if you're hungry and you say "yes," you've answered my question about your subjective experience. Every time a doctor asks a patient about their pain level they're asking a question about their subjective experiences. If you ask 10 people if they like Beethoven and 9 say yes, you have an objective answer to a subjective question.

Your "answer seeking" is fine in the respect that in each place you look-your own experience, those of other artists, those of other cultures, those of experts, etc.-you're given a new "context" by which to understand how those subjects think about/appreciate art. But that's all you're doing; you're understanding different contexts, different subjectivities, different values. There may be some commonalities among them, but there are undoubtedly just as many differences. As I said in (I think) my very first post on this subject, you don't get this difference with the existence of the sun, and there's a reason for complete unanimity on the latter and for the differing standards and values you find on art across times, cultures, and individuals.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> But where's the "context dependence" in all that McGonagall/Beethoven talk? What context does their "greatness/badness" depend on, and what did Beethoven know that McGonagall didn't? Be specific, not vague.
> 
> The "idea" isn't about taking a worldwide poll, the "idea" is what you originally said: that the judgment of aesthetic greatness is context dependent, and there are potentially billions of different contexts depending on how you want to divide the judgment up. Speaking about greatness independent of that context makes no sense, as you yourself admitted. You seem to want to have your cake and eat it too; simultaneously say that the judgment of greatness is context dependent, but then speak about greatness and "knowing it" without reference to any such context. Of course I make aesthetic judgments all the time, but those judgments are also context dependent, the context being my own values and tastes, which themselves are at least partially dependent on my socio-historical-cultural context, and like all humans dependent on the context of evolutionary neurobiology. The things that go into making up the values and standards by which individuals and cultures judge art by is incredibly complex, and trying to speak of greatness without reference to these standards-and understanding that these standards are ultimately subjective-is utterly futile. The "we/they just know" is an awful argument as it can be made by anyone who thinks they know anything, regardless of whether what they think they know is wrong or even unknowable.
> 
> The only "objective" part in aesthetic judgments is the object being judged, but no mere statements of facts about any objects necessitates any given judgment; the latter part completely depends on what objective elements we value and disvalue, and such valuations exist entirely in the human mind, and are therefore subjective by definition. I agree that our values are not arbitrary, but as I said earlier, not being coincidental or arbitrary doesn't make them objective. As I said, if you want to get somewhere in understanding why such things happen, then you need to understand what's common about human subjectivity that creates this commonality of values, and that would be in the fields of cognitive and neuroscience, two fields that deal with human subjectivity in a scientific fashion.
> 
> Your last paragraph seems founded on the fallacious assumption that human subjectivity can't be studied, and as I suggested with cognitive/neuroscience that's simply false. The thing that creates our subjective experience-the human brain-is an object in itself and can be studied by others outside ourselves who correlate their findings with our stated experiences. Even beyond that, the notion that we can't ask questions about subjective things is absurd on its face; If I ask you if you're hungry and you say "yes," you've answered my question about your subjective experience. Every time a doctor asks a patient about their pain level they're asking a question about their subjective experiences. If you ask 10 people if they like Beethoven and 9 say yes, you have an objective answer to a subjective question.
> 
> Your "answer seeking" is fine in the respect that in each place you look-your own experience, those of other artists, those of other cultures, those of experts, etc.-you're given a new "context" by which to understand how those subjects think about/appreciate art. But that's all you're doing; you're understanding different contexts, different subjectivities, different values. There may be some commonalities among them, but there are undoubtedly just as many differences. As I said in (I think) my very first post on this subject, you don't get this difference with the existence of the sun, and there's a reason for complete unanimity on the latter and for the differing standards and values you find on art across times, cultures, and individuals.


I can't be bothered to burrow through all this hemming and hawing. I gave you a list of contexts for making aesthetic judgments, and you're telling me I haven't specified any contexts. Oh well...

Knowing that Mozart is a greater composer than Dittersdorf is not that hard. Almost anyone who understand Classical music can get it (and, of course, the relative reputations of Mozart and Dittersdorf support that). Are you seriously telling me that the only "context" you have for making that judgment is "your own values and tastes"? You can't distinguish degrees of skill and imagination in the manipulation of the musical materials intrinsic to the Classical style? You can't hear, directly and without need for a million words of explanation and "proof," the sound of genius at work? Of course you can hear it. Hearing it is what humans do. It's in the nature of our perceptual apparatus to hear it. I could hear it as a child. A native of the Amazon or the Himalayas, given some exposure to Western music, can hear it. The whole world can hear it. NOBODY thinks Dittersdorf is as good as Mozart. What ivory tower are you living in? You want to hold fast to the idea that all aesthetic value is subjective because it can't be "proved" with a chart or a syllogism. Well, you can't "prove" to a blind person that the sky is blue, or that there's even a real thing called color.

Either there are real perceptual faculties common to human beings which respond to real qualities in works of art, giving rise to common perceptions of aesthetic excellence, or we can just trade in all the insights that brilliant, perceptive, sensitive people have brought to their encounters with great art and go with something like "I like vanilla, you like chocolate" - or maybe just "Oh wow!" If that's the universe you think you inhabit, you're welcome to it.


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## Haydn70

Woodduck said:


> I can't be bothered to burrow through all this hemming and hawing. I gave you a list of contexts for making aesthetic judgments, and you're telling me I haven't specified any contexts. Oh well...
> 
> Knowing that Mozart is a greater composer than Dittersdorf is not that hard. Almost anyone who understand Classical music can get it (and, of course, the relative reputations of Mozart and Dittersdorf support that). Are you seriously telling me that the only "context" you have for making that judgment is "your own values and tastes"? You can't distinguish degrees of skill and imagination in the manipulation of the musical materials intrinsic to the Classical style? You can't hear, directly and without need for a million words of explanation and "proof," the sound of genius at work? Of course you can hear it. Hearing it is what humans do. It's in the nature of our perceptual apparatus to hear it. I could hear it as a child. A native of the Amazon or the Himalayas, given some exposure to Western music, can hear it. The whole world can hear it. NOBODY thinks Dittersdorf is as good as Mozart. What ivory tower are you living in? You want to hold fast to the idea that all aesthetic value is subjective because it can't be "proved" with a chart or a syllogism. Well, you can't "prove" to a blind person that the sky is blue, or that there's even a real thing called color.
> 
> Either there are real perceptual faculties common to human beings which respond to real qualities in works of art, giving rise to common perceptions of aesthetic excellence, or we can just trade in all the insights that brilliant, perceptive, sensitive people have brought to their encounters with great art and go with something like "I like vanilla, you like chocolate" - or maybe just "Oh wow!" If that's the universe you think you inhabit, you're welcome to it.


Another superb set of posts, Woodduck...great responses to the another example of the rampant relativism that plagues this site.


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## Haydn70

Jobis said:


> Serialism does not submit to the same kind of analysis as tonal music; you cannot apply Schenker, it is hard to form expectations or to subvert the listeners' expectations because they are already surrounded by the unfamiliar.


And it's ugly too.


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## Woodduck

ArsMusica said:


> Another superb set of posts, Woodduck...great responses to the another example of the rampant relativism that plagues this site.


"Rampant relativism..." Nice alliteration!


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## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> "Rampant relativism..." Nice alliteration!


I assume that's as opposed to "absurdly asinine absolutism." Sorry, I'm sure Spiro Agnew could have done better!​


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## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> I assume that's as opposed to "absurdly asinine absolutism." Sorry, I'm sure Spiro Agnew could have done better!​


Well, he couldn't have butt in with anything less insightful, relevant, useful, or welcome. Sorry I can't make those alliterate.


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## Blancrocher

Woodduck said:


> Well, he couldn't have butt in with anything less insightful, relevant, useful, or welcome. Sorry I can't make those alliterate.


smart, suitable, serviceable, or satisfying


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## Strange Magic

> Woodduck: "I've insisted since the beginning of this discussion that artistic judgments are both "subjective" and "objective," while trying to avoid those dichotomous terms and point instead to the factors in art and in the perception of it (including the artist's perception as he creates) which are responsible for the fact that aesthetic perception exists and takes certain forms. It is not coincidental or arbitrary that humans all over the world from time immemorial have created art that exhibits certain traits which can be and are understood and valued across widely divergent cultures over ages of time. The "art is subjective," or "it's thinking that makes it so," refrain sung here in monotonous chorus takes us exactly nowhere in understanding these hard, objective facts. Everyone knows that individuals can have virtually any feeling or opinion about anything. My response to that is, "So what?"


This is a very well stated repetition of the truism that there is a bell curve under which certain art is enjoyed by those audiences that mutually enjoy it. The vastly larger audience(s) who experience no "universal" sharing with those same art objects is clearly of no consequence or interest to the above argument. That there can be assembled an audience for any sort of art across widely divergent cultures over ages of time is itself a truism that reveals that the "hard, objective facts" alleged above are essentially self-authenticating constructs which do nothing to demonstrate the existence of an aesthetic preference that exists "objectively".

I assume that certain wines are demonstrably better than others, "objectively".


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## Woodduck

Blancrocher said:


> smart, suitable, serviceable, or satisfying


Bravo, Blancrocher.


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## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> This is a very well stated repetition of the truism that there is a bell curve under which certain art is enjoyed by those audiences that mutually enjoy it. The vastly larger audience(s) who experience no "universal" sharing with those same art objects is clearly of no consequence or interest to the above argument. That there can be assembled an audience for any sort of art across widely divergent cultures over ages of time is itself a truism that reveals that the "hard, objective facts" alleged above are essentially self-authenticating constructs which do nothing to demonstrate the existence of an aesthetic preference that exists "objectively".
> 
> I assume that certain wines are demonstrably better than others, "objectively".


When I speak of aesthetic values, I distinguish them from artistic preferences. It's the difference that makes it possible to hear and understand that _Tristan und Isolde_ is a stupendous work while _Countess Maritza_ is not, while disliking the former and liking the latter. I enjoy both thoroughly, but I know which one is the greater achievement.

If you don't recognize that distinction, we don't have a conversation.


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## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> When I speak of aesthetic values, I distinguish them from artistic preferences. It's the difference that makes it possible to hear and understand that _Tristan und Isolde_ is a stupendous work while _Countess Maritza_ is not, while disliking the former and liking the latter. I enjoy both thoroughly, but I know which one is the greater achievement.
> 
> If you don't recognize that distinction, we don't have a conversation.


I don't recognize that distinction. I do recognize that you prefer Tristan; you've told me/us that. There is nothing quantifiable beyond that other than measurements of length, complexity, many other measurable variables, especially including detailed lists of who also prefers Tristan. Let's have a glass of wine; any preference ?


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> I can't be bothered to burrow through all this hemming and hawing. I gave you a list of contexts for making aesthetic judgments, and you're telling me I haven't specified any contexts. Oh well...
> 
> Knowing that Mozart is a greater composer than Dittersdorf is not that hard. Almost anyone who understand Classical music can get it (and, of course, the relative reputations of Mozart and Dittersdorf support that). Are you seriously telling me that the only "context" you have for making that judgment is "your own values and tastes"? You can't distinguish degrees of skill and imagination in the manipulation of the musical materials intrinsic to the Classical style? You can't hear, directly and without need for a million words of explanation and "proof," the sound of genius at work? Of course you can hear it. Hearing it is what humans do. It's in the nature of our perceptual apparatus to hear it. I could hear it as a child. A native of the Amazon or the Himalayas, given some exposure to Western music, can hear it. The whole world can hear it. NOBODY thinks Dittersdorf is as good as Mozart. What ivory tower are you living in? You want to hold fast to the idea that all aesthetic value is subjective because it can't be "proved" with a chart or a syllogism. Well, you can't "prove" to a blind person that the sky is blue, or that there's even a real thing called color.
> 
> Either there are real perceptual faculties common to human beings which respond to real qualities in works of art, giving rise to common perceptions of aesthetic excellence, or we can just trade in all the insights that brilliant, perceptive, sensitive people have brought to their encounters with great art and go with something like "I like vanilla, you like chocolate" - or maybe just "Oh wow!" If that's the universe you think you inhabit, you're welcome to it.


Those contexts you gave boil down to how different subjectivities think about and value art. As I said, you will mention such contexts, but then assert "greatness" and "knowing it" without any reference to those contexts, as you do explicitly in this post right here.

"Understanding" classical music has nothing to do with preferring Mozart to Dittersdorf. Understanding anything has nothing to do with judging it (understanding it just gives us more factors to judge). Yes, all the judgments I make are reflective of my own values and tastes. Judging degrees of "skill and imagination" only boils down to reflecting what those values and tastes are. Any time you speak of "skill and imagination" you're just saying "I like what so-and-so did here." We judge skill and imagination based on what qualities we prefer, we don't base what we prefer on some objective skill and imagination. The notion that one "hears a genius" without the context--meaning those values and tastes--is absurd. Intelligent aliens who knew nothing of human music or psychology would not "hear genius" in Mozart. This is all just a case of the Mind Projection Fallacy at work. And I guarantee that of the billions of people alive, I could find someone who prefers Dittersdorf to Mozart.*

Your last paragraph is also a blatant false dichotomy fallacy. There are real perceptual faculties common to human beings, but the ways in which these perceptual factors filter and categorize the objects they encounter can differ dramatically based on numerous factors. And, for the millionth time, no amount of universal subjective agreement would ever make such agreement objective. We DO live in a universe of "I like chocolate, you like vanilla," and the problem is that some people are utterly convinced that chocolate is objectively better than vanilla and vice versa.

*Slight aside here, but I recall the intro to one of my poetry textbooks contrasting the example of Keats's Ode to a Nightingale--generally considered one of the greatest and most perfect poems in the language--with Charles Simic's The Garden of Earthly Delights, that there were people who preferred the latter. I could hazard several guesses as to why, but I also guarantee that there are lovers of poetry out there who think like you who'd almost certainly say about the Keats VS Simic poems what you're saying about Mozart and Dittersdorf.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Also, I really want to drive this important point home: no amount of agreement about subjective feelings/perceptions can make those feelings/perceptions objective. If you look at the case of the Checkerboard Illusion, all humans with working vision will see squares A and B as being different colors. The universal agreement about this perception does not make squares A and B different colors, as indeed they are not, and provably so. This optical illusion goes to show how easily human minds fallaciously project their perceptions onto reality. When you hear *insert favorite composer/work here* and think it's genius or skillful or imaginative, it's just your mind projecting those judgments onto the work/composer and thinking them qualities of the work/composer rather than being what they are: subjective judgments of other actually existing objective qualities.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> "Rampant relativism..." Nice alliteration!


Yes, but that's its only virtue.

As we debated in another thread, it's less the context that's important (for me) than the content - the "what it is the artist has created that makes her "know" she' perfected what she wanted to achieve".

I have no problem with the notion that one composer is better than another - provided that we can explain the criteria by which "better" is being judged. I do have a problem with the idea that I can hear "genius at work" which is mere hyperbole.


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## Guest

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Judging degrees of "skill and imagination" only boils down to reflecting what those values and tastes are. Any time you speak of "skill and imagination" you're just saying "I like what so-and-so did here." We judge skill and imagination based on what qualities we prefer, we don't base what we prefer on some objective skill and imagination.


If it wasn't for the fact that I hate the cheerleader style of post, I'd want to cheer this post. :lol:


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## Nereffid

Eva Yojimbo said:


> *Slight aside here, but I recall the intro to one of my poetry textbooks contrasting the example of Keats's Ode to a Nightingale--generally considered one of the greatest and most perfect poems in the language--with Charles Simic's The Garden of Earthly Delights, that there were people who preferred the latter. I could hazard several guesses as to why, but I also guarantee that there are lovers of poetry out there who think like you who'd almost certainly say about the Keats VS Simic poems what you're saying about Mozart and Dittersdorf.


If you replace the last 4 lines of _Ode to a Nightingale_ with the last 4 lines of _The Garden of Earthly Delights_, *that* is the greatest and most perfect poem.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> *"Understanding" classical music has nothing to do with preferring Mozart to Dittersdorf. Understanding anything has nothing to do with judging it *(understanding it just gives us more factors to judge). Yes, *all the judgments I make are reflective of my own values and tastes. Judging degrees of "skill and imagination" only boils down to reflecting what those values and tastes are. **Any time you speak of "skill and imagination" you're just saying "I like what so-and-so did here." *We judge skill and imagination based on what qualities we prefer,* we don't base what we prefer on some objective skill and imagination. *The notion that one "hears a genius" without the context--meaning those values and tastes--is absurd. Intelligent aliens who knew nothing of human music or psychology would not "hear genius" in Mozart. This is all just a case of the Mind Projection Fallacy at work. *And I guarantee that of the billions of people alive, I could find someone who prefers Dittersdorf to Mozart.**
> 
> Your last paragraph is also a blatant false dichotomy fallacy. There are real perceptual faculties common to human beings, but the ways in which these perceptual factors filter and categorize the objects they encounter can differ dramatically based on numerous factors. And, for the millionth time, no amount of universal subjective agreement would ever make such agreement objective. *We DO live in a universe of "I like chocolate, you like vanilla," and the problem is that some people are utterly convinced that chocolate is objectively better than vanilla and vice versa.*
> 
> *When you hear *insert favorite composer/work here* and think it's genius or skillful or imaginative, it's just your mind projecting those judgments onto the work/composer and thinking them qualities of the work/composer.*


The difference I have with you, Strange Magic, and the rest of the Representatives of Rampant Relativism, is that I don't limit "knowledge" to the measurable and understanding to the "objective." The inner life of man - his soul (with no religious connotations necessary) - is inaccessible to such criteria except indirectly and circumstantially, and neither self-perception nor relationships with others nor morality nor aesthetics - in other words, almost everything peculiarly and gloriously human - can be defined and circumscribed by means of standards applicable only to the material and the quantifiable. These central aspects of human existence are experienced, assessed and valued "subjectively," but not arbitrarily. Your statements, "understanding classical music has nothing to do with preferring Mozart to Dittersdorf," and "understanding anything has nothing to do with judging it," limit the meaning of "understanding" in a way that I don't recognize as describing a human being. Some sort of semiconscious computer, maybe...

To the contrary: my love of art and my preferences in art have _a great deal_ to do with understanding it. And although that understanding can be expressed in insightful and truthful words - many such words are spoken by perceptive lovers of art every day - no words can fully convey the meanings embodied in art, or its quality as art, to anyone who does not himself perceive them. As Mahler and others have said said, if the meaning of music could be conveyed in words, there would be no need for music. In the realm of aesthetic perception, words are, like Zen, a finger pointing at the moon. I can't make anyone see the moon who doesn't know how to look up or open his eyes, and I have no need or desire to. But I know that what I see when I look up is not vanilla ice cream or Strange Magic's bottle of wine. Art does more, and does something of an entirely different order, than give sensuous pleasure or get us drunk. It can transform perception itself, it can make abstract values and phantom intuitions concretely present and real, and it can call out parts of ourselves we didn't even know we possessed. But it can go farther: it can transcend the individual and induct us into the universally human through the skill, the sensitivity, the insight, the imagination of the artist. And those qualities, of art and of its creators, can be perceived and appreciated. That some fail to do so is neither here nor there - with all due respect to Dittersdorf and his fervent admirers.

I'm tired of pointing at the moon. The last sentence in the quote above is one of the silliest things I've ever heard anyone say. In fact, all the statements in boldface are. So I leave you to your ice cream, wine, and bubble bath, or whatever else you consider as intrinsically great, skillful, brilliant, profound, humanly significant, and valuable as Bach, Shakespeare, Vermeer, or Robinson Jeffers (hello SM).


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## Star

I've just come into this one but I really can't see the point of discussing diversity. I thought that was intrinsic in music that we have diverse styles over the centuries. Now whether we all like all of those styles is a different matter altogether. I am all for having diversity in music as long as I am not expected to like all of it or listen to all of it.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> The difference I have with you, Strange Magic, and the rest of ArsMusica's Representatives of Rampant Relativism, is that I don't limit "knowledge" to the measurable and understanding to the "objective." The inner life of man - his soul (with no religious connotations necessary) - is inaccessible to such criteria except indirectly and circumstantially, and neither self-perception nor relationships with others can be defined and circumscribed by means of standards applicable only to the material and the quantifiable. These central aspects of human existence are experienced, assessed and valued "subjectively," but not arbitrarily.


Is anyone objecting to this, or denying it? It's the extension to it - that the experiencing, assessing and valuing leads to the allegedly 'objective' "Mozart is a genius" that is the problem.


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## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> The difference I have with you, Strange Magic, and the rest of the Representatives of Rampant Relativism, is that I don't limit "knowledge" to the measurable and understanding to the "objective." The inner life of man - his soul (with no religious connotations necessary) - is inaccessible to such criteria except indirectly and circumstantially, and neither self-perception nor relationships with others nor morality nor aesthetics - in other words, almost everything peculiarly and gloriously human - can be defined and circumscribed by means of standards applicable only to the material and the quantifiable. These central aspects of human existence are experienced, assessed and valued "subjectively," but not arbitrarily. Your statements, "understanding classical music has nothing to do with preferring Mozart to Dittersdorf," and "understanding anything has nothing to do with judging it," limit the meaning of "understanding" in a way that I don't recognize as describing a human being. Some sort of semiconscious computer, maybe...


I will not "quote" the rest of the above post, though it is a most excellent exposition of its author's position. It is clear from this and parallel posts that people--I certainly include myself--can be, are, profoundly affected by particular human expressions--art. it is also clear that inhuman/nonhuman objects encountered in nature can also arouse strong feelings within observers. I have looked with awe upon an enormous erosion gully in northern Arizona, gigantic trees in a valley in California, a blinding white salt-floored valley, the sea, and the night sky, and experienced powerful emotions. I observe that the erosion gully doubtless triggers differing emotions within the breasts of civil engineers looking for the next reservoir site, and conquistadores looking for a direct route to El Dorado. Paul Bunyan fingers his axe blade as he gazes upon the sequoia.

But these are highly individual, deeply subjective reactions to phenomena that exist--once created--"objectively"--out there; they just are. As individuals with differing backgrounds and expectations, we bring a cargo of aesthetic/emotional overlays to these phenomena and robe them with meaning that they do not intrinsically possess. To ascribe to the objects of art and of nature properties that they do not themselves contain is a form of mysticism that is both quite understandable and quite valuable, and I am as profoundly moved by art and nature as anyone else. But I continue to recognize that others may legitimately loathe what I value (Robinson Jeffers comes to mind, as a poet for decades routinely denounced by legions of his fellow poets), and that is both as it should be and as it actually is.


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## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> Is anyone objecting to this, or denying it? It's the extension to it - that the experiencing, assessing and valuing leads to *the allegedly 'objective' "Mozart is a genius" that is the problem.*


It's a problem for a theory of knowledge that excludes the subjective. Self-perception, relationships, morality, aesthetics - such a theory has to deny that knowledge is possible in any of these most critical and most fundamentally human areas of life.

It's a philosophical option. Believe it if you wish.


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## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> I will not "quote" the rest of the above post, though it is a most excellent exposition of its author's position. It is clear from this and parallel posts that people--I certainly include myself--can be, are, profoundly affected by particular human expressions--art. it is also clear that inhuman/nonhuman objects encountered in nature can also arouse strong feelings within observers. I have looked with awe upon an enormous erosion gully in northern Arizona, gigantic trees in a valley in California, a blinding white salt-floored valley, the sea, and the night sky, and experienced powerful emotions. I observe that the erosion gully doubtless triggers differing emotions within the breasts of civil engineers looking for the next reservoir site, and conquistadores looking for a direct route to El Dorado. Paul Bunyan fingers his axe blade as he gazes upon the sequoia.
> 
> But these are highly individual, deeply subjective reactions to phenomena that exist--once created--"objectively"--out there; they just are. As individuals with differing backgrounds and expectations, we bring a cargo of aesthetic/emotional overlays to these phenomena and robe them with meaning that they do not intrinsically possess. *To ascribe to the objects of art and of nature properties that they do not themselves contain* is a form of mysticism that is both quite understandable and quite valuable, and I am as profoundly moved by art and nature as anyone else. But I continue to recognize that others may legitimately loathe what I value (Robinson Jeffers comes to mind, as a poet for decades routinely denounced by legions of his fellow poets), and that is both as it should be and as it actually is.


I agree completely. But you leave out the possibility of recognizing in works of art properties that they DO actually contain.

Music is not contentless. Its "properties" are not objects in nature, but they are abstractions of things in nature, most particularly human nature. This is not self-evident, but becomes strikingly evident once one has begun to realize it.


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## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> I agree completely. But you leave out the possibility of recognizing in works of art properties that they DO actually contain.
> 
> Music is not contentless. Its "properties" are not objects in nature, but they are abstractions of things in nature, most particularly human nature. This is not self-evident, but becomes strikingly evident once one has begun to realize it.


Nay, I cry; I am falsely accused. I recognize all sorts of properties contained within works of art--symmetry (if present and appropriate), shape, color, size, duration, materials--the list is long--associations (intended or not intended) with other objects or concepts or peoples or whatever. But the values of these things exist only within individual, highly variable human brains.

There is a thread that does run through your many excellent and thought-provoking posts on this matter though, that several times explicitly states that artists of the top rank together--across time and space and cultures--can be relied upon to correctly recognize and then affirm that certain works of art are incontrovertibly "great" or "excellent" or "perfect" or whatever, no matter what anybody else thinks of them. All I can assert is that this can be made to be true only by proper _ex post facto_ selection of data points to match wish to reality. There is otherwise nothing to support your assertion, and much counterevidence to refute it.


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## EdwardBast

Either there are real perceptual faculties common to human beings which respond to real qualities in works of art, giving rise to common perceptions of aesthetic excellence, or we can just trade in all the insights that brilliant, perceptive, sensitive people have brought to their encounters with great art and go with something like "I like vanilla, you like chocolate" - or maybe just "Oh wow!" If that's the universe you think you inhabit, you're welcome to it.



Eva Yojimbo said:


> Your last paragraph is also a blatant false dichotomy fallacy. There are real perceptual faculties common to human beings, but the ways in which these perceptual factors filter and categorize the objects they encounter can differ dramatically based on numerous factors. And, for the millionth time, no amount of universal subjective agreement would ever make such agreement objective. We DO live in a universe of "I like chocolate, you like vanilla," and the problem is that some people are utterly convinced that chocolate is objectively better than vanilla and vice versa.


Where in that paragraph, Eva, do you see Woodduck claiming "such agreement [is] objective?" He seems only to be talking about intersubjective agreement where such agreement is based on objective properties of the aesthetic object. To choose an imaginary example: In a passage where _the inversion of an earlier motive is transferred to the bass line and harmonized by the Neapolitan chord, a move many experts and connoisseurs over the ages have applauded as brilliant_, there are indeed real qualities (I would have said properties, but …), of the artwork (the choice of harmony, the motivic connection and its transformation, etc.) perceived by real perceptual faculties of listeners that give rise to common perceptions of brilliance. There is nothing controversial about this at all. Of course there are going to be people who don't get it, just as there are possibly a few people who prefer Dittersdorf over Mozart. We of the intersubjective agreement will pity them based on our common perception of real properties of the music. Who cares if a few don't understand what we all claim to understand or if others claim our understanding is not objective? Not us. We are too busy enjoying the music and worrying about that poor SOB all alone listening to Dittersdorf.


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## Phil loves classical

This is an interesting discussion, and I'll offer my little spiel. In Postmodern philosophy is there is no objective reality. Going back to the old example, Bieber is as good as Beethoven. I think the limitation in this outlook is there is nothing prescriptive in how they are equal other than basic rejection of first principles. I think it is the right assumption that better music has more design, involving harmonic organization, rhythm, symmetry, balance, etc. regardless of taste. Otherwise there is no argument for better, a random piece of music is as good as Beethoven's. So the Postmodernist must not say that Beethoven is not better than Bieber (which is outside of his scope, but which can easily be proven with basic principles), but that there is no better. Unless one can make the argument random is better or equal to designed, then you can't deny which is better.

There is also the idea that what is better is all in the listener. If the listener is looking for what is better, again, there is no doubt. There is no way a competent listener could hear Bieber's music as better designed than Beethoven's. This is a simple example, but it becomes complicated when more factors come in and in different proportions, such as Mozart vs. Beethoven, Bach vs. Stravinsky.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> It's a problem for a theory of knowledge that excludes the subjective. Self-perception, relationships, morality, aesthetics - such a theory has to deny that knowledge is possible in any of these most critical and most fundamentally human areas of life.
> 
> It's a philosophical option. Believe it if you wish.


Sorry Woodduck - I'm not sure I follow.



Strange Magic said:


> But the values of these things exist only within individual, highly variable human brains.


Well, almost, I'd say. It's not what the content is that matters as much as the value we choose to attach to that content.

Which is better: _Jeux _or _Arabesque No 1?_


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## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> Which is better: _Jeux _or _Arabesque No 1?_


1. I don't know.
2. I don't care.
3. Better in what way?

Why do people want to bring this down to "what's better"? Even in cases where we can confidently say that one work, or one composer, is superior to another, of what use is that knowledge? My interest is in knowing what music can communicate, in knowing how it communicates, and in refining my ability to "read" the "language" a given work utilizes in doing so. In this discussion, I'm asserting that this is something we can actually do, and that our understanding of what music actually contains has a not-completely-arbitrary relationship to how we respond to it and value it.


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## janxharris

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Also, I really want to drive this important point home: no amount of agreement about subjective feelings/perceptions can make those feelings/perceptions objective. If you look at the case of the Checkerboard Illusion, all humans with working vision will see squares A and B as being different colors. The universal agreement about this perception does not make squares A and B different colors, as indeed they are not, and provably so. This optical illusion goes to show how easily human minds fallaciously project their perceptions onto reality. When you hear *insert favorite composer/work here* and think it's genius or skillful or imaginative, it's just your mind projecting those judgments onto the work/composer and thinking them qualities of the work/composer rather than being what they are: subjective judgments of other actually existing objective qualities.


Hmm... I'm finding it hard to accept that checkerboard example.


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## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> This is an interesting discussion, and I'll offer my little spiel. In Postmodern philosophy is there is no objective reality. Going back to the old example, Bieber is as good as Beethoven. I think the limitation in this outlook is there is nothing prescriptive in how they are equal other than basic rejection of first principles. I think it is the right assumption that better music has more design, involving harmonic organization, rhythm, symmetry, balance, etc. regardless of taste. Otherwise there is no argument for better, a random piece of music is as good as Beethoven's. So the Postmodernist must not say that Beethoven is not better than Bieber (which is outside of his scope, but which can easily be proven with basic principles), but that there is no better. Unless one can make the argument random is better or equal to designed, then you can't deny which is better.


There are people here who are obliged by the logic of their premises to claim that Beethoven and Bieber are musical equals. Presumably they find 4'33" as great a piece of music (or of something) as the B-minor Mass - except that neither is great, since greatness is a meaningless term and should be replaced with "tasty."


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> 1. I don't know.
> 2. I don't care.
> 3. Better in what way?
> 
> Why do people want to bring this down to "what's better"? Even in cases where we can confidently say that one work, or one composer, is superior to another, of what use is that knowledge? My interest is in knowing what music can communicate, in knowing how it communicates, and in refining my ability to "read" the "language" a given work utilizes in doing so. In this discussion, I'm asserting that this is something we can actually do, and that our understanding of what music actually contains has a not-completely-arbitrary relationship to how we respond to it and value it.


And yet you post thus:



> It's the difference that makes it possible to hear and understand that _Tristan und Isolde_ is a stupendous work while _Countess Maritza_ is not, while disliking the former and liking the latter. I enjoy both thoroughly, but I know which one is the greater achievement.


(so establishing which is better has some importance for you)

and thus:



> The difference I have with you, Strange Magic, and the rest of the Representatives of Rampant Relativism


(so you're not a relativist)

and thus:



> NOBODY thinks Dittersdorf is as good as Mozart. What ivory tower are you living in?


(that whole post reeked of exasperation that we relativists just don't get it, even though you now say who cares, it's not important despite having spent some considerable time defending it!)


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## janxharris

Ok - I just took a screen shot of the checkerboard and used a photo editor to paint over the whole image leaving just the two squares in question.

They are the same colour. Quite astonishing.


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## EdwardBast

Phil loves classical said:


> This is an interesting discussion, and I'll offer my little spiel. In Postmodern philosophy is there is no objective reality. Going back to the old example, Bieber is as good as Beethoven. *I think the limitation in this outlook is there is nothing prescriptive in how they are equal other than basic rejection of first principles. I think it is the right assumption that better music has more design, involving harmonic organization, rhythm, symmetry, balance, etc. regardless of taste. Otherwise there is no argument for better, a random piece of music is as good as Beethoven's.* So the Postmodernist must not say that Beethoven is not better than Bieber (which is outside of his scope, but which can easily be proven with basic principles), but that there is no better. Unless one can make the argument random is better or equal to designed, then you can't deny which is better.
> 
> There is also the idea that what is better is all in the listener. If the listener is looking for what is better, again, there is no doubt. *There is no way a competent listener could hear Bieber's music as better designed than Beethoven's.* This is a simple example, but it becomes complicated when more factors come in and in different proportions, such as Mozart vs. Beethoven, Bach vs. Stravinsky.


Re first bold passage:
I think this is asking the wrong questions. To me, asking if Bieber is better than Beethoven is like asking if a hammer is better than a saw. Depends on what one is hoping to do with it (or, to borrow a Robert Frippism, whether one is listening with ones brains or ones feet ) If one asks which is better at spinning out long term thematic processes, exploiting the ambiguity of diminished seventh chords, or balancing subtle tonal tensions over long time spans, the answer is going to be Beethoven because his music does these things and Bieber's doesn't. Or, one could ask more general questions, like: Which is better at composing large-scale instrumental structures? Once again, the answer is obvious and objective, since one does and the other doesn't.

Re second bold passage:
A competent listener might well say Bieber's music is better designed for certain forms of dancing. Once again, ask specific questions and the answers are easy.


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## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> And yet you post thus:
> 
> "It's the difference that makes it possible to hear and understand that Tristan und Isolde is a stupendous work while Countess Maritza is not, while disliking the former and liking the latter. I enjoy both thoroughly, but I know which one is the greater achievement."
> 
> (that whole post reeked of exasperation that we relativists just don't get it, even though you now say who cares, it's not important despite having spent some considerable time defending it!)


You mistake my purpose in comparing things. My point is not that ranking is important, but that WE CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE BECAUSE THERE _IS_ A DIFFERENCE WHICH HUMANS CAN UNDERSTAND. Obviously, we compare things all the time, but as a means to an end. We have to compare in order to form any concepts about the world at all, and to have a context for judging things. That doesn't mean that comparisons and rankings are important for their own sake, and that we need to be able to say whether Beethoven's 3rd or 5th is a "better" symphony.


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## Woodduck

EdwardBast said:


> Re first bold passage:
> I think this is asking the wrong questions. To me, asking if Bieber is better than Beethoven is like asking if a hammer is better than a saw. Depends on what one is hoping to do with it (or, to borrow a Robert Frippism, whether one is listening with ones brains or ones feet ) If one asks which is better at spinning out long term thematic processes, exploiting the ambiguity of diminished seventh chords, or balancing subtle tonal tensions over long time spans, the answer is going to be Beethoven because his music does these things and Bieber's doesn't. Or, one could ask more general questions, like: Which is better at composing large-scale instrumental structures? Once again, the answer is obvious and objective, since one does and the other doesn't.
> 
> Re second bold passage:
> A competent listener might well say Bieber's music is better designed for certain forms of dancing. Once again, ask specific questions and the answers are easy.


We might also continue to enumerate and conclude that Beethoven is better than Bieber at doing almost anything that music can do. The major exception might be putting stars in the eyes of adolescent girls.


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## janxharris

The most astonishing illusion I have yet seen.


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## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> We might also continue to enumerate and conclude that Beethoven is better than Bieber at doing almost anything that music can do.


Music can make people want to dance.
Music can make people anxious to spend their money to hear it.
Music can fill huge halls or even stadiums without depending on the charity of the rich (or government subsidies).
In short, music can appeal to vast swathes of the population, not just some portion of the one percent.

I'll let you do the tally…


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## janxharris

Maybe Beethoven did do a Bieber...when he wrote the hugely successful _Wellington's Victory_.

And maybe Bieber's music will suffer the same fate...


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## Blancrocher

janxharris said:


> Maybe Beethoven did do a Bieber...when he wrote the hugely successful _Wellington's Victory_.
> 
> And maybe Bieber's music will suffer the same fate...


I doubt it...it takes a lot of talent to write a work that is mentioned hundreds of years later, not just in one's own time, as the epitome of crap.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> You mistake my purpose in comparing things. My point is not that ranking is important, but that WE CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE BECAUSE THERE _IS_ A DIFFERENCE WHICH HUMANS CAN UNDERSTAND. Obviously, we compare things all the time, but as a means to an end. We have to compare in order to form any concepts about the world at all, and to have a context for judging things. That doesn't mean that comparisons and rankings are important for their own sake, and that we need to be able to say whether Beethoven's 3rd or 5th is a "better" symphony.


I didn't mention ranking. My point is that you believe there is a valuable purpose in comparing (whether I mistake your purpose is irrelevant) and saying which is better, not least because you believe in extolling the virtues of the better composers.


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## KenOC

janxharris said:


> Maybe Beethoven did do a Bieber...when he wrote the hugely successful _Wellington's Victory_.
> 
> And maybe Bieber's music will suffer the same fate...


Some of this stuff has staying power. Nielsen, in its 2017 year-end report, lists the Beatles as the third highest-grossing group for the year in the Rock genre. They broke up almost 50 years ago!


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## Strange Magic

> EdwardBast: Who cares if a few don't understand what we all claim to understand or if others claim our understanding is not objective? Not us. We are too busy enjoying the music and worrying about that poor SOB all alone listening to Dittersdorf.



Yes, there are musics that are better than others--my kind of people all agree that music A is better than music B. I know that your kind of people prefer B to A. Some crazy people like music C. But they, like the B people, are just plain wrong because A is best. My people all say so; we all agree. Matter settled. I like this sort of argumentation and proof.


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## Dim7

Blancrocher said:


> janxharris said:
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe Beethoven did do a Bieber...when he wrote the hugely successful Wellington's Victory.
> 
> And maybe Bieber's music will suffer the same fate...
> 
> 
> 
> I doubt it...it takes a lot of talent to write a work that is mentioned hundreds of years later, not just in one's own time, as the epitome of crap.
Click to expand...

Wellington's Victory gets the attention it gets as a bad work because it was written by somebody who's other music had a lasting impact and a timeless quality. This is a more general problem really: isn't it likely that there are hundreds or even thousands of works that are just as awful as Wellington's Victory but don't receive the negative attention they deserve because they were written by obscure mediocre composers? Digging into catalogues of talentless and forgettable artists just to find that extraordinary piece of trash may not sound like a fun way spend one's time, but perhaps for the sake of justice it is a sacrifice some of us should consider making.


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## Blancrocher

Dim7 said:


> Wellington's Victory gets the attention it gets as a bad work because it was written by somebody who's other music had a lasting impact and a timeless quality. This is a more general problem really: isn't it likely that there are hundreds or even thousands of works that are just as awful as Wellington's Victory but don't receive the negative attention they deserve because they were written by obscure mediocre composers? Digging into catalogues of talentless and forgettable artists just to find that extraordinary piece of trash may not sound like a fun way spend one's time, but perhaps for the sake of justice it is a sacrifice some of us should consider making.


Yes, I agree absolutely. In fact, I could probably compose a piece of music right now that's worse than anything Beethoven, or perhaps even Bieber, ever composed, though I doubt everyone would admit its inferiority.

p.s. More seriously, I sometimes wonder about the "humor" of major artists like Mozart, Beethoven, or ... Shostakovich. Appreciating any given piece of music may sometimes require being sensitive to passages that are deliberately uninspired. This would justify some of that digging into catalogs, maybe.


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## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> Music can make people want to dance.
> Music can make people anxious to spend their money to hear it.
> Music can fill huge halls or even stadiums without depending on the charity of the rich (or government subsidies).
> In short, music can appeal to vast swathes of the population, not just some portion of the one percent.
> 
> I'll let you do the tally…


Donald Trump also appeals to vast swathes of the population. Those swathes prefer Bieber to Beethoven by a large margin, I'm sure.

What were we talking about now?


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## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> I didn't mention ranking. My point is that you believe there is a valuable purpose in comparing (whether I mistake your purpose is irrelevant) and saying which is better, not least because you believe in extolling the virtues of the better composers.


Sorry, I just can't see the significance of this.


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## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> Donald Trump also appeals to vast swathes of the population. Those swathes prefer Bieber to Beethoven by a large margin, I'm sure.
> 
> What were we talking about now?


I see intellectual argument is failing you... :lol:


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## KenOC

Dim7 said:


> Wellington's Victory gets the attention it gets as a bad work because it was written by somebody who's other music had a lasting impact and a timeless quality. This is a more general problem really: isn't it likely that there are hundreds or even thousands of works that are just as awful as Wellington's Victory but don't receive the negative attention they deserve because they were written by obscure mediocre composers? Digging into catalogues of talentless and forgettable artists just to find that extraordinary piece of trash may not sound like a fun way spend one's time, but perhaps for the sake of justice it is a sacrifice some of us should consider making.


Here's an interesting snippet from the AMZ review of the concert that premiered both Wellington's Victory and the 7th Symphony. Note particularly the last sentence.

"If one wanted to express the battle in music, one would have to do it in the way that it is here. Once immersed into the idea, one is pleasantly surprised at the wealth of ideas and at the genial application of the means of art for every purpose. The effect, nay, even the very realistic impression, is quite extraordinary. One can say without hesitation that there is nothing in the realm of descriptive music that is its equal. However, that the composer's rich, wonderful mind turned to composing such a work finds its justification-if any is needed-in the fact that Hr. Mälzel, Hr. v. B.s friend, is about to embark on a journey to London, for which purpose this work has been destined. To that end, the most beloved national songs of the British-Rule Britannia, Marlborough and God save the King-have been incorporated with great ingenuity, partly before the battle and partly after it. We hardly need to add that laymen were completely amazed at this work and did not know what had happened to them, while on the other hand connoisseurs preferred the preceding symphony as a more noble work of art by far."


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## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> I see intellectual argument is failing you... :lol:


Just trying to fit in here. Just for a moment, to see how it feels.


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## Strange Magic

It cannot be demonstrated that one wine is better than another; all we can show is that more people of a certain socioeconomic or educational or other defined group prefer it. Wine "experts" like it, and tell us that it is "the best", objectively the best--everything a great wine should be, according to those who have tried a lot of wines and find they prefer one to another. Same with ice cream. Same with art; music.

I realize that the desire to reinforce one's liking of a certain piece of art by an assurance that it has some intrinsic superiority that is independent of one's own bias is very tempting indeed--I sometimes tell myself that everybody ought to recognize the things I like are masterpieces; at least everybody like me should think so.

But in reality, all we can fall back on with any real certainty is that people like and dislike, and list and rank, and rationalize and explain their preferences in art and music just as in wine and ice cream, without any demonstrable extrinsic, measurable qualities. And we must learn to be content with enjoying what we enjoy reliant upon the validity and self-justification of our own taste.


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## EdwardBast

Strange Magic said:


> Yes, there are musics that are better than others--my kind of people all agree that music A is better than music B. I know that your kind of people prefer B to A. Some crazy people like music C. But they, like the B people, are just plain wrong because A is best. My people all say so; we all agree. Matter settled. I like this sort of argumentation and proof.


You seem to have missed the point of my post, which was to clarify the distinction between intersubjective consensus and objective aesthetic value and to show that a statement by Woodduck about the first had been mistaken for a statement about the second (which seems to be what you are doing here ). I didn't claim anything was settled or that anyone was wrong or that anything was objectively better than anything else. What I claimed is that a consensus of people who know things about music prefer Mozart over Dittersdorf, which is in fact true, and that this preference is informed by agreement about objective properties of musical works and their significance.


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## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> It cannot be demonstrated that one wine is better than another; all we can show is that more people of a certain socioeconomic or educational or other defined group prefer it. Wine "experts" like it, and tell us that it is "the best", objectively the best--everything a great wine should be, according to those who have tried a lot of wines and find they prefer one to another. Same with ice cream. Same with art; music.
> 
> I realize that the desire to reinforce one's liking of a certain piece of art by an assurance that it has some intrinsic superiority that is independent of one's own bias is very tempting indeed--I sometimes tell myself that everybody ought to recognize the things I like are masterpieces; at least everybody like me should think so.
> 
> But *in reality, all we can fall back on with any real certainty is that people like and dislike, and list and rank, and rationalize and explain their preferences in art and music just as in wine and ice cream, without any demonstrable extrinsic, measurable qualities.* And we must learn to be content with enjoying what we enjoy reliant upon the validity and self-justification of our own taste.


Your gastronomical analogy was off even the first time. I would never even think to rationalize or explain my taste in wine or ice cream, and I would suppose that most thoughtful, intelligent people would recognize that the very idea of doing so is absurd. By contrast, people have a sense that art is in fundamental ways different from food, and they regularly attempt, more crudely or more precisely, to understand (not necessarily "rationalize") their aesthetic perceptions and valuations by referring, properly, to characteristics of both the art and themselves. People who can do this knowledgeably and insightfully, and know that they can, won't be impressed by an insistence on quantifiability as a necessary criterion of knowledge.

"How much do you love me? No, not so fast! What's your unit of measurement? Is love measured by weight, length, or temperature? Sorry, but If you can't measure it, then your so-called love is no different than your taste for Hostess Twinkies. And how much do you like Hostess Twinkies anyway? Never mind. You don't love me. Go to hell."

"So why do you say Joanne is a good person? Good by what standard? How do you measure goodness? Is that part of the metric system? I think you only call her good because you like her, the same way you like spinach and acai berry smoothies. You don't? OK, so what food do you like? Me, I think Joanne is a b****. And never mind why. There is no why."

"I hope Kim Jong-Un doesn't blow up South Korea. Personally, I don't care for people getting blown up. I don't care for jalapeno peppers either. Neither one feels good. To me, I mean. I know others feel differently."

"Beethoven's 9th? Crap! King Lear? Garbage! Yummy Yummy Yummy, I've Got Love in my Tummy? Now you're talking!"


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## Strange Magic

There is absolutely nothing wrong with equating taste in wine and ice cream with art and music. You purport not to see the analogies, and I believe you. Yet they are there. Your invoking thoughtful, intelligent people to find the analogy absurd is itself thin gruel indeed--are we back to the era of Duns Scotus and Aquinas? OK, there are thoughtful, intelligent people who agree with my perspective; two can play that game. And the efforts of people to understand their own preferences in art are perhaps different in intensity (maybe) but not in kind from similar efforts to rationalize their aesthetic (gustatory) perceptions and valuations--while no oenophile myself, I'm told that it can become a compelling, "consuming" focus. Let's drink to that!


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## DaveM

Woodduck said:


> "So why do you say Joanne is a good person? Good by what standard? How do you measure goodness? Is that part of the metric system? I think you only call her good because you like her, the same way you like spinach and acai berry smoothies. You don't? OK, so what food do you like? Me, I think Joanne is a b****. And never mind why. There is no why."


Joanne gave away all her worldly goods to the poor, donated a kidney to someone with renal failure and now works with the sick and dying in a hospice. She's a good person. Don't you feel bad calling her a b****?


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## Strange Magic

IN the first chapter of Kenneth Clark's wonderful book _Civilisation_ that was the print version of his memorable TV series on art, Clark offers a photo of the sculpture The Apollo of the Belvedere. He then writes:"...for four hundred years after it was discovered the Apollo was the most admired piece of sculpture in the world. It was Napoleon's greatest boast to have looted it from the Vatican. Now it is completely forgotten except by the guides of coach parties, who have become the only surviving transmitters of traditional culture."


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## Eva Yojimbo

As MacLeod and Strange Magic have both eloquently addressed your opening paragraph, and because I think your middle paragraph is mostly a poetic, rhapsodic waxing about the power and value you (and I imagine most of us here) see in art--reminds me of much of my own romantic notions in my teens and early 20s--but which I don't think is terribly relevant to our actual disagreement, allow me to take on this:



Woodduck said:


> I'm tired of pointing at the moon.


Let me use your own analogy to try to elucidate what our actually disagreement is.

When you point to the moon, nobody is denying that it's the moon. Everyone with eyes sees it, everyone knows what it's called and agrees upon that definition. Rather, what's happening is you're pointing and saying "That's a WONDERFUL moon!" and we're saying "the wonderfulness isn't in the moon, it's in your mind; it's your subjective judgment of an objectively existing thing." I may be completely ignorant about the moon beyond its existence. You may know every detail about the moon there is to know. But this gap in factual knowledge of an object has nothing to do with thinking it's wonderful or not, or wonderfulness being a property of the moon. Rather, if one thinks something is wonderful, they're probably more inclined to learn about it as their feeling of wonder often fuels a curiosity for knowledge. You may even do research on why, as humans, we're often inclined to find the moon wonderful, but even understanding the reason for this reaction does not make the reaction an objective property of the moon. Meanwhile, there are people that find the sun wonderful, or landscapes, or animals, or humans, or anything else that people are capable of forming judgments on. There are people that find all of them wonderful, and probably people that find none of them wonderful, and people that find some of them wonderful and not others. That's down to the difference in subjectivities, which is mediated by the context of socio-cultural-historical values, evolutionary psychology, and individual tastes. There's no point in thinking "wonderfulness" is a property of these objects rather than the minds that are observing them, and if it's wholly a property of the minds observing them, there's no reason to speak of "wonderfulness" without the context of those minds.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> It's a problem for a theory of knowledge that excludes the subjective. Self-perception, relationships, morality, aesthetics - such a theory has to deny that knowledge is possible in any of these most critical and most fundamentally human areas of life.
> 
> It's a philosophical option. Believe it if you wish.


What difference do you see between "subjective knowledge" and "knowledge about the subject?" EG, if one thinks Sofia Vergara is beautiful, does that "subjective knowledge" say anything about Sofia Vergara or only something about what the subject thinks about her? And if this "knowledge" is saying something about Sofia Vergara, what is it, and why can't everyone "know" the same thing?


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## Eva Yojimbo

EdwardBast said:


> Either there are real perceptual faculties common to human beings which respond to real qualities in works of art, giving rise to common perceptions of aesthetic excellence, or we can just trade in all the insights that brilliant, perceptive, sensitive people have brought to their encounters with great art and go with something like "I like vanilla, you like chocolate" - or maybe just "Oh wow!" If that's the universe you think you inhabit, you're welcome to it.
> 
> Where in that paragraph, Eva, do you see Woodduck claiming "such agreement [is] objective?" He seems only to be talking about intersubjective agreement where such agreement is based on objective properties of the aesthetic object. To choose an imaginary example: In a passage where _the inversion of an earlier motive is transferred to the bass line and harmonized by the Neapolitan chord, a move many experts and connoisseurs over the ages have applauded as brilliant_, there are indeed real qualities (I would have said properties, but …), of the artwork (the choice of harmony, the motivic connection and its transformation, etc.) perceived by real perceptual faculties of listeners that give rise to common perceptions of brilliance. There is nothing controversial about this at all. Of course there are going to be people who don't get it, just as there are possibly a few people who prefer Dittersdorf over Mozart. We of the intersubjective agreement will pity them based on our common perception of real properties of the music. Who cares if a few don't understand what we all claim to understand or if others claim our understanding is not objective? Not us. We are too busy enjoying the music and worrying about that poor SOB all alone listening to Dittersdorf.


The problem is as I said in another post: Woodduck has made posts that seem to acknowledge that greatness is a subjective judgment, going so far as to say that all judgments are context dependent, but then he makes posts talking about greatness/brilliance as if it's an inherent properties of objects that we directly perceive without reference to this context dependence. So when he says "giving rise to common perceptions of aesthetic excellence," it seems like he's making the argument that this "common perception" is some grounds for thinking that people are directly perceiving aesthetic excellence as opposed to simply sharing a certain subjectivity that happens to (using his later comment) think vanilla is great. That's why it's a false dichotomy; because people having an "intersubjective agreement" ARE of the "thinks vanilla is great/better" variety.

In terms of how you phrase it, there's nothing controversial about that at all until one starts trying to argue that one is directly perceiving the brilliance/greatness in the object as opposed to simply having a subjectivity that finds certain objective properties brilliant/great. I of the "intersubjective agreement" only pity people to the extent that they don't get to experience my feelings when I experience art that I love; but even within music I would pity everyone here that doesn't feel what I feel when listening to my favorite pop, heavy metal, or jazz music; just as when I'm on a board for pop music I pity most of them for not experiencing classical the way I do. But I do not pity them for a lack of knowledge of the objects, nor think that my perceptive faculties are better, nor that my tastes/standards are better, nor that I'm directly perceiving excellence/greatness in any of the music I happen to love that others don't. If one isn't doing any of that then we have no problem and no disagreement.


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## Eva Yojimbo

janxharris said:


> Hmm... I'm finding it hard to accept that checkerboard example.





janxharris said:


> Ok - I just took a screen shot of the checkerboard and used a photo editor to paint over the whole image leaving just the two squares in question.
> 
> They are the same colour. Quite astonishing.


That page gives you numerous ways to confirm it's claim; painting over the other squares is one--I actually just arranged my hands to block out the other squares so I was only seeing the two in question. I often use this example to prove how the human mind automatically equates our perceptions with reality. This carries over into things that exist entirely in our mind and nowhere in reality at all. Aesthetic values are among those things.

The more one studies the human mind and how it works, the less one is inclined to immediately trust any of its perceptions and feelings. I think one can take this too far--the postmodernist theories denying the existence of objectivity, truth, or scientific facts altogether; all strains of solipsism, etc.--but anyone remotely familiar with cognitive science would hold "skepticism" as their primary reaction to the mind's intuitive and instinctual beliefs.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Strange Magic said:


> It cannot be demonstrated that one wine is better than another; all we can show is that more people of a certain socioeconomic or educational or other defined group prefer it. Wine "experts" like it, and tell us that it is "the best", objectively the best--everything a great wine should be, according to those who have tried a lot of wines and find they prefer one to another.


People can't tell the difference between expensive and cheap wines when they don't know which they're drinking, and if you add flavorless "white" coloring to red wine (or red to white), people will describe the wine in the language they use for wine of the other color: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiebell/2012/07/09/is-there-really-a-taste-difference-between-cheap-and-expensive-wines/#16d717a93ae2

Audiophiles are the same way. Every audio engineer knows that cables have no sound, that DACs and Amps are perceptually identical (their measurable differences are way outside the realm of human hearing) as long as the amps are operating in their linear range; yet audiophiles spends thousands, even tens of thousands, on exotic cables, DACs, and Amps that presumably have supernatural powers. Never mind that test after test has shown people cannot perceive differences in these components in blind testing. To audiophiles, such tests only reveal the limits of scientific testing; they just KNOW when they hear a difference between DACs.

See my post above about being skeptical the more one learns about humanity's cognitive/perceptual faculties.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> What difference do you see between "subjective knowledge" and "knowledge about the subject?" EG, if one thinks Sofia Vergara is beautiful, does that "subjective knowledge" say anything about Sofia Vergara or only something about what the subject thinks about her? And if this "knowledge" is saying something about Sofia Vergara, what is it, and why can't everyone "know" the same thing?


The statement "Sofia is beautiful" may or may not refer to any characteristic of Sofia. As an unqualified judgment it's really useless except as a suggestion that we look at Sofia, which might turn out to be a pleasant experience or not. Such statements are meaningless in appraising works of art. "Beautiful" is potentially a useful word, but it's usually nothing more than a casual expression of pleasure, and I would never use it in serious discussion without saying what I meant by it. The more specific I can be about what qualities I'm speaking of, the more likely that other people will "know the same thing." If I say to another musician that a work of Mendelssohn is "beautifully constructed," or to an art connoisseur that a painting by Grant Wood is "beautifully composed," they will nod their assent because they "know the same thing." We could then go on, if we wished, to analyze the beauty which we perceived.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> The problem is as I said in another post: Woodduck has made posts that seem to acknowledge that greatness is a subjective judgment, going so far as to say that all judgments are context dependent, but then he makes posts talking about greatness/brilliance as if it's an inherent properties of objects that we directly perceive without reference to this context dependence.


You are mistaken.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Phil loves classical said:


> This is an interesting discussion, and I'll offer my little spiel. In Postmodern philosophy is there is no objective reality. Going back to the old example, Bieber is as good as Beethoven. I think the limitation in this outlook is there is nothing prescriptive in how they are equal other than basic rejection of first principles. I think it is the right assumption that better music has more design, involving harmonic organization, rhythm, symmetry, balance, etc. regardless of taste. Otherwise there is no argument for better, a random piece of music is as good as Beethoven's. So the Postmodernist must not say that Beethoven is not better than Bieber (which is outside of his scope, but which can easily be proven with basic principles), but that there is no better. Unless one can make the argument random is better or equal to designed, then you can't deny which is better.
> 
> There is also the idea that what is better is all in the listener. If the listener is looking for what is better, again, there is no doubt. There is no way a competent listener could hear Bieber's music as better designed than Beethoven's. This is a simple example, but it becomes complicated when more factors come in and in different proportions, such as Mozart vs. Beethoven, Bach vs. Stravinsky.


There being no objective reality is only a belief among certain postmodernists who have gone as far as solipsism. Postmodernists of the softer variety would be more inclined to say that if there's an objective reality we don't have access to it and can't directly know it, not that it doesn't exist at all. Also, this was already a notion among the Modernists, who saw their insular worlds broadening to such a degree that, to quote Ezra Pound, they couldn't make it cohere.

As for your musical points: what's better about more design? And by "better" I mean something other than "people think that it's better." If more design is the criteria, then most pop music is far more designed than any improvisatory jazz or aleatory classical. I have no problem saying that Beethoven is not better than Bieber unless we specify what values and criteria that we're using to judge them. If one specifies that criteria, then we can comparatively judge because then we're looking for/comparing objective properties; but the criteria by which we use to judge ("more design," eg) is absolutely a subjective value. A listener could absolutely hear Bieber's music as "better designed" if their criteria for "better designed" was such that they found those properties more in Beieber. "Better designed" to them could just be (as others have said) the ability to dance to it, or maybe just the ability to craft a catchy vocal hook--two things Beethoven wasn't especially good at.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> As MacLeod and Strange Magic have both eloquently addressed your opening paragraph, and because I think your middle paragraph is mostly a poetic, rhapsodic waxing about the power and value you (and I imagine most of us here) see in art--reminds me of much of my own romantic notions in my teens and early 20s--but which I don't think is terribly relevant to our actual disagreement, allow me to take on this:
> 
> Let me use your own analogy to try to elucidate what our actually disagreement is.
> 
> When you point to the moon, nobody is denying that it's the moon. Everyone with eyes sees it, everyone knows what it's called and agrees upon that definition. Rather, what's happening is you're pointing and saying "That's a WONDERFUL moon!" and we're saying "the wonderfulness isn't in the moon, it's in your mind; it's your subjective judgment of an objectively existing thing." I may be completely ignorant about the moon beyond its existence. You may know every detail about the moon there is to know. But this gap in factual knowledge of an object has nothing to do with thinking it's wonderful or not, or wonderfulness being a property of the moon. Rather, if one thinks something is wonderful, they're probably more inclined to learn about it as their feeling of wonder often fuels a curiosity for knowledge. You may even do research on why, as humans, we're often inclined to find the moon wonderful, but even understanding the reason for this reaction does not make the reaction an objective property of the moon. Meanwhile, there are people that find the sun wonderful, or landscapes, or animals, or humans, or anything else that people are capable of forming judgments on. There are people that find all of them wonderful, and probably people that find none of them wonderful, and people that find some of them wonderful and not others. That's down to the difference in subjectivities, which is mediated by the context of socio-cultural-historical values, evolutionary psychology, and individual tastes. There's no point in thinking "wonderfulness" is a property of these objects rather than the minds that are observing them, and if it's wholly a property of the minds observing them, there's no reason to speak of "wonderfulness" without the context of those minds.


Good heavens! "Pointing to the moon" is a poetic analogy. I'm not talking about the literal moon that "everyone with eyes" sees. Are you not familiar with the origin of the expression in Zen literature? The moon I'm speaking of is one that nearly everyone could see if they knew how to look. I'm not going to call it "wonderful"; that's an even worse abuse of language than the conceptually empty "beautiful" I just talked about in the post above.

We can't have a conversation if you keep attributing things to me that I haven't said and don't mean.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> As for your musical points: what's better about more design? And by "better" I mean something other than "people think that it's better." If more design is the criteria, then most pop music is far more designed than any improvisatory jazz or aleatory classical. *I have no problem saying that Beethoven is not better than Bieber unless we specify what values and criteria that we're using to judge them.* If one specifies that criteria, then we can comparatively judge because then we're looking for/comparing objective properties; but *the criteria by which we use to judge ("more design," eg) is absolutely a subjective value. *A listener could absolutely hear Bieber's music as "better designed" if their criteria for "better designed" was such that they found those properties more in Beieber. "Better designed" to them could just be (as others have said) the ability to dance to it, or maybe just the ability to craft a catchy vocal hook--two things Beethoven wasn't especially good at.


You're asking for specifics here - and yet you just handed me generalities like "beautiful" and "wonderful" and asked me to account for them!


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## Phil loves classical

EdwardBast said:


> Re first bold passage:
> I think this is asking the wrong questions. To me, asking if Bieber is better than Beethoven is like asking if a hammer is better than a saw. Depends on what one is hoping to do with it (or, to borrow a Robert Frippism, whether one is listening with ones brains or ones feet ) If one asks which is better at spinning out long term thematic processes, exploiting the ambiguity of diminished seventh chords, or balancing subtle tonal tensions over long time spans, the answer is going to be Beethoven because his music does these things and Bieber's doesn't. Or, one could ask more general questions, like: Which is better at composing large-scale instrumental structures? Once again, the answer is obvious and objective, since one does and the other doesn't.
> 
> Re second bold passage:
> A competent listener might well say Bieber's music is better designed for certain forms of dancing. Once again, ask specific questions and the answers are easy.


I think this is where I see a lot of people get mixed up on. When people say Bieber, Katy Perry or some other current pop star sucks, they are referring (maybe instinctively) to artistic quality, or quality of design, but the same people may say Mozart or so and so is not great because they are not moved by their music, or not original, and say Yanni, Ornette Coleman, Captain Beefheart or someone is better, their stance shifted, without their knowledge, or more accurately due to their lack of knowledge, or lack of precise reasoning. They take some sort of contradictory middle ground. Their instincts tell them there is no way Bieber can be better than Beethoven, but relying on their instincts they fail to find objective criteria, or do an objective comparison.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> The statement "Sofia is beautiful" may or may not refer to any characteristic of Sofia. As an unqualified judgment it's really useless except as a suggestion that we look at Sofia, which might turn out to be a pleasant experience or not. Such statements are meaningless in appraising works of art. "Beautiful" is potentially a useful word, but it's usually nothing more than a casual expression of pleasure, and I would never use it in serious discussion without saying what I meant by it. The more specific I can be about what qualities I'm speaking of, the more likely that other people will "know the same thing." If I say to another musician that a work of Mendelssohn is "beautifully constructed," or to an art connoisseur that a painting by Grant Wood is "beautifully composed," they will nod their assent because they "know the same thing." We could then go on, if we wished, to analyze the beauty which we perceived.


I think the problem you're having is that you can't seem to disconnect the judgment of qualities from the qualities themselves. Why does it not make more sense to say that Mendelssohn, or Sofia, or Grant Wood, has properties that some people find beautiful, that those properties exist in the person/work, the judgment of beauty exists only in the minds of the observer and have no validity, rightness, or value outside those minds?

Yes, if you're talking to a like-minded individual it can be a convenient shorthand to simply say "X is beautiful" if you know you both share similar values about beauty. The mistake is only made when you encounter someone who thinks differently and think that you "know" something they don't above and beyond what you happen to think and value.



Woodduck said:


> You are mistaken.


You said here: "The difference between Beethoven and McGonagall is that Beethoven's work is great and he knew it, and McGonagall's is mediocre and he didn't know it (or maybe he did and didn't care)." So where is any "context dependence" in these statements? Where is the relativity? Where is the subjectivity? You're just stating things as facts, point blank, no context dependence at all.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> Good heavens! "Pointing to the moon" is a poetic analogy. I'm not talking about the literal moon that "everyone with eyes" sees. Are you not familiar with the origin of the expression in Zen literature? The moon I'm speaking of is one that nearly everyone could see if they knew how to look. I'm not going to call it "wonderful"; that's an even worse abuse of language than the conceptually empty "beautiful" I just talked about in the post above.
> 
> We can't have a conversation if you keep attributing things to me that I haven't said and don't mean.


And I took your "poetic analogy" and made it literal in order to illustrate our seeming disagreement. The fact that you weren't talking about the literal moon that everyone sees has no bearing on that.



Woodduck said:


> You're asking for specifics here - and yet you just handed me generalities like "beautiful" and "wonderful" and asked me to account for them!


You're talking about two different posts!


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## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> There is absolutely nothing wrong with equating taste in wine and ice cream with art and music. You purport not to see the analogies, and I believe you. Yet they are there.


Indeed, the analogies are quite sound. After all, life itself is ultimately a series of preferential choices, some of which we welcome while dreading others.

For example, we can compare choosing between Schubert and Brahms to a choice between chateaubriand and a ribeye steak with rich morel sauce. Similarly, we might consider a listening choice from the atonal and serial canons much like choosing between fricasseed dung beetles and stinkworm stew.


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## WildThing

A thought provoking video.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I think the problem you're having is that you can't seem to disconnect the judgment of qualities from the qualities themselves. Why does it not make more sense to say that Mendelssohn, or Sofia, or Grant Wood, has properties that some people find beautiful, that those properties exist in the person/work, the judgment of beauty exists only in the minds of the observer and have no validity, rightness, or value outside those minds?
> 
> Yes, if you're talking to a like-minded individual it can be a convenient shorthand to simply say "X is beautiful" if you know you both share similar values about beauty. The mistake is only made when you encounter someone who thinks differently and think that you "know" something they don't above and beyond what you happen to think and value.
> 
> You said here: "The difference between Beethoven and McGonagall is that Beethoven's work is great and he knew it, and McGonagall's is mediocre and he didn't know it (or maybe he did and didn't care)." So where is any "context dependence" in these statements? Where is the relativity? Where is the subjectivity? You're just stating things as facts, point blank, no context dependence at all.


Context?

There are a few fundamental states which are necessary conditions of being, of successful life, and of the effective functioning of bodies and minds. The most fundamental of these is constancy of identity and consistency in our experience of things, which is expressed in cognition as coherent perception and non-contradictory logic. Art, being both a thing in the world and a cognitive experience, offers a microcosm of the world which we take pleasure in recognizing. The sense of pleasure arises when we see that a work of art is consistent with itself - when its elements form a comprehensible pattern, one that "makes sense" to our minds (and even to our bodies, since artistic forms may be analogous to physical gestures which are pleasing when they describe a trajectory of energy deployed purposefully rather than randomly). This, at base, is what is meant by "beauty" in art: the elements of a work function together, affirming and reinforcing each other to form a non-contradictory, non self-negating whole. This is something the mind is built to recognize, and the emotions are constituted to enjoy.

Beauty, in this fundamental, specific sense, requires no special context to exist, to be perceived, or to be valued; it is itself the ultimate context in which art lives and without which it would not exist, much less have meaning or value. The opposite of beauty is disorder or chaos - an element of existence and experience that art may take account of, but cannot be built on.

That's where I begin. There's much, much more. But it's too late in the day for more work.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> And I took your "poetic analogy" and made it literal in order to illustrate our seeming disagreement. The fact that you weren't talking about the literal moon that everyone sees has no bearing on that.
> 
> You're talking about two different posts!


The fact that I wasn't talking about a literal moon is precisely what has "bearing." Your making it the literal moon produces nothing but a confused mess. It's like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. If you can't use my imagery properly, please invent your own.

Yes, I was talking about the slovenly thinking that allowed you to write those two posts.


----------



## Haydn70

WildThing said:


> A thought provoking video.


I just watched the first few minutes and I am very impressed that he referenced Roger Scruton, one of my favorite philosophers. I will watch the entire video tomorrow and comment.

Thanks for posting it!


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## KenOC

WildThing said:


> A thought provoking video.


A very interesting video. Many thanks!


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## Guest

Strange Magic said:


> It cannot be demonstrated that one wine is better than another; all we can show is that more people of a certain socioeconomic or educational or other defined group prefer it. Wine "experts" like it, and tell us that it is "the best", objectively the best--everything a great wine should be, according to those who have tried a lot of wines and find they prefer one to another. Same with ice cream. Same with art; music.


As my signature here used to say, until I got tired of reading it (never mind anyone else) "There is no such thing as 'greatest', but there is better."

You and I may be of a similar mind, but not the same. Keats _is _better than McGonagall; whereas I abhor Hopkins and prefer Tennyson.



ArsMusica said:


> I just watched the first few minutes and I am very impressed that he referenced Roger Scruton,


Thanks for saving me the effort: now I know _not _to watch it!


----------



## janxharris

KenOC said:


> Some of this stuff has staying power. Nielsen, in its 2017 year-end report, lists the Beatles as the third highest-grossing group for the year in the Rock genre. They broke up almost 50 years ago!


I would agree regarding the Beatles. 
I haven't heard all of Mr. Bieber's material.


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## Haydn70

MacLeod said:


> Thanks for saving me the effort: now I know _not _to watch it!


I am not surprised at your reaction at all...and you are welcome.


----------



## janxharris

Eva Yojimbo said:


> That page gives you numerous ways to confirm it's claim; painting over the other squares is one--I actually just arranged my hands to block out the other squares so I was only seeing the two in question. I often use this example to prove how the human mind automatically equates our perceptions with reality. This carries over into things that exist entirely in our mind and nowhere in reality at all. Aesthetic values are among those things.
> 
> The more one studies the human mind and how it works, the less one is inclined to immediately trust any of its perceptions and feelings. I think one can take this too far--the postmodernist theories denying the existence of objectivity, truth, or scientific facts altogether; all strains of solipsism, etc.--but anyone remotely familiar with cognitive science would hold "skepticism" as their primary reaction to the mind's intuitive and instinctual beliefs.


Thanks so much for posting it. I'm holding you personally responsible for freaking me out


----------



## Guest

ArsMusica said:


> I am not surprised at your reaction at all...and you are welcome.


Obviously, I did watch it - thanks WildThing for posting. It stood up without having to refer to anyone else's thinking, though if this is a plug for Scruton's book and that's where much of it came from, then acknowledgement is only right and proper.

It didn't seem to do much more than offer a simple explanation for something already well known to regular listeners of CM - that composers construct their music to maximise the impact of "flow" etc...and laid out the kind of argument familiar to readers of TC that emotion can be prompted by things other than the music, but that in CM, it is the music itself that does it.

I'm not sure...well, no I am sure that I can't agree with the illustration of "moral character" ("sad"?). And I also don't agree that "unlike theatre and film, where we're just observers of someone else's emotion, in music we take a leap into subjectivity..._we _are the first person." The fact that in cinema, there is a third party exhibiting emotion should not detract from our capacity to respond in the same way as to an abstract expression of emotion. There are films I find it hard to watch because I identify so strongly with the character(s) that I "take a leap into subjectivity" in the same way that I do with music.


----------



## janxharris

KenOC said:


> Here's an interesting snippet from the AMZ review of the concert that premiered both Wellington's Victory and the 7th Symphony. Note particularly the last sentence.
> 
> "If one wanted to express the battle in music, one would have to do it in the way that it is here. Once immersed into the idea, one is pleasantly surprised at the wealth of ideas and at the genial application of the means of art for every purpose. The effect, nay, even the very realistic impression, is quite extraordinary. One can say without hesitation that there is nothing in the realm of descriptive music that is its equal. However, that the composer's rich, wonderful mind turned to composing such a work finds its justification-if any is needed-in the fact that Hr. Mälzel, Hr. v. B.s friend, is about to embark on a journey to London, for which purpose this work has been destined. To that end, the most beloved national songs of the British-Rule Britannia, Marlborough and God save the King-have been incorporated with great ingenuity, partly before the battle and partly after it. We hardly need to add that laymen were completely amazed at this work and did not know what had happened to them, while on the other hand connoisseurs preferred the preceding symphony as a more noble work of art by far."


In contrast with Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung's 1826 review of The Grosse Fugue: "incomprehensible, like Chinese" and "a confusion of Babel".


----------



## Enthusiast

Woodduck said:


> Context?
> 
> There are a few fundamental states which are necessary conditions of being, of successful life, and of the effective functioning of bodies and minds. The most fundamental of these is constancy of identity and consistency in our experience of things, which is expressed in cognition as coherent perception and non-contradictory logic.


I'm trying to follow this (and may be misunderstanding you) but, as someone who has lived in a number of different cultures, it seems plain to me that these things are determined (or at least very strongly influenced) by cultural context. The reference to "non-contradictory logic" also seems to be culturally specific but perhaps I am reading it too literally. And I am not sure that it is only cultural context which can influence these things.

I am mindful, also, of optical and other sensory illusions and, not only the simple pleasure we derive from them, but also the role that context can play in resolving them one way or another.



Woodduck said:


> Art, being both a thing in the world and a cognitive experience, offers a microcosm of the world which we take pleasure in recognizing. The sense of pleasure arises when we see that a work of art is consistent with itself - when its elements form a comprehensible pattern, one that "makes sense" to our minds (and even to our bodies, since artistic forms may be analogous to physical gestures which are pleasing when they describe a trajectory of energy deployed purposefully rather than randomly). This, at base, is what is meant by "beauty" in art: the elements of a work function together, affirming and reinforcing each other to form a non-contradictory, non self-negating whole. This is something the mind is built to recognize, and the emotions are constituted to enjoy.
> 
> Beauty, in this fundamental, specific sense, requires no special context to exist, to be perceived, or to be valued; it is itself the ultimate context in which art lives and without which it would not exist, much less have meaning or value. The opposite of beauty is disorder or chaos - an element of existence and experience that art may take account of, but cannot be built on.


I also find myself doubting this account of the pleasure we gain from art. For example, for me, sometimes the struggle to "understand" is a great pleasure and I find the ambiguous and the chaotic can be very "beautiful" (in a broad sense of the word). Resolution of this ambiguity and chaos may also be rewarding but can just as easily be disappointing. Ambiguity - not a word that you have used but one that seems allied to chaotic - in particular is important to me in art. It is the fertile ground that can keep a work fresh and capable of surprising us.

All this is very abstract and abstraction on discussion forums can be very misleading. We all have different definitions about the terms we use and no-one feels compelled to adopt or accept another's definitions of them. It may be that this is leading me to misunderstand your intent or thinking. Also, as might be clear from the above, I have a personal aversion to tying things up too neatly (it closes down possibilities) and I may be (over-)reacting to what I read as an attempt to do that.


----------



## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> Context?
> 
> There are a few fundamental states which are necessary conditions of being, of successful life, and of the effective functioning of bodies and minds. The most fundamental of these is constancy of identity and consistency in our experience of things, which is expressed in cognition as coherent perception and non-contradictory logic. Art, being both a thing in the world and a cognitive experience, offers a microcosm of the world which we take pleasure in recognizing. The sense of pleasure arises when we see that a work of art is consistent with itself - when its elements form a comprehensible pattern, one that "makes sense" to our minds (and even to our bodies, since artistic forms may be analogous to physical gestures which are pleasing when they describe a trajectory of energy deployed purposefully rather than randomly). This, at base, is what is meant by "beauty" in art: the elements of a work function together, affirming and reinforcing each other to form a non-contradictory, non self-negating whole. This is something the mind is built to recognize, and the emotions are constituted to enjoy.
> 
> Beauty, in this fundamental, specific sense, requires no special context to exist, to be perceived, or to be valued; it is itself the ultimate context in which art lives and without which it would not exist, much less have meaning or value. The opposite of beauty is disorder or chaos - an element of existence and experience that art may take account of, but cannot be built on.


Very eloquent, as I find all your writings on these subjects. But what then can account for the enormous disparities in human reactions to nature and to art? One would hope that the universality of your overview of beauty, art as order, etc. would reveal itself in a universality of agreement on specific examples of art. It is not enough to speak of consistency of a work with itself; forming a comprehensible pattern; "making sense" to our minds, and so forth. These seemingly solid assertions become a wobbly, uncertain Jello of a foundation when loaded with the reality of peoples' very real differences in reaction when presented with identical art objects or experiences. While we can agree that there are certain underlying neural and hierarchical states/requirements that, when satisfied, yield feelings of pleasure, fulfillment, rapture, "wholeness", etc., these are often swamped by the myriad other factors that go into any experience of art (or nature experienced as art), and so yield that disparity, over and over again.

The situation is different with our appreciation of scientific theories (using the word "theory" in its correct meaning): modern cosmology, plate tectonics, biological evolution, general relativity, quantum theory, etc. Here we can speak of the "greatness", the "beauty" of a theory as its predictions and stipulations increasingly are shown to correspond with increasingly accurately recorded specific data points upon which researchers increasingly agree--we have an asymptotic approach to an objective resonance with reality that relies upon quite different criteria than any extant theory of art. We can actually determine the relative worth or value of scientific theories by how closely they match the data points. No such accuracy is forthcoming from any theory of aesthetics.


----------



## Woodduck

Enthusiast said:


> I'm trying to follow this (and may be misunderstanding you) but, as someone who has lived in a number of different cultures, it seems plain to me that these things are determined (or at least very strongly influenced) by cultural context. The reference to "non-contradictory logic" also seems to be culturally specific but perhaps I am reading it too literally. And I am not sure that it is only cultural context which can influence these things.
> 
> I am mindful, also, of optical and other sensory illusions and, not only the simple pleasure we derive from them, but also the role that context can play in resolving them one way or another.
> 
> I also find myself doubting this account of the pleasure we gain from art. For example, for me, sometimes the struggle to "understand" is a great pleasure and I find the ambiguous and the chaotic can be very "beautiful" (in a broad sense of the word). Resolution of this ambiguity and chaos may also be rewarding but can just as easily be disappointing. Ambiguity - not a word that you have used but one that seems allied to chaotic - in particular is important to me in art. It is the fertile ground that can keep a work fresh and capable of surprising us.
> 
> All this is very abstract and abstraction on discussion forums can be very misleading. We all have different definitions about the terms we use and no-one feels compelled to adopt or accept another's definitions of them. It may be that this is leading me to misunderstand your intent or thinking. Also, as might be clear from the above, I have a personal aversion to tying things up too neatly (it closes down possibilities) and I may be (over-)reacting to what I read as an attempt to do that.


Thanks for this insightful post. It's refreshing to find, amid the general wallow in "subjectivity," someone willing to think about how art works as a cognitive phenomenon.

I don't think the view you're putting forth here is in contradiction to mine. There's no question that cognition in any form depends upon a perception of order, and that the mind is engaged in a relentless pursuit of coherence amid the random sense impressions that assault it. Order, pattern, coherence are the essential presuppositions of all cognitive activity. But cognition is a life function, and life is dynamic; it consists of movement from one state to another, and as long as life lasts and movement continues order is relative and not absolute. In life, and in perception, the ordering process is never finished, but consists of constant and simultaneous ordering and disordering. There is constant building up and breaking down in the dance of life; order battles continuously with chaos - but, as long as life lasts, it wins the war.

The winning of that war, cognitively as well as physically (in the maintenance of health), is the defining project of living beings, and art is, at its most basic level, the translation of that project into the symbolic realm. In the process of cognition, beyond the point of simply identifying entities (recognizing separate entities in the general field of sense perception), the mind begins to note common patterns between phenomena and to perceive one thing as representing or standing in for another: it begins to symbolize - to create metaphor. The basic importance of metaphor in human cognition has, I gather (without having done extensive reading in the subject), become increasingly appreciated by cognitive psychologists, who have proposed the concept of "cross-domain mapping" to designate the process by which the mind understands information obtained by one sense mode in terms of another. It does this by abstracting and comparing patterns, patterns which may be either static or dynamic but which can actually be metaphorized into one another (hence the natural way we speak of the "movement" of line and form in the literally static art of painting). The identification of the "life patterns" with which the process of metaphoric translation works would be a very considerable project which I suspect may be ongoing in the field of cognitive psychology, but here I'll just say that I believe an understanding of this is fundamental to an understanding of art and of the cognitive/affective response we identify as "aesthetic." My practical experience as both painter and musician, which has allowed me the most intimate possible observation of the cross-domain metaphorizing involved in artistic thinking, affirms this vividly.

I think you might see from this (admittedly too brief) elaboration of my previous remarks that the order I'm asserting as fundamental to art implies no "closing things down" or "tying them up neatly." Life is never tied up neatly, and never closed down before death. Order - and its aesthetic equivalent, beauty - is for a living being not static but dynamic; the dynamic process of ordering, of building up and breaking down, not only does not forbid, but positively embraces, the ambiguity and open-endedness you value in art. What you call the struggle to "understand" is precisely the essence of the cognitive process; it's the battle of life itself, and art is a metaphorical field of battle on which life happens. Life's process can be manifested in all the arts, but certainly in none more strikingly than in music, which metaphorizes vital life patterns in their native dimension, the one most urgently important to us as living beings: time.


----------



## Strange Magic

Another thought-provoking video that may cast light on the variability of response to specific art objects or experiences:


----------



## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> Very eloquent, as I find all your writings on these subjects. But what then can account for the enormous disparities in human reactions to nature and to art? One would hope that the universality of your overview of beauty, art as order, etc. would reveal itself in a universality of agreement on specific examples of art. It is not enough to speak of consistency of a work with itself; forming a comprehensible pattern; "making sense" to our minds, and so forth. These seemingly solid assertions become a wobbly, uncertain Jello of a foundation when loaded with the reality of peoples' very real differences in reaction when presented with identical art objects or experiences. While we can agree that there are certain underlying neural and hierarchical states/requirements that, when satisfied, yield feelings of pleasure, fulfillment, rapture, "wholeness", etc., these are often swamped by the myriad other factors that go into any experience of art (or nature experienced as art), and so yield that disparity, over and over again.
> 
> The situation is different with our appreciation of scientific theories (using the word "theory" in its correct meaning): modern cosmology, plate tectonics, biological evolution, general relativity, quantum theory, etc. Here we can speak of the "greatness", the "beauty" of a theory as its predictions and stipulations increasingly are shown to correspond with increasingly accurately recorded specific data points upon which researchers increasingly agree--we have an asymptotic approach to an objective resonance with reality that relies upon quite different criteria than any extant theory of art. We can actually determine the relative worth or value of scientific theories by how closely they match the data points. No such accuracy is forthcoming from any theory of aesthetics.


I can agree with your observations regarding the individuality of our responses to art - nothing I've said denies them - but the radical contrast you draw between the epistemic status of artistic and scientific cognition seems to me to foreclose the possibility of understanding the former. If the necessary lack of an external measuring stick for aesthetic judgments is for you fatal to any possibility of real knowledge, then I see no possibility of a meaningful discussion of art.

The "enormous disparities in human reactions to nature and to art" pose no great intellectual problem. The challenge, and the gateway to a science of aesthetics, is in accounting for the commonalities amid the disparities, in both art and our responses to art. "Why is nearly all of the world's music built around some system of tonality?" is a question with much wider implications than "why do you prefer music in minor keys while I prefer it in major?"


----------



## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> The "enormous disparities in human reactions to nature and to art" pose no great intellectual problem. The challenge, and the gateway to a science of aesthetics, is in accounting for the commonalities amid the disparities, in both art and our responses to art. "Why is nearly all of the world's music built around some system of tonality?" is a question with much wider implications than "why do you prefer music in minor keys while I prefer it in major?"


Likewise, I see no great intellectual problem with accounting for the commonalities in human reactions to nature and to art if we take a bell curve approach again and say that more people prefer tonalism to its alternative(s), representational art to abstract art, etc. But this sidesteps/avoids (as it should) talk of what art is great, what not-so-great, what outranks what. Your approach again actually boils down to, essentially, a popularity contest where we decide which audience's set of reactions is the one we use to ascertain any art's value or rank. And so we should clearly state at the outset that "the following works have been deemed great--that is, consonant with widely-held tropisms toward tonality, a certain complexity, timbre, whatever--by a majority vote of people sharing the following characteristics....". One of those characteristics is that they like the same music.


----------



## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> Likewise, I see no great intellectual problem with accounting for the commonalities in human reactions to nature and to art if we take a bell curve approach again and say that more people prefer tonalism to its alternative(s), representational art to abstract art, etc. But this sidesteps/avoids (as it should) talk of what art is great, what not-so-great, what outranks what. Your approach again actually boils down to, essentially, a popularity contest where we decide which audience's set of reactions is the one we use to ascertain any art's value or rank. And so we should clearly state at the outset that "the following works have been deemed great--that is, consonant with widely-held tropisms toward tonality, a certain complexity, timbre, whatever--by a majority vote of people sharing the following characteristics....". One of those characteristics is that they like the same music.


The matter of ranking art according to "greatness" or whatever, which seems central to your interest in this subject, is of little intrinsic interest to me, and polling the population and drawing bell curves strikes me as valuable only as a source of raw data, telling us nothing about how that data should be used in any process of discovery or pursuit of understanding. What you call my "approach" certainly does require some such data - in other words, it requires observation of human nature and behavior, as do the disciplines of psychology and anthropology - but data are only meaningful as a basis for theory. The question of why humans behave as they do is not asking what behaviors are "popular"! But I suppose you have to view it that way if you're committed a priori to the notion that the aesthetic response is no more complex or meaningful than the response of taste buds to ice cream.

If you really "see no great intellectual problem with accounting for the commonalities in human reactions to nature and to art," you're a lot smarter than I am, and you ought to be writing books on the subject. I have a feeling that neurological science and aesthetic philosophy have a long way to go before we can properly account for those commonalities, and for why the differences you exult in can mean very much.


----------



## EdwardBast

Woodduck said:


> Thanks for this insightful post. It's refreshing to find, amid the general wallow in "subjectivity," someone willing to think about how art works as a cognitive phenomenon.
> 
> I don't think the view you're putting forth here is in contradiction to mine. There's no question that cognition in any form depends upon a perception of order, and that the mind is engaged in a relentless pursuit of coherence amid the random sense impressions that assault it. Order, pattern, coherence are the essential presuppositions of all cognitive activity. But cognition is a life function, and life is dynamic; it consists of movement from one state to another, and as long as life lasts and movement continues order is relative and not absolute. In life, and in perception, the ordering process is never finished, but consists of constant and simultaneous ordering and disordering. There is constant building up and breaking down in the dance of life; order battles continuously with chaos - but, as long as life lasts, it wins the war.
> 
> The winning of that war, cognitively as well as physically (in the maintenance of health), is the defining project of living beings, and art is, at its most basic level, the translation of that project into the symbolic realm. In the process of cognition, beyond the point of simply identifying entities (recognizing separate entities in the general field of sense perception), the mind begins to note common patterns between phenomena and to perceive one thing as representing or standing in for another: it begins to symbolize - to create metaphor. The basic importance of metaphor in human cognition has, I gather (without having done extensive reading in the subject), become increasingly appreciated by cognitive psychologists, who have proposed the concept of "cross-domain mapping" to designate the process by which the mind understands information obtained by one sense mode in terms of another. It does this by abstracting and comparing patterns, patterns which may be either static or dynamic but which can actually be metaphorized into one another (hence the natural way we speak of the "movement" of line and form in the literally static art of painting). The identification of the "life patterns" with which the process of metaphoric translation works would be a very considerable project which I suspect may be ongoing in the field of cognitive psychology, but here I'll just say that I believe an understanding of this is fundamental to an understanding of art and of the cognitive/affective response we identify as "aesthetic." My practical experience as both painter and musician, which has allowed me the most intimate possible observation of the cross-domain metaphorizing involved in artistic thinking, affirms this vividly.
> 
> I think you might see from this (admittedly too brief) elaboration of my previous remarks that the order I'm asserting as fundamental to art implies no "closing things down" or "tying them up neatly." Life is never tied up neatly, and never closed down before death. *Order - and its aesthetic equivalent, beauty - i*s for a living being not static but dynamic; the dynamic process of ordering, of building up and breaking down, not only does not forbid, but positively embraces, the ambiguity and open-endedness you value in art. What you call the struggle to "understand" is precisely the essence of the cognitive process; it's the battle of life itself, and art is a metaphorical field of battle on which life happens. Life's process can be manifested in all the arts, but certainly in none more strikingly than in music, which metaphorizes vital life patterns in their native dimension, the one most urgently important to us as living beings: time.


This phrase is the only major problem I see with this view. Beauty, I believe, is entirely wrong in this context. Order's aesthetic equivalent doesn't equate to or reduce to beauty or any other single quality or descriptor. Order itself, that is, aesthetic order or significant form, is the irreducible primary, the bottom turtle in the stack. Valuable aesthetic effects can consist primarily in qualities having little to do with any traditional notion of beauty.


----------



## Woodduck

EdwardBast said:


> This phrase is the only major problem I see with this view. Beauty, I believe, is entirely wrong in this context. Order's aesthetic equivalent doesn't equate to or reduce to beauty or any other single quality or descriptor. Order itself, that is, aesthetic order or significant form, is the irreducible primary, the bottom turtle in the stack. Valuable aesthetic effects can consist primarily in qualities having little to do with any traditional notion of beauty.


You are right. It might be best to drop "beauty" from the aesthetic philosopher's lexicon, though I think it could still be useful if carefully qualified. My attempt to limit its use doesn't go far enough in eliminating any possible distraction.

I'd also like to eliminate the loaded words "subjective" and "objective."


----------



## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> If you really "see no great intellectual problem with accounting for the commonalities in human reactions to nature and to art," you're a lot smarter than I am, and you ought to be writing books on the subject. I have a feeling that neurological science and aesthetic philosophy have a long way to go before we can properly account for those commonalities, and for why the differences you exult in can mean very much.


I believe we are agreed that ranking art in terms of relative and/or absolute "greatness" is of little interest to either of us. As I have stated several times, I have made a god of my own preferences and tastes and require no validation from without. Others have other approaches or requirements.

I continue to see no great intellectual problem with someone, someday, given time and intellect and enough or more research, accounting for those commonalities and differences we speak of. It certainly won't be me but I think a good start has been made on several fronts, both by Leonard Meyer and by ongoing researchers in neurology/brain chemistry, etc. It's a tractable "problem", and we get better answers all the time.


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## DaveM

Woodduck said:


> You are right. It might be best to drop "beauty" from the aesthetic philosopher's lexicon, though I think it could still be useful if carefully qualified. My attempt to limit its use doesn't go far enough in eliminating any possible distraction.


Good answer. The term 'beauty' has value if its use is qualified. Some people say that whether something has beauty or is beautiful is purely and always subjective. I disagree.


----------



## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> I believe we are agreed that ranking art in terms of relative and/or absolute "greatness" is of little interest to either of us. As I have stated several times, I have made a god of my own preferences and tastes and require no validation from without. Others have other approaches or requirements.
> 
> I continue to see no great intellectual problem with someone, someday, given time and intellect and enough or more research, accounting for those commonalities and differences we speak of. It certainly won't be me but I think a good start has been made on several fronts, both by Leonard Meyer and by ongoing researchers in neurology/brain chemistry, etc. It's a tractable "problem", and we get better answers all the time.


I was wondering if Meyer had slipped your mind. His "Emotion and Meaning in Music" (TO ANYONE WHO HASN'T READ IT: READ IT!) is one of the first things that got me thinking about art as a medium of cognition, and specific elements of art (such as tonality in music) as metaphors for psychological and physical life processes. Early in my membership on the forum I did quite a bit of thinking/writing on tonality from this standpoint, but got little or no help from anyone else, and a good bit of resistance (from self-styled "modernists") to the idea that tonal organization has any special significance.


----------



## science

Woodduck said:


> "Why is nearly all of the world's music built around some system of tonality?"


Let's say it's because most people like tonality.... Then what we would have is a fine example of a widely-shared SUBJECTIVE preference, not an OBJECTIVE aesthetic command. It would not constitute anything like evidence that atonal music is wrong, or that people who enjoy atonal music have bad taste.


----------



## Woodduck

science said:


> Let's say it's because most people like tonality.... Then what we would have is a fine example of a widely-shared SUBJECTIVE preference, not an OBJECTIVE aesthetic command. It would not constitute anything like evidence that atonal music is wrong, or that people who enjoy atonal music have bad taste.


No one said non-tonal music was wrong. It's an artistic option that's always there, at least in theory. But the question of why tonal music has evolved all over the world can't be answered by saying that people like it. Imagine this conversation:

"Why is tonality a characteristic of music all over the world?"

Because people like it."

"Why do people like it?"

"Because it's what evolved in their culture."

"But why did it evolve in their culture?"

"Well, someone must have composed something tonal, and people liked it better."

"Better than what?"

"Better than atonal music."

"Had they ever heard any atonal music?"

"Not that we know of."

"So tonal music is the only kind they knew? Do we know of an indigenous culture that has atonal music?"

"None that I know of."

"Why don't they? Why did tonality arise in the music of cultures all over the world?"

"Because people like tonality."

"Well...um...OK then. I guess music is just, uh, _subjective!_"

Eventually, neurologists, cognitive psychologists, evolutionary biologists, musical anthropologists and aesthetic philosophers may save us from such whirlpools of subjectivity. Meanwhile, some of us like to take our amateurish stabs at understanding what might lie behind the easy answers (and the wrong ones).


----------



## Phil loves classical

science said:


> Let's say it's because most people like tonality.... Then what we would have is a fine example of a widely-shared SUBJECTIVE preference, not an OBJECTIVE aesthetic command. It would not constitute anything like evidence that atonal music is wrong, or that people who enjoy atonal music have bad taste.


I would agree with this statement. I treat them as separate languages or contexts, although sometimes they can be mixed into the same piece of music.



Woodduck said:


> I was wondering if Meyer had slipped your mind. His "Emotion and Meaning in Music" (TO ANYONE WHO HASN'T READ IT: READ IT!) is one of the first things that got me thinking about art as a medium of cognition, and specific elements of art (such as tonality in music) as metaphors for psychological and physical life processes. Early in my membership on the forum I did quite a bit of thinking/writing on tonality from this standpoint, but got little or no help from anyone else, and a good bit of resistance (from self-styled "modernists") to the idea that tonal organization has any special significance.


Schoenberg himself eventually came around and acknowledged tonality does have special significance. Consonance is a trait of traditional tonality, and the most consonant interval other than octave and unison (which I don't feel counts as harmony) is the perfect fifth which approximates the golden ratio, or more accurately divides the octave into the golden ratio (yes, I've just checked the math myself). The fourth is just the inverse. These are the basic building blocks of tonality, so I think there is definitely special significance, and not just arbitrarily being weened into it.


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## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> Schoenberg himself eventually came around and acknowledged tonality does have special significance. Consonance is a trait of traditional tonality, and the most consonant interval other than octave and unison (which I don't feel counts as harmony) is *the perfect fifth which approximates the golden ratio, or more accurately divides the octave into the golden ratio* (haven't checked the math myself). The fourth is just the inverse. These are the basic building blocks of tonality, so I think there is definitely special significance, and not just arbitrary, being weened into it.


I had not heard of the golden ratio (or golden section) being an acoustical property. I was always aware of the satisfying nature of the proportion in visual art, even before I encountered the concept and term. It seems plausible that this is something fundamental in the way nature is designed, and that the brain is somehow attuned to it and finds it pleasing in different cognitive modalities. The fifth above the tonic is prominent in many musical traditions, simply because, I would suppose, it's the most audible overtone and the most consonant with the tonic. But knowing that it divides the octave into the golden section is fascinating.

There remain, of course, many questions about the lure of the tonic and of the hierarchical relationship of other tones to it. I think there's more to it than sensuous pleasure.


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## Phil loves classical

In case anyone is wondering, the major pentatonic scale in many cultures is actually made up of notes which form major/minor triads from each other within the same octave. Which is why as the saying goes, nothing ever sounds bad in that scale.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> Context?
> 
> There are a few fundamental states which are necessary conditions of being, of successful life, and of the effective functioning of bodies and minds. The most fundamental of these is constancy of identity and consistency in our experience of things, which is expressed in cognition as coherent perception and non-contradictory logic. Art, being both a thing in the world and a cognitive experience, offers a microcosm of the world which we take pleasure in recognizing. The sense of pleasure arises when we see that a work of art is consistent with itself - when its elements form a comprehensible pattern, one that "makes sense" to our minds (and even to our bodies, since artistic forms may be analogous to physical gestures which are pleasing when they describe a trajectory of energy deployed purposefully rather than randomly). This, at base, is what is meant by "beauty" in art: the elements of a work function together, affirming and reinforcing each other to form a non-contradictory, non self-negating whole. This is something the mind is built to recognize, and the emotions are constituted to enjoy.
> 
> Beauty, in this fundamental, specific sense, requires no special context to exist, to be perceived, or to be valued; it is itself the ultimate context in which art lives and without which it would not exist, much less have meaning or value. The opposite of beauty is disorder or chaos - an element of existence and experience that art may take account of, but cannot be built on.
> 
> That's where I begin. There's much, much more. But it's too late in the day for more work.


I'm not sure you answered my question about Beethoven and McGonagall specifically, but never mind that. I have several disagreements with what you say here, and perhaps it will help keep them clearer if I enumerate.

1. I do not believe constancy of identity, consistency of experience, coherence of perception, non-contradictory logic, etc. necessarily has much to do with making great/substantial art. I think it CAN, but that it's not a necessary requirement. For some counter-examples:

Whitman said: "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself; / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)." Pound said of the epic Cantos: "I cannot make it cohere." The entire 20th century was swamped in artistic movements that expressed and examined the inconstancy and flux of identity and experience, the incoherency of perception (surrealism, eg.), and contradictory logic-paradox, which is the technique of expressing contradictory logic, is as old as poetry itself. The most important American poet of the last half-century was John Ashbery, and I dare you to find any consistency or comprehensible patterns in his work; and yet, I dare say, that despite his nonsense, despite being completely and utterly bewildered by his work… he's often very beautiful. I have not the slightest idea what Fragment means, but it moves me in inexplicable ways… perhaps all the more because I can't explain it. Two of the filmmakers that make the most beautiful films, Terrence Malick and Jean-Luc Godard, also make the most incomprehensible films, completely without the patterning that mainstream films use to "make sense" of film narrative. Both of them employ styles that are closer to improvisation, often filming without scripts or with only script outlines, putting things together more by association than logic in the editing room.

2. I think "patterning" and "pattern finding" is only one aspect of our enjoyment and appreciation of art. There's probably more art that's mediocre due to the prevalence and prominence of predictable patterns rather than a lack of patterns. What most mediocre art lacks isn't a patterning that's comprehensible, but a lack of patterning, the ability to surprise, shock, disorient, to shake people out of their comfort zones and make them reconsider what they think they know about art, or even about life. Patterns can be a source of potential beauty, but also of boredom when they become old and predictable. When we look at history, a good chunk of what's considered great art in every medium was "shocking" to its contemporary audiences, it violated the rules, patterns, standards, and aesthetic values of its culture, and in doing so created NEW rules, standards, and aesthetic values.

3. The notions of patterning (and surprise) are incredibly cultural dependent. A pattern common to one culture can be a surprise to another and vice versa. So even in the case where there are objective patterns, the recognition of them is still highly relative and subjective. Further, the perception of such patterns still requires that the viewer find such patterns "beautiful." They are not "beautiful" in-and-of-themselves, independent of the observer thinking and feeling about them a certain way. They most certainly require the viewer to value them, and they have absolutely no meaning or value on their own (and audiences are perfectly free to find meaning and value in art without such patterns).

4. I fundamentally disagree that disorder and chaos cannot be beautiful. Sunsets are often beautiful, and yet they're completely random and chaotic, depending upon the time of year and the location and the exact positioning of the clouds. There's nothing "designed" about a sunset. Similarly, I imagine the creative process of a Godard or an Ashbery is much more concerned about capturing whatever beauty they happen to find in the chaos of the moment, without design, without reference to some a priori values of whatever patterning you or anyone else thinks constitutes beauty. Given that even in the 20th century we've had the birth of genres like jazz that stressed improvisation (and in which even the "patterning" of improvisation loosened over time), of compositional styles like aleatory music, I'd say that even musicians and listeners hear value in the aural equivalence of chaos-or as close as one can get to it while still making art at all.

5. Finally, reading over your recent exchange with Strange Magic, I do not deny that there is something in our psychology that finds tonality innately pleasing; but whatever the answer is as to why, it will be no different than what I said in another post about why most everyone finds sugar more pleasing than vegetables. One reason finding patterns is pleasing at all to humans is because it was by recognizing patterns that our ancestors were able to make accurate predictions about how reality functioned and that facilitated their manipulating of reality to benefit them. There's probably something in tonality that makes its patterns more readily detectable than in other musical modes. Given that music is based on acoustic waveforms and frequencies, and given that these frequencies have physical sizes, it's likely that tonality takes advantages of the geometric ratios of these frequencies and sizes; it would be the aural equivalent of why we find geometric visual designs pleasing in painting and architecture.

All that said, it's still entirely possible for people to be pleased by atonal music, as I'm sure you're aware of, and there's no basis by which to declare those who prefer atonal to tonal (or vice versa) right or wrong, or to say that either side "knows" something the other doesn't (or that their "knowledge" is the source of their differing aesthetic preferences). I essentially agree with Strange Magic in that I don't see what you're writing about really argues for any kind of "subjective knowledge," or at least how this "subjective knowledge" differs in any way from "knowledge about subjects." To boil this whole thing down, do you think there's any difference between these statements:

a. "Many people think/feel tonal music is beautiful."
b. "Many people know tonal music is beautiful." 
c. "Tonal music is beautiful."


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I do not believe constancy of identity, consistency of experience, coherence of perception, non-contradictory logic, etc. necessarily has much to do with making great/substantial art. I think it CAN, but that it's not a necessary requirement. For some counter-examples:
> 
> Whitman said: "Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself; / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)." Pound said of the epic Cantos: "I cannot make it cohere." The entire 20th century was swamped in artistic movements that expressed and examined the inconstancy and flux of identity and experience, the incoherency of perception (surrealism, eg.), and contradictory logic-paradox, which is the technique of expressing contradictory logic, is as old as poetry itself. The most important American poet of the last half-century was John Ashbery, and I dare you to find any consistency or comprehensible patterns in his work; and yet, I dare say, that despite his nonsense, despite being completely and utterly bewildered by his work… he's often very beautiful. I have not the slightest idea what Fragment means, but it moves me in inexplicable ways… perhaps all the more because I can't explain it. Two of the filmmakers that make the most beautiful films, Terrence Malick and Jean-Luc Godard, also make the most incomprehensible films, completely without the patterning that mainstream films use to "make sense" of film narrative. Both of them employ styles that are closer to improvisation, often filming without scripts or with only script outlines, putting things together more by association than logic in the editing room.


Your background is in literature. Keep in mind that mine is in music and visual art. Literature uses words, and except in some poetry possesses abstract form only in a rough and simple way sufficient to support the meaning inherent in words. My only thought is that wherever there is an expression of anything significant in art - and certainly anything significant enough to constitute "greatness" - there is substantial coherence or agreement within the work, at the very least an agreement of means to ends.

In the absence of anything concrete to address, only general principles can be stated.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I think "patterning" and "pattern finding" is only one aspect of our enjoyment and appreciation of art. There's probably more art that's mediocre due to the prevalence and prominence of predictable patterns rather than a lack of patterns. What most mediocre art lacks isn't a patterning that's comprehensible, but a lack of patterning, the ability to surprise, shock, disorient, to shake people out of their comfort zones and make them reconsider what they think they know about art, or even about life. Patterns can be a source of potential beauty, but also of boredom when they become old and predictable. When we look at history, a good chunk of what's considered great art in every medium was "shocking" to its contemporary audiences, it violated the rules, patterns, standards, and aesthetic values of its culture, and in doing so created NEW rules, standards, and aesthetic values.


Well, _of course_ perceptual coherence is only one aspect. Who said it wasn't? The point is that coherence is a basic necessity for communicating meaning, not to mention achieving (formal) beauty. In art which employs sensuous forms and/or colors, the patterning must be coherent and not undermine the perceptual expectations it creates. (In literature, coherence will be a matter of finding a form that fits the ideas being communicated in words.) Moreover, coherence is not incompatible with surprise or shock. You're looking at this too narrowly.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> Eventually, neurologists, cognitive psychologists, evolutionary biologists, musical anthropologists and aesthetic philosophers may save us from such whirlpools of subjectivity. Meanwhile, some of us like to take our amateurish stabs at understanding what might lie behind the easy answers (and the wrong ones).


In terms of aesthetics, every single one of those fields--Neurology, Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Biology, Anthropology--except aesthetic philosophy are based around studying the subjectivity of human beings. They couldn't "save us from whirlpools of subjectivity" when all their answers would simply be answering why our subjectivities are what they are.

I said this in another thread, but there's an evolutionary reason why most prefer sugar to vegetables. That we have an evolutionary answer to the question "why do most humans prefer the taste of sugar to vegetables?" doesn't make that preference objective; the preference still resides in the minds and tastes of the human. The entire issue is that whatever answers you can find to why people prefer tonality, they will not and can not make the preference objective as the preference will always exist in the human mind, not in the art.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> The notions of patterning (and surprise) are incredibly cultural dependent. A pattern common to one culture can be a surprise to another and vice versa. So even in the case where there are objective patterns, the recognition of them is still highly relative and subjective. Further, the perception of such patterns still requires that the viewer find such patterns "beautiful." They are not "beautiful" in-and-of-themselves, independent of the observer thinking and feeling about them a certain way. They most certainly require the viewer to value them, and they have absolutely no meaning or value on their own (and audiences are perfectly free to find meaning and value in art without such patterns).


I'm not talking about "notions of patterning." I'm talking about coherence as a necessity of comprehensibility and the communication of fundamental values in human existence. (I'm tired of this "objective/subjective" stuff. Can you make your points without resorting to that deceptive dichotomy?)

"...audiences are perfectly free to find meaning and value in art without such patterns." That is a completely useless statement. Anyone is "perfectly free to find value" in _anything._


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I fundamentally disagree that disorder and chaos cannot be beautiful. Sunsets are often beautiful, and yet they're completely random and chaotic, depending upon the time of year and the location and the exact positioning of the clouds. There's nothing "designed" about a sunset. Similarly, I imagine the creative process of a Godard or an Ashbery is much more concerned about capturing whatever beauty they happen to find in the chaos of the moment, without design, without reference to some a priori values of whatever patterning you or anyone else thinks constitutes beauty. Given that even in the 20th century we've had the birth of genres like jazz that stressed improvisation (and in which even the "patterning" of improvisation loosened over time), of compositional styles like aleatory music, I'd say that even musicians and listeners hear value in the aural equivalence of chaos-or as close as one can get to it while still making art at all.


The term "beauty" is problematic, as EdwardBast and I were saying. It's a term best avoided unless we're very specific about what it means in context. Yes, a sunset may be "beautiful." But how can you assert that sunsets are "random and chaotic" and why do you imply that the criteria we use in finding them beautiful are the same criteria we apply to works of art? Better think that one through. (Ever wonder why even skillful paintings of sunsets generally look rather feeble?)

Yeah, some listeners like music that sounds (or is) chaotic. So what? To repeat, people can value anything. They can even call it "beautiful."


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Finally, reading over your recent exchange with Strange Magic, I do not deny that there is something in our psychology that finds tonality innately pleasing; but whatever the answer is as to why, it will be no different than what I said in another post about why most everyone finds sugar more pleasing than vegetables. One reason finding patterns is pleasing at all to humans is because it was by recognizing patterns that our ancestors were able to make accurate predictions about how reality functioned and that facilitated their manipulating of reality to benefit them. There's probably something in tonality that makes its patterns more readily detectable than in other musical modes. Given that music is based on acoustic waveforms and frequencies, and given that these frequencies have physical sizes, it's likely that tonality takes advantages of the geometric ratios of these frequencies and sizes; it would be the aural equivalent of why we find geometric visual designs pleasing in painting and architecture.
> 
> All that said, it's still entirely possible for people to be pleased by atonal music, as I'm sure you're aware of, and there's no basis by which to declare those who prefer atonal to tonal (or vice versa) right or wrong, or to say that either side "knows" something the other doesn't (or that their "knowledge" is the source of their differing aesthetic preferences). I essentially agree with Strange Magic in that I don't see what you're writing about really argues for any kind of "subjective knowledge," or at least how this "subjective knowledge" differs in any way from "knowledge about subjects." To boil this whole thing down, do you think there's any difference between these statements:
> 
> a. "Many people think/feel tonal music is beautiful."
> b. "Many people know tonal music is beautiful."
> c. "Tonal music is beautiful."


Oh God! Not food again!

You thoughts on tonality are a start on actually thinking about how and what music means, so I guess I ought to feel grateful. I believe there's a lot more to be said about tonality, its origins, its power, and its ubiquity. I've said much about that in earlier years on this forum, and haven't the fortitude at the moment to dive back in.

Of course people can enjoy atonal music. I've done so myself. No one is saying that music _has_ to be tonal, only that there are very interesting reasons why most music is.

In answer to your grand finale: tonal music may or may not be "beautiful," people may think/feel that it is, and people may know that it is (if it is).


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> In terms of aesthetics, every single one of those fields--Neurology, Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Biology, Anthropology--except aesthetic philosophy are based around studying the subjectivity of human beings. They couldn't "save us from whirlpools of subjectivity" when all their answers would simply be answering why our subjectivities are what they are.
> 
> I said this in another thread, but there's an evolutionary reason why most prefer sugar to vegetables. That we have an evolutionary answer to the question "why do most humans prefer the taste of sugar to vegetables?" doesn't make that preference objective; the preference still resides in the minds and tastes of the human. The entire issue is that whatever answers you can find to why people prefer tonality, they will not and can not make the preference objective as the preference will always exist in the human mind, not in the art.


The very fact that you can use the incoherent formulation "objective preference" suggests that you're not understanding what I'm saying (or maybe what _you're_ saying). This sort of thing is symptomatic of the "whirlpool of subjectivity" I'm talking about.

I disagree completely with your first statement here. Those disciplines are looking at facts of human physiology, history, behavior and culture, drawing connections, making inferences and forming theories which may be tested through further observation and research. That doesn't sound like a whirlpool of subjectivity to me.


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## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> Oh God! Not food again!


"If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it..."


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## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> "If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it..."


"He didn't say on what, but I think it's a ma-a-a-ahvelous idea!" (Anna Russell)


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## Enthusiast

Woodduck said:


> The term "beauty" is problematic, as EdwardBast and I were saying. It's a term best avoided unless we're very specific about what it means in context. Yes, a sunset may be "beautiful." But how can you assert that sunsets are "random and chaotic" and why do you imply that the criteria we use in finding them beautiful are the same criteria we apply to works of art? Better think that one through. (Ever wonder why even skillful paintings of sunsets generally look rather feeble?)


I'm not disagreeing with anyone, here, but the sunset analogy is instructive. A good sunset may not be chaotic but it is rare, arresting, surprising. It is not the norm. These are also qualities that apply to great art.


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## Enthusiast

Woodduck said:


> Thanks for this insightful post. It's refreshing to find, amid the general wallow in "subjectivity," someone willing to think about how art works as a cognitive phenomenon.
> 
> I don't think the view you're putting forth here is in contradiction to mine. There's no question that cognition in any form depends upon a perception of order, and that the mind is engaged in a relentless pursuit of coherence amid the random sense impressions that assault it. Order, pattern, coherence are the essential presuppositions of all cognitive activity. But cognition is a life function, and life is dynamic; it consists of movement from one state to another, and as long as life lasts and movement continues order is relative and not absolute. In life, and in perception, the ordering process is never finished, but consists of constant and simultaneous ordering and disordering. There is constant building up and breaking down in the dance of life; order battles continuously with chaos - but, as long as life lasts, it wins the war.
> 
> The winning of that war, cognitively as well as physically (in the maintenance of health), is the defining project of living beings, and art is, at its most basic level, the translation of that project into the symbolic realm. In the process of cognition, beyond the point of simply identifying entities (recognizing separate entities in the general field of sense perception), the mind begins to note common patterns between phenomena and to perceive one thing as representing or standing in for another: it begins to symbolize - to create metaphor. The basic importance of metaphor in human cognition has, I gather (without having done extensive reading in the subject), become increasingly appreciated by cognitive psychologists, who have proposed the concept of "cross-domain mapping" to designate the process by which the mind understands information obtained by one sense mode in terms of another. It does this by abstracting and comparing patterns, patterns which may be either static or dynamic but which can actually be metaphorized into one another (hence the natural way we speak of the "movement" of line and form in the literally static art of painting). The identification of the "life patterns" with which the process of metaphoric translation works would be a very considerable project which I suspect may be ongoing in the field of cognitive psychology, but here I'll just say that I believe an understanding of this is fundamental to an understanding of art and of the cognitive/affective response we identify as "aesthetic." My practical experience as both painter and musician, which has allowed me the most intimate possible observation of the cross-domain metaphorizing involved in artistic thinking, affirms this vividly.
> 
> I think you might see from this (admittedly too brief) elaboration of my previous remarks that the order I'm asserting as fundamental to art implies no "closing things down" or "tying them up neatly." Life is never tied up neatly, and never closed down before death. Order - and its aesthetic equivalent, beauty - is for a living being not static but dynamic; the dynamic process of ordering, of building up and breaking down, not only does not forbid, but positively embraces, the ambiguity and open-endedness you value in art. What you call the struggle to "understand" is precisely the essence of the cognitive process; it's the battle of life itself, and art is a metaphorical field of battle on which life happens. Life's process can be manifested in all the arts, but certainly in none more strikingly than in music, which metaphorizes vital life patterns in their native dimension, the one most urgently important to us as living beings: time.


This thread moves too fast for me! I read this last night and wanted to think about it. And now it is two pages back. I certainly agree with what you have written here but do not always see it reflected in some of your other posts. I guess that is the nature of short posts (even long ones are short): they give is a small view (a glimpse) of something bigger (in this case your whole view on the subjects here). I like the term _general wallow in "subjectivity"_ and agree that subjectivity gets us nowhere very helpful if we are talking of the valuing of art. It is an easy way out in discussions like this, though, and it is easy also to paint those who argue against it as a form of "aesthetic fascism".


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## Enthusiast

Evolution is getting a lot of mentions here, presumably as analogy. But (literal) evolution is about organisms finding niches that they can thrive in. Life may have started with one organism but it quickly (or, rather, very slowly!) became a myriad of organisms. The story of evolution is one of diversification rather than of the strong destroying the rest. There are "arms races", of course, as predators are challenged to beat the latest mutation of the predated, but this is merely a mechanism and not the broad story. In literal evolution thriving means reproducing. The analogous process in art is not that clear but is probably something like finding an appreciative audience. But my point is that I am not sure the analogy helps us to understand what is great in art. It merely tells us that I will probably find what I like and you will probably find what you like. So it seems to lead to subjectivity - and its main measurement, popularity - but, although it allows plenty of room for the less popular, it doesn't tell us how to value it.


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## science

Enthusiast said:


> This thread moves too fast for me! I read this last night and wanted to think about it. And now it is two pages back. I certainly agree with what you have written here but do not always see it reflected in some of your other posts. I guess that is the nature of short posts (even long ones are short): they give is a view of something bigger (in this case your whole view on the subjects here). I like the term _general wallow in "subjectivity"_ and agree that subjectivity gets us nowhere very helpful if we are talking of the valuing art. It is an easy way out in discussions like this, though, and it is easy also to paint those who argue against it as a form of "aesthetic fascism".


I don't think acknowledging that taste is subjective is "an easy out." In fact, it complicates everything.

Which is why fascists, colonialists, racists, classists, and so on throughout history haven't liked it. I would not attribute such motives to everyone who believes that taste could somehow be objective (rather than subjective responses to objectively verifiable features of the art)...

... but let's not forget that on this site the ubiquitous context of this discussion is the battle between people who think you're a dolt if you don't like Schoenberg/Cage/Stockhausen and people who think you're a dolt if you do. (For the moment the former have mostly surrendered the field to the latter, but this probably won't last forever.) In this context, for both sides, objectivity is meant to be wielded as a weapon.

To me, a world where we can discuss why we like various works to varying degrees seems much more interesting than a world where those questions have objectively correct answers that we all have to submit to. Fortunately, despite the claims of those who insist we all share their tastes (which are supposed to be objectively correct), it appears to be the world we live in. As interesting as math and science are, it's nice that aesthetics seems to have different principles.


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## science

Enthusiast said:


> Evolution is getting a lot of mentions here, presumably as analogy. But (literal) evolution is about organisms finding niches that they can thrive in. Life may have started with one organism but it quickly (or, rather, very slowly!) became a myriad of organisms. The story of evolution is one of diversification rather than of the strong destroying the rest. There are "arms races", of course, as predators are challenged to beat the latest mutation of the predated, but this is merely a mechanism and not the broad story. In literal evolution thriving means reproducing. The analogous process in art is not that clear but is probably something like finding an appreciative audience. But my point is that I am not sure the analogy helps us to understand what is great in art. It merely tells us that I will probably find what I like and you will probably find what you like. So it seems to lead to subjectivity - and its main measurement, popularity - but, although it allows plenty of room for the less popular, it doesn't tell us how to value it.


This _is_ an interesting question!

I think you're right to note the diversity of life. Astounding diversity. So if there is any analogy between the tree of life and the world of art, it appears to be that the rare exotic species is as legitimate as the most common.

For the past five hundred years, we have lived in a time of rapid extinctions as invasive species take over previously isolated ecosystems. That is analogous to what has been happening in the world of culture, as a few varieties - primarily Western and especially American and Spanish, but also Arabian, Chinese, and lately Korean - food, music, television, film, art, religion, language, and so on replace the cultures of the rest of the world. So it goes, I guess. But we have once again began to appreciate diversity, which is a nice thing. Maybe we'll save a few things.


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## DaveM

science said:


> ... but let's not forget that on this site the ubiquitous context of this discussion is the battle between people who think you're a dolt if you don't like Schoenberg/Cage/Stockhausen and people who think you're a dolt if you do. (For the moment the former have mostly surrendered the field to the latter, but this probably won't last forever.)


No they haven't.


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## Enthusiast

science said:


> For the past five hundred years, we have lived in a time of rapid extinctions as invasive species take over previously isolated ecosystems. That is analogous to what has been happening in the world of culture, as a few varieties - primarily Western and especially American and Spanish, but also Arabian, Chinese, and lately Korean - food, music, television, film, art, religion, language, and so on replace the cultures of the rest of the world. So it goes, I guess. But we have once again began to appreciate diversity, which is a nice thing. Maybe we'll save a few things.


Yes. But the metaphor of (biological) evolution applied to culture is problematic. The rapid extinctions we are witnessing among living forms is too rapid for evolutionary forces to provide new adaptations and diversification. Biological evolution is very slow. But this is not the case with cultural evolution. To be sure some forms of human organisation - and the cultural practices, ideas and artifacts that go with them - are doomed. But new cultural forms can spring up quickly and some of our new technologies can foster increased and even speedier diversification. It seems to me that this speeding up of diversification - and the overthrowing of previously dominant strands - has been happening in the arts for at least a hundred years. So even as older cultural forms are dying out they are being replaced by a more varied mass of new forms. Old cultural forms were always only temporary and destined to be replaced - Mozartian classicism by Beethovian early romanticism and so on - but the trend has become that the replacements are more varied. Another difference between (biological) evolution and its use as a metaphor for cultural change is that with art we do not lose what came before (we still have Mozart and Beethoven as well as Ferneyhough, Adams and Benjamin) whereas all we have of extinct animals are fossils or, for more recent extinctions, stuffed specimens! Some might argue that Mozart's and Beethoven's music is fossilised but I don't think they can be taken seriously.


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## DaveM

Evolution is nature's artist striving for perfection.


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## Enthusiast

science said:


> I don't think acknowledging that taste is subjective is "an easy out." In fact, it complicates everything.
> 
> Which is why fascists, colonialists, racists, classists, and so on throughout history haven't liked it. I would not attribute such motives to everyone who believes that taste could somehow be objective (rather than subjective responses to objectively verifiable features of the art)...


OK, yes. Subjectivity is a right. But when it is combined with measurement - "most people prefer this to that" - one subjective view it becomes oppressive towards other subjective views. This might be why some sort of objectivity might be useful. It allows us to protect things that may be under attack from a majority view, whether it be ISIS destroying historic statues or people arguing that most people dislike Schoenberg and therefore Schoenberg should be buried. Schoenberg being put on a pedestal is decried and resented as elitism and the majority subjective view is offered as proof. Sometimes tentatively stated standards (which tend toward being objective) are needed to defend the less popular things for those who (subjectively) enjoy them. And such standards can also guide people who are interested about where it might be worth opening their ears to something new.



science said:


> ... but let's not forget that on this site the ubiquitous context of this discussion is the battle between people who think you're a dolt if you don't like Schoenberg/Cage/Stockhausen and people who think you're a dolt if you do. (For the moment the former have mostly surrendered the field to the latter, but this probably won't last forever.) In this context, for both sides, objectivity is meant to be wielded as a weapon.
> 
> *To me, a world where we can discuss why we like various works to varying degrees seems much more interesting than a world where those questions have objectively correct answers that we all have to submit to. Fortunately, despite the claims of those who insist we all share their tastes (which are supposed to be objectively correct), it appears to be the world we live in. As interesting as math and science are, it's nice that aesthetics seems to have different principles.*


I couldn't agree more with the part I have highlighted! How can someone be a dolt is they do or do not like Stockhausen? How can they even be wrong? And isn't discussing these matters what a forum like this is all about?

Do my two responses to your post contradict each other? Perhaps. But don't most truths about important things have two opposing faces?


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## Nereffid

Enthusiast said:


> OK, yes. Subjectivity is a right. But when it is combined with measurement - "most people prefer this to that" - one subjective view it becomes oppressive towards other subjective views. This might be why some sort of objectivity might be useful. It allows us to protect things that may be under attack from a majority view, whether it be ISIS destroying historic statues or people arguing that most people dislike Schoenberg and therefore Schoenberg should be buried. Schoenberg being put on a pedestal is decried and resented as elitism and the majority subjective view is offered as proof.


But if a majority subjective view starts to _attack_ another subjective view, isn't this just another form of pretend "objectivity" - where instead of "aesthetic standards" you've got "market forces", or "God's will". Though I don't think ISIS believe that they're simply expressing their personal subjective opinions; if anything, they represent Peak Objectivity.


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## Enthusiast

Nereffid said:


> But if a majority subjective view starts to _attack_ another subjective view, isn't this just another form of pretend "objectivity" - where instead of "aesthetic standards" you've got "market forces", or "God's will". Though I don't think ISIS believe that they're simply expressing their personal subjective opinions; if anything, they represent Peak Objectivity.


Yes to the first part. How _do _you establish what is the objective truth about the value of this or that art? I have posted my own answers to this at too much length a few weeks ago (not in this thread) and I am not sure anyone was that impressed! And most, I think, misunderstood - or didn't read - what I actually said, anyway. So let it be that I think there probably is an objective truth and that perhaps we can even know a little of it in a very broad way.

But that cannot mean that it is something that should be used to dictate anything to anyone. And, anyway, I am not sure we can _know _anything objective about music that is not at least, say, 80 years old. My feeling, you see, is that it our best knowledge of objective value is concerned with the longevity of the art in question. It is important, by the way, that any view we have about objective truth, and how we might know some of it, is (and must be) open to discussion. _That discussion is more important than any decision it reaches. _I would like to think this would be learned debate rather than just shouting prejudiced views across a divide.

As for ISIS, they may think they know God's will but what they try to impose is their majority view. So I agree again .... and that was my point. Subjectivity is OK - everyone is welcome to make up their own minds about what they like - but it is when it becomes a majority view that it can become dangerous. This is because that majority may seek to impose their view on others ... well, that is the end. They _claim_ objective truth but they cannot substantiate it and are not willing to debate it. So I do not agree or accept that this - whether from the brave lads of ISIS or any other Fascist group - is peak objectivity.


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## Enthusiast

DaveM said:


> Evolution is nature's artist striving for perfection.


The Blind Watchmaker to use Dawkins' facetious book title. Or, to Daniel Dennett, an algorithm - so not an artist at all! I don't think either see a trend towards perfection, though.


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## DaveM

Enthusiast said:


> The Blind Watchmaker to use Dawkins' facetious book title. Or, to Daniel Dennett, an algorithm - so not an artist at all! I don't think either see a trend towards perfection, though.


Natural genetic selection is the weeding out of the imperfect or, if you will, less perfect.


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## Strange Magic

A quick possible view of "objective/subjective":

In future, a hypothetical "art experience" (rapture, "insight", "understanding", joy, feelings of grandeur or humility, admiration, what some call "cusp experiences") will be very well mapped, understood, predicted by a combination of neurochemistry, Meyerian analysis of patterns and hierarchies, and a thorough knowledge of an individual's background and life experiences. This could be considered "objective": "This is why X loves Bach, Bartok, and Babbitt, and I can prove it."

The variability of each individual, in brain anatomy, chemistry, neurology; and in background and life experiences, would require a specific, detailed analysis of any one individual's reaction to art (and to nature), to tease out exactly what their reaction would be, as everyone's reactions are unique. This aspect we will label "subjective": "Unless I have all your data points, I cannot tell you what you'll like (have an "art experience") or why; your situation is unique and currently unfathomable".

All we're left with, until all relevant data about everybody is collected and analyzed, is the bell curve--how many people like--or say they like (have an "art experience" in association with) Bach, or Bartok, or Babbitt. And this future potential knowledge will still tell us nothing about great/not great or good/bad in art.


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## DaveM

Strange Magic said:


> All we're left with, until all relevant data about everybody is collected and analyzed, is the bell curve--how many people like--or say they like (have an "art experience" in association with) Bach, or Bartok, or Babbitt. And this future potential knowledge will still tell us nothing about great/not great or good/bad in art.


The Bell curve data would be more useful if it was based on how many people _think_ Bach, Beethoven or Bartok is great (whether they like them or not), especially if the data is collected over many years and derived from different cultures. The suggestion by some that all opinions on classical composers are subjective is simply not true. The more the opinion is based on reliable, reconfirmed -generation after generation- historical information, the more objective it becomes.

The meaning of the word 'great' is pretty straightforward. Thus, 'Beethoven is a great composer' is a pretty objective opinion.


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## Strange Magic

More people think Beethoven is a great composer than think Babbitt is a great composer (add me to that Beethoven list). Having determined this, what next?


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## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> More people think Beethoven is a great composer than think Babbitt is a great composer (add me to that Beethoven list). Having determined this, what next?


Next is to ask: WHY?


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> Your background is in literature. Keep in mind that mine is in music and visual art. Literature uses words, and except in some poetry possesses abstract form only in a rough and simple way sufficient to support the meaning inherent in words. My only thought is that wherever there is an expression of anything significant in art - and certainly anything significant enough to constitute "greatness" - there is substantial coherence or agreement within the work, at the very least an agreement of means to ends.
> 
> In the absence of anything concrete to address, only general principles can be stated.


Just to clarify: I have an informal background in literature and film; "informal" meaning I've read/studied actual textbooks, discussed them with actual professors, but outside of academia. Over the years I've probably read as much on music as film and literature, but I've never cracked open an actual music textbook and studied.

I still disagree with what you say about "substantial coherence or agreement within a work." The bulk of modernism and postmodernism have greatly challenged these assumptions, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design (there's an interesting history of this in literature if you'd like me to try to explain it).



Woodduck said:


> Well, _of course_ perceptual coherence is only one aspect. Who said it wasn't? The point is that coherence is a basic necessity for communicating meaning, not to mention achieving (formal) beauty. In art which employs sensuous forms and/or colors, the patterning must be coherent and not undermine the perceptual expectations it creates. (In literature, coherence will be a matter of finding a form that fits the ideas being communicated in words.) Moreover, coherence is not incompatible with surprise or shock. You're looking at this too narrowly.


See my disagreement about coherency above. Even in the visual arts, which I admittedly know little about, I'm not so sure that's true: what about the approach to paintings where colors are randomly splashed on a canvas? In film, I think of the experimental "painting-on-film" works of Stan Brakhage, which I find quite beautiful, if not really coherent:






Surprise and shock occur when the predictability that patterns create is broken, disrupted, or interrupted. If these breaks in pattern were also compatible with the patterns I don't see how it would be perceived as a surprise or shock.



Woodduck said:


> "...audiences are perfectly free to find meaning and value in art without such patterns." That is a completely useless statement. Anyone is "perfectly free to find value" in _anything._


So if everyone's free to find meaning and value in anything, then why is such patterning a necessary condition for beauty and meaning and value?



Woodduck said:


> The term "beauty" is problematic, as EdwardBast and I were saying. It's a term best avoided unless we're very specific about what it means in context. Yes, a sunset may be "beautiful." But how can you assert that sunsets are "random and chaotic" and why do you imply that the criteria we use in finding them beautiful are the same criteria we apply to works of art? Better think that one through. (Ever wonder why even skillful paintings of sunsets generally look rather feeble?)
> 
> Yeah, some listeners like music that sounds (or is) chaotic. So what? To repeat, people can value anything. They can even call it "beautiful."


A sunset certainly isn't "designed," and the way anyone looks is determined by a confluence of factors-time of year, place on Earth, location of clouds-that are rather unpredictable. It's not like you can predict what a sunset will look like before you see it. So if that's not "random and chaotic," I'm not sure what would be. I'm not sure if what we find beautiful in sunsets and art are comparable, but neither am I sure that even what we find beautiful in art is always comparable and has some common element underlying it all.

If some listeners like music that sounds/is chaotic, if it's beautiful to them, then patterning isn't a necessary condition for beauty unless you're trying to argue that beauty is a property of the objects rather than of the minds perceiving it.



Woodduck said:


> The very fact that you can use the incoherent formulation "objective preference" suggests that you're not understanding what I'm saying (or maybe what _you're_ saying). This sort of thing is symptomatic of the "whirlpool of subjectivity" I'm talking about.
> 
> I disagree completely with your first statement here. Those disciplines are looking at facts of human physiology, history, behavior and culture, drawing connections, making inferences and forming theories which may be tested through further observation and research. That doesn't sound like a whirlpool of subjectivity to me.


I actually agree that "objective preference" is an incoherent formulation, but that was partly the point: if these things (beauty, meaning, value, etc.) boil down to "preferences" then there's no way to argue that beauty depends on features of art; they would all depend upon the minds evaluating the art.

What you say about those disciplines is not incompatible with the notions that they're studying human subjectivity. You can state facts about and causes of subjective things: "Shooting him caused him pain" is a fact about a subjective feeling and what caused it. To go back to music, saying "most people prefer tonal music" is a fact about people's subjectivities: "Beethoven is a good composer to most classical music fans" is a fact about people's subjectivities" "Beethoven knew when he did good work" is not a fact unless you specify what subjectivity the "good work" is in reference to; it may be true in regard to Beethoven's subjectivity and those who love Beethoven, and not true in regard to those who dislike Beethoven.



Woodduck said:


> In answer to your grand finale: tonal music may or may not be "beautiful," people may think/feel that it is, and people may know that it is (if it is).


You didn't really answer my question as to what the DIFFERENCE is between those statements. Again, the way you phrase this makes it seem like you believe that beauty can be inherent in the art, and people can directly perceive it if it is. This doesn't jive what you say about about "people can value anything. They can even call it 'beautiful.'" If you still believe that the beauty is in the art, then if people are finding works that objectively don't possess beauty "beautiful" then you would have to believe they're wrong, not simply that they have different values about what constitutes beauty.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Strange Magic said:


> A quick possible view of "objective/subjective":
> 
> In future, a hypothetical "art experience" (rapture, "insight", "understanding", joy, feelings of grandeur or humility, admiration, what some call "cusp experiences") will be very well mapped, understood, predicted by a combination of neurochemistry, Meyerian analysis of patterns and hierarchies, and a thorough knowledge of an individual's background and life experiences. *This could be considered "objective": "This is why X loves Bach, Bartok, and Babbitt, and I can prove it."*
> 
> The variability of each individual, in brain anatomy, chemistry, neurology; and in background and life experiences, would require a specific, detailed analysis of any one individual's reaction to art (and to nature), to tease out exactly what their reaction would be, as everyone's reactions are unique. *This aspect we will label "subjective":* "Unless I have all your data points, I cannot tell you what you'll like (have an "art experience") or why; your situation is unique and currently unfathomable".


I think this is a key point that's getting muddled in this thread. There seems to be this idea that if you can prove why subjective feelings are what they are then that proof makes them objective; this is incorrect given the philosophical distinction between the two terms. If you prove why someone feels or reacts how they do to something, then the proof itself can be an objective fact; subjectivities can be studied and mapped and theorized about and made predictions about. However, the actual "goodness" or "badness" that the subject feels/thinks about art remains subjective, a part of their mental experience, and subjective no matter why it happens.

To make an analogy, it's fair to say we know for an objective fact that shooting someone results in them feeling pain. So that's an objectively true statement. The pain that people feel, however, is subjective; it exists entirely as a mental experience, even though the cause is primarily external to them (I say primarily as the experience of pain requires certain functioning nerves and areas of the brain that reads pain signals). That's a more clear-cut example even than art, because in art the subjective aspects are as much a crucial causal variable than in gunshot cases.


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## Eva Yojimbo

DaveM said:


> The more the opinion is based on reliable, reconfirmed -generation after generation- historical information, the more objective it becomes.
> 
> The meaning of the word 'great' is pretty straightforward. Thus, 'Beethoven is a great composer' is a pretty objective opinion.


The "historical information" is only given you data about how many people like Beethoven. You can make an objective statement about how many like Beethoven from that data, but not a statement about how great Beethoven is, unless we're defining "greatness" as "X many people liking Beethoven over Y period of time."


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## KenOC

DaveM said:


> Evolution is nature's artist striving for perfection.


Evolution is a process that selects species most suited to flourish in a specific environment at a specific time. The mechanism is the preferential survival and reproduction strategies of individuals. Not looking for, or progressing toward, "perfection."


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## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> Next is to ask: WHY?


See my post #442. Someday we will state with great clarity why more people say they believe that Beethoven is great than believe Babbitt is great.


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## DaveM

Eva Yojimbo said:


> The "historical information" is only given you data about how many people like Beethoven. You can make an objective statement about how many like Beethoven from that data, but not a statement about how great Beethoven is, unless we're defining "greatness" as "X many people liking Beethoven over Y period of time."


I specifically stated that the historic information that is important is that based on what people 'think' was great, not what they 'liked'. Over the last 200 hundred years we have the evaluation of Beethoven's music by his peers, by composers who followed and were influenced by him, by publishers, by musicologists, by critics and finally by the listening public which includes many diverse cultures when recorded music became available.

Also, over that period of time, with the information from the same sources above, one can make increasingly accurate comparisons with other composers. If there is consistency as to how Beethoven compares/compared with other composers that preceded or followed and he falls in the top 3-4, decade after decade, then one can come to a fairly reliable/objective conclusion that he is great.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Just to clarify: I have an informal background in literature and film; "informal" meaning I've read/studied actual textbooks, discussed them with actual professors, but outside of academia. Over the years I've probably read as much on music as film and literature, but I've never cracked open an actual music textbook and studied.
> 
> I still disagree with what you say about "substantial coherence or agreement within a work." The bulk of modernism and postmodernism have greatly challenged these assumptions, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design (there's an interesting history of this in literature if you'd like me to try to explain it).
> 
> See my disagreement about coherency above. Even in the visual arts, which I admittedly know little about, I'm not so sure that's true: what about the approach to paintings where colors are randomly splashed on a canvas? In film, I think of the experimental "painting-on-film" works of Stan Brakhage, which I find quite beautiful, if not really coherent:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Surprise and shock occur when the predictability that patterns create is broken, disrupted, or interrupted. If these breaks in pattern were also compatible with the patterns I don't see how it would be perceived as a surprise or shock.
> 
> So if everyone's free to find meaning and value in anything, then why is such patterning a necessary condition for beauty and meaning and value?
> 
> A sunset certainly isn't "designed," and the way anyone looks is determined by a confluence of factors-time of year, place on Earth, location of clouds-that are rather unpredictable. It's not like you can predict what a sunset will look like before you see it. So if that's not "random and chaotic," I'm not sure what would be. I'm not sure if what we find beautiful in sunsets and art are comparable, but neither am I sure that even what we find beautiful in art is always comparable and has some common element underlying it all.
> 
> If some listeners like music that sounds/is chaotic, if it's beautiful to them, then patterning isn't a necessary condition for beauty unless you're trying to argue that beauty is a property of the objects rather than of the minds perceiving it.
> 
> I actually agree that "objective preference" is an incoherent formulation, but that was partly the point: if these things (beauty, meaning, value, etc.) boil down to "preferences" then there's no way to argue that beauty depends on features of art; they would all depend upon the minds evaluating the art.
> 
> What you say about those disciplines is not incompatible with the notions that they're studying human subjectivity. You can state facts about and causes of subjective things: "Shooting him caused him pain" is a fact about a subjective feeling and what caused it. To go back to music, saying "most people prefer tonal music" is a fact about people's subjectivities: "Beethoven is a good composer to most classical music fans" is a fact about people's subjectivities" "Beethoven knew when he did good work" is not a fact unless you specify what subjectivity the "good work" is in reference to; it may be true in regard to Beethoven's subjectivity and those who love Beethoven, and not true in regard to those who dislike Beethoven.
> 
> You didn't really answer my question as to what the DIFFERENCE is between those statements. Again, the way you phrase this makes it seem like you believe that beauty can be inherent in the art, and people can directly perceive it if it is. This doesn't jive what you say about about "people can value anything. They can even call it 'beautiful.'" If you still believe that the beauty is in the art, then if people are finding works that objectively don't possess beauty "beautiful" then you would have to believe they're wrong, not simply that they have different values about what constitutes beauty.


It's just too cumbersome and exhausting to deal with these gargantuan posts. Really, they boil down to very little, but responding to them in their particulars is becoming onerous.

On this one, I'll only point out that your offer of random splotches of paint as evidence that "beauty" is totally subjective is evidence of no such thing. It's merely evidence that "beauty" has a variety of meanings. I had hoped that pointing out that the word is problematic might serve as a caution and a clue, but I guess I didn't get that across. One might reasonably use it to distinguish, say, the qualities of design present in an exquisitely designed and carved jade dragon from the qualities of design present in a truckload of horse manure. But if by chance you're more moved to exclaim "BEAUTIFUL!" upon seeing (or stepping in) the latter, I wouldn't dream of arguing with you.


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## science

Strange Magic said:


> See my post #442. Someday we will state with great clarity why more people say they believe that Beethoven is great than believe Babbitt is great.


And perhaps why even more people like the Beatles. And maybe we'll know why the exceptions are exceptional.

But we won't know that the exceptional are WRONG. If someone enjoys Jackson Pollack more than they enjoy a carved jade dragon.... De gustibus. De gustibus eternally.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I think this is a key point that's getting muddled in this thread. There seems to be this idea that if you can prove why subjective feelings are what they are then that proof makes them objective.


I don't think this is properly formulated. The "muddle" in the discussion results largely from getting hung up on a supposed dichotomy of"subjective" vs. "objective," and thinking that some sort of choice must be made, when it should be obvious that every response to art and every work of art is the result of an interaction between the two. Seeking for objective factors that give rise to subjective experience is not a denial of subjective experience.

The problem I have with a thoroughly "subjectivist" view of aesthetics is that it seems content to assume (if only implicitly) that the experience of art is just an identityless, indeterminate mush - that the human psycho-physical organism has no specific identity, no intrinsic, universally human nature, no structure or needs which give rise to the phenomenon of art and to the forms which it takes. There seems to be a fear that acknowledging a specifically human nature, and identifying the kinds of aesthetic responses and values that tend to arise from it, would invalidate the wide variation in artistic tastes. And so there's this crazy egalitarianism which insists that it's biased and oppressive to suggest that a Wagner opera or an Indian raga has any claim to "objectively" superior artistry over Uncle George singing out of tune in the shower or John Cage tickling a cactus with a feather, simply because some people may "subjectively" prefer the latter.


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## DaveM

KenOC said:


> Evolution is a process that selects species most suited to flourish in a specific environment at a specific time. The mechanism is the preferential survival and reproduction strategies of individuals. Not looking for, or progressing toward, "perfection."


I would say that for each specific environment at a specific time, genetic selection tends to result in an increasingly more perfect species for that environment.


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## Enthusiast

DaveM said:


> I would say that for each specific environment at a specific time, genetic selection tends to result in an increasingly more perfect species for that environment.


And as that happens the environment changes so everything is always as perfect as can be and at the same time there is an "arms race" bringing about more change.

Of course, changes in the environment can come from other sources, too, and many organisms can all need to adapt at the same time. When these changes are sudden (a huge meteorite hitting the Earth, the spread of a new insecticide) lots of species can get wiped out completely with insufficient time to adapt.


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## Nereffid

Woodduck said:


> The problem I have with a thoroughly "subjectivist" view of aesthetics is that it seems content to assume (if only implicitly) that the interaction between the two is just an identityless, indeterminate mush - that the human psycho-physical organism has no specific identity, no intrinsic, universally human nature, no structure or needs which give rise to the phenomenon of art and to the forms which it takes.


I wonder who here actually believes that? I know I've often noted the fact that all humans share the same basic brain design and that it's therefore inevitable that there'll be considerable overlap in aesthetic preferences, and that some composers are clearly better than others at producing work that matches the aesthetic preferences of a huge number of people. The argument is over whether those aesthetic preferences are immutable and "correct", or whether they're so dependent on historical/social/cultural context that they're better described simply as the preferences of one particular group of people.



Woodduck said:


> And so there's this crazy egalitarianism which insists that it's biased and oppressive to suggest that a Wagner opera or an Indian raga has any claim to "objectively" superior artistry over Uncle George singing out of tune in the shower or John Cage tickling a cactus with a feather, simply because some people may "subjectively" prefer the latter.


Uncle George is a red herring here though. Although in theory Wagner vs Uncle George is still a matter of subjectivity, really in practice it's hard to come up with convincing grounds, _given what we know about what people generally want from music_, where Uncle George would be the equal of Wagner. The subjective vs objective debate really only kicks in with more realistic comparisons between, say, Wagner and Meyerbeer, or Meyerbeer and Boulez, or Boulez and Reich.


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## KenOC

For Woodduck: I prefer old Uncle George singing in the shower to Wagner. Can you really say I'm wrong without hauling in "expert" opinion or, even worse, appealing to numbers?


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## janxharris

KenOC said:


> For Woodduck: I prefer old Uncle George singing in the shower to Wagner. Can you really say I'm wrong without hauling in "expert" opinion or, even worse, appealing to numbers?


Depends which uncle George.

Seriously, Wagner's Prelude to Tristan and Isolde is beautifully crafted music; I think you jest.


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## janxharris

Uncle Handel........................


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## janxharris




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## Enthusiast

Nereffid said:


> I wonder who here actually believes that? I know I've often noted the fact that all humans share the same basic brain design and that it's therefore inevitable that there'll be considerable overlap in aesthetic preferences, and that some composers are clearly better than others at producing work that matches the aesthetic preferences of a huge number of people. The argument is over whether those aesthetic preferences are immutable and "correct", or whether they're so dependent on historical/social/cultural context that they're better described simply as the preferences of one particular group of people.
> 
> Uncle George is a red herring here though. Although in theory Wagner vs Uncle George is still a matter of subjectivity, really in practice it's hard to come up with convincing grounds, _given what we know about what people generally want from music_, where Uncle George would be the equal of Wagner. The subjective vs objective debate really only kicks in with more realistic comparisons between, say, Wagner and Meyerbeer, or Meyerbeer and Boulez, or Boulez and Reich.


I always had a problem when reading philosophy that I would agree with whoever I was reading at the time. I'm having something like the same problem in this debate. If it is a debate, that is, and I am not convinced that it is. There may be substantial agreement but that it is leading to substantially different choices?!

Surely the Uncle George example does demonstrate that there is something like an objective reality to the valuing of art? That it tells us nothing surprising is neither here nor there. But, yes, the problem we are having does indeed arise when we come to comparing artists of standing and trying to objectively value one more than the other. It seems to me that there probably is an objective truth to be discovered in this comparison of value. That does not mean we can know it but it does mean that it may be interesting to see if we can reason our way towards it. In this it does also seem that the subjective - whether it be "I like this more than that" or "most people like this more than that" - is not terribly helpful in this. And I do also wonder whether objectivity derived from mere measurement of simple subjective judgements (I like this vs 100 people like that) can be helpful either. In fact I feel certain that it cannot. What may be more important is the reason (and perhaps the reasoning) behind the _apparently _subjective judgments. And measurement as well may come into play here. But numbers can only mean anything in all this when they are meaningful (relevant) numbers for our purpose.

As I have stated before the only way I know to get slightly close to objective truth about the value of a piece of art is historical (it concerns how durably the work has proved to hold meaning for us) and is based on a consensus (not a mere majority) and is derived from people who have applied some rigour to the question (not merely their liking). But as my main interest in this discussion concerns contemporary music my method cannot be applied. Contemporary music is not old enough. So we are left with interesting and open and (I wish) respectful debate in which individual subjective experiences will be important.

And now I can't work out whether I have said anything of any value in this discussion or have merely kicked a few of the factors around a bit! Ah well. Take it or leave it.


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## Phil loves classical

^^ The problem I have with this view is less accessible works will always remain less accessible, and a less accessible work with greater craft will be less favoured than one more accessible with less. I believe History has already shown that. Music theory has been expanded in the 1950's that even contemporary works can be accurately judged. Some composers of old were ahead of their time. But I think many are lagging now. Ravel knew the Rite of Spring was genius right when he heard it in the premiere even when it involved something new. People don't necessarily need to like something new, but they can sense it, which warrants further study. There hadn't been anything really fresh and new for decades, from what I'm aware of.


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## Strange Magic

^^^^The accidents of history come into play also. We have retained perhaps 1% of the works of classical (Greek, Roman) antiquity, and almost all of that through the later transcriptions of medieval and later scholars, not from the originals themselves. We are told that much of the statuary of the classical world was brilliantly painted; it would be interesting to see the same pieces side by side painted and as their raw marble originals--whole theses could be written on how much better one approach was than the other.


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## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I still disagree with what you say about "substantial coherence or agreement within a work." The bulk of modernism and postmodernism have greatly challenged these assumptions, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design (there's an interesting history of this in literature if you'd like me to try to explain it).
> 
> Surprise and shock occur when the predictability that patterns create is broken, disrupted, or interrupted. If these breaks in pattern were also compatible with the patterns I don't see how it would be perceived as a surprise or shock.
> 
> So if everyone's free to find meaning and value in anything, then why is such patterning a necessary condition for beauty and meaning and value?
> 
> If some listeners like music that sounds/is chaotic, if it's beautiful to them, then patterning isn't a necessary condition for beauty unless you're trying to argue that beauty is a property of the objects rather than of the minds perceiving it.
> 
> I actually agree that "objective preference" is an incoherent formulation, but that was partly the point: if these things (beauty, meaning, value, etc.) boil down to "preferences" then there's no way to argue that beauty depends on features of art; they would all depend upon the minds evaluating the art.
> 
> What you say about those disciplines is not incompatible with the notions that they're studying human subjectivity. You can state facts about and causes of subjective things: "Shooting him caused him pain" is a fact about a subjective feeling and what caused it. To go back to music, saying "most people prefer tonal music" is a fact about people's subjectivities: "Beethoven is a good composer to most classical music fans" is a fact about people's subjectivities" "Beethoven knew when he did good work" is not a fact unless you specify what subjectivity the "good work" is in reference to; it may be true in regard to Beethoven's subjectivity and those who love Beethoven, and not true in regard to those who dislike Beethoven.


I'm sorry to have hacked up your post, Eva (and others: Eva's original post if you want to see it in full it is #446) but I have been rereading some of these posts and doing some thinking and have arrived at a belief that much of this particular aspect of the debate can be made to go away!

Let's accept that the perception of coherence is involved in the perception of beauty. And also that the brain (no, let's say the mind so as to allow for changes in when this happens across time and across cultures) is "wired" (a misleading metaphor, probably) to perceive order. The two do, to some extent, cancel each other out because the mind will seek and often find coherence even in chaos. In art, though, this tendency is not so automatic and may also be far from simple.

Many of the acknowledged great art works are unfinished or broken (not just music but sculptures, including many by Michelangelo and many broken masterpieces from antiquity, and paintings, including many by Leonardo). This potential incoherence does not cause us to see the works as lacking in beauty, let alone ugly.

And, then, if we look back in time and try to imagine how people of the early 1700s might perceive, say, the music of Beethoven. They would probably hear chaos. Indeed, the history of music is filled with stories of informed audiences and musicians not getting a new work that we now think of as simply beautiful. For example, Schubert's Great was initially thought by many musicians to be unplayable.

So, where does this get us? It matters little, I think, whether we consider chaos beautiful or whether we consider chaos to be perceived as coherent and therefore beautiful! They amount to the same thing. We can all agree, I think: that chaos can be considered beautiful (in broad terms). Whether or not this involves the perception of coherence (something that in perception of the world happens in a matter of milliseconds) does not seem an important point?


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## Enthusiast

Phil loves classical said:


> ^^ The problem I have with this view is less accessible works will always remain less accessible, and a less accessible work with greater craft will be less favoured than one more accessible with less. I believe History has already shown that. Music theory has been expanded in the 1950's that even contemporary works can be accurately judged. Some composers of old were ahead of their time. But I think many are lagging now. Ravel knew the Rite of Spring was genius right when he heard it in the premiere even when it involved something new. People don't necessarily need to like something new, but they can sense it, which warrants further study. There hadn't been anything really fresh and new for decades, from what I'm aware of.


I'm not sure whether I agree or not. But what I do know is that my ability to access music enjoyably grows with my experience. Music that once seemed a challenge to me now talks to me freely like an old friend. But I am not sure that I personally know whether or not the music that I still find challenging will open up to me or not. This can apply to the very avant garde but it can also apply to composers like, say, Bax who I rejected as rather minor and uninteresting for years but now find rewarding and enjoyable.


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## Nereffid

Enthusiast said:


> Surely the Uncle George example does demonstrate that there is something like an objective reality to the valuing of art? That it tells us nothing surprising is neither here nor there.


It demonstrates that, at one end of the spectrum, it's the similarities between human brains that are significant. I think the debate is really about when the _differences_ become significant.



Enthusiast said:


> As I have stated before the only way I know to get slightly close to objective truth about the value of a piece of art is historical (it concerns how durably the work has proved to hold meaning for us) and is based on a consensus (not a mere majority) and is derived from people who have applied some rigour to the question (not merely their liking). But as my main interest in this discussion concerns contemporary music my method cannot be applied. Contemporary music is not old enough. So we are left with interesting and open and (I wish) respectful debate in which individual subjective experiences will be important.


That's why I chose the 3 examples: Wagner vs Meyerbeer, Meyerbeer vs Boulez, Boulez vs Reich.
There's no doubt that under the current paradigm of classical music, Wagner is a greater composer than Meyerbeer. But I don't see him as _inherently_ greater: it's not hard to imagine an alternative paradigm in which the roles are reversed because Wagner's music didn't resonate with as many people (though I suspect any Star Trek-style changing of timelines would require going back quite early in the 19th century to produce such an outcome, possibly by killing Beethoven?!).
Meyerbeer vs Boulez - well, clearly Boulez is a much despised figure in some quarters, but much lauded elsewhere. So there are competing paradigms: under one, even a minor figure like Meyerbeer is vastly superior to a Boulez, who didn't write proper music; under the other, Boulez is clearly a significant composer; under a third, neither is worth bothering with. As you indicate, we don't yet have a historical distance for one paradigm to win out. It seems to me that the second option will probably become the universal paradigm, but who knows? At least one can say that Boulez's reputation is as solid now as Meyerbeer's was 2 years after _his_ death...
And Boulez vs Reich - in this case, with two contemporary composers who composed very different music, how does one compare them meaningfully except through vague (and inevitably subjective) terms?


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## DaveM

KenOC said:


> For Woodduck: I prefer old Uncle George singing in the shower to Wagner. Can you really say I'm wrong without hauling in "expert" opinion or, even worse, appealing to numbers?


For all we know, Uncle George could be a male Susan Boyle. Undiscovered greatness.


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## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> For Woodduck: I prefer old Uncle George singing in the shower to Wagner. Can you really say I'm wrong without hauling in "expert" opinion or, even worse, appealing to numbers?


Who could condemn a man's love for his uncle?


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## Enthusiast

Nereffid said:


> It demonstrates that, at one end of the spectrum, it's the similarities between human brains that are significant. I think the debate is really about when the _differences_ become significant.


I'm not sure it is worth talking about whether cats or aliens might find more value in Uncle George's voice. We are, after all, talking about our enjoyment of our art.



Nereffid said:


> That's why I chose the 3 examples: Wagner vs Meyerbeer, Meyerbeer vs Boulez, Boulez vs Reich.
> There's no doubt that under the current paradigm of classical music, Wagner is a greater composer than Meyerbeer. But I don't see him as _inherently_ greater: it's not hard to imagine an alternative paradigm in which the roles are reversed because Wagner's music didn't resonate with as many people (though I suspect any Star Trek-style changing of timelines would require going back quite early in the 19th century to produce such an outcome, possibly by killing Beethoven?!).
> Meyerbeer vs Boulez - well, clearly Boulez is a much despised figure in some quarters, but much lauded elsewhere. So there are competing paradigms: under one, even a minor figure like Meyerbeer is vastly superior to a Boulez, who didn't write proper music; under the other, Boulez is clearly a significant composer; under a third, neither is worth bothering with. As you indicate, we don't yet have a historical distance for one paradigm to win out. It seems to me that the second option will probably become the universal paradigm, but who knows? At least one can say that Boulez's reputation is as solid now as Meyerbeer's was 2 years after _his_ death...
> And Boulez vs Reich - in this case, with two contemporary composers who composed very different music, how does one compare them meaningfully except through vague (and inevitably subjective) terms?


Ah right. I see where you are coming from. But I'm not wholly convinced.

Your pairs are, as you note, very different. That doesn't stop us comparing them but may make comparing their relative value difficult. With relatively recent music, I can say "I prefer Carter to Cage" and I can even say why. But I will know that this remains an opinion. I can even say "I think this preference says x and y about me and my tastes" - I might as well get there before someone else insults me for the preference - but it remains an opinion. Others, perhaps more knowledgeable than me, will very likely call it the other way. We just have opinions and history warns us that both of us could be betting on music that is doomed to be forgotten.

But when it comes to older music, fashions - I think I prefer this word to "paradigms" (which is rather a technical term but I am not sure you were using it that way?) - will have changed many times. They will have influenced composers' opportunities and, perhaps, confidence but once the composers have died their influence will only be on how much value we find it their music. True enough, changing fashions will have been influenced by all sorts of events in the world and may therefore seem rather random or arbitrary. But the music will have exerted its own influence on the fashions - and this may be the stronger effect. All of this might make it impossible to decisively value some composers over some others, but I doubt it can be such a strong effect as to make us think Meyerbeer was greater than Wagner! They did very different things, of course, but Meyerbeer would have had to have been really magical to have elevated his idiom above Wagner's, surely? And he didn't. I think you probably agree, really!

In any case, I was not referring to fashions and popularity, as such. I was referring to a more rigorously arrived at judgement. And one that can be examined and is based on methods that can argued about. But, as I say, the matter becomes interesting to me when it is applied to recent music and, with this, I am sure we cannot know what is best, only what we like best.


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## Woodduck

Nereffid said:


> I wonder who here actually believes that? I know I've often noted the fact that all humans share the same basic brain design and that it's therefore inevitable that there'll be considerable overlap in aesthetic preferences, and that some composers are clearly better than others at producing work that matches the aesthetic preferences of a huge number of people. The argument is over whether those aesthetic preferences are immutable and "correct", or whether they're so dependent on historical/social/cultural context that they're better described simply as the preferences of one particular group of people.


This whole discussion, like most discussions of the meaning and value of art, is largely skating on the surface of a subject that none of us is fully competent to handle. At times I think the whole thing is pointless; it does seem at at least hopelessly repetitive. I see the main reason for this not in the insufficiency of our knowledge, but in the fact that the "subjectivist" theory of value - the idea that any aesthetic valuation signifies nothing more than the "feeling" of the individual or some group of individuals - discourages inquiry into phenomena which are clearly pertinent and readily observable. It's all very well to acknowledge that humans, as humans, have a certain brain structure in common, and that this is very probably the reason why there's a considerable overlap in people's artistic preferences. But if that's as far as we're willing to go, we really haven't gone very far.

When you say that "the argument is over whether those aesthetic preferences are immutable and 'correct', or whether they're so dependent on historical/social/cultural context that they're better described simply as the preferences of one particular group of people," you describe one side of the debate - your own side - better than the other. I would describe my side more precisely, not as an assertion that anyone's "preferences" are "immutable and correct" - I recognize no such thing as a correct or immutable preference - but as a belief that art is capable of addressing (speaking to, expressing, symbolizing, etc.) in more or less definite ways various traits and functions of human nature and the values that people hold, that some works of art address "higher" (more fundamental, significant, essential, diverse, complex, etc.) functions and values than others, that the competence with which artists do this can to a great extent be perceived, and that it's therefore meaningful to speak of the relative "value" of works of art irrespective of the fact that there is no "objective" measuring stick by which precise values can be assigned, and irrespective of the personal tastes of individuals. It isn't necessary for something to have a _precise_ value - not only in art but in any aspect of life outside of mathematics and the physical realm - in order for _meaningful_ value to be assigned to it and for degrees of excellence to be perceived, and it isn't necessary for a thing to be considered valuable by everyone for its virtues to be appreciated and asserted by those capable of doing so.

Individual experience, temperament and "taste" are bound to influence the perception of aesthetic qualities and the meanings that art embodies and expresses. This is especially true of music, an almost wholly abstract art whose meanings are therefore more potential, diverse and fluid than actualized, limited and fixed. But human nature is not infinitely malleable, and the possible meanings of a piece of music are not unlimited. Some musical works - and works of art generally - are, individual interpretations or reactions aside, more expertly made, more strikingly creative, and more capable of communicating a range and depth of meaning than others, and they will naturally be found to do so by people able to perceive their qualities. People insensitive to a thing's qualities are not the appropriate judges of it, in art or in any other field, and judging is not synonymous with "liking" even when judgments are influenced by personal likes and dislikes. Again, we don't have to be able to assign something a precise, quantifiable value in order to recognize excellence, and it isn't necessary for a thing to be understood and valued universally for its virtues to be appreciated and asserted. The master practitioners of Indian classical music are able to appreciate the depth and subtlety of their art in ways that few Westerners can. But even a glancing acquaintance with their music should tell us that we would be arrogant fools to assert that our less profound knowledge of the subject gives us the right to claim that their great tradition represents nothing more than a "historical/social/cultural preference" of no higher aesthetic merit or deeper human significance than the music of Katy Perry.

I think we can confidently assert that many an admirer of Katy Perry would regard himself as greatly enriched by acquiring an appreciation of Indian classical music. It seems equally likely that Ali Akbar Khan, encountering Katy Perry and the musical culture she exemplifies, would not experience a similar enrichment.


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## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> This whole discussion, like most discussions of the meaning and value of art, is largely skating on the surface of a subject that none of us is fully competent to handle. At times I think the whole thing is pointless; it does seem at at least hopelessly repetitive. I see the main reason for this not in the insufficiency of our knowledge, but in the fact that the "subjectivist" theory of value - the idea that any aesthetic valuation signifies nothing more than the "feeling" of the individual or some group of individuals - discourages inquiry into phenomena which are clearly pertinent and readily observable. It's all very well to acknowledge that humans, as humans, have a certain brain structure in common, and that this is very probably the reason why there's a considerable overlap in people's artistic preferences. But if that's as far as we're willing to go, we really haven't gone very far.
> 
> When you say that "the argument is over whether those aesthetic preferences are immutable and 'correct', or whether they're so dependent on historical/social/cultural context that they're better described simply as the preferences of one particular group of people," you describe one side of the debate - your own side - better than the other. I would describe my side more precisely, not as an assertion that anyone's "preferences" are "immutable and correct" - I recognize no such thing as a correct or immutable preference - but as a belief that art is capable of addressing (speaking to, expressing, symbolizing, etc.) in more or less definite ways various traits and functions of human nature and the values that people hold, that some works of art address "higher" (more fundamental, significant, essential, diverse, complex, etc.) functions and values than others, that the competence with which artists do this can to a great extent be perceived, and that it's therefore meaningful to speak of the relative "value" of works of art irrespective of the fact that there is no "objective" measuring stick by which precise values can be assigned, and irrespective of the personal tastes of individuals. It isn't necessary for something to have a _precise_ value - not only in art but in any aspect of life outside of mathematics and the physical realm - in order for _meaningful_ value to be assigned to it and for degrees of excellence to be perceived, and it isn't necessary for a thing to be considered valuable by everyone for its virtues to be appreciated and asserted by those capable of doing so.
> 
> Individual experience, temperament and "taste" are bound to influence the perception of aesthetic qualities and the meanings that art embodies and expresses. This is especially true of music, an almost wholly abstract art whose meanings are therefore more potential, diverse and fluid than actualized, limited and fixed. But human nature is not infinitely malleable, and the possible meanings of a piece of music are not unlimited. Some musical works - and works of art generally - are, individual interpretations or reactions aside, more expertly made, more strikingly creative, and more capable of communicating a range and depth of meaning than others, and they will naturally be found to do so by people able to perceive their qualities. People insensitive to a thing's qualities are not the appropriate judges of it, in art or in any other field, and judging is not synonymous with "liking" even when judgments are influenced by personal likes and dislikes. Again, we don't have to be able to assign something a precise, quantifiable value in order to recognize excellence, and it isn't necessary for a thing to be understood and valued universally for its virtues to be appreciated and asserted. The master practitioners of Indian classical music are able to appreciate the depth and subtlety of their art in ways that few Westerners can. But even a glancing acquaintance with their music should tell us that we would be arrogant fools to assert that our less profound knowledge of the subject gives us the right to claim that their great tradition represents nothing more than a "historical/social/cultural preference" of no higher aesthetic merit or deeper human significance than the music of Katy Perry.
> 
> I think we can confidently assert that many an admirer of Katy Perry would regard himself as greatly enriched by acquiring an appreciation of Indian classical music. It seems equally likely that Ali Akbar Khan, encountering Katy Perry and the musical culture she exemplifies, would not experience a similar enrichment.


Plenty of enriching music exists in the popular field. Also, I expect much pop music is written purely to achieve financial success and isn't trying to be profound. Maybe you are insensitive to the level of skill it takes to achieve a hit song.


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## Woodduck

janxharris said:


> Plenty of enriching music exists in the popular field. Also, I expect much pop music is written purely to achieve financial success and isn't trying to be profound. Maybe you are insensitive to the level of skill it takes to achieve a hit song.


Well, that's a presumption - actually more than one - not justified by anything I've said. Are you a Katy Perry fan? I've composed a fair amount of music, by the way, and I've never thought of financial success as an artistic goal, so I don't see how it's relevant.


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## Strange Magic

> Woodduck: "I would describe my side more precisely, not as an assertion that anyone's "preferences" are "immutable and correct" - I recognize no such thing as a correct or immutable preference - but as a belief that art is capable of addressing (speaking to, expressing, symbolizing, etc.) in more or less definite ways various traits and functions of human nature and the values that people hold, that some works of art address "higher" (more fundamental, significant, essential, diverse, complex, etc.) functions and values than others, that the competence with which artists do this can to a great extent be perceived, and that it's therefore meaningful to speak of the relative "value" of works of art irrespective of the fact that there is no "objective" measuring stick by which precise values can be assigned, and irrespective of the personal tastes of individuals. It isn't necessary for something to have a precise value - not only in art but in any aspect of life outside of mathematics and the physical realm - in order for meaningful value to be assigned to it and for degrees of excellence to be perceived, and it isn't necessary for a thing to be considered valuable by everyone for its virtues to be appreciated and asserted by those capable of doing so."


Again, an excellent statement of a position. I can agree with an idea that some works convey more information than others, by being longer or bigger or more complex--A Mahler symphony conveys more information than a Chopin polonaise; a Madonna and Child conveys more information than a Rothko. I can also agree that a Madonna and Child explores the values of both the maternal bond but also an overlying religious theme/value. A problem comes when we attempt to rank or grade Madonna and Child works--I'm sure we've all seen dozens--including a hypothetical painting on velvet offered at a flea market that, for some, perfectly captures both of the previously discussed values. And what if we then compare any Madonna and Child with Henri Rousseau's enigmatic The Sleeping Gypsy? What values does the Gypsy painting embody and project? If the values can be identified, are they richer, higher values? I certainly agree with your statement that those capable of appreciating the virtues of a piece of art perceive a degree of excellence in it and assign it meaningful value. But all this really gets us no further down the path to a place beyond _de gustibus_, in my estimation.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Short on time today, but I wanted to offer this analogy that I was thinking over last night. 

In sports, the rules of games are wholly subjective. They were invented by human minds. You can't find the "rules" of sports by observing nature. However, once the rules (and goals of the game) are in place, we have a standard by which to judge good, bad, better. We have objective facts like statistics that allow us to compare one player to another. There are still subjective aspects--in Basketball, do rebounds or assists matter more? How valuable are they compared to points scored? What about all the "hustle" plays and other intangibles like leadership?--but one reason there's majority agreement on who the greats are is because we have standards by which to judge them that everyone broadly agrees on. 

When it comes to art, there are no written rules, but there are unspoken standards and values that it seems that huge swaths of people share on some deeply abstract level. The way in which these standards manifests varies from era to era, genre to genre, and that's largely the reason for the disagreements. It seems that the subjectivists are trying to argue for the importance of the "rules" (in the sports analogy), that the only way we judge anything is by agreeing on the rules, and that there are often disagreements on which "rules" we should be playing by. They argue that each era and genre creates its own "game" with its own "rules" for judging goodness/greatness, and comparing "players" in different games is apples and oranges. The objectivists, however, are largely ignoring the origin of the rules and just looking at the "statistics" of the "players" and showing how they succeed (or fail) on one set of rules that a lot of people agree to. They seem to want to argue that there is some generalized, abstract set of rules that all humans share, so that we can merely focus on the "stats" of the "players" in order to evaluate them. 

This analogy is a rough one, but I think it might help to highlight the different perspectives of the two sides. I side with the subjectivists in large part because I do feel like that whatever generalized/abstract "rules" are common across large swaths of art--tonality, the importance of melody, rhythms, etc.--that the ways in which these abstractions manifest across genres and eras is so diverse, with so many different modes that different people find valuable and pleasing, that it's difficult to find one overarching standard. I'm more inclined to say that every era and genre simply creates its own standards, its own "rules" to its own "game," that its own audiences find valuable, and that trying to say which standards are better/more valuable is utterly useless without reference to the minds that think them valuable. 

This attitude could be do to my own incredibly broad tastes in the arts. In music, I love classical, I love pop. I don't see one as innately more valuable than the other. They both achieve things and touch parts of my humanity that the other doesn't. The Beatles and Dylan are as invaluable and meaningful to my life as Mozart and Beethoven, and there is part of me that's rather annoyed at those who insist that the latter have some innately greater value. In doing so I don't see they're doing anything other than dismissing the experiences and values of millions of people and asserting their own values as superior.


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## DaveM

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Short on time today, but I wanted to offer this analogy that I was thinking over last night.
> 
> In sports, the rules of games are wholly subjective. They were invented by human minds. You can't find the "rules" of sports by observing nature. However, once the rules (and goals of the game) are in place, we have a standard by which to judge good, bad, better. We have objective facts like statistics that allow us to compare one player to another. There are still subjective aspects--in Basketball, do rebounds or assists matter more? How valuable are they compared to points scored? What about all the "hustle" plays and other intangibles like leadership?--but one reason there's majority agreement on who the greats are is because we have standards by which to judge them that everyone broadly agrees on.
> 
> When it comes to art, there are no written rules, but there are unspoken standards and values that it seems that huge swaths of people share on some deeply abstract level. The way in which these standards manifests varies from era to era, genre to genre, and that's largely the reason for the disagreements. It seems that the subjectivists are trying to argue for the importance of the "rules" (in the sports analogy), that the only way we judge anything is by agreeing on the rules, and that there are often disagreements on which "rules" we should be playing by. They argue that each era and genre creates its own "game" with its own "rules" for judging goodness/greatness, and comparing "players" in different games is apples and oranges. The objectivists, however, are largely ignoring the origin of the rules and just looking at the "statistics" of the "players" and showing how they succeed (or fail) on one set of rules that a lot of people agree to. They seem to want to argue that there is some generalized, abstract set of rules that all humans share, so that we can merely focus on the "stats" of the "players" in order to evaluate them.
> 
> This analogy is a rough one, but I think it might help to highlight the different perspectives of the two sides. I side with the subjectivists in large part because I do feel like that whatever generalized/abstract "rules" are common across large swaths of art--tonality, the importance of melody, rhythms, etc.--that the ways in which these abstractions manifest across genres and eras is so diverse, with so many different modes that different people find valuable and pleasing, that it's difficult to find one overarching standard. I'm more inclined to say that every era and genre simply creates its own standards, its own "rules" to its own "game," that its own audiences find valuable, and that trying to say which standards are better/more valuable is utterly useless without reference to the minds that think them valuable.
> 
> This attitude could be do to my own incredibly broad tastes in the arts. In music, I love classical, I love pop. I don't see one as innately more valuable than the other. They both achieve things and touch parts of my humanity that the other doesn't. The Beatles and Dylan are as invaluable and meaningful to my life as Mozart and Beethoven, and there is part of me that's rather annoyed at those who insist that the latter have some innately greater value. In doing so I don't see they're doing anything other than dismissing the experiences and values of millions of people and asserting their own values as superior.


I'm not familiar with groups as defined subjectivists and objectivists. I do know that some people don't seem to understand that the more educated an opinion, the more objective it is likely to be. When it comes to art, there are spoken parameters (standards, values etc.) that are shared openly rather than on some abstract level. They may change over time, but they are there nonetheless.

I love classical and I love pop. Both have been important to me in their own way. But it is self evident that classical music, particularly in the form of concertos and symphonies, is a more sophisticated, complex art form than pop music. That's not a value judgment on the music and does not infer that the former necessarily moves one more than the latter. It does infer that composing the average symphony is more of a challenge than composing the average pop song. Likewise, playing Beethoven's Sonata #32 is likely more difficult than playing almost any keyboard part in a pop work.


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## Phil loves classical

janxharris said:


> Plenty of enriching music exists in the popular field. Also, I expect much pop music is written purely to achieve financial success and isn't trying to be profound. Maybe you are insensitive to the level of skill it takes to achieve a hit song.


It doesn't take much skill to compose a hit pop song. But it takes understanding what makes a hook. The "Oh oh oh I really don't care" is the one of the most banal things you'll ever hear in any genre, but it gets noticed by being catchy. My step daughters like most their age judge a song by its hooks, the ability to stand out regardless of meaning, or skill.


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## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> Again, an excellent statement of a position. I can agree with an idea that some works convey more information than others, by being longer or bigger or more complex--A Mahler symphony conveys more information than a Chopin polonaise; a Madonna and Child conveys more information than a Rothko. I can also agree that *a Madonna and Child explores the values of both the maternal bond but also an overlying religious theme/value. A problem comes when we attempt to rank or grade Madonna and Child works--I'm sure we've all seen dozens--including a hypothetical painting on velvet offered at a flea market that, for some, perfectly captures both of the previously discussed values. *
> 
> I certainly agree with your statement that those capable of appreciating the virtues of a piece of art perceive a degree of excellence in it and assign it meaningful value. But all this really gets us no further down the path to a place beyond _de gustibus_, in my estimation.


A Raphel madonna and a flea market madonna on black velvet may portray exactly the same subject, but probably only one of them conveys much of the potential meaning inherent in that subject. "Some" may indeed fail to appreciate the difference, but that's because they're unaware of the ways in which composition, color, paint handling, and other visual elements are used by artists not merely to present images of objects but to say something about them - to present a specific view and valuation of the reality they're representing.

This takes us far beyond _de gustibus_ territory. This is what art is about. Unlike ice cream.


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## KenOC

Sadly, in Raphael's time the technology did not support paintings on black velvet. If it had, Raphael's paintings would command far better prices at garage sales.


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## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> Well, that's a presumption - actually more than one - not justified by anything I've said. Are you a Katy Perry fan? I've composed a fair amount of music, by the way, and I've never thought of financial success as an artistic goal, so I don't see how it's relevant.


Not one modern song evidencing the profound?
Not a fan particularly, no - but I can imagine, perhaps, 'Chained To The Rhythm' working as a classical piece.

Not sure why you mention your artistic goal.


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## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> It doesn't take much skill to compose a hit pop song. But it takes understanding what makes a hook. The "Oh oh oh I really don't care" is the one of the most banal things you'll ever hear in any genre, but it gets noticed by being catchy. My step daughters like most their age judge a song by its hooks, the ability to stand out regardless of meaning, or skill.


Alas, that's what much popular music now comes down to. Retail establishments bombard us with monotonous rhythms and three-note melodies with endlessly repeated "hooks," which are intended to, and do, become maddening earworms. Of course there's always been more sophisticated popular music, but we're long past the era when teenagers went around singing really good melodies (or singing at all, from what I can observe). I've often envied my parents for that.


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## Woodduck

janxharris said:


> Not one modern song evidencing the profound?
> Not a fan particularly, no - but I can imagine, perhaps, 'Chained To The Rhythm' working as a classical piece.
> 
> Not sure why you mention your artistic goal.


I guess I couldn't see your point in mentioning music that has something other than art as a goal.


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## Guest

Been away from the thread for a short while and it seems to have moved no further forward, though has obviously taken some interesting detours in its circular travels (or has it just revolved on the spot?)



> the more educated an opinion, the more objective it is likely to be


But it's still an opinion. I though we were in pursuit of the immutable facts of the values or qualities of music(s)?



> t is self evident that classical music, particularly in the form of concertos and symphonies, is a more sophisticated, complex art form than pop music


It isn't self-evident at all - well, not by my understanding of the term.



> the rules of games are wholly subjective.


I don't follow this at all. There may be a subjective element to the application of the rules by the umpire/referee, but the rules are objectively accepted by all who play the game.



> I've never thought of financial success as an artistic goal


Quite. It's self-evidently a financial goal.



> I expect much pop music is written *purely *to achieve financial success


A regular claim that no-one actually provides evidence to support. If Katy Perry can make a living as she does, it doesn't mean that was her pure motive and as is regularly pointed out here, even Beethoven wrote to earn money.



> I expect much pop music is written purely to achieve financial success *and isn't trying to be profound*


Financial success and profundity are not simple binary options, nor are they at either extreme of a continuum.

Finally, the whole of Woodduck's post #471 expertly slides from making legitimate claims about judging the quality of a work into the value of the work...("Becaue it's well made, it must be a work of greater value".)



> Some musical works - and works of art generally - are, individual interpretations or reactions aside, more expertly made, more strikingly creative, and more capable of communicating a range and depth of meaning than others


True, but



> I think we can confidently assert that many an admirer of Katy Perry would regard himself as greatly enriched by acquiring an appreciation of Indian classical music.


is saying something different. The one does not follow the other. No matter how expertly made this piece of music might be in comparison to that, and no matter how conclusively we might be able to establish, objectively, that this is so, the impact on and response of the listener, the value of the music to the listener cannot be so lightly swept aside. The objective fact is that many more millions of people appreciate the value of the simplest, least 'complex' pop song than appreciate the Andante of Mahler's 6th Symphony. It's just that what is valued is different.

I don't accept it's a matter of differing tastes, but a matter of valuing different things.


----------



## janxharris

Phil loves classical said:


> It doesn't take much skill to compose a hit pop song.


Ok - some more than others.


----------



## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> Alas, that's what much popular music now comes down to. Retail establishments bombard us with monotonous rhythms and three-note melodies with endlessly repeated "hooks," which are intended to, and do, become maddening earworms. Of course there's always been more sophisticated popular music, but we're long past the era when teenagers went around singing really good melodies (or singing at all, from what I can observe). I've often envied my parents for that.


Woodduck, you'll be in agreement with John Philip Sousa:

"These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."


----------



## KenOC

Phil loves classical said:


> It doesn't take much skill to compose a hit pop song.


Well, this is a multi-billion dollar industry with a few BIG winners and a lot of losers. Competition is fierce. I suspect it takes a lot of skill indeed.


----------



## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> ...the whole of Woodduck's post #471 expertly slides from making legitimate claims about judging the quality of a work into the value of the work...("Becaue it's well made, it must be a work of greater value".)
> 
> *"Some musical works - and works of art generally - are, individual interpretations or reactions aside, more expertly made, more strikingly creative, and more capable of communicating a range and depth of meaning than others." *
> 
> True, but
> 
> *"I think we can confidently assert that many an admirer of Katy Perry would regard himself as greatly enriched by acquiring an appreciation of Indian classical music. It seems equally likely that Ali Akbar Khan, encountering Katy Perry and the musical culture she exemplifies, would not experience a similar enrichment."*
> 
> is saying something different. The one does not follow the other. No matter how expertly made this piece of music might be in comparison to that, and no matter how conclusively we might be able to establish, objectively, that this is so, the impact on and response of the listener, the value of the music to the listener cannot be so lightly swept aside. The objective fact is that many more millions of people appreciate the value of the simplest, least 'complex' pop song than appreciate the Andante of Mahler's 6th Symphony. It's just that what is valued is different.
> 
> I don't accept it's a matter of differing tastes, but a matter of valuing different things.


The one doesn't follow from the other because I didn't intend it to. And I don't see that you've dealt with either the one or the other. (BTW, I didn't say "because it's well made, it must be a work of greater value," so you shouldn't have that in quotes.)

I haven't "swept aside" the value of any music to the listener. The listener is entitled to value anything he chooses. It's just that not everything that people value, in art or in life, is equally significant, distinguished, profound, rich, skillful... propose your own adjectives. Why is there an argument here? There's no need for all art to be earth-shaking to make it worthy of enjoyment, so relax and enjoy that Johnny Cash CD! Mahler will always be there when you're up for him.


----------



## DaveM

MacLeod said:


> Been away from the thread for a short while and it seems to have moved no further forward, though has obviously taken some interesting detours in its circular travels (or has it just revolved on the spot?)
> 
> But it's still an opinion. I though we were in pursuit of the immutable facts of the values or qualities of music(s)?
> 
> It isn't self-evident at all - well, not by my understanding of the term.
> 
> I don't follow this at all. There may be a subjective element to the application of the rules by the umpire/referee, but the rules are objectively accepted by all who play the game.
> 
> Quite. It's self-evidently a financial goal.
> 
> A regular claim that no-one actually provides evidence to support. If Katy Perry can make a living as she does, it doesn't mean that was her pure motive and as is regularly pointed out here, even Beethoven wrote to earn money.
> 
> Financial success and profundity are not simple binary options, nor are they at either extreme of a continuum.
> 
> Finally, the whole of Woodduck's post #471 expertly slides from making legitimate claims about judging the quality of a work into the value of the work...("Becaue it's well made, it must be a work of greater value".)
> 
> True, but
> 
> is saying something different. The one does not follow the other. No matter how expertly made this piece of music might be in comparison to that, and no matter how conclusively we might be able to establish, objectively, that this is so, the impact on and response of the listener, the value of the music to the listener cannot be so lightly swept aside. The objective fact is that many more millions of people appreciate the value of the simplest, least 'complex' pop song than appreciate the Andante of Mahler's 6th Symphony. It's just that what is valued is different.
> 
> I don't accept it's a matter of differing tastes, but a matter of valuing different things.


Parsing posts and mixing segments from different posters without attribution and then responding with various pithy responses which in a likely attempt to appear witty, actuality contain little or no apparent thought or substance gets old really fast.


----------



## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> ...but we're long past the era when teenagers went around singing really good melodies (or singing at all, from what I can observe). I've often envied my parents for that.


Of course the young have always loved music they grow out of - but I see young people here:


----------



## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> I guess I couldn't see your point in mentioning music that has something other than art as a goal.


because you are making a comparison with such songs.


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> Parsing posts and mixing segments from different posters without attribution and then responding with various pithy responses which in a likely attempt to appear witty, actuality contain little or no apparent thought or substance gets old really fast.


Instead of commenting negatively on my posting style, try dealing with the overall point. And attribution really isn't essential - it's mere convention.

I'm not trying to be either pithy or witty, just trying to be brief in establishing the points I wanted to make. Whatever the value of the longer takes preferred by Eva and Woodduck (and sometimes me), there is also value in brevity.

[ADD - And some of us have less time than others to spend here catching up with the longer posts and exchanges that have taken place overnight. I have a job to do.]



Woodduck said:


> The one doesn't follow from the other because I didn't intend it to.


You may not have intended it to, but, IMO of course, that was the effect - which is why I put it in quotes - not implying attribution but as an encapsulation of what you appeared to be saying.



Woodduck said:


> I haven't "swept aside" the value of any music to the listener. The listener is entitled to value anything he chooses. It's just that not everything that people value, in art or in life, is equally significant, distinguished, profound, rich, skillful... propose your own adjectives.


So now we've left behind 'better made = more worthy' and replaced it with 'what I value in music is better/worse than what you value'.


----------



## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> So now we've left behind 'better made = more worthy' and replaced it with 'what I value in music is better/worse than what you value'.


You're off in the woods somewhere, MacLeod. Please don't put even more words in my mouth. I have enough in there already!


----------



## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> Woodduck, you'll be in agreement with John Philip Sousa:
> 
> "These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."


The vision of young people gathering on porches in the evening to sing together - and not just songs of the day but songs of their parents' or grandparents' day - is enough to break an old man's heart. I still possess musty volumes of the songs those kids must have sung; "home" songs, love songs, traveling songs, humorous songs, patriotic songs, religious songs - wonderful tunes from America, England, Ireland, France, Germany... We still sang a few of them as children in school, but I suspect mine was the last generation to learn them. It's true: people once knew dozens or hundreds of tunes (and the words!), and they sang, and played the piano and violin and banjo, and entertained themselves at home, as families, in town gatherings, in church, and across generations.

Now they can't stop looking at their g-d phones.


----------



## DaveM

MacLeod said:


> Instead of commenting negatively on my posting style, try dealing with the overall point. And attribution really isn't essential - it's mere convention.


Says you. Post with respect and I'll respond with respect.


----------



## Guest

DaveM said:


> Says you. Post with respect and I'll respond with respect.


I think you have it the wrong way round.


----------



## janxharris

MacLeod said:


> A regular claim that no-one actually provides evidence to support. If Katy Perry can make a living as she does, it doesn't mean that was her pure motive and as is regularly pointed out here, even Beethoven wrote to earn money.


I can't prove it and you are right to make the point regarding the same can be said of classical composers. I think my point is that arty music shouldn't be compared to overtly commercial music.

I'm not criticizing pop for being commercial - they are just making a living after all.......


----------



## DavidA

KenOC said:


> Well, this is a multi-billion dollar industry with a few BIG winners and a lot of losers. Competition is fierce. I suspect it takes a lot of skill indeed.


A conversation with a songwriter who said that he had 20 hits. When asked how many songs he'd written he said 'about a 1000'


----------



## janxharris

DavidA said:


> A conversation with a songwriter who said that he had 20 hits. When asked how many songs he'd written he said 'about a 1000'


?
.................................


----------



## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> A Raphel madonna and a flea market madonna on black velvet may portray exactly the same subject, but probably only one of them conveys much of the potential meaning inherent in that subject. "Some" may indeed fail to appreciate the difference, but that's because they're unaware of the ways in which composition, color, paint handling, and other visual elements are used by artists not merely to present images of objects but to say something about them - to present a specific view and valuation of the reality they're representing.
> 
> This takes us far beyond _de gustibus_ territory. This is what art is about. Unlike ice cream.


But what if we cover with electrodes the head of our hypothetical flea market observer as s/he stands before that black velvet Madonna and Child, and we find that s/he is having a profound "art experience" wherein s/he finds core values being expressed as never before by any other Madonna and Child s/he's ever previously seen? One person? Thousands?

I realize that my analogies to wine-making and tasting and to ice cream are crude and quotidian. I yearn to fly upwards into realms of Platonic or Keatsian Beauty and Truth but the sun keeps melting the wax that holds the feathers to my arms and I fall headlong back to earth .


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> You're off in the woods somewhere, MacLeod. Please don't put even more words in my mouth. I have enough in there already!


I was trying to take some out!


----------



## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> I was trying to take some out!


Well, I'd be happy to give you a few, but you might not like my choices.


----------



## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> But what if we cover with electrodes the head of our hypothetical flea market observer as s/he stands before that black velvet Madonna and Child, and we find that s/he is having a profound "art experience" wherein s/he finds core values being expressed as never before by any other Madonna and Child s/he's ever previously seen? One person? Thousands?
> 
> I realize that my analogies to wine-making and tasting and to ice cream are crude and quotidian. I yearn to fly upwards into realms of Platonic or Keatsian Beauty and Truth but the sun keeps melting the wax that holds the feathers to my arms and I fall headlong back to earth .


He might also have that experience while staring into empty space.

What's the question?


----------



## Enthusiast

MacLeod said:


> Been away from the thread for a short while and it seems to have moved no further forward, though has obviously taken some interesting detours in its circular travels (or has it just revolved on the spot?)
> 
> .........
> 
> But it's still an opinion. I though we were in pursuit of the immutable facts of the values or qualities of music(s)?
> 
> .......
> 
> No matter how expertly made this piece of music might be in comparison to that, and no matter how conclusively we might be able to establish, objectively, that this is so, the impact on and response of the listener, the value of the music to the listener cannot be so lightly swept aside. The objective fact is that many more millions of people appreciate the value of the simplest, least 'complex' pop song than appreciate the Andante of Mahler's 6th Symphony. It's just that what is valued is different.
> 
> I don't accept it's a matter of differing tastes, but a matter of valuing different things.


Well. Things do go round and round in this thread: that is certainly true. We are all talking about different things. Mostly we are talking about the value of one type of music vs another (historically or by genre - this style is more _something _than that style) but sometimes we are talking about more abstract things that seem to refer to bigger questions. And we are using terms differently. As you say, MacLeod, some interesting thoughts and ideas have come out of this. But we are certainly not resolving any of the larger questions about stylistic diversity. The subject is just too big and needs to be broken down.

When I quoted MacLeod's post (above) it came, of course, without the quotes being responded to. So I have deleted lots that no longer made any sense without the stimulus that led to the response. The result is a nice simplification of the question, a reminder of the subject! How do we ascribe value to different things?

We have recently arrived at perhaps the simplest question of all within this subject: pop music vs classical. One is commercial and simple; one is less commercial and more complex. One can be loved by millions while the other by far fewer people. Yes. Yes. Yes. All are at least roughly true. But what we can't say without an explosion of philosophy, psychology and sociology - all interesting and intriguing but it is easy to lose the subject in the smoke - is that the one engages us at a superficial level while the other engages us more profoundly. People have said that, of course, but that's when the fireworks start (or, when we are tired, the jokes). And, fair enough, it does sound offensive and elitist to say it. But is the alternative merely to say "they are different, that's all there is to it"? Perhaps that is it. The answer! Different things that do different things and _those things are all equivalent_.

But this does seem like a disappointing answer to a possibly profound question that is maybe at the heart of what this forum is for! If we cannot get beyond that then, when the subject gets to more knotty problems like comparing different sorts of classical music, we will be totally lost. I don't have a problem with that. I am not sure I can go beyond it. And one reason for that is that my experience is that the value of different _types _of music isn't so much in the difference between the types as between _how good the example are_. I love opera buffa because of Mozart not because of opera buffa. That doesn't mean that opera buffa will suit me fine when I am feeling like listening to Wagner. But it is why I bother at all with opera buffa.

OK, I quite like Rossini, too.


----------



## Enthusiast

Oh no. I think I just stated that Mozart's opera is greater than, say, Cimarosa's. And I think I implied that was an objective fact. I'm sorry. 

The trouble is, that is what I actually think.


----------



## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> He might also have that experience while staring into empty space.
> 
> What's the question?


I guess the question is whether it is possible for someone to have a meaningful, profound art experience seeing a flea market painting on velvet of a Madonna and Child, and finding that particular painting more moving, personally affecting, satisfying, than a Madonna and Child by Rembrandt or whomever. Would that person be sick, faking it, delusional?


----------



## DaveM

How about this on your front room wall:


----------



## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> I guess the question is whether it is possible for someone to have a meaningful, profound art experience seeing a flea market painting on velvet of a Madonna and Child, and finding that particular painting more moving, personally affecting, satisfying, than a Madonna and Child by Rembrandt or whomever. Would that person be sick, faking it, delusional?


I don't think there's any doubt that people can have all sorts of experiences stimulated by all sorts of things - or, as my reference to empty space implies, by nothing external at all. I can't see what that tells us about art. If a person's aesthetic perceptions haven't advanced beyond what crude, amateurish velvet paintings in flea markets can offer, he may well be excited by them. Whether his experience would be "profound" depends, I suppose, on how you define "profound," but it would not be an "art experience" in the full sense unless he were responding to artistic qualities in the piece and not merely to the fact that a certain subject was being portrayed and that someone had had the (to him) uncanny ability to put in on velvet.

The expressive "languages" of art didn't evolve by chance; they are complex, indescribably subtle abstractions of processes, perceptions and movements by and of the human mind and body. There are reasons why a Degas canvas may be a masterpiece and Elvis on velvet is probably just kitsch. It doesn't advance our understanding of art one bit to know that Bert Horton from Northfield finds French art strange but gets really, really turned on by that velvet stuff. What we can pretty safely predict is that if Bert's senses and intellect are awakened to what Degas is doing, he's unlikely ever again to look to velvet paintings in flea markets for an "art experience."


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> I'm sorry to have hacked up your post, Eva (and others: Eva's original post if you want to see it in full it is #446) but I have been rereading some of these posts and doing some thinking and have arrived at a belief that much of this particular aspect of the debate can be made to go away!
> 
> Let's accept that the perception of coherence is involved in the perception of beauty. And also that the brain (no, let's say the mind so as to allow for changes in when this happens across time and across cultures) is "wired" (a misleading metaphor, probably) to perceive order. The two do, to some extent, cancel each other out because the mind will seek and often find coherence even in chaos. In art, though, this tendency is not so automatic and may also be far from simple.
> 
> Many of the acknowledged great art works are unfinished or broken (not just music but sculptures, including many by Michelangelo and many broken masterpieces from antiquity, and paintings, including many by Leonardo). This potential incoherence does not cause us to see the works as lacking in beauty, let alone ugly.
> 
> And, then, if we look back in time and try to imagine how people of the early 1700s might perceive, say, the music of Beethoven. They would probably hear chaos. Indeed, the history of music is filled with stories of informed audiences and musicians not getting a new work that we now think of as simply beautiful. For example, Schubert's Great was initially thought by many musicians to be unplayable.
> 
> So, where does this get us? It matters little, I think, whether we consider chaos beautiful or whether we consider chaos to be perceived as coherent and therefore beautiful! They amount to the same thing. We can all agree, I think: that chaos can be considered beautiful (in broad terms). Whether or not this involves the perception of coherence (something that in perception of the world happens in a matter of milliseconds) does not seem an important point?


I think we're basically in agreement here. I very much agree that the brain is programmed to find patterns whether they exist or not; this explains why people go to casinos and think they can find "patterns" in random outcomes. When it comes to art, there is a history of artists creating certain patterns and orders for works, for audiences appreciating them, and then for artists finding "new" patterns/orders that are often perceived as chaotic (or surprising or shocking) because people are not used to them. For art that's potentially lacking patterns or order in some aspects, I also think it's natural for audiences to try to discern order and patterns even when none are there. I've had experience with literary and cinematic works that are both highly ordered/patterned AND highly chaotic depending on what aspects you're talking about.

But I ultimately agree that both the chaotic and the ordered, and that includes the ordered that's perceived as chaotic and the chaotic that's perceived as order, can all be considered beautiful by observers. This was one of my major disputes with Woodduck who was claiming that order was a necessary condition for beauty.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

DaveM said:


> I'm not familiar with groups as defined subjectivists and objectivists. I do know that some people don't seem to understand that the more educated an opinion, the more objective it is likely to be. When it comes to art, there are spoken parameters (standards, values etc.) that are shared openly rather than on some abstract level. They may change over time, but they are there nonetheless.
> 
> I love classical and I love pop. Both have been important to me in their own way. But it is self evident that classical music, particularly in the form of concertos and symphonies, is a more sophisticated, complex art form than pop music. That's not a value judgment on the music and does not infer that the former necessarily moves one more than the latter. It does infer that composing the average symphony is more of a challenge than composing the average pop song. Likewise, playing Beethoven's Sonata #32 is likely more difficult than playing almost any keyboard part in a pop work.


The only time education makes an opinion more objective is when the opinion is related to questions that have objectively true/false answers. Examples would be a doctor's educated opinion about a diagnosis, or an historian's educated opinion on the life of Julius Caesar. This doesn't apply to issues of values and taste when it comes to art. Knowing every detail about a work of art does not entail any value judgment of the work, so any opinion on it, no matter how educated, can't be more objective.

If by "spoken parameters" you mean "people write/talk about aesthetic standards/values," then sure; but it's not like there's a book that every artist studies and abides by before they start creating art the way that athletes must learn the rules of their game before they can play.

Let's say I grant for the sake of argument that classical music is more sophisticated and complex, that it's more difficult to compose a symphony than a pop song, and that Beethoven's Sonata #32 is more difficult to play than any pop keyboard work; so what? As you suggest, it still requires valuing those things in order for any discussions of good/better to take place.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

MacLeod said:


> I don't follow this at all. There may be a subjective element to the application of the rules by the umpire/referee, but the rules are objectively accepted by all who play the game.


I thought I explained it with this: "the rules of games are wholly subjective. *They were invented by human minds. You can't find the "rules" of sports by observing nature.*" If you agree with someone else's subjective idea, the idea doesn't become objective just because it came from someone else's mind other than your own.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> The problem I have with a thoroughly "subjectivist" view of aesthetics is that it seems content to assume (if only implicitly) that the experience of art is just an identityless, indeterminate mush - that the human psycho-physical organism has no specific identity, no intrinsic, universally human nature, no structure or needs which give rise to the phenomenon of art and to the forms which it takes. There seems to be a fear that acknowledging a specifically human nature, and identifying the kinds of aesthetic responses and values that tend to arise from it, would invalidate the wide variation in artistic tastes. And so there's this crazy egalitarianism which insists that it's biased and oppressive to suggest that a Wagner opera or an Indian raga has any claim to "objectively" superior artistry over Uncle George singing out of tune in the shower or John Cage tickling a cactus with a feather, simply because some people may "subjectively" prefer the latter.


I have no idea why you think it assumes that. There is a human nature, and there are works of art that are particularly good at resonating with that nature across times and cultures; I don't think many subjectivists would deny that. However, this ignores points like whether such facts about art resonating with people gives us some basis for declaring some art better or more valuable than other art without reference to the subjects who think it better/more valuable.

In reference to your example, if 999,999,999/1,000,000,000 people prefer Wagner to Uncle George in the shower, I'm fine stating that fact: that 99.99...% of people prefer Wagner. What I don't agree with is declaring Wagner better in some objective, absolute sense, without reference to those that prefer Wagner; or in declaring the one person that prefers Uncle George "wrong" in any way remotely similar to how Flat Earthers are wrong. I do not object to (and would in fact encourage) any endeavor that would try to understand WHY almost everyone prefers Wagner, or even why the one person prefers Uncle George, while still holding the opinion that any understanding couldn't declare either side right or wrong.



Woodduck said:


> The listener is entitled to value anything he chooses. It's just that not everything that people value, in art or in life, is equally significant, distinguished, profound, rich, skillful... propose your own adjectives.


And what are you using to evaluate significance, distinguishment, profundity, richness, and skillful if NOT what people think, value, feel, etc.? 


Woodduck said:


> ...If a person's aesthetic perceptions haven't advanced beyond what crude, amateurish velvet paintings in flea markets can offer, he may well be excited by them. Whether his experience would be "profound" depends, I suppose, on how you define "profound," but it would not be an "art experience" in the full sense unless he were responding to artistic qualities in the piece and not merely to the fact that a certain subject was being portrayed and that someone had had the (to him) uncanny ability to put in on velvet.
> 
> ...It doesn't advance our understanding of art one bit to know that Bert Horton from Northfield finds French art strange but gets really, really turned on by that velvet stuff. What we can pretty safely predict is that if Bert's senses and intellect are awakened to what Degas is doing, he's unlikely ever again to look to velvet paintings in flea markets for an "art experience."


I suppose by "advancing aesthetic perceptions" you mean something like a person becoming more aware of the artistic elements that go into making up a work of art. I've gone through this "advancing" with music, film, and literature; I didn't notice that it changed my responses to art. It changed my intellectual awareness of what I was experiencing, it made me more able to express why I liked what I did/didn't like what I didn't, but that was it. Further, I have no idea how you'd define "art experience" so that someone having a profound reaction to a work of art wouldn't be an "art experience" just because they weren't intellectually aware of all the aesthetic properties the work possessed.

It absolutely advances our understanding of art one bit to know why Bert Horton responds to French art one way and velvet art another; it tells us just as much as knowing why lovers of Degas are turned on by him and turned off by velvet art. Again, all you're doing is elevating your tastes over Mr. Horton's and trying to argue that this "advanced aesthetic perception" entails some correct response to the art one is experiencing.

In general, this whole view seems utterly bizarre to me because the majority of audiences for the majority of history have been largely ignorant of the art they experienced. The majority of audiences are not made up of cognoscenti who have studied art and are aware of all its qualities. Yet their experiences and opinions are less valid... WHY? If anything, I think understanding why art affects those unaware of its qualities would be more enlightening than understanding the reverse, because they do not possess the knowledge that can bias perceptions; they simply react to what's natural/instinctual/intuitive to them. If there's some "human nature" that art naturally "resonates" with, then it would seem more obvious to look for it in the majority, the uneducated everyman, than the intellectual aesthetes.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

janxharris said:


> ?
> .................................


I think the idea is that if writing a hit song was easy, then someone would have a better "hit" rate than 20/1000 (2%).


----------



## KenOC

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I think the idea is that if writing a hit song was easy, then someone would have a better "hit" rate than 20/1000 (2%).


Here's a fantastic article from _The Atlantic_ (in 2015) that discusses how hit songs come to be. This is a really good read with some surprises. A lot of it has to do with bald Norwegians. Really!

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/hit-charade/403192/

"It is a business as old as Stephen Foster, but never before has it been run so efficiently or dominated by so few. We have come to expect this type of consolidation from our banking, oil-and-gas, and health-care industries. But the same practices they rely on-ruthless digitization, outsourcing, focus-group brand testing, brute-force marketing-have been applied with tremendous success in pop, creating such profitable multinationals as Rihanna, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift."


----------



## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I have no idea why you think it assumes that. There is a human nature, and there are works of art that are particularly good at resonating with that nature across times and cultures; I don't think many subjectivists would deny that. However, this ignores points like whether such facts about art resonating with people gives us some basis for declaring some art better or more valuable than other art without reference to the subjects who think it better/more valuable.
> 
> In reference to your example, if 999,999,999/1,000,000,000 people prefer Wagner to Uncle George in the shower, I'm fine stating that fact: that 99.99...% of people prefer Wagner. What I don't agree with is declaring Wagner better in some objective, absolute sense, without reference to those that prefer Wagner; or in declaring the one person that prefers Uncle George "wrong" in any way remotely similar to how Flat Earthers are wrong. I do not object to (and would in fact encourage) any endeavor that would try to understand WHY almost everyone prefers Wagner, or even why the one person prefers Uncle George, while still holding the opinion that any understanding couldn't declare either side right or wrong.
> 
> And what are you using to evaluate significance, distinguishment, profundity, richness, and skillful if NOT what people think, value, feel, etc.?
> I suppose by "advancing aesthetic perceptions" you mean something like a person becoming more aware of the artistic elements that go into making up a work of art. I've gone through this "advancing" with music, film, and literature; I didn't notice that it changed my responses to art. It changed my intellectual awareness of what I was experiencing, it made me more able to express why I liked what I did/didn't like what I didn't, but that was it. Further, I have no idea how you'd define "art experience" so that someone having a profound reaction to a work of art wouldn't be an "art experience" just because they weren't intellectually aware of all the aesthetic properties the work possessed.
> 
> It absolutely advances our understanding of art one bit to know why Bert Horton responds to French art one way and velvet art another; it tells us just as much as knowing why lovers of Degas are turned on by him and turned off by velvet art. Again, all you're doing is elevating your tastes over Mr. Horton's and trying to argue that this "advanced aesthetic perception" entails some correct response to the art one is experiencing.
> 
> In general, this whole view seems utterly bizarre to me because the majority of audiences for the majority of history have been largely ignorant of the art they experienced. The majority of audiences are not made up of cognoscenti who have studied art and are aware of all its qualities. Yet their experiences and opinions are less valid... WHY? If anything, I think understanding why art affects those unaware of its qualities would be more enlightening than understanding the reverse, because they do not possess the knowledge that can bias perceptions; they simply react to what's natural/instinctual/intuitive to them. If there's some "human nature" that art naturally "resonates" with, then it would seem more obvious to look for it in the majority, the uneducated everyman, than the intellectual aesthetes.


I've already told you that these gargantuan posts responding to multiple points are a burden to deal with. Can you at least agree to take on one of my posts at a time?

All right... (you in red, me in black):

There is a human nature, and there are works of art that are particularly good at resonating with that nature across times and cultures

Well, thanks for _that_ at least. "Resonating with" is a pretty weak expression to describe our profound and subtle perceptions of the psycho-physical phenomena that inform the languages of art, but I'll let that go.

However, this ignores points like whether such facts about art resonating with people gives us some basis for declaring some art better or more valuable than other art without reference to the subjects who think it better/more valuable.

Looking at the origins, functions and meaning of art in human life is hardly "ignoring" the basis for evaluating artistic expressions.

Note: I don't say crudely that composer A or artwork A is "better" or "more valuable" than composer or artwork B. I say that some works of art express, in form and/or subject, certain values which are "higher," "deeper," "more complex," et al., and do it with greater aesthetic sophistication and richness, creativity, or skill. I speak this way because I want to avoid suggesting exactly what you keep accusing me of - i.e., claiming that anyone's enjoyment of the art they enjoy is "wrong." Like most people, I suspect, I enjoy art that exhibits many levels of aesthetic sophistication. I just know the difference between those levels and don't feel the need to make pointless comparisons, inflate the virtues of minor art, or defend my less sophisticated preferences to myself. Even velvet Elvises have their place (though not in my home).

What I don't agree with is declaring Wagner better in some objective, absolute sense, without reference to those that prefer Wagner.

I'm not asserting Wagner's distinction "without reference to" those who perceive the qualities his work possesses. After all, they're the ones best qualified to show us what's distinctive about Wagner, and who will be putting the time, effort and money into performing his works, or perhaps writing books about them. I'm saying that those who can perceive his qualities vis-a-vis the qualities of Uncle George's shower serenade (or, to bring it closer to home, the operas of Meyerbeer) will recognize Wagner's work as more profound, rich, original, skillful, interesting, culturally significant, et al. Wagner's work simply embodies many more human values and has much more to offer us - _assuming we are able to perceive it_ - than the work of Meyerbeer or Uncle George. Confirming circumstantial evidence is abundantly available, should we feel a need for it it: there will be few books about Meyerbeer, because there's just not much to say about him, and the scarcity of performances itself speaks volumes.

I suppose by "advancing aesthetic perceptions" you mean something like a person becoming more aware of the artistic elements that go into making up a work of art. I've gone through this "advancing" with music, film, and literature; I didn't notice that it changed my responses to art. It changed my intellectual awareness of what I was experiencing, it made me more able to express why I liked what I did/didn't like what I didn't, but that was it. Further, I have no idea how you'd define "art experience" so that someone having a profound reaction to a work of art wouldn't be an "art experience" just because they weren't intellectually aware of all the aesthetic properties the work possessed.

Aesthetic _per_ceptions are not aesthetic _con_ceptions. Aesthetic perceptiveness is basically preconceptual and preverbal. Learning the names of things and how to talk about them can, of course, sharpen and multiply our perceptions and point us in unsuspected directions.

It absolutely advances our understanding of art one bit to know why Bert Horton responds to French art one way and velvet art another; it tells us just as much as knowing why lovers of Degas are turned on by him and turned off by velvet art. Again, all you're doing is elevating your tastes over Mr. Horton's and trying to argue that this "advanced aesthetic perception" entails some correct response to the art one is experiencing. 

All that dear Bert's preference for velvet art over Degas tells us is that Bert Probably hasn't much of an eye for the aesthetics of painting (though exceptions to this, as to most things, are imaginable - barely). I'll repeat: if Bert's senses and intellect are awakened to what Degas is doing, he's unlikely ever again to look to velvet paintings in flea markets for an "art experience." I'm sure you realize that changes in taste as a result of a growing, deepening acquaintance with art are quite normal. Such growth doesn't make one's earlier responses"incorrect"; one would be incorrect only if one pronounced velvet Elvis better than Degas simply on the basis of one's inability to understand Degas. It isn't "wrong" to be bored by Bach, but it's wrong (ignorant and arrogant) to argue with the profound admiration accomplished musicians and knowledgeable music lovers express for his work. No one can prove to you that Bach is a mind-blowing musical genius - they can only give you clues as to what to listen for - but unless you're musically insensitive (some people are) your ears and brain will figure it out whether you come to love his music or not.

In general, *this whole view seems utterly bizarre to me because the majority of audiences for the majority of history have been largely ignorant of the art they experienced.* The majority of audiences are not made up of cognoscenti who have studied art and are aware of all its qualities. Yet their experiences and opinions are less valid... WHY? If anything, I think understanding why art affects those unaware of its qualities would be more enlightening than understanding the reverse, because they do not possess *the knowledge that can bias perceptions*; they simply react to what's natural/instinctual/intuitive to them. *If there's some "human nature" that art naturally "resonates" with, then it would seem more obvious to look for it in the majority, the uneducated everyman, than the intellectual aesthetes.*

The artistic perceptions and tastes of the "uneducated everyman" are certainly informative if we're merely looking to identify some of the most primal and universal principles underlying human artistic expression. I've suggested that tonality in music is one such principle. But who is this "uneducated everyman"? Intellectual knowledge has never been the point here: aesthetic perceptiveness is not the same as academic knowledge of art, and if you think that the latter is what I've been talking about you're way off. "Primitive" art can be highly sophisticated, and the artists don't have to frequent Gertrude Stein's salons and drop witticisms and cigarette ashes to know what they're doing.


----------



## Guest

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I thought I explained it with this: "the rules of games are wholly subjective. *They were invented by human minds. You can't find the "rules" of sports by observing nature.*" If you agree with someone else's subjective idea, the idea doesn't become objective just because it came from someone else's mind other than your own.


You did explain it. I don't agree that 'objective/subjective' is applicable here. Surely we're using the terms to refer, shorthand, to objective/subjective _opinion/taste/preference/perception?_


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## janxharris

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I think the idea is that if writing a hit song was easy, then someone would have a better "hit" rate than 20/1000 (2%).


20/1000 would be hugely successful.


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## janxharris

A clear demonstration of deductive and inductive reasoning on show here.


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## Constant Q

Most professional philosophers consider aesthetic values to be objective.

That should give some of the armchair philosophers here pause for thought.


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## Jacck

Constant Q said:


> Most professional philosophers consider aesthetic values to be objective. That should give some of the armchair philosophers here pause for thought.


Philosophy is not even science, you comedian (in the sense that its claims are objectively verifiable). Most of philosophy has been taken over by science, and what is left is the analysis of language and logic (analytic philosophy). Aesthetic values are a product of the brain.


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## janxharris

Constant Q said:


> Most *professional philosophers consider aesthetic values to be objective*.
> 
> That should give some of the armchair philosophers here pause for thought.


But can't demonstrate it.


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> Philosophy is not even science...Most of philosophy has been taken over by science, and what is left is the analysis of language and logic (analytic philosophy).


I agree philosophy is not scientific. However I do not agree that most of philosophy has been taken over by science. Analytic philosophy is of course a major component of modern Western philosophy, but that does not mean "most of philosophy has been taken over by science" :

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy


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## Strange Magic

> Woodduck: "I don't think there's any doubt that people can have all sorts of experiences stimulated by all sorts of things - or, as my reference to empty space implies, by nothing external at all. I can't see what that tells us about art. If a person's aesthetic perceptions haven't advanced beyond what crude, amateurish velvet paintings in flea markets can offer, he may well be excited by them. Whether his experience would be "profound" depends, I suppose, on how you define "profound," but it would not be an "art experience" in the full sense unless he were responding to artistic qualities in the piece and not merely to the fact that a certain subject was being portrayed and that someone had had the (to him) uncanny ability to put in on velvet."


This brings us to the question of who shall determine whether someone else is having a legitimate art experience, and whether such experience is profound as determined by the outside observer and evaluator. It also brings up the dreaded issue of which of the dozens--nay, hundreds (thousands?) of Madonna and Childs painted by Real Artists--the BIGGIES--is The Best. Alas, this seems to be the area where talk of "artistic" goals, skills, strivings, knowledge, education, fulfillment--supply many other nouns here--should lead relentlessly to a single final answer: Murillo!. (No? Not Murillo? Why not Murillo?)


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## Jacck

dogen said:


> I agree philosophy is not scientific. However I do not agree that most of philosophy has been taken over by science. Analytic philosophy is of course a major component of modern Western philosophy, but that does not mean "most of philosophy has been taken over by science" :
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy


Almost all traditional domains of philosophical inquiry have been taken over by science. Take epistemiology, a traditional branch of philosophy. It has been largely taken over by cognitive neuroscience and I am convinced that Kant would be a neuroscientist if he had been born today. His "a priori" categories of cognition are simply properties of our cognitive instruments, ie brains etc. There is really not much left for philosophy to investigate. Or take metaphysics and ontology. The real questions about the nature of reality are answered by physics, quantum mechanics etc. Most philosophers do not understand these theories indepth enough to even contemplate questions such as the ontologic status of the wave function. The main role that is left for philosophy is the analysis of language and maybe serve a integrative discipline that tries to interpret all the various scientific findings.


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## Guest

Western philosophy's remit has certainly been reduced with the growth of science. But as my link suggested, non-Western philosophy (eg Buddhist, African, Arab) is not quite so affected.


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## Jacck

dogen said:


> Western philosophy's remit has certainly been reduced with the growth of science. But as my link suggested, non-Western philosophy (eg Buddhist, African, Arab) is not quite so affected.


I don't know about Arab philosophy, but they seem to be stuck in a primitive medieval form of religion that has nothing to do with reality. But I respect sufism - the mystical branch of islam. Buddhist philosophy is very much psychological and you can see the convergence between their philosophy and western psychology, ie mindfulness research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness

or the research of enlightment, the sense of the loss of the ego etc. The ego, ie the self-centered process is probably situated in the so called default mode network and for example psychedelics can disrupt it and so dissolve the ego - the goal of the eastern religions
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lsd-may-chip-away-at-the-brain-s-sense-of-self-network/

PS: are you named after the zen master Dogen? 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōgen


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## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> *This brings us to the question of who shall determine whether someone else is having a legitimate art experience, and whether such experience is profound as determined by the outside observer and evaluator. * *It also brings up the dreaded issue of which of the dozens--nay, hundreds (thousands?) of Madonna and Childs painted by Real Artists--the BIGGIES--is The Best. * Alas, this seems to be the area where talk of "artistic" goals, skills, strivings, knowledge, education, fulfillment--supply many other nouns here--should lead relentlessly to a single final answer: Murillo!. (No? Not Murillo? Why not Murillo?)


I don't think it brings us to that question at all. The meaningful question is, "What, in the experience of a work of art (or something purporting to be art) are we responding to?" If we're merely responding to the subject of a painting (e.g. the Madonna) because, say, we're Roman Catholic and devoted to the Virgin, our response has nothing to do with art. If our pleasure comes from the simple fact that someone has been able to depict a realistic woman and child on canvas (or velvet), our response has something to do with art but is not profoundly artistic; knowing how to draw accurately is for a painter but an elementary skill, comparable to knowing how to construct a sentence for a writer.

Why does anyone need to "determine whether someone else is having a legitimate art experience" (whatever that is)? And why should anyone care which depiction of the Madonna is the "best"? Why does the ability to discriminate between incompetent or superficial art and skillful and profound art necessitate that any art be "best"?


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## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> I don't think it brings us to that question at all. The meaningful question is, "What, in the experience of a work of art (or something purporting to be art) are we responding to?" If we're merely responding to the subject of a painting (e.g. the Madonna) because, say, we're Roman Catholic and devoted to the Virgin, our response has nothing to do with art. If our pleasure comes from the simple fact that someone has been able to depict a realistic woman and child on canvas (or velvet), our response has something to do with art but is not profoundly artistic; knowing how to draw accurately is for a painter but an elementary skill, comparable to knowing how to construct a sentence for a writer.
> 
> *Why does anyone need to "determine whether someone else is having a legitimate art experience"* (whatever that is)? And why should anyone care which depiction of the Madonna is the "best"? Why does the ability to discriminate between incompetent or superficial art and skillful and profound art necessitate that any art be "best"?


Did you not do just that?



Woodduck said:


> If a person's aesthetic perceptions haven't advanced beyond what crude, amateurish velvet paintings in flea markets can offer, he may well be excited by them. Whether his experience would be "profound" depends, I suppose, on how you define "profound," but it would not be an "art experience" in the full sense unless he were responding to artistic qualities in the piece and not merely to the fact that a certain subject was being portrayed and that someone had had the (to him) uncanny ability to put in on velvet.


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## Guest

Jacck said:


> Buddhist philosophy is very much psychological and you can see the convergence between their philosophy and western psychology, ie mindfulness research.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness
> 
> PS: are you named after the zen master Dogen?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōgen


Damn, I've been rumbled 

I accept the mindfulness point; but I would characterise it not as convergence but secular theft (following on from scientific research).


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## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> I don't think it brings us to that question at all. The meaningful question is, "What, in the experience of a work of art (or something purporting to be art) are we responding to?" If we're merely responding to the subject of a painting (e.g. the Madonna) because, say, we're Roman Catholic and devoted to the Virgin, our response has nothing to do with art. If our pleasure comes from the simple fact that someone has been able to depict a realistic woman and child on canvas (or velvet), our response has something to do with art but is not profoundly artistic; knowing how to draw accurately is for a painter but an elementary skill, comparable to knowing how to construct a sentence for a writer.
> 
> Why does anyone need to "determine whether someone else is having a legitimate art experience" (whatever that is)? And why should anyone care which depiction of the Madonna is the "best"? Why does the ability to discriminate between incompetent or superficial art and skillful and profound art necessitate that any art be "best"?


All I can repeat here is that:

A) the experience of and reaction to art is extraordinarily complex and multifaceted even when dealing with groups of people (under the center part of the bell curve), though some of the factors at play are being teased out by theoreticians and clinicians. When we turn to the unique individual experiences, biologies, and histories of each of us, the situation increases in complexity by many orders of magnitude. So it is essentially meaningless to speak with any authority of what people are responding to when they experience a work of art. They are responding to a vast number of known, knowable, unknown, and currently very unknowable factors yielding a unique, personal, idiosyncratic array of responses to art. And....

B) Therefore "the ability to discriminate between incompetent or superficial art and skillful and profound art" implies beyond question measurement and ranking into bad, blah, good, better, best by individuals for themselves. And, for most individuals, as individuals, this is both normal and as it should be, despite protestations as above that there is no need to discriminate among Madonna and Child depictions--everybody prefers something over something else, and that something is "the best". But this ''ability" is itself an uncertain and variable thing, and is unique, personal, and idiosyncratic, just like people's "art experiences".

C) So much discussion of the verities(!) of aesthetics are _ex post facto_ efforts--sometimes skillful, sometimes lame and transparent--to justify to others and to ourselves that there are really good and cogent reasons why we like this and hate that .


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## Woodduck

janxharris said:


> Did you not do just that?


No, I never called anyone's experience of art illegitimate.


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## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> All I can repeat here is that:
> 
> A) the experience of and reaction to art is extraordinarily complex and multifaceted even when dealing with groups of people (under the center part of the bell curve), though some of the factors at play are being teased out by theoreticians and clinicians. When we turn to the unique individual experiences, biologies, and histories of each of us, the situation increases in complexity by many orders of magnitude. So *it is essentially meaningless to speak with any authority of what people are responding to when they experience a work of art.* They are responding to a vast number of known, knowable, unknown, and currently very unknowable factors yielding a unique, personal, idiosyncratic array of responses to art. And....
> 
> B) Therefore "the ability to discriminate between incompetent or superficial art and skillful and profound art" implies beyond question measurement and ranking into bad, blah, good, better, best by individuals for themselves. And, for most individuals, as individuals, this is both normal and as it should be, *despite protestations as above that there is no need to discriminate among Madonna and Child depictions--everybody prefers something over something else, and that something is "the best".* But this ''ability" is itself an uncertain and variable thing, and is unique, personal, and idiosyncratic, just like people's "art experiences".
> 
> C) So much discussion of the verities(!) of aesthetics are _ex post facto_ efforts--sometimes skillful, sometimes lame and transparent--to justify to others and to ourselves that *there are really good and cogent reasons why we like this and hate that* .


You didn't answer any of my points.

I haven't spoken, with or without authority, of what any individual is responding to. I don't read minds.

In what reality does discrimination between relative values require measurement with a ruler or pressure guage? We can discriminate between people of better and worse character without being able to measure them and account for all the "known, knowable, unknown, and currently very unknowable factors yielding a unique, personal, idiosyncratic array" of character traits.

Why, if there is better and worse, must there be a "best"? Who's the "best" composer? What does that even mean? Isn't it enough to know that Mozart's music exemplifies more remarkable artistic values than Dittersdorf's? Do we have to know whether Mozart, Bach, Beethoven or someone else is "best?"

We needn't test our tastes by reference to "reasons." Taste justifies itself. But there may be reasons for liking what we like, and we may have some awareness of them. They don't have to be based on our assessments of quality.


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## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> You didn't answer any of my points.


I thought I did, and pretty well too.


----------



## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> .......
> _*For art that's potentially lacking patterns or order in some aspects, *_I also think it's natural for audiences to try to discern order and patterns _*even when none are there*_. I've had experience with literary and cinematic works that are both highly ordered/patterned AND highly chaotic depending on what aspects you're talking about.


Theoretically this seems sound but I am not convinced that there is such a thing as an effective work of art that has no order. I think great art can be "highly ordered/patterned AND highly chaotic" but not merely chaotic. There will always be an order, I feel. Finding it, feeling it, allowing it to take you where it goes ... these are parts of the joys of discovering a new work. It is great when it is a new voice, too. But it is great when it is a composer you are getting to know. The order (the picture, the "story") may be weird, it may be all sorts of things ... and it may be very hidden. But I feel it will always be there in effective art.


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## Woodduck

Enthusiast said:


> Theoretically this seems sound but I am not convinced that there is such a thing as an effective work of art that has no order. I think great art can be "highly ordered/patterned AND highly chaotic" but not merely chaotic. There will always be an order, I feel. Finding it, feeling it, allowing it to take you where it goes ... these are parts of the joys of discovering a new work. It is great when it is a new voice, too. But it is great when it is a composer you are getting to know. The order (the picture, the "story") may be weird, it may be all sorts of things ... and it may be very hidden. But I feel it will always be there in effective art.


Paradox: chaos may be a subject in art, but art that's wholly chaotic can't represent any subject, including chaos.


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## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> Paradox: chaos may be a subject in art, but art that's wholly chaotic can't represent any subject, including chaos.


The art of Jackson Pollock presents a challenge, as do certain musics we can all think of. Impassioned attacks upon it/them have been made, as well as equally impassioned defenses--what's a boy to believe? "It's All a Matter of Taste".


----------



## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> You didn't answer any of my points.
> 
> I haven't spoken, with or without authority, of what any individual is responding to. I don't read minds.
> 
> In what reality does discrimination between relative values require measurement with a ruler or pressure guage? We can discriminate between people of better and worse character without being able to measure them and account for all the "known, knowable, unknown, and currently very unknowable factors yielding a unique, personal, idiosyncratic array" of character traits.
> 
> Why, if there is better and worse, must there must be a "best"? Who's the "best" composer? What does that even mean? Isn't it enough to know that Mozart's music exemplifies more remarkable artistic values than Dittersdorf's? Do we have to know whether Mozart, Bach, Beethoven or someone else is "best?"
> 
> We needn't test our tastes by reference to "reasons." Taste justifies itself. But there may be reasons for liking what we like, and we may have some awareness of them. They don't have to be based on our assessments of quality.


I think we are inching towards a mutual understanding of the differences between having a personal, individual aesthetic sense or theory or structure, and an overarching "one size fits all" Procrustean aesthetics that jams everybody's brains into one bell jar, let alone curve.


----------



## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> I think we are *inching* towards a mutual understanding of the differences between having a personal, individual aesthetic sense or theory or structure, and an overarching "one size fits all" Procrustean aesthetics that jams everybody's brains into one bell jar, let alone curve.


Two and two are four
Four and four are eight
Eight and eight are sixteen
Sixteen and sixteen are thirty two

Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds
You and your arithmetic
You'll probably go far

Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds
Seems to me you'd stop and see
How beautiful they are

Shall we change the lyrics to "seems to me you'd stop and see whether you could measure their beauty and then realize there was nothing to measure because beauty is nothing but a feeling that some worms have about flowers"? But that's metrically clumsy, which in this case is good. Or at least some worms think so.


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## Strange Magic

My Parthian shot, from Wikipedia:

"De gustibus non est disputandum, or de gustibus non disputandum est, is a Latin maxim meaning "In matters of taste, there can be no disputes" (literally "about tastes, it should not be disputed/discussed").[1][2] The phrase is commonly rendered in English as "There is no accounting for taste(s)."[3] The implication is that everyone's personal preferences are merely subjective opinions that cannot be right or wrong, so they should never be argued about as if they were. Sometimes the phrase is expanded as De gustibus et coloribus... referring to tastes and colors. The original quotation is an ancient Latin adage, i.e. Roman, and discussed by many philosophers and economists."

We each have our own personal aesthetic, and that is as it should be. There is also our old friend the bell curve: where we are positioned under it, and whether that actually means anything regarding the value of our experiences of art. End of prepared statement and of my contribution to this discussion--I've said it all, many times, many ways....... .


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## DaveM

In the discussion of a some of the important subjects here, I see signs of what is a form of circular reasoning whereby even the simplest logic is questioned no matter how much explanation is given.

It goes something like this: One person says, 'Biologists, Anthropologists and Naturalists have proven the most important tenets of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution.' The response: 'Well, it's still just a theory.'


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## DaveM

Woodduck said:


> Two and two are four
> Four and four are eight
> Eight and eight are sixteen
> Sixteen and sixteen are thirty two
> 
> Inchworm, inchworm
> Measuring the marigolds
> You and your arithmetic
> You'll probably go far
> 
> Inchworm, inchworm
> Measuring the marigolds
> Seems to me you'd stop and see
> How beautiful they are
> 
> Shall we change the lyrics to "seems to me you'd stop and see whether you could measure their beauty and then realize there was nothing to measure because beauty is nothing but a feeling that some worms have about flowers"? But that's metrically clumsy, which in this case is good. Or at least some worms think so.


When I read this, my first thought was of Hans Christian Anderson and then my second was a fond memory of Danny Kaye...


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## janxharris

DaveM said:


> In the discussion of a some of the important subjects here, I see signs of what is a form of circular reasoning whereby even the simplest logic is questioned no matter how much explanation is given.
> 
> It goes something like this: One person says, 'Biologists, Anthropologists and Naturalists have proven the most important tenets of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution.' The response: 'Well, it's still just a theory.'


As a historical science it remains a theory. Just saying.


----------



## KenOC

janxharris said:


> As a historical science it remains a theory. Just saying.


In science, there are no truths. Only theories waiting for a single contrary observation to be disproven.

That said, evolution has been waiting for a long time to find that bunny rabbit in the Cretacious. And its explanatory power is overwhelming. "Without evolution, biology would make no sense."


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## Guest

janxharris said:


> As a historical science it remains a theory. Just saying.


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/just-a-theory-7-misused-science-words/



> The general public so widely misuses the words hypothesis, theory and law that scientists should stop using these terms, writes physicist Rhett Allain of Southeastern Louisiana University, in a blog post on Wired Science. [Amazing Science: 25 Fun Facts]
> "I don't think at this point it's worth saving those words," Allain told LiveScience.
> 
> Climate-change deniers and creationists have deployed the word "theory" to cast doubt on climate change and evolution. "It's as though it weren't true because it's just a theory," Allain said.
> That's despite the fact that an overwhelming amount of evidence supports both human-caused climate change and Darwin's theory of evolution.
> Part of the problem is that the word "theory" means something very different in lay language than it does in science: A scientific theory is an explanation of some aspect of the natural world that has been substantiated through repeated experiments or testing. But to the average Jane or Joe, a theory is just an idea that lives in someone's head, rather than an explanation rooted in experiment and testing.


----------



## janxharris

KenOC said:


> In science, there are no truths. Only theories waiting for a single contrary observation to be disproven.
> 
> That said, evolution has been waiting for a long time to find that bunny rabbit in the Cretacious. And its explanatory power is overwhelming. "Without evolution, biology would make no sense."


There's no doubting the strong evidential support, but there are also significant problems.

We'll stop though...with much respect to the moderators.


----------



## Guest

Constant Q said:


> Most professional philosophers consider aesthetic values to be objective.
> 
> That should give some of the armchair philosophers here pause for thought.


Ah, a new member gives us his/her take on things. A bit pithy for those of us who aren't even armchair philosophers, though...would you elaborate?


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## DaveM

janxharris said:


> As a historical science it remains a theory. Just saying.


I rest my case.


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## DaveM

KenOC said:


> In science, there are no truths. Only theories waiting for a single contrary observation to be disproven.
> 
> That said, evolution has been waiting for a long time to find that bunny rabbit in the Cretacious. And its explanatory power is overwhelming. "Without evolution, biology would make no sense."


I believe we came from the DNA strands 'donated' by one of the Engineers.


----------



## Nereffid

Woodduck said:


> Two and two are four
> Four and four are eight
> Eight and eight are sixteen
> Sixteen and sixteen are thirty two
> 
> Inchworm, inchworm
> Measuring the marigolds
> You and your arithmetic
> You'll probably go far
> 
> Inchworm, inchworm
> Measuring the marigolds
> Seems to me you'd stop and see
> How beautiful they are
> 
> Shall we change the lyrics to "seems to me you'd stop and see whether you could measure their beauty and then realize there was nothing to measure because beauty is nothing but a feeling that some worms have about flowers"? But that's metrically clumsy, which in this case is good. Or at least some worms think so.


How about:

Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds
Seems to me you'd stop and see
How right my values are


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## janxharris

Is there the Darwinian equivalent of Godwin's Law?


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## Guest

janxharris said:


> Is there the Darwinian equivalent of Godwin's Law?


As an online discussion of evolution grows longer, the probability of a creationist using the word "theory" as an intended dismissal approaches 1.


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## Phil loves classical

KenOC said:


> Well, this is a multi-billion dollar industry with a few BIG winners and a lot of losers. Competition is fierce. I suspect it takes a lot of skill indeed.


Competition is more fierce for attention grabbing songs, which is where the money is. The more skilled compositions usually make less money than the catchy ones. Even among pop artists, I hear how some loathe the songs they view are better are neglected over their more incessantly catchy ones. There was an experiment how they took some Stockhausen or some other difficult composer and looped a few parts together and cutting out some, adding more repetition in the process, and even among classical students they found it more listenable.


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## KenOC

Phil loves classical said:


> ... There was an experiment how they took some Stockhausen or some other difficult composer and looped a few parts together and cutting out some, adding more repetition in the process, and even among classical students they found it more listenable.


A pity Stockhausen didn't think of doing that... :lol:


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## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> Competition is more fierce for *attention grabbing songs, which is where the money is. The more skilled compositions usually make less money than the catchy ones. *Even among pop artists, I hear how some loathe the songs they view are better are neglected over their more incessantly catchy ones. There was an experiment how they took some Stockhausen or some other difficult composer and looped a few parts together and cutting out some, adding more repetition in the process, and even among classical students they found it more listenable.


Literal repetition of short phrases is the simplest, easiest, most primitive, most mindless, and therefore the most sure-fire, way of ensuring the listener's engagement. The only trick is in making the phrase something he'll like and not get bored with as it's pounded into his brain. At present this is commonly achieved with a relentless underlying rhythm, a repetitive and preferably suggestive lyric, and a thin, juvenile voice prematurely afflicted with vocal fry.


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## Phil loves classical

KenOC said:


> A pity Stockhausen didn't think of doing that... :lol:


Actually seems like he did. There was an interview of him commenting on Aphex Twin, about repetition

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2...-music-tips-for-aphex-twin-plastikman-others/


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## Eva Yojimbo

KenOC said:


> Here's a fantastic article from _The Atlantic_ (in 2015) that discusses how hit songs come to be. This is a really good read with some surprises. A lot of it has to do with bald Norwegians. Really!
> 
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/hit-charade/403192/
> 
> "It is a business as old as Stephen Foster, but never before has it been run so efficiently or dominated by so few. We have come to expect this type of consolidation from our banking, oil-and-gas, and health-care industries. But the same practices they rely on-ruthless digitization, outsourcing, focus-group brand testing, brute-force marketing-have been applied with tremendous success in pop, creating such profitable multinationals as Rihanna, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift."


Thanks for that. I was aware of many of these names and vaguely knew about the "hit-making machine" that was modern pop music. I was surprised though at how calculating it had become. There are actually analogs in the past though, and the idea of writing songs and "shopping them" among the most popular artists is quite old indeed--this is similar to how Bob Dylan started out before he was recording his own material. Still, despite some of the distasteful aspects of this "songwriting as an industrial process," I don't think it invalidates the idea that if it was so easy you'd see a lot more people doing it than just the handful named in that article; and as I look them up on Wikipedia I notice that even the kingpin is still well behind Paul McCartney for #1 songs. Of course, ideas like focus groups in the arts is an old idea in film. I'm reminded what Billy Wilder said: "An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius."

I should also mention in defense of contemporary pop that not all artists and bands are a product of that industrial complex. Perhaps my favorite contemporary pop band is Paramore and they write all their own songs, and weren't even afraid of making a startling genre shift from being a pop-punk emo rock band to being a kind of 80s-throwback retro band.


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## Eva Yojimbo

MacLeod said:


> You did explain it. I don't agree that 'objective/subjective' is applicable here. Surely we're using the terms to refer, shorthand, to objective/subjective _opinion/taste/preference/perception?_


In terms of art, yes, we're using subjective as an adjective to qualify "opinions/tastes/preferences/perceptions," but in terms of my analogy, the subjective adjective is qualifying the rules of sports. In both cases, subjective means "in/of the mind." Opinions/tastes/preferences/perceptions and the rules of sports all exist within the mind, not within external reality. So I'm not sure why you don't think it's applicable for the analogy.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Constant Q said:


> Most professional philosophers consider aesthetic values to be objective.


Barely. It's a 40/35/25 split between objective/subjective/other: https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl


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## Eva Yojimbo

Jacck said:


> Almost all traditional domains of philosophical inquiry have been taken over by science. Take epistemiology, a traditional branch of philosophy. It has been largely taken over by cognitive neuroscience and I am convinced that Kant would be a neuroscientist if he had been born today. His "a priori" categories of cognition are simply properties of our cognitive instruments, ie brains etc. There is really not much left for philosophy to investigate. Or take metaphysics and ontology. The real questions about the nature of reality are answered by physics, quantum mechanics etc. Most philosophers do not understand these theories indepth enough to even contemplate questions such as the ontologic status of the wave function. The main role that is left for philosophy is the analysis of language and maybe serve a integrative discipline that tries to interpret all the various scientific findings.


I'm not sure how cognitive neuroscience can take over epistemology because cognitive neuroscience can only tell us what we consider to be knowledge, not what actually IS knowledge, which is the domain of philosophy. Metaphysics and ontology also deal with more than just the physical models of science; though I might agree that metaphysics and ontology can't tell us anything more useful or necessarily truthful than what science does. In terms of knowledge, I'm pretty satisfied with a fully Bayesian approach, but many are not (I suspect many more will be as AI begins making more and more use of it for our benefit).

However, I'll give an example of where science is currently limited and philosophy is of great use: quantum mechanics. In QM, we have very precise and accurate models, but they also happen to incompatible with other successful models-namely Einstein's General Relativity-without disproving it or subsuming it into a larger theory. Science has been a century-old standstill in QM to show which interpretation is correct, because all the interpretations are consistent with the data. Philosophy, specifically a rationalist view of epistemology supported by mathematical principles like Occam's Razor and its formalizations (Solomonoff Induction, Bayes' Theorem, etc.), CAN help though.

Sadly, most scientists are as ignorant about this as philosophers are ignorant of quantum mechanics. It's only the few that's relatively well-versed in both that seem to even ever bother commenting on the issue. I think the answer/solution is obvious (many-worlds), but most scientists just take a "shut up and calculate" approach and don't even worry about answering the whole "what does it mean?" business. This approach wouldn't have sat well with the more philosophically inclined scientists like Newton and Einstein. Sean Carroll had a good article discussing the ignorance and dismissal of philosophy by scientists: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/06/23/physicists-should-stop-saying-silly-things-about-philosophy/


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> I've already told you that these gargantuan posts responding to multiple points are a burden to deal with. Can you at least agree to take on one of my posts at a time?


 I agree these long posts are exhausting, so let me try to pare this down to what I consider the crux of our issues (apologies if my paring excludes anything you consider important):



Woodduck said:


> Note: I don't say crudely that composer A or artwork A is "better" or "more valuable" than composer or artwork B. I say that some works of art express, in form and/or subject, certain values which are "higher," "deeper," "more complex," et al., and do it with greater aesthetic sophistication and richness, creativity, or skill.


So who determines what values are "higher, deeper, more complex, et al.," which are done "with greater sophistication, richness, creativity, and skill," and how do they determine this without reference to their own tastes, values, preferences, etc.?



Woodduck said:


> I'm saying that those who can perceive his qualities vis-a-vis the qualities of Uncle George's shower serenade (or, to bring it closer to home, the operas of Meyerbeer) will recognize Wagner's work as more profound, rich, original, skillful, interesting, culturally significant, et al. Wagner's work simply embodies many more human values and has much more to offer us - _assuming we are able to perceive it_ - than the work of Meyerbeer or Uncle George.


From this, I can't tell you're saying anything more than "people who perceive the qualities Wagner possesses and value those qualities Wagner possesses will find Wagner more profound, rich, skillful, interesting, and significant," which is practically a tautology and could be said of any artist besides Wagner.



Woodduck said:


> All that dear Bert's preference for velvet art over Degas tells us is that Bert Probably hasn't much of an eye for the aesthetics of painting (though exceptions to this, as to most things, are imaginable - barely). I'll repeat: if Bert's senses and intellect are awakened to what Degas is doing, he's unlikely ever again to look to velvet paintings in flea markets for an "art experience."


Again, this seems to say nothing more than "if Bert's senses and intellect are like the senses and intellect of those who like what Degas is doing and dislike what velvet paintings in flea markets are doing then Bert will like Degas and forget about the velvet paintings." Yes, like-minded people will perceive and like the qualities of the art that their like-mindedness leads them to like. This is as true of those who love Degas as those who love velvet paintings. Your entire argument could be reversed to say "All that Degas' lovers' preference for Degas over velvet paintings tells us is that they probably haven't much of an eye for the aesthetics of velvet paintings, and if their senses and intellect are awakened to what the velvet paintings are doing (and what Bert sees in them), then they're unlikely ever again to look at Degas."



Woodduck said:


> …one would be incorrect only if one pronounced velvet Elvis better than Degas simply on the basis of one's inability to understand Degas. It isn't "wrong" to be bored by Bach, but it's wrong (ignorant and arrogant) to argue with the profound admiration accomplished musicians and knowledgeable music lovers express for his work. No one can prove to you that Bach is a mind-blowing musical genius - they can only give you clues as to what to listen for - but unless you're musically insensitive (some people are) your ears and brain will figure it out whether you come to love his music or not.


And why would one not be incorrect in pronouncing Degas better than velvet Elvis on the basis of one's inability to understand velvet Elvis? Thing is, why can't you just replace Bach with ANY musical artist and replace "accomplished musicians and knowledgeable music lovers" with whomever are fans of that artist? That's the real crux: why are we granting Bach and Degas and Wagner and whomever this protective status and not every artist?


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Phil loves classical said:


> Competition is more fierce for attention grabbing songs, which is where the money is. The more skilled compositions usually make less money than the catchy ones. Even among pop artists, I hear how some loathe the songs they view are better are neglected over their more incessantly catchy ones. There was an experiment how they took some Stockhausen or some other difficult composer and looped a few parts together and cutting out some, adding more repetition in the process, and even among classical students they found it more listenable.


Why are we assuming that there's a mutual exclusivity between "skillful composition" and "catchy composition?" If the latter was easier to do and was, indeed, what most listeners were drawn to, then there would be more successful songwriters than there are. Further, as I mentioned above, the artist with the most #1 singles is Paul McCartney, and if The Beatles aren't being considered "skillful" in the realm of pop music, then who is? Even in the realm of classical the two don't seem exclusive. Beethoven's 5th is catchy as hell, which is probably one reason it's well-known by audiences of all genres. I dare say that if you break down the list of greatest classical compositions, many of them will display some degree of catchiness.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> Theoretically this seems sound but I am not convinced that there is such a thing as an effective work of art that has no order. I think great art can be "highly ordered/patterned AND highly chaotic" but not merely chaotic. There will always be an order, I feel.


Free jazz? Surrealism? Splashing paint on canvass? Aleatory music? I think there's a good deal of art in the 20th century that explored modes of creation that were as close to pure chaos as it gets. One example that immediately comes to mind is the short film Un Chien Andalou, which is probably the most influential, well-known short/experimental film ever, but in which Dali and Bunuel created by thinking up random scenes/images without any intended connection between them:


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## KenOC

Eva Yojimbo said:


> ...Still, despite some of the distasteful aspects of this "songwriting as an industrial process," I don't think it invalidates the idea that if it was so easy you'd see a lot more people doing it than just the handful named in that article … ideas like focus groups in the arts is an old idea in film. I'm reminded what Billy Wilder said: "An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius."


I've read of Brahms playing through his symphonies for selected audiences of friends before finalizing them. Early-day focus groups for sure!


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> So who determines what values are "higher, deeper, more complex, et al.," which are done "with greater sophistication, richness, creativity, and skill," and how do they determine this without reference to their own tastes, values, preferences, etc.?
> 
> Again, this seems to say nothing more than "if Bert's senses and intellect are like the senses and intellect of those who like what Degas is doing and dislike what velvet paintings in flea markets are doing then Bert will like Degas and forget about the velvet paintings." Yes, like-minded people will perceive and like the qualities of the art that their like-mindedness leads them to like. This is as true of those who love Degas as those who love velvet paintings. *Your entire argument could be reversed to say "All that Degas' lovers' preference for Degas over velvet paintings tells us is that they probably haven't much of an eye for the aesthetics of velvet paintings, and if their senses and intellect are awakened to what the velvet paintings are doing (and what Bert sees in them), then they're unlikely ever again to look at Degas." *


The sentence I've put in bold is so laugh-out-loud absurd even on a purely empirical basis that it ought to make anyone look down to see if their leg is being pulled! The path of art appreciation leading from Degas to velvet Elvis???

Your position seems here to be revealed clearly: you believe that 1.) all values are values of individuals (i.e., "subjective"); 2.) there are no values - i.e. things _of value_ - that transcend the individual and pertain to human beings and human life as such; 3.) therefore, no values can be considered superior to any others, and 3.) therefore, no art can, by virtue of expressing or embodying such values, be said to be superior to any other.

Do I understand your beliefs correctly? If so, there is no point in further discussion, since I disagree with your premises and your conclusions.


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## Guest

Eva Yojimbo said:


> In terms of art, yes, we're using subjective as an adjective to qualify "opinions/tastes/preferences/perceptions," but in terms of my analogy, the subjective adjective is qualifying the rules of sports. In both cases, subjective means "in/of the mind." Opinions/tastes/preferences/perceptions and the rules of sports all exist within the mind, not within external reality. So I'm not sure why you don't think it's applicable for the analogy.


The rules of sport don't "exist in the mind"...well, they do, but if we're going to get that subjective, there's nothing created by man that _doesn't_ "exist in the mind". Are you saying that an automobile is subjective? That _Citizen Kane _is subjective? What we need to worry about here is what _only _exists in the mind (until it is voiced out loud with another) ie, my opinon about the rules of sport, about cars, about the finest movie ever made...


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## Larkenfield

*Degas on Art.*

"Taste! It doesn't exist. An artist makes beautiful things without being aware of it."

"What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming."

"My art, what do you want to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to those who do not see them? . . . I can find the best and clearest words to explain my meaning, and I have spoken to the most intelligent people about art, and they have not understood; but among people who understand, words are not necessary, you say humph, he, ha and everything has been said."

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.

"What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things."

"Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?"

"The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see."

_"C'est vrai. Voilá quelqu'un qui sent comme moi._ (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do)."

"A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody."

"Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means."

"The fascinating thing, is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light."

"Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form."

"There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing."

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things."


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## Nereffid

Woodduck said:


> Your position seems here to be revealed clearly: you believe that 1.) all values are values of individuals (i.e., "subjective"); 2.) there are no values - i.e. things _of value_ - that transcend the individual and pertain to human beings and human life as such; 3.) therefore, no values can be considered superior to any others, and 3.) therefore, no art can, by virtue of expressing or embodying such values, be said to be superior to any other.


FWIW, I'll revise and expand these to reveal my position:
1) all values are values of individuals, in as much as what an individual values depends entirely on what goes on in that individual's brain,
1a) but all human brains are very similar, and moreover society and culture mean that many individuals' brains are under the same influences;
2) so inevitably there will be values that are shared by some, many, or most individuals, and these values transcend the individual and pertain to human beings and human life as such,
2a) but it's possible for two or more groups to have different and even conflicting values that each transcend the individual and pertain to human beings;
3) therefore, no values can be considered _inherently_ superior to any others,
3a) although if the values are shared by nearly everyone in a particular group or culture or society, then it's not unreasonable to say that _in practical terms_ some values are superior to others;
4) therefore, no art can, by virtue of expressing or embodying such values, be said to be _inherently_ superior to any other,
4b) and while it's certainly the case for art of the historical past that some art can be considered _in practical terms_ to be superior to other art, it's not the case when one is dealing with the differing (and even conflicting) values given to newer art, or by newer audiences, or even by re-evaluation of the past.


----------



## science

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Barely. It's a 40/35/25 split between objective/subjective/other: https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl


Looking over those results, it appears that 30% of professional philosophers are people who enjoy taking unconventional positions out of sheer stubbornness.


----------



## science

I don't see how saying that one thing is _subjectively_ superior to another is the same as saying that it's not superior.


----------



## Jacck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I'm not sure how cognitive neuroscience can take over epistemology because cognitive neuroscience can only tell us what we consider to be knowledge, not what actually IS knowledge, which is the domain of philosophy. Metaphysics and ontology also deal with more than just the physical models of science; though I might agree that metaphysics and ontology can't tell us anything more useful or necessarily truthful than what science does. In terms of knowledge, I'm pretty satisfied with a fully Bayesian approach, but many are not (I suspect many more will be as AI begins making more and more use of it for our benefit).
> 
> However, I'll give an example of where science is currently limited and philosophy is of great use: quantum mechanics. In QM, we have very precise and accurate models, but they also happen to incompatible with other successful models-namely Einstein's General Relativity-without disproving it or subsuming it into a larger theory. Science has been a century-old standstill in QM to show which interpretation is correct, because all the interpretations are consistent with the data. Philosophy, specifically a rationalist view of epistemology supported by mathematical principles like Occam's Razor and its formalizations (Solomonoff Induction, Bayes' Theorem, etc.), CAN help though.
> 
> Sadly, most scientists are as ignorant about this as philosophers are ignorant of quantum mechanics. It's only the few that's relatively well-versed in both that seem to even ever bother commenting on the issue. I think the answer/solution is obvious (many-worlds), but most scientists just take a "shut up and calculate" approach and don't even worry about answering the whole "what does it mean?" business. This approach wouldn't have sat well with the more philosophically inclined scientists like Newton and Einstein. Sean Carroll had a good article discussing the ignorance and dismissal of philosophy by scientists: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/06/23/physicists-should-stop-saying-silly-things-about-philosophy/


the question "what actually IS knowledge" seems trivial to me. Knowledge is memory, ie data stored in our brains. To claim that knowledge is something more and exists objectively outside the human consciousness is again bringing in platonism, which is a delusion (in my opinion). Concerning the interpretations of QM, it has been something of a hobby of mine over a couple of years . The MWI is acutally my least favorite, it is just ugly. Why dont you apply the Occams razor to it? It makes outrageous claims that are unnecessary to explain the observations. It is true that most physicists do not care about philosophy, but some do. For example Mermin, Zeilinger or Roland Omnes who has written good books about interpretation
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/225049.Understanding_Quantum_Mechanics


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## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> In terms of art, yes, we're using subjective as an adjective to qualify "opinions/tastes/preferences/perceptions," but in terms of my analogy, the subjective adjective is qualifying the rules of sports. In both cases, subjective means "in/of the mind." Opinions/tastes/preferences/perceptions and the rules of sports all exist within the mind, not within external reality. So I'm not sure why you don't think it's applicable for the analogy.


So what, in aesthetic appreciation, is left to be described as objective? There only seems room for the term subjective using this definition because art can only be accessed via the mind. It is not a tree that may exist whether we see it or not.


----------



## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Free jazz? Surrealism? Splashing paint on canvass? Aleatory music? I think there's a good deal of art in the 20th century that explored modes of creation that were as close to pure chaos as it gets. One example that immediately comes to mind is the short film Un Chien Andalou, which is probably the most influential, well-known short/experimental film ever, but in which Dali and Bunuel created by thinking up random scenes/images without any intended connection between them:


As you know, I think in all cases the worthwhile stuff does have coherence and shape. It may not be obvious but it will be there. As a young child I used to bang our piano randomly and pretend that I was playing some modern masterpiece. But even at that young age, I knew there must be more to it really! I just didn't know what it was.

There has been an interesting series of documentaries by Waldemar Januszczak (_*always *_exceptionally good TV, IMO) about American art. In the first film he focused some attention on Jackson Pollock, showing where he came from and the fluent techniques that he developed. Pollock had been a student of Thomas Hart Benton, who produced murals mixing up various typical scenes from American life. But Benton's method had been to start with abstract "patterns" (actually, visual representations of something more rhythmic than a "pattern") which he then turned into stylised but very figurative murals. Pollock, he showed us, developed an opposite technique: starting with figurative patterns he made them, layer by layer, more abstract and apparently chaotic. Both it seems were responding to music - jazz in Pollock's case - and had (obviously) very fluent and highly developed control over the techniques they used to put paint on canvas (or wall). He also showed us that the way to really _get _Pollock's drip paintings is to do what Pollock did - move around, move in and out - rather than standing back and looking at it statically as a whole.

As for Dali and Bunuel, they still made choices (how could they not?). And they still had strong technical skills (i.e. techniques). I am reminded of a technique sometimes used by auditors and statisticians to detect true randomness. True randomness has patterns - repeating numbers or runs of numbers - but fake randomness will show evidence that a mind has tried to eliminate those patterns. What Dali and Bunuel did in Un Chien Andalou was make a point. It was both influential and a dead end.


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## Woodduck

Nereffid said:


> FWIW, I'll revise and expand these to reveal my position:
> 1) all values are values of individuals, in as much as what an individual values depends entirely on what goes on in that individual's brain,
> 1a) but all human brains are very similar, and moreover society and culture mean that many individuals' brains are under the same influences;
> 2) so inevitably there will be values that are shared by some, many, or most individuals, and these values transcend the individual and pertain to human beings and human life as such,
> 2a) but it's possible for two or more groups to have different and even conflicting values that each transcend the individual and pertain to human beings;
> 3) therefore, no values can be considered _inherently_ superior to any others,
> 3a) although if the values are shared by nearly everyone in a particular group or culture or society, then it's not unreasonable to say that _in practical terms_ some values are superior to others;
> 4) therefore, no art can, by virtue of expressing or embodying such values, be said to be _inherently_ superior to any other,
> 4b) and while it's certainly the case for art of the historical past that some art can be considered _in practical terms_ to be superior to other art, it's not the case when one is dealing with the differing (and even conflicting) values given to newer art, or by newer audiences, or even by re-evaluation of the past.


Very good. But 3 does not follow from 2a.


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## Kollwitz

I've enjoyed reading this thread: it's one of the things that finally made me sign up to talkclassical.

My view, and one that I think Woodduck has expressed more cogently, is that there are objective criteria with which one can judge art and music. It is possible to categorise some works as 'better' than others, based on complexity, coherency, innovation and other criteria. This is not particularly neat and obvious, however and cannot be applied with great precision (e.g. precise rankings of symphonies, composers or works of art).

As a classical neophyte, I have become obsessed with Bruckner. I find his symphonies, especially 5 to 9, tremendously beautiful, urgent, stimulating, meaningful and transcendent. I love them more than I've loved any other music in my life. However, I can appreciate why others don't like them. The consistency of structure, the relatively slow and deliberate building of movements, the lack of super-memorable melodies (I find much of them very memorable, but that did take repeated listens), even the nature of the orchestration may not appeal to many listeners (I love Brucknerian brass, I appreciate others may not. I think that, objectively, Bruckner's symphonies are great, based on several criteria, but that subjectively, individuals may not like them for a range of perfectly valid reasons.

Brahms 4, in my limited knowledge, is objectively a very great work, and greater even than my most beloved Bruckner 5, 8 and 9. All four movements are highly memorable, the symphony is coherent, the orchestration is varied, it is concise, it is open to different interpretations (I love Furtwangler, Kleiber and Giulini). I can't find any faults in it. This doesn't meant that I think everyone should enjoy it as much as I do, but that objectively it meets many criteria for greatness and that reasons for disliking it are therefore _more_ subjective than the reasons for disliking some other works. I am not a musical expert, by any means. I presume, though, that a panel of musical experts would be able to identify a range of objective reasons why Brahms 4, Beethoven 3 or Mahler 6 are great works.

If we deny the existence of objectivity we are succumbing to pernicious artistic relativism. The subjective element of musical or artistic appreciation is, in my opinion, more important though.

Apologies for this rather rambling and portentous first post.


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## Kollwitz

I've enjoyed reading this thread: it's one of the things that finally made me sign up to talkclassical.

My view, and one that I think Woodduck has expressed more cogently, is that there are objective criteria with which one can judge art and music. It is possible to categorise some works as 'better' than others, based on complexity, coherency, innovation and other criteria. This is not particularly neat and obvious, however and cannot be applied with great precision (e.g. precise rankings of symphonies, composers or works of art).

As a classical neophyte, I have become obsessed with Bruckner. I find his symphonies, especially 5 to 9, tremendously beautiful, urgent, stimulating, meaningful and transcendent. I love them more than I've loved any other music in my life. However, I can appreciate why others don't like them. The consistency of structure, the relatively slow and deliberate building of movements, the lack of super-memorable melodies (I find much of them very memorable, but that did take repeated listens), even the nature of the orchestration may not appeal to many listeners (I love Brucknerian brass, I appreciate others may not. I think that, objectively, Bruckner's symphonies are great, based on several criteria, but that subjectively, individuals may not like them for a range of perfectly valid reasons.

Brahms 4, in my limited knowledge, is objectively a very great work, and greater even than my most beloved Bruckner 5, 8 and 9. All four movements are highly memorable, the symphony is coherent, the orchestration is varied, it is concise, it is open to different interpretations (I love Furtwangler, Kleiber and Giulini). I can't find any faults in it. This doesn't meant that I think everyone should enjoy it as much as I do, but that objectively it meets many criteria for greatness and that reasons for disliking it are therefore _more_ subjective than the reasons for disliking some other works. I am not a musical expert, by any means. I presume, though, that a panel of musical experts would be able to identify a range of objective reasons why Brahms 4, Beethoven 3 or Mahler 6 are great works.

If we deny the existence of objectivity we are succumbing to pernicious artistic relativism. The subjective element of musical or artistic appreciation is, in my opinion, more important though.

Apologies for this rather rambling and portentous first post.


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## Eva Yojimbo

MacLeod said:


> The rules of sport don't "exist in the mind"...well, they do, but if we're going to get that subjective, there's nothing created by man that _doesn't_ "exist in the mind". Are you saying that an automobile is subjective? That _Citizen Kane _is subjective? What we need to worry about here is what _only _exists in the mind (until it is voiced out loud with another) ie, my opinon about the rules of sport, about cars, about the finest movie ever made...


Automobiles and Citizen Kane are objective, though: they can be seen and heard, and in the case of the former can be touched, smelled, and tasted. Our senses alert us to their existence beyond our mind. How do the rules of sports exist in this way? Saying it's written down doesn't count since linguistic meaning is subjective too.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Jacck said:


> the question "what actually IS knowledge" seems trivial to me. Knowledge is memory, ie data stored in our brains. To claim that knowledge is something more and exists objectively outside the human consciousness is again bringing in platonism, which is a delusion (in my opinion). Concerning the interpretations of QM, it has been something of a hobby of mine over a couple of years . The MWI is acutally my least favorite, it is just ugly. Why dont you apply the Occams razor to it? It makes outrageous claims that are unnecessary to explain the observations. It is true that most physicists do not care about philosophy, but some do. For example Mermin, Zeilinger or Roland Omnes who has written good books about interpretation
> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/225049.Understanding_Quantum_Mechanics


 The philosophical counter to "knowledge as memory" would be examples where memory is wrong. I kinda agree with you, though, and a Bayesian account of knowledge is basically just experience/memory with a formulation for how new experiences/evidence should be used to update your beliefs/knowledge. However, accepting that memory (or Bayesianism) is the best account of "knowledge" is a philosophical position that cognitive neuroscience can't, in and of itself, prove correct.

What you say about MWI makes me suspicious that you (like the vast majority of people) are confused about what it actually is. MWI is most favored by Occam because it takes the basic formulations of QM, treats them as real, and adds nothing. As a bonus, it keeps physics local, real, and deterministic and thus compatible with General Relativity. Here's some good explanatory articles:

http://www.askamathematician.com/2010/10/q-copenhagen-or-many-worlds/comment-page-1/
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com...ion-of-quantum-mechanics-is-probably-correct/
https://manyworldstheory.com/2014/01/13/dont-cut-yourself-on-occams-razor/ <- Directly addresses the Occam issue.

I know there are some physicists interested in philosophy, but they are sadly in the minority. I wish there was more dialogue between philosophy and science.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> So what, in aesthetic appreciation, is left to be described as objective? There only seems room for the term subjective using this definition because art can only be accessed via the mind. It is not a tree that may exist whether we see it or not.


The art itself! Art is seen, heard, and in some cases felt (and I guess tasted if we want to treat the culinary arts as art). Art is accessed first by the senses, and then it's the mind that does all the filtering, categorizing, judging, valuing, etc. based on a multitude of factors. One of the causal factors is undeniably the art itself.



Enthusiast said:


> As you know, I think in all cases the worthwhile stuff does have coherence and shape. It may not be obvious but it will be there. As a young child I used to bang our piano randomly and pretend that I was playing some modern masterpiece. But even at that young age, I knew there must be more to it really! I just didn't know what it was.
> 
> There has been an interesting series of documentaries by Waldemar Januszczak (_*always *_exceptionally good TV, IMO) about American art. In the first film he focused some attention on Jackson Pollock, showing where he came from and the fluent techniques that he developed. Pollock had been a student of Thomas Hart Benton, who produced murals mixing up various typical scenes from American life. But Benton's method had been to start with abstract "patterns" (actually, visual representations of something more rhythmic than a "pattern") which he then turned into stylised but very figurative murals. Pollock, he showed us, developed an opposite technique: starting with figurative patterns he made them, layer by layer, more abstract and apparently chaotic. Both it seems were responding to music - jazz in Pollock's case - and had (obviously) very fluent and highly developed control over the techniques they used to put paint on canvas (or wall). He also showed us that the way to really _get _Pollock's drip paintings is to do what Pollock did - move around, move in and out - rather than standing back and looking at it statically as a whole.
> 
> As for Dali and Bunuel, they still made choices (how could they not?). And they still had strong technical skills (i.e. techniques). I am reminded of a technique sometimes used by auditors and statisticians to detect true randomness. True randomness has patterns - repeating numbers or runs of numbers - but fake randomness will show evidence that a mind has tried to eliminate those patterns. What Dali and Bunuel did in Un Chien Andalou was make a point. It was both influential and a dead end.


I'd have to know more than I do about the visual arts to comment on your Pollock paragraph, but it's interesting stuff nonetheless. Saying Pollock was inspired by jazz reminds me of how the poet John Ashbery and his (seemingly) incoherent poetry was itself inspired by art like Pollock and abstract expressionism. Funny how that kind of cross-genre influence happens!

I agree Dali and Bunuel made choices, but if we're saying that making choices prevents art from being random then no art would or could be random; but I think this is cheating a bit at what people mean by "random" or "lacking coherence.". Mostly I think people mean that such art lacks conscious design, intent, or meaning, as in the artist didn't think they were doing X in the way of Y to achieve/communicate Z. I would agree that the human mind is probably not good at producing PURE randomness the way a random number generator would, but I think this ignores the difference between art that is very clearly and carefully designed, and art where the artists attempt not to impart a design.

I don't agree Un Chien Andalou was a dead end, though I would agree not many filmmakers directly followed it. What happened, though, was that future surrealists and experimental filmmakers incorporated that mode of dream-like and/or random creativity into more overall coherent structures with meaning and design, but which gave the impression of not having any. Fellini and David Lynch are probably the two biggest proponents, and Lynch at his densest (Inland Empire) is nigh impossible to make sense out of.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> The sentence I've put in bold is so laugh-out-loud absurd even on a purely empirical basis that it ought to make anyone look down to see if their leg is being pulled! The path of art appreciation leading from Degas to velvet Elvis???
> 
> Your position seems here to be revealed clearly: you believe that 1.) all values are values of individuals (i.e., "subjective"); 2.) there are no values - i.e. things _of value_ - that transcend the individual and pertain to human beings and human life as such; 3.) therefore, no values can be considered superior to any others, and 3.) therefore, no art can, by virtue of expressing or embodying such values, be said to be superior to any other.
> 
> Do I understand your beliefs correctly? If so, there is no point in further discussion, since I disagree with your premises and your conclusions.


What Nereffid said in his reply is pretty close to my own thoughts, but to just respond directly to your numbers:

1.) Subjectivity means "in/of the mind" not "of the individual." To me, values are subjective because they exist in the mind, and that's true whether they exist in one individual's mind, or in the mind of all individuals (ie, all humanity).

2) There can be values that pertain to most all individuals, yes. I doubt there's any value that pertains to all individuals, though. Arguably the most universal value is "it's better to live than die," but there are people who commit suicide who obviously disagree with that value.

3) No values can be considered objectively superior to any other because "superiority" itself is a subjective concept that just means "I value X more than Y." Even if by "superior" you mean "embodies values that pertain to most of humanity" then you have chosen to use "embodies values that pertain to most of humanity" as the standard for judging superiority, and why must that be the standard?

4) Art can be said to be superior to other art among people who, e.g., agree with the value that art that embodies values pertaining to most of humanity makes it superior (assuming they can then agree on what art embodies those values), but it can't be said to be superior outside the context of the minds that hold that value.


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## DaveM

Eva Yojimbo said:


> The philosophical counter to "knowledge as memory" would be examples where memory is wrong. I kinda agree with you, though, and a Bayesian account of knowledge is basically just experience/memory with a formulation for how new experiences/evidence should be used to update your beliefs/knowledge. However, accepting that memory (or Bayesianism) is the best account of "knowledge" is a philosophical position that cognitive neuroscience can't, in and of itself, prove correct.
> 
> What you say about MWI makes me suspicious that you (like the vast majority of people) are confused about what it actually is. MWI is most favored by Occam because it takes the basic formulations of QM, treats them as real, and adds nothing. As a bonus, it keeps physics local, real, and deterministic and thus compatible with General Relativity. Here's some good explanatory articles:
> 
> http://www.askamathematician.com/2010/10/q-copenhagen-or-many-worlds/comment-page-1/
> http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/06/30/why-the-many-worlds-formulation-of-quantum-mechanics-is-probably-correct/
> https://manyworldstheory.com/2014/01/13/dont-cut-yourself-on-occams-razor/ <- Directly addresses the Occam issue.
> 
> I know there are some physicists interested in philosophy, but they are sadly in the minority. I wish there was more dialogue between philosophy and science.





Eva Yojimbo said:


> What Nereffid said in his reply is pretty close to my own thoughts, but to just respond directly to your numbers:
> 
> 1.) Subjectivity means "in/of the mind" not "of the individual." To me, values are subjective because they exist in the mind, and that's true whether they exist in one individual's mind, or in the mind of all individuals (ie, all humanity).
> 
> 2) There can be values that pertain to most all individuals, yes. I doubt there's any value that pertains to all individuals, though. Arguably the most universal value is "it's better to live than die," but there are people who commit suicide who obviously disagree with that value.
> 
> 3) No values can be considered objectively superior to any other because "superiority" itself is a subjective concept that just means "I value X more than Y." Even if by "superior" you mean "embodies values that pertain to most of humanity" then you have chosen to use "embodies values that pertain to most of humanity" as the standard for judging superiority, and why must that be the standard?
> 
> 4) Art can be said to be superior to other art among people who, e.g., agree with the value that art that embodies values pertaining to most of humanity makes it superior (assuming they can then agree on what art embodies those values), but it can't be said to be superior outside the context of the minds that hold that value.


How come I get the feeling that a forum is being mistaken for a university lecture hall?


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## Larkenfield

People are trying very hard to define what great art is, and to reach any bottom line conclusion can make art appear static because it has to fall within certain boundaries, definitions, and parameters and can never be outside of it with the element of surprise. What is the advantage of measuring what art is in advance—before experiencing it? One will measure it before experiencing it, or perhaps a quicker route is to find out by experiencing it directly, which requires no time that would be wasted in a measurement. A lifetime could go by in measurements before experiencing anything, and by that time one could be dead. Perhaps the only definition that works—if one is needed—is one that is a moving definition which changes with each work of art moves into an infinitely expanding universe.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> What Nereffid said in his reply is pretty close to my own thoughts, but to just respond directly to your numbers:
> 
> 1.) Subjectivity means "in/of the mind" not "of the individual." To me, values are subjective because they exist in the mind, and that's true whether they exist in one individual's mind, or in the mind of all individuals (ie, all humanity).
> 
> 2) There can be values that pertain to most all individuals, yes. I doubt there's any value that pertains to all individuals, though. Arguably the most universal value is "it's better to live than die," but there are people who commit suicide who obviously disagree with that value.
> 
> 3) No values can be considered objectively superior to any other because "superiority" itself is a subjective concept that just means "I value X more than Y." Even if by "superior" you mean "embodies values that pertain to most of humanity" then you have chosen to use "embodies values that pertain to most of humanity" as the standard for judging superiority, and why must that be the standard?
> 
> 4) Art can be said to be superior to other art among people who, e.g., agree with the value that art that embodies values pertaining to most of humanity makes it superior (assuming they can then agree on what art embodies those values), but it can't be said to be superior outside the context of the minds that hold that value.


As I've said before, I'm not interested in assigning to artistic values "objectivity" or "subjectivity" by your no doubt precise philosophical definition. It's obvious that all valuation, including artistic valuation, occurs inside the mind. Where else could it occur? It's also obvious that no work of art will be valued by everyone, or by everyone in the same way. None of this implies that, in the process by which an artistic idea leaves the mind of an artist and is transmitted to a viewer, reader, or listener, nothing is created which _embodies_ in specific ways values of greater or lesser human significance (values which most humans, by virtue of their humanity, hold to be significant). And none of it implies that art cannot embody those values more or less effectively. My only interest here is in whether art can perceptibly address itself to such values, whether it does so with aesthetic consistency and conviction, and whether it reveals in the artist creative imagination and skill, which at the highest levels we recognize as "genius." Those are the criteria by which art is customarily and reasonably judged, and which have enabled vast numbers of people around the globe and down through the ages to recognize quality, or the lack of it, in art of all kinds.

I find that human values over a wide range of complexity and significance can be embodied in the physical and intellectual forms of art in such a way that they are very substantially communicated; I observe, in both my personal experience and in that of mankind at large, that the forms in which they are embodied can exert a powerful degree of control over the reactions of extremely diverse appreciators, who are thus brought together in a remarkably common understanding. This phenomenon is real; the attributes of works of art that enable them to communicate, challenge and expand our realities, and bring people together by discovering for them perspectives on life and the world they could not think of themselves yet share, are real attributes. Real attributes which, I hasten to add, some works of art possess in greater abundance than others, and which some people will perceive better than others.

All this prattle over "objectivity" and "subjectivity" belongs in musty tomes in dusty libraries. If you and the rest of the "subjectivists" want to believe that a Schubert sonata says no more about human existence, and does so with no more artistic prowess, than a salon piece by Ethelbert Nevin - or that, if it does these things, they should not be considered "intrinsic" values, and Schubert should not be judged a "greater" composer - go right on playing these verbal games. Me, I know a hawk from a handsaw.


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## Woodduck

DaveM said:


> How come I get the feeling that a forum is being mistaken for a university lecture hall?


It's a rather awful feeling, isn't it? On graduating from college I swore I'd never sit behind a desk again.


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## Guest

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Automobiles and Citizen Kane are objective, though: they can be seen and heard, and in the case of the former can be touched, smelled, and tasted. Our senses alert us to their existence beyond our mind. How do the rules of sports exist in this way? Saying it's written down doesn't count since linguistic meaning is subjective too.


I'm beginning to lose sight of the relevance of this to the main argument, but I'll just say that I am aware of the difference between the abstract and the concrete.


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## Jacck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> The philosophical counter to "knowledge as memory" would be examples where memory is wrong. I kinda agree with you, though, and a Bayesian account of knowledge is basically just experience/memory with a formulation for how new experiences/evidence should be used to update your beliefs/knowledge. However, accepting that memory (or Bayesianism) is the best account of "knowledge" is a philosophical position that cognitive neuroscience can't, in and of itself, prove correct.


you are making an unjustified assumption that knowledge has to be "right". It does not. The harder philosophical question would be what is truth, because then you would need to contemplate some kind of correspondence between knowledge existing within the brain and some external reality. (which is however inaccesible to us). My position is probably closest to constructivism.



Eva Yojimbo said:


> What you say about MWI makes me suspicious that you (like the vast majority of people) are confused about what it actually is. MWI is most favored by Occam because it takes the basic formulations of QM, treats them as real, and adds nothing. As a bonus, it keeps physics local, real, and deterministic and thus compatible with General Relativity. Here's some good explanatory articles:


I know what it is, I just find it extremely distasteful and ugly. To preserve locality, determinism, realism, and solve the problem of wave function collapse, it makes an absolutely outrageous claim that is universe is splitting each moment into and infinite number of parallel universes. The hypothesis is not even provable, so not even wrong. It is not scientific. A much better solution to the wave function collapse and measurement problem is decoherence theory.


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## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> The art itself! Art is seen, heard, and in some cases felt (and I guess tasted if we want to treat the culinary arts as art). Art is accessed first by the senses, and then it's the mind that does all the filtering, categorizing, judging, valuing, etc. based on a multitude of factors. One of the causal factors is undeniably the art itself.


But, to take one art form, music is just a load of paper with markings on it (I can't read music), perhaps gathering dust in the attic. If that is the only objective reality of music and everything else is subjective then, really, subjective is all there is. The same for painting - once seen it becomes a subjective phenomenon. And so on. If the term "objective" in aesthetics is limited to just this then it seems to have little value or use in our discussion! So, you win! But it is an easy victory (and yet we are on page 39 of this discussion). Obviously, most people are using the term to mean more: to refer to what happens to art once it is perceived (with the suggestion that it has an objective reality when it is among us).



Eva Yojimbo said:


> I'd have to know more than I do about the visual arts to comment on your Pollock paragraph, but it's interesting stuff nonetheless. Saying Pollock was inspired by jazz reminds me of how the poet John Ashbery and his (seemingly) incoherent poetry was itself inspired by art like Pollock and abstract expressionism. Funny how that kind of cross-genre influence happens!
> 
> I agree Dali and Bunuel made choices, but if we're saying that making choices prevents art from being random then no art would or could be random; but I think this is cheating a bit at what people mean by "random" or "lacking coherence.". Mostly I think people mean that such art lacks conscious design, intent, or meaning, as in the artist didn't think they were doing X in the way of Y to achieve/communicate Z. I would agree that the human mind is probably not good at producing PURE randomness the way a random number generator would, but I think this ignores the difference between art that is very clearly and carefully designed, and art where the artists attempt not to impart a design.
> 
> I don't agree Un Chien Andalou was a dead end, though I would agree not many filmmakers directly followed it. What happened, though, was that future surrealists and experimental filmmakers incorporated that mode of dream-like and/or random creativity into more overall coherent structures with meaning and design, but which gave the impression of not having any. Fellini and David Lynch are probably the two biggest proponents, and Lynch at his densest (Inland Empire) is nigh impossible to make sense out of.


My point was that the randomness in Dali and Bunuel is fake randomness. It was not truly random but its purpose was to display apparent randomness as legitimate art. There was nowhere for this idea to go except to true randomness and I can't think of any meaningful works that are wholly random - there are always choices (which instruments, how long, how loud etc) which give some sort of structure. It was influential - I never said it wasn't - but often it was the patterns within it that were influential. There is also the idea of allowing randomness a role. But that is a role within something that has structure.

Artists need technique and skill to make great art. They would not if all they were producing was chaos. And even if they did seek to produce chaos with no artifice or skill they would still choose which pieces we get and which go in the bin.


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## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Automobiles and Citizen Kane are objective, though: they can be seen and heard, and in the case of the former can be touched, smelled, and tasted. _*Our senses alert us to their existence beyond our mind. *_How do the rules of sports exist in this way? Saying it's written down doesn't count since linguistic meaning is subjective too.


I do not think our senses are somehow separate from our minds. Surely they are a manifestation of mind?


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## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> What Nereffid said in his reply is pretty close to my own thoughts, but to just respond directly to your numbers:
> 
> 1.) Subjectivity means "in/of the mind" not "of the individual." To me, values are subjective because they exist in the mind, and that's true whether they exist in one individual's mind, or in the mind of all individuals (ie, all humanity).
> 
> 2) There can be values that pertain to most all individuals, yes. I doubt there's any value that pertains to all individuals, though. Arguably the most universal value is "it's better to live than die," but there are people who commit suicide who obviously disagree with that value.
> 
> 3) No values can be considered objectively superior to any other because "superiority" itself is a subjective concept that just means "I value X more than Y." Even if by "superior" you mean "embodies values that pertain to most of humanity" then you have chosen to use "embodies values that pertain to most of humanity" as the standard for judging superiority, and why must that be the standard?
> 
> _*4) Art can be said to be superior to other art among people who, e.g., agree with the value that art that embodies values pertaining to most of humanity makes it superior (assuming they can then agree on what art embodies those values), but it can't be said to be superior outside the context of the minds that hold that value.*_


_*
*_

All of which is fair enough but tells us little about the subject(s) of this thread. As soon as an art work is observed what follows is all subjectivity in your reductive account. I don't object to this. But it basically removes subjectivity and objectivity from the discussion (because objectivity doesn't really come into our observations or valuing of art). So, let's accept that all aesthetic experience is subjective and forget about using the word objective. Obviously, in such a scheme, there can be no objectively greater art works. Your number 4 (highlighted) is to take us back, "objectivity" removed, into the subject of aesthetic value. But I'm not sure it says anything more than that "people who agree that an art work is great and agree why will believe that the art in question is great", does it? Probably it does and I am missing something. Could you explain or clarify it, please.


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## Enthusiast

Kollwitz said:


> I've enjoyed reading this thread: it's one of the things that finally made me sign up to talkclassical.
> 
> My view, and one that I think Woodduck has expressed more cogently, is that there are objective criteria with which one can judge art and music. _*It is possible to categorise some works as 'better' than others, based on complexity, coherency, innovation and other criteria. *_This is not particularly neat and obvious, however and cannot be applied with great precision (e.g. precise rankings of symphonies, composers or works of art).
> 
> As a classical neophyte, I have become obsessed with Bruckner. I find his symphonies, especially 5 to 9, tremendously beautiful, urgent, stimulating, meaningful and transcendent. I love them more than I've loved any other music in my life. However, I can appreciate why others don't like them. The consistency of structure, the relatively slow and deliberate building of movements, the lack of super-memorable melodies (I find much of them very memorable, but that did take repeated listens), even the nature of the orchestration may not appeal to many listeners (I love Brucknerian brass, I appreciate others may not. I think that, objectively, Bruckner's symphonies are great, based on several criteria, but that subjectively, individuals may not like them for a range of perfectly valid reasons.
> 
> Brahms 4, in my limited knowledge, is objectively a very great work, and greater even than my most beloved Bruckner 5, 8 and 9. All four movements are highly memorable, the symphony is coherent, the orchestration is varied, it is concise, it is open to different interpretations (I love Furtwangler, Kleiber and Giulini). I can't find any faults in it. This doesn't meant that I think everyone should enjoy it as much as I do, but that objectively it meets many criteria for greatness and that reasons for disliking it are therefore _more_ subjective than the reasons for disliking some other works. I am not a musical expert, by any means. I presume, though, that a panel of musical experts would be able to identify a range of objective reasons why Brahms 4, Beethoven 3 or Mahler 6 are great works.
> 
> If we deny the existence of objectivity we are succumbing to pernicious artistic relativism. The subjective element of musical or artistic appreciation is, in my opinion, more important though.
> 
> Apologies for this rather rambling and portentous first post.


Welcome to the forum. Rambling and portentous is the thing for this thread! And some of what you have posted provides a nice place for me to hang some thoughts on.

I have highlighted one sentence in your post which I do not think works. I am not at all sure that complexity is anything more than incidental. At the same time coherence and, perhaps, innovation seem necessary but far from sufficient. The "other criteria" you mention could go on to being a big list and there would then be a big problem in describing how to use or apply it! I wonder if this sort of approach - based on a collection of "objective" (or at least measurable) criteria - is likely to lead us to the essence of what makes some music seem (or be) great while other music just doesn't get there? And yet, if we throw out the idea of measurable criteria, this seems to lead us to the idea of greatness being some sort of "essence". This is clearly not at all satisfactory, either. So if we want to say something about aesthetic value we do need to look into what the art does in our brains or in our minds. If we choose brains it doesn't get us very far because we end up with looking at the behaviour of neurotransmitters or the roles of different parts of the brain and there is no way to connect this with _the experience _of perceiving art. So, we need to look into what is happening in the mind and how (and when) different art leads to different experiences - different between us and different between works.

And whatever system we use it would for me need to recognise the _exceptional _greatness of the works you mention. If it couldn't do that then I would feel that it doesn't work!


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## Woodduck

Enthusiast said:


> I am not at all sure that complexity is anything more than incidental. At the same time coherence and, perhaps, innovation seem necessary but far from sufficient.


True, no single criterion of artistic excellence is sufficient to ensure excellence, much less greatness. Complexity in itself is certainly of no value, but in a list of aesthetic virtues I'd hardly call it incidental. In combination with coherence, complexity becomes a powerful value: we recognize the power of the artist to control, to discipline, to give purpose to a multitude of elements. This power is a virtue in any human endeavor, not only in art, and its concrete, sensible embodiment in art allows us to experience our own power of comprehension and to feel admiration and even awe toward the object and toward the person who was able to create such a work and give us such an experience. The power of disciplined, purposeful complexity is the virtue that lifts certain artists and works of art to the preeminence which by general consent they possess.


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## Enthusiast

Woodduck said:


> True, no single criterion of artistic excellence is sufficient to ensure excellence, much less greatness. Complexity in itself is certainly of no value, but in a list of aesthetic virtues I'd hardly call it incidental. In combination with coherence, complexity becomes a powerful value: we recognize the power of the artist to control, to discipline, to give purpose to a multitude of elements. This power is a virtue in any human endeavor, not only in art, and its concrete, sensible embodiment in art allows us to experience our own power of comprehension and to feel admiration and even awe toward the object and toward the person who was able to create such a work and give us such an experience. The power of disciplined, purposeful complexity is the virtue that lifts certain artists and works of art to the preeminence which by general consent they possess.


Fair enough, Woodduck. But I meant what I said and, for me, complexity is not an essential. A lot of classical music has a fair bit of complexity but quite a lot is _relatively _simple. Many contemporary works are more complex than, say, Mozart or Beethoven but this doesn't mean they tend towards being better. Not for me anyway. I don't feel any correlation between complexity and works I value highly.

I will take that coherence and innovation are important but I'm not sure how many other such elements or qualities would be needed before we had anything close to being able to give me a sense of how we value a work or (not necessarily the same thing) how we _should _value it.


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## science

I am not seeing the bridge from "is" to "ought."

I can accept that we might be able to make a list of aesthetic features that, in certain circumstances and with certain kinds of previous experience and knowledge and so on, please certain groups of humans. I can accept that we've all internalized some of these values to such an extent that, if this makes sense, they "feel objective."

But I cannot understand how that list gets itself over into something that a work of art actually _ought_ to have in an actual objective sense. In fact, the moment that such a list existed, I'd almost consider it the duty of every self-respecting artist to start trying to make wonderful art that violates some or all of the principles of the list.


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## DaveM

The injection of a totally philosophical approach into a discussion of subjectivity/objectivity and the arts in general can take things into the weeds and the discussion goes round and round with no consensus about anything. After all, philosophers or wannabes endlessly brainstorm; that's what they do.

It is also a mistake to apply this discussion to all of the arts as if they all operate in the same way. Classical music typically has notated scores; there is nothing comparable in the painting arts. The presence of notated music injects elements of objectivity. The musician's interpretation will be highly subjective, but the musician must play the notes that are written and as written (e.g. quarter notes as quarter notes) which are objective guidelines. A critic will inevitably evaluate the performance subjectively, but if the musician makes mistakes such as playing the wrong notes, the criticism related to that will be objective. Again, nothing comparable in the painting arts.

And just to get this out of the way: the statement that 'the rules of sports all exist within the mind' is an example of people being at cross-purposes as to how they define subjectivity/objectivity. As far as I'm concerned, once rules of games are established, they de facto establish as much objectivity as possible into the game. An umpire's evaluation of a strike may be somewhat subjective, but the fact that the pitcher has just hit the batter and the batter gets to take first base is usually an objective decision. A line judge may subjectively judge that a tennis ball is out, but the Hawkeye device proves it. Whether the ball is in or out is no longer a subjective decision.


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## Guest

DaveM said:


> An umpire's evaluation of a strike may be somewhat subjective, but the fact that the pitcher has just hit the batter and the batter gets to take first base is usually an objective decision. A line judge may subjectively judge that a tennis ball is out, but the Hawkeye device proves it. Whether the ball is in or out is no longer a subjective decision.


True. And what is also not subjective, is the rule of football that says if the ball goes off the pitch at either side, play is restarted by a throw-in, and if at either end, either a goal kick or a corner.


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## Woodduck

Enthusiast said:


> Fair enough, Woodduck. But I meant what I said and, for me, complexity is not an essential. A lot of classical music has a fair bit of complexity but quite a lot is _relatively _simple. Many contemporary works are more complex than, say, Mozart or Beethoven but this doesn't mean they tend towards being better. Not for me anyway. I don't feel any correlation between complexity and works I value highly.
> 
> I will take that coherence and innovation are important but I'm not sure how many other such elements or qualities would be needed before we had anything close to being able to give me a sense of how we value a work or (not necessarily the same thin) how we _should _value it.


Complexity can mean different things: it can refer to the sheer quantity of elements in a work, to the degree of nuance with which they're presented, to the dynamic relationships between them, or to the shades and layers of meaning the work communicates. In the latter sense the idea of complexity merges with the idea of depth or profundity.

There's no sense in worrying about quantifying these things ("I'm not sure how many other such elements or qualities would be needed before we had anything close to being able to give me a sense of how we value a work"). Works of art are in effect infinitely varied, and they can be analyzed, but it's the gestalt that matters. In the end we see it and hear it or we don't.

No, complexity is not an "essential." Complexity might even be a defect if the artist can't control it. It's just one of many qualities that we can enjoy and admire in a work, either for its own sake or in relation to other qualities. And as you say, it's _relative._ I think most art - most good art, most art that endures - is more complex than it seems, or ought to seem. It's an artist's goal, and a sign of his mastery, to make the complex seem simple.


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## Jacck

is this thing complex?


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## DaveM

Jacck said:


> is this thing complex?


Initially it looks like a cold virus entering a cell and then develops into something that makes me think I just smoked something.


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## Jacck

DaveM said:


> Initially it looks like a cold virus entering a cell and then develops into something that makes me think I just smoked something.


more like the crazy geometric patterns that you see on LSD
https://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/01/23/math-behind-patterns-people-see-psychedelics/

the Mandelbrot set is both infinitely complex (it goes into infinity, it is a fractal) and infinitely simple. 
it is generated by a simple function f = z^2 + C in the complex plain. A high-school student can make a script to draw it. 
The notion of complexity is difficult. For example you can conceptualize random noise as an order of infinite complexity. You can make a recording of turbulent water flow and claim that it is a very complex music. And you would be right. The relations between order, chaos, complexity, entropy etc are difficult and it would be really difficult to define exactly what complexity in a musical piece means. Is it the number of notes? If yes, then Xenakis is more complex than Bach, see his score
http://www.boosey.com/imagesw/print/music/$wm1_0x700_$_9790060040061_mus.jpg
Is Xenakis better than Bach? Most people would agree no.


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## Kollwitz

Regarding complexity, I was guilty of sloppy expression/insufficient explanation. I did not mean to say that it was an essential criteria for greatness and agree with others that it can be problematic or counter-productive. Expressing complex ideas with clarity and coherence (and perhaps even concision) is, though, something that many great works do and that lesser works don't.

Compiling a list of essential criteria that can be used is a futile task, but I think that criteria could be established in such a way that 'best fit' judgements could indicate greatness with reasonable accuracy. If we could assemble a panel of experts and get them to judge a selection of works they'd never heard before using some criteria, there would probably be a good level of congruence. Is this a step beyond subjectivity? Upon reflection though, this potential experiment would face the issues Enthusiast identifies above. The point that "we need to look into what is happening in the mind and how (and when) different art leads to different experiences - different between us and different between works." is a very interesting one.


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## Woodduck

Jacck said:


> more like the crazy geometric patterns that you see on LSD
> https://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/01/23/math-behind-patterns-people-see-psychedelics/
> 
> the Mandelbrot set is both infinitely complex (it goes into infinity, it is a fractal) and infinitely simple.
> it is generated by a simple function f = z^2 + C in the complex plain. A high-school student can make a script to draw it.
> The notion of complexity is difficult. For example you can conceptualize random noise as an order of infinite complexity. You can make a recording of turbulent water flow and claim that it is a very complex music. And you would be right. The relations between order, chaos, complexity, entropy etc are difficult and it would be really difficult to define exactly what complexity in a musical piece means. Is it the number of notes? If yes, then Xenakis is more complex than Bach, see his score
> http://www.boosey.com/imagesw/print/music/$wm1_0x700_$_9790060040061_mus.jpg
> Is Xenakis better than Bach? Most people would agree no.


Complexity can mean different things: it can refer to the sheer quantity or variety of elements in a work (e.g. number of notes or kinds of instruments playing), to the degree of nuance with which they're presented (gradations of volume, inflections of pitch or timbre), to the relationships between the elements (internal forms, patterns, kinetic forces), or to the shades and layers of meaning the work communicates by such means.

Complexity is no virtue in itself. Increasing complexity without apparent purpose - without a unifying design or expressive goal - is just clutter and bombast.

I can't conceptualize random noise as an "order of infinite complexity." How can it be ordered if it's random? And I wouldn't consider a recording of flowing water to be music.


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## Larkenfield

Perhaps what matters is that music can be complex, masterful, and _clear_ at the same time. If it's not clear, what good is complexity if it sounds like a muddy _mess_?


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## Eva Yojimbo

DaveM said:


> ...the statement that 'the rules of sports all exist within the mind' is an example of people being at cross-purposes as to how they define subjectivity/objectivity. As far as I'm concerned, once rules of games are established, they de facto establish as much objectivity as possible into the game. An umpire's evaluation of a strike may be somewhat subjective, but the fact that the pitcher has just hit the batter and the batter gets to take first base is usually an objective decision. A line judge may subjectively judge that a tennis ball is out, but the Hawkeye device proves it. Whether the ball is in or out is no longer a subjective decision.


Many (if not most) debates boil down to how people are defining words. ""If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" The answer entirely depends on how you define "sound" (if it's "acoustic vibrations" then "yes," if it's "auditory experience" then "no."). I've been very clear that I'm defining subjective/objective as "of/inside the mind" and "outside the mind." I dare say this is the most commonly used philosophical definition, and since this discussion is, in essence, a philosophical one, it makes the most sense (to me) to use those terms that way. I've explained why the rules of sports are subjective in the "they exist within the mind" sense. The fact that they're "established" and that "everyone agrees on them" doesn't mean they exist external to the mind.


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## Eva Yojimbo

MacLeod said:


> I'm beginning to lose sight of the relevance of this to the main argument, but I'll just say that I am aware of the difference between the abstract and the concrete.


Let me reproduce the analogy and the original side-by-side:

Rules of sports/aesthetic values are created an exist only within the mind. Agreeing on them creates a standard by which to judge players/artists and art, but there's no reason we can't create different rules/aesthetic values by which other players/artists and art would be deemed superior according to those rules/values. Trying to argue that some players/artists and art are innately superior to others makes no sense without reference to the rules/aesthetic values by which we judge them, and it makes even less sense to argue that some rules/aesthetic values are innately superior to other rules/aesthetic values.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Jacck said:


> you are making an unjustified assumption that knowledge has to be "right". It does not. The harder philosophical question would be what is truth, because then you would need to contemplate some kind of correspondence between knowledge existing within the brain and some external reality. (which is however inaccesible to us). My position is probably closest to constructivism.


You mistake me: I wasn't making that assumption, I said many philosophers would. The classic conception of knowledge is "justified TRUE belief." I agree with you that it would be better to drop the "true" part, in part because as long as it's there you'll never eliminate Gettier problems. I'd replace it with a formulation in which all "knowledge" is probabilistic/uncertain and based on experience/memory, and which is updated via new experiences/evidence according to Bayes' Theorem. But, again, my (and your) formulation of "knowledge" is controversial, to say the least. Most philosophers would not agree with it, and cognitive neuroscience couldn't, in itself, tell us whether we or the philosophers were right in how we defined "knowledge."



Jacck said:


> you I know what it is, I just find it extremely distasteful and ugly. To preserve locality, determinism, realism, and solve the problem of wave function collapse, it makes an absolutely outrageous claim that is universe is splitting each moment into and infinite number of parallel universes. The hypothesis is not even provable, so not even wrong. It is not scientific. A much better solution to the wave function collapse and measurement problem is decoherence theory.


Why is it an outrageous claim? The Schrodinger Wave Equation (SWE) already tells us that that particles are in multiple states at once, and upon measurement you either have to make that other state disappear/collapse, you have to assume that it keeps existing in some "parallel" world, you have to assume that the SWE isn't actually representing anything real at all, or you have to assume there are hidden variables that are somehow accounting for the difference between pre and post measurement. Why do you think MWI is more "outrageous" than the others? It's the one that's assuming the least! MWI is just a logical consequence of the SWE being true and representing something real and not assuming anything else.

Also, it's not a hypothesis, it's an interpretation. All of the interpretations of QM agree with the empirical results and make no unique predictions. MWI is, however, falsifiable, as any experiment that showed any group of particles not in a superpositioned state would falsify it. MWI is also a decoherence interpretation, as is Bohm's, and some more recent versions of Copenhagen. Decoherence just explains the appearance of collapse by describing how the state(s) of the wavefunction get entangled with the environment so that they stop interfering with each other, but it doesn't by itself make claims about what happens to the other state(s) or why we observe one state rather than another upon measurement.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> But, to take one art form, music is just a load of paper with markings on it (I can't read music), perhaps gathering dust in the attic. If that is the only objective reality of music and everything else is subjective then, really, subjective is all there is. The same for painting - once seen it becomes a subjective phenomenon. And so on. If the term "objective" in aesthetics is limited to just this then it seems to have little value or use in our discussion! So, you win! But it is an easy victory (and yet we are on page 39 of this discussion). Obviously, most people are using the term to mean more: to refer to what happens to art once it is perceived (with the suggestion that it has an objective reality when it is among us).


Music when it's performed is also sound, and we can also invent terms that describe that sound such as notes, rhythms, forms, intervals, etc. When we're talking about "objective" in aesthetics we're talking about everything that the object is, everything that can be accounted for by sight, hearing, touch, smells, taste, etc. Once the art is sensed, however, everything that occurs after that is subjective.

I think the crux of the issue is perhaps more about the nature of causality than even the subjective/objective dichotomy. If you take my previous "getting shot" analogy, if you look at the entire causal chain it goes something like:

[Objective]Someone pulls trigger -> bullet leaves gun -> bullet enters person -> bullet messes with nerves -> nerves send pain signals to brain[/objective][subjective]->Person experiences "pain."[/subjective]

If you look at that whole chain, everything is objective except the person's experience of pain, so while it makes sense to say "pain is subjective," we tend to attribute the cause more to the objective part because it seems to play a more important role in why the "pain" ended up occurring.

When it comes to art, assuming that the "objective" begins with the art itself and ends with the subjective "evaluation," I think the subjective plays a much larger and more variable role in the causal chain. Even though the art itself undoubtedly has an influence on the ultimate evaluation, it's nigh impossible to say whether it's a more important influence than the values and perceptions of the individuals (and/or groups) observing the art.



Enthusiast said:


> My point was that the randomness in Dali and Bunuel is fake randomness. It was not truly random but its purpose was to display apparent randomness as legitimate art. There was nowhere for this idea to go except to true randomness and I can't think of any meaningful works that are wholly random - there are always choices (which instruments, how long, how loud etc) which give some sort of structure. It was influential - I never said it wasn't - but often it was the patterns within it that were influential. There is also the idea of allowing randomness a role. But that is a role within something that has structure.
> 
> Artists need technique and skill to make great art. They would not if all they were producing was chaos. And even if they did seek to produce chaos with no artifice or skill they would still choose which pieces we get and which go in the bin.


If creating art by imagining a sequence of scenes without conceiving of any rational/meaningful connection between them is "fake randomness" then I'm not sure what "real randomness" would be in an artistic context. Again, I agree there's always choices in art, but I think if you set "choice" as being antithetical to "randomness" then you're making it so that art can't be random a priori because you can't create any art without making some choices. The issue, IMO, is more about the nature of those choices, how many are made, why, for what reasons/intentions, etc., in terms of deciding whether a work is random or not.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> I do not think our senses are somehow separate from our minds. Surely they are a manifestation of mind?


I wouldn't say our senses are separate from our minds, but our senses impart a kind of persistent information that can't be altered by our minds at will or by whimsy the way that aesthetic values or the rules of sports can be. This is a very important distinction.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> All of which is fair enough but tells us little about the subject(s) of this thread. As soon as an art work is observed what follows is all subjectivity in your reductive account. I don't object to this. But it basically removes subjectivity and objectivity from the discussion (because objectivity doesn't really come into our observations or valuing of art). So, let's accept that all aesthetic experience is subjective and forget about using the word objective. Obviously, in such a scheme, there can be no objectively greater art works. *Your number 4 (highlighted) is to take us back, "objectivity" removed, into the subject of aesthetic value. But I'm not sure it says anything more than that "people who agree that an art work is great and agree why will believe that the art in question is great", does it?* Probably it does and I am missing something. Could you explain or clarify it, please.


I'm not sure I remember the subject of this thread! :lol:

RE the bolded part: you're absolutely correct that my #4 doesn't say anything more than that. I think on the subject of aesthetic values or art being "superior" that's all that CAN be said. People will share certain subjective values, they will recognize those values contained within certain art, and will therefore value that art more than other art that doesn't contain those values. It's also true that for almost all art in existence there will be an audience with a set of values that sees those values contained within that art and thus feel that art is superior to other art.

The conflict arises when one such group tries to declare that its values (and the art it feels embodies those values) are innately superior to other groups' values and the art they feel embodies those values. They aren't just saying that their "superior" art is superior according to the "only true within their own mind" values they hold; they genuinely think the art's superiority doesn't depend on what they think/feel/value.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Once again, attempting to pare down to prevent long, exhausting exchanges:



Woodduck said:


> It's obvious that all valuation, including artistic valuation, occurs inside the mind. Where else could it occur? It's also obvious that no work of art will be valued by everyone, or by everyone in the same way. None of this implies that, in the process by which an artistic idea leaves the mind of an artist and is transmitted to a viewer, reader, or listener, nothing is created which _embodies_ in specific ways values of greater or lesser human significance (values which most humans, by virtue of their humanity, hold to be significant). And none of it implies that art cannot embody those values more or less effectively…
> 
> I find that human values over a wide range of complexity and significance can be embodied in the physical and intellectual forms of art in such a way that they are very substantially communicated; I observe, in both my personal experience and in that of mankind at large, that the forms in which they are embodied can exert a powerful degree of control over the reactions of extremely diverse appreciators, who are thus brought together in a remarkably common understanding…


If it's obvious that all valuation occurs in the mind, then speaking of art being "superior" to other art makes no sense except in relation to the minds that hold the values that they do, and this is as true for lovers of Schubert as it is for lovers of Nickelback.

If you want to argue that there are common values that most of humanity holds, including values that most think of as being "higher" than others, and argue that some art expresses these values in ways that resonate with more people than others, then I don't disagree; but that's just an empirical statement, a kind of ad populum argument. There's no reason that we-and by "we" I mean individuals, other groups, or even, hypothetically, most of humanity-couldn't choose different values.

Currently, what we have are many different groups across different times and cultures that had values different enough so that an immense variety of art has flourished at different times and cultures. Right now, you have values that lead to groups thinking rock, pop, jazz, rap, classical, etc. are superior (and that's ignoring the sub-genres of each). The issue is that there's no declaring a superiority among them without reference to the values which have elevated those genres/sub-genres/artists in the minds of the individuals and groups that feel they're superior.


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## Larkenfield

If CM didn’t have certain advantages over pop or other types of music, then I imagine that everybody would be on some other forum and not here. So there’s a distinct difference and there’s an advantage however the distinction is made. They aren’t the same though both can be equally enjoyable but for different reasons. It is just not satisfying when everything outwardly is being equated as being the same, and yet every listener will spend more time with certain types of music more than others. The intangibles of music cannot be explained logically and rationally.


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## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> *If it's obvious that all valuation occurs in the mind, then speaking of art being "superior" to other art makes no sense except in relation to the minds that hold the values that they do,* and this is as true for lovers of Schubert as it is for lovers of Nickelback.
> 
> *If you want to argue that there are common values that most of humanity holds, including values that most think of as being "higher" than others, and argue that some art expresses these values in ways that resonate with more people than others, then I don't disagree*; but that's just an empirical statement, a kind of ad populum argument. There's no reason that we-and by "we" I mean individuals, other groups, or even, hypothetically, most of humanity-couldn't choose different values.
> 
> The issue is that there's no declaring a superiority among them without reference to the values which have elevated those genres/sub-genres/artists in the minds of the individuals and groups that feel they're superior.


The question underlying this exhausting exchange is whether we accept that some human values - values in general, not only artistic values - are inherently superior to others. I do. You don't. Because I do, I find that art which results from, embodies, and communicates those values has a legitimate claim to being superior art. Because you don't, you think that the quality of art can't be judged except in terms of whatever a given individual happens to feel good about. You might happen to feel good about some dude making aryhthmic and unmelodic shrieks and squawks on a saxophone, but not feel good about the passions of Bach. Well, terrific! Both are great art, then - or neither are. The term "great" has no "inherent" meaning!

Both personal experience and observation tell me that it's possible, to a very substantial extent, for people to understand works of art in terms of the values (aesthetic and otherwise) which those works represent, _whether or not_ _they personally share those values_. We can learn to evaluate art in terms not native or obvious to us, and thus enrich our own value context, and we can do so largely because there are profound commonalities in the principles underlying the diverse art of mankind, principles which arise from mankind's shared intellectual, psychological, moral and physical conditions. These principles constitute a very large substratum of the human experience, and the result is that the aesthetic values of the art of the Lascaux caves speak eloquently to us 20.000 years later. It's one example - but it could be multiplied indefinitely.

I consider your statement - "If it's obvious that all valuation occurs in the mind, then speaking of art being 'superior' to other art makes no sense except in relation to the minds that hold the values that they do" - to be wrong. "Valuation" may indeed occur in the mind, but fundamental "values" - _things which are in fact of value to man qua man_ - exist in reality, and it's the business of living to discover them, and the highest calling of art to represent them. Individuals have tastes and preferences, and those can vary almost infinitely - as can art - but there are things the importance of which we need and ought to acknowledge in order to fulfill our human nature and flourish. Art that embodies and celebrates those things, in form and content, is rightly celebrated and durable. Bach is an indispensable expression of humanity. Dudes shrieking and squawking are dispensable - and history will dispense with them.


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## DaveM

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Many (if not most) debates boil down to how people are defining words. ""If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" The answer entirely depends on how you define "sound" (if it's "acoustic vibrations" then "yes," if it's "auditory experience" then "no.").


One can play those games and try to tie people up in knots with them, but I'm having none of it. Scientifically, a tree falling in a forest always makes a sound whether a human is in hearing distance or not. Even a human not within hearing distance, but within eyesight of the area might see the results of the sound of the tree falling such a birds suddenly rising in the sky. Does the sun always give off light whether one can see it or not? Yes, because the light is tied to heat and if it didn't give off light even when many could not see it, the entire planet would freeze. Want to continue with that silliness?



> I've been very clear that I'm defining subjective/objective as "of/inside the mind" and "outside the mind." I dare say this is the most commonly used philosophical definition, and since this discussion is, in essence, a philosophical one, it makes the most sense (to me) to use those terms that way. I've explained why the rules of sports are subjective in the "they exist within the mind" sense. The fact that they're "established" and that "everyone agrees on them" doesn't mean they exist external to the mind.


You, and no one else, have decided that this is a philosophical discussion to the extreme of applying hardcore philosophical definitions which lead to fantastical things like the premise that rules of a game exist entirely in the mind, something you state as fact. Well, in most people's world, the rules of a game originate in many minds and once agreed on, established and written down now exist external to those minds. Those who play or watch the game long after the originators of the game have passed will know the rules not because they magically already exist in their minds, but because they came to understand the externally preserved rules.


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## Guest

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Rules of sports/aesthetic values are created an exist only within the mind. Agreeing on them creates a standard by which to judge players/artists and art


You're right about definitions. I think we even have a different meaning for the word "rules"...where do 'standard' and 'judge' come in? The rules of football have nothing to do with standards by which to judge - they are simply a formulation of the way the game is played, not about how well the game is played.



Eva Yojimbo said:


> I'm defining subjective/objective as "of/inside the mind" and "outside the mind." I dare say this is the most commonly used philosophical definition,


Is it the most common? I've certainly seen it in an online dictionary, but I'd be grateful if you could reference a source for your claim. I don't think it's the one that most here have been using over the past several years that this debate has rumbled on!

Of course, it's possible to get lost in a labyrinth if we're heading into pure philosophical territory. I see nothing worng with sticking with a common-or-garden definition as you might find in a regular dictionary.

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



> 1 Based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.


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## Nereffid

Kollwitz said:


> I think that criteria could be established in such a way that 'best fit' judgements could indicate greatness with reasonable accuracy. If we could assemble a panel of experts and get them to judge a selection of works they'd never heard before using some criteria, there would probably be a good level of congruence.


Given the history of how new music has been received, especially in the 20th century, a good level of congruence seems unlikely to me.


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## Kollwitz

Nereffid said:


> Given the history of how new music has been received, especially in the 20th century, a good level of congruence seems unlikely to me.


A very fair point.


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## science

Rules, laws, international boundaries, political institutions, traditions and so on are curious things. They're not "merely opinions" in that they have an objective existence outside of any _individual_ mind - they are made real by the successful use of violence or persuasion - and yet they clearly do not exist outside of human minds. In my own personal epistemology, I think of these things as "social facts." But if we're careful, we wouldn't say, "It is an objective fact that Trump is the President of the United States." We would say, "It is an objective fact that Americans, having previously agreed to elect a president in a certain manner, now agree that Trump is the President of the United States." In other words, something like "Trump is the President" doesn't describe an objective reality independent of human thought, but a reality created by human agreement.

That category is not altogether distinct from the kind of subjectivity involved in our response to art, music, beauty, or food, in that our responses are never free of social conditioning: our taste in something like music must be affected by everything from what our mothers hummed when we were in utero to the background noises we've heard in the past few moments - and very strongly by our perceptions, mostly subconscious, of how people who matter to us will respond to our expressions of our taste. This all can lead to widespread agreement about things like, say, some canonical composer's superiority to a much less famous composer: we've had overlapping experiences and training, we are in similar social situations, we reach the same conclusions.

Still, I think almost all of us, if we watch ourselves, will find that we regard social facts as rather more concrete than reactions to art. It is harder to deny that Trump is the President than it is to deny that Beethoven is greater than Weber. On the other hand, it is often easier to question the legitimacy of social facts than it is to question our social circle's aesthetic norms!


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## janxharris

science said:


> Rules, laws, international boundaries, political institutions, traditions and so on are curious things. They're not "merely opinions" in that they have an objective existence outside of any _individual_ mind - they are made real by the successful use of violence or persuasion - and yet they clearly do not exist outside of human minds. In my own personal epistemology, I think of these things as "social facts." But if we're careful, we wouldn't say, "It is an objective fact that Trump is the President of the United States." We would say, "It is an objective fact that Americans, having previously agreed to elect a president in a certain manner, now agree that Trump is the President of the United States." In other words, something like "Trump is the President" doesn't describe an objective reality independent of human thought, but a reality created by human agreement.
> 
> That category is not altogether distinct from the kind of subjectivity involved in our response to art, music, beauty, or food, in that our responses are never free of social conditioning: our taste in something like music must be affected by everything from what our mothers hummed when we were in utero to the background noises we've heard in the past few moments - and very strongly by our perceptions, mostly subconscious, of how people who matter to us will respond to our expressions of our taste. This all can lead to widespread agreement about things like, say, some canonical composer's superiority to a much less famous composer: we've had overlapping experiences and training, we are in similar social situations, we reach the same conclusions.
> 
> Still, I think almost all of us, if we watch ourselves, will find that we regard social facts as rather more concrete than reactions to art. It is harder to deny that Trump is the President than it is to deny that Beethoven is greater than Weber. On the other hand, it is often easier to question the legitimacy of social facts than it is to question our social circle's aesthetic norms!


If it isn't an objective fact that Trump is president, then doesn't the same argument apply to the acts of Americans voting for him? And so on?


----------



## science

janxharris said:


> If it isn't an objective fact that Trump is president, then doesn't the same argument apply to the acts of Americans voting for him? And so on?


Both (that Trump is President and that he won the electoral college) are "objective facts."

Well, I'm not actually sure about the term "objective facts" but, objectively, they are both facts. Put another way: empirically, we can observe that Americans are behaving as if the office of the Presidency exists and that Trump sits in it. The only reason - and the only sense in which - the office of the Presidency (or the electoral college) exists is that Americans have imagined it into existence, began behaving as if it exists, and continue to behave as if it exists.

Things like this, including the rules of games, are a different sort of entity than rocks, trees, or neutrinos - and probably/arguably a different sort of thing than mathematical statements.

They are not quite the same thing as what some here might want to call "aesthetic facts" though. They're something more than widely shared opinions.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Literal repetition of short phrases is the simplest, easiest, most primitive, most mindless, and therefore the most sure-fire, way of ensuring the listener's engagement.


At face value, this seems to me to be a dismissal of much popular/traditional musics from around the globe and over time. That's fine if it's your position, but I wonder if that's what you actually intended?


----------



## janxharris

science said:


> Things like this, including the rules of games, are a different sort of entity than rocks, trees, or neutrinos - and probably/arguably a different sort of thing than mathematical statements.


Would you explain this argument a bit please?


----------



## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> Literal repetition of short phrases is the simplest, easiest, most primitive, most mindless, and therefore the most sure-fire, way of ensuring the listener's engagement.


You can uphold a clear difference when compared with the cadential repetitions common in classical era music?

I don't disagree - some pop music irritates me too.


----------



## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> If creating art by imagining a sequence of scenes without conceiving of any rational/meaningful connection between them is "fake randomness" then I'm not sure what "real randomness" would be in an artistic context. Again, I agree there's always choices in art, but I think if you set "choice" as being antithetical to "randomness" then you're making it so that art can't be random a priori because you can't create any art without making some choices. The issue, IMO, is more about the nature of those choices, how many are made, why, for what reasons/intentions, etc., in terms of deciding whether a work is random or not.


Fake randomness was explained a little earlier. It is when someone (or people) try to create something that appears random by choosing what goes into it (they choose the numbers in a strong of numbers, they choose the events in a "random story"). It gives itself away because the authors edit out any patterns so as to keep it appearing random. Real randomness is just that - something that is genuinely random. Real randomness will tend to have patterns. In art, an artist might want to give something the appearance of randomness - and to do so through making crazy choices and removing any hint of a pattern (like the Dali & Bunuel collaboration) so that the point (the pattern if you will) becomes the randomness or lack of patterns. Or an artist might be interested in experimenting with chance, in which case they will usually use structure or rules to control or contain the true randomness that would result from taking this experiment to an extreme.

For the rest, I fear we will always disagree about whether some art has a greater aesthetic value than other art. I do feel it does even though it may not be possible to say anything about the value of a piece of art with any precision. But your position is one that many hold although I have seen little from any sources that persuades me that it is correct! I don't really see why you need to cut up perceptual processes - which are actually far more complex than you describe them and extremely fast - and label different bits as objective or subjective. Nor is the enjoyment (or not!) of art merely a perceptual process. You don't really need all that if all you want to do is say "everyone has different tastes and it would be wrong to say that one person's tastes are superior to another's".


----------



## science

janxharris said:


> Would you explain this argument a bit please?


Sure. One sort of thing ("social facts") exists only because it exists within human minds; the other sort things (actual physically real things and mathematical principles) exist independently of human minds.

(The latter statement is a little tricky, since obviously our minds "organize" our perceptions of the world into concepts that we call "tree" and so on, but the point is not that the concept itself corresponds to anything in the world, but that something, independently of our perception, actually exists there in the world.)


----------



## janxharris

science said:


> Sure. One sort of thing ("social facts") exists only because it exists within human minds; the other sort things (actual physically real things and mathematical principles) exist independently of human minds.
> 
> (The latter statement is a little tricky, since obviously our minds "organize" our perceptions of the world into concepts that we call "tree" and so on, but the point is not that the concept itself corresponds to anything in the world, but that something, independently of our perception, actually exists there in the world.)


You discount solipsism?


----------



## Strange Magic

janxharris said:


> You discount solipsism?


I for years have lobbied for a league of dedicated solipsists to argue strongly for our position, before governments, to the press, and to the general public. Our centuries of being ignored are over!


----------



## Woodduck

dogen said:


> At face value, this seems to me to be a dismissal of much popular/traditional musics from around the globe and over time. That's fine if it's your position, but I wonder if that's what you actually intended?


I'm not saying that all music made that way is bad. It's just limited in its artistic possibilities, and made for listeners limited in their artistic expectations.


----------



## Woodduck

janxharris said:


> You can uphold a clear difference when compared with the cadential repetitions common in classical era music?
> 
> I don't disagree - some pop music irritates me too.


You can uphold a similarity (even remote, never mind clear) between conventional cadences in Mozart and the simple-minded, grindingly repetitive, earworm-breeding pap you hear in supermarkets?


----------



## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> I'm not saying that all music made that way is bad. It's just limited in its artistic possibilities, and made for listeners limited in their artistic expectations.


You make some extraordinary assertions Woodduck.


----------



## San Antone

Woodduck said:


> Literal repetition of short phrases is the simplest, easiest, most primitive, most mindless, and therefore the most sure-fire, way of ensuring the listener's engagement. The only trick is in making the phrase something he'll like and not get bored with as it's pounded into his brain. At present this is commonly achieved with a relentless underlying rhythm, a repetitive and preferably suggestive lyric, and a thin, juvenile voice prematurely afflicted with vocal fry.


I wonder have you listened to much pre-war acoustic blues? Or what about Appalachian fiddle or banjo music? Fado? Flamenco? What about Indian Classical music? Mexican folk music is fantastic, as is Eastern European peasant music, including klezmer. Chinese street music ... etc.

Oral folk traditions have produced music of quality and sophistication. Why you choose to divide the world of music into Western Classical music and popular commercial music strikes me as someone looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope.


----------



## Strange Magic

janxharris said:


> You make some extraordinary assertions Woodduck.


Woodduck and I have equally stringent standards/thresholds for what art or music is worth our time attending to. I account for my distastes/dislikes of the art/music that others like by an inability on my part to appreciate what it is in the material that so pleases others. Woodduck doesn't like certain art or music because it's no good. It really comes down to these two alternatives. Either one works as an explanation.


----------



## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> You can uphold a similarity (even remote, never mind clear) between conventional cadences in Mozart and the simple-minded, grindingly repetitive, earworm-breeding pap you hear in supermarkets?


I find excessive repetition irritating wherever I hear it. If Mozart's cadences are to be explained away by contended that such was normal practice at the time then we might do the same with pop.

I appreciate the Mozart who avoids or limits said cadences. In view of your stated position, then no doubt you would consider my sensibilities a little unrefined.


----------



## janxharris

Strange Magic said:


> Woodduck and I have equally stringent standards/thresholds for what art or music is worth our time attending to. I account for my distastes/dislikes of the art/music that others like by an inability on my part to appreciate what it is in the material that so pleases others. Woodduck doesn't like certain art or music because it's no good. It really comes down to these two alternatives. Either one works as an explanation.


You / my position doesn't require proof; the other does.


----------



## Woodduck

San Antone said:


> I wonder have you listened to much pre-war acoustic blues? Or what about Appalachian fiddle or banjo music? Fado? Flamenco? What about Indian Classical music? Mexican folk music is fantastic, as is Eastern European peasant music, including klezmer. Chinese street music ... etc.
> 
> Oral folk traditions have produced music of quality and sophistication. Why you choose to divide the world of music into Western Classical music and popular commercial music strikes me as someone looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope.


I've heard and enjoyed a good bit of all of the above (except the blues, to which I'm somewhat allergic). I don't see why you're lumping it all together and assuming I haven't.


----------



## Woodduck

janxharris said:


> I find excessive repetition irritating wherever I hear it. If Mozart's cadences are to be explained away by contended that such was normal practice at the time then we might do the same with pop.
> 
> I appreciate the Mozart who avoids or limits said cadences. In view of your stated position, then no doubt you would consider my sensibilities a little unrefined.


Who needs to "explain away" Mozart's cadences? I find no parallel whatsoever to contemporary pop garbage.


----------



## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> Woodduck and I have equally stringent standards/thresholds for what art or music is worth our time attending to. I account for my distastes/dislikes of the art/music that others like by an inability on my part to appreciate what it is in the material that so pleases others. Woodduck doesn't like certain art or music because it's no good. It really comes down to these two alternatives. Either one works as an explanation.


My dislike for musical junkfood is purely coincidental. After all, I have a weakness for potato chips.


----------



## Woodduck

Strange Magic said:


> I for years have lobbied for a league of dedicated solipsists to argue strongly for our position, before governments, to the press, and to the general public. Our centuries of being ignored are over!


Only in your own mind.


----------



## janxharris

Woodduck said:


> Who needs to "explain away" Mozart's cadences?


If you contend that repetition can cause one to dislike a piece then you might be asked to.



> I find no parallel whatsoever to contemporary pop garbage.


Perhaps you are purely referring to the sort of teenage pop that is unlikely to appeal to non-teenagers?


----------



## Haydn70

San Antone said:


> Why you choose to divide the world of music into Western Classical music and popular commercial music strikes me as someone looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope.


He (Woodduck) chooses to because he is a smart guy who knows what he is talking about and is absolutely correct.

He is looking through the correct end of the telescope...the one used by people who are interested in the truth and not political correctness.


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## janxharris

Pop:


----------



## Woodduck

janxharris said:


> If you contend that repetition can cause one to dislike a piece then you might be asked to.
> 
> Perhaps you are purely referring to the sort of teenage pop that is unlikely to appeal to non-teenagers?


I didn't contend that. I contended that pop music that relies on the continuous, literal repetition of short phrases gives me earworms and makes me want to leave whatever store I'm shopping in (or maybe I left out that part). Your problem with Mozart's cadences is - well, your problem with Mozart's cadences!

The initial provocation for my remark was someone's mention of commercial pop music and its reliance on the "hook." There's been plenty of more sophisticated pop music.


----------



## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> I for years have lobbied for a league of dedicated solipsists...


Yes, if we solipsists got together we could really get things done! But then I remember that there's only one of us.


----------



## DaveM

My view of solipsism is that this is my world and the rest of you, if you even exist, are living in it.


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I'm not saying that all music made that way is bad.


I'll let you off then. 



Woodduck said:


> It's just limited in its artistic possibilities, and made for listeners limited in their artistic expectations.


Well, by definition, I suppose it is certainly limited in its potential level of complexity, but I'm not sure how much that equates to "artistic possibilities." Any musically complex work may perhaps leave me cold, but by the same token a simplistic piece may move me greatly. Or vice versa. YMMV.
Regarding listeners, I don't know if I'm limited in my artistic expectations but whatever they might be, I am not aware of adjusting them when listening to different categories of music.


----------



## Strange Magic

KenOC said:


> Yes, if we solipsists got together we could really get things done! But then I remember that there's only one of us.


And that one real Solipsist is me. Ken, when will you realize you are only a figment of my imagination?? Everybody agrees with me; get with the program!


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## KenOC

Strange Magic said:


> And that one real Solipsist is me. Ken, when will you realize you are only a figment of my imagination?? Everybody agrees with me; get with the program!


Obviously it's time for the Revolt of the Figments! A sort of usurpereration.


----------



## Woodduck

dogen said:


> I'll let you off then.
> 
> Well, by definition, I suppose it is certainly limited in its potential level of complexity, but I'm not sure how much that equates to "artistic possibilities." Any musically complex work may perhaps leave me cold, but by the same token a simplistic piece may move me greatly. Or vice versa. YMMV.
> Regarding listeners, I don't know if I'm limited in my artistic expectations but whatever they might be, I am not aware of adjusting them when listening to different categories of music.


OK, thanks. 

I think our artistic expectations adjust themselves, with respect to complexity and every other quality. We don't expect Mahler to do what Morton Feldman does (or vice versa), and we'd find it shocking if he did.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

MacLeod said:


> You're right about definitions. I think we even have a different meaning for the word "rules"...where do 'standard' and 'judge' come in? The rules of football have nothing to do with standards by which to judge - they are simply a formulation of the way the game is played, not about how well the game is played.
> 
> Is it the most common? I've certainly seen it in an online dictionary, but I'd be grateful if you could reference a source for your claim. I don't think it's the one that most here have been using over the past several years that this debate has rumbled on!
> 
> Of course, it's possible to get lost in a labyrinth if we're heading into pure philosophical territory. I see nothing worng with sticking with a common-or-garden definition as you might find in a regular dictionary.
> 
> https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/subjective


The rules of football state, among other things, what counts as touchdowns, completions, sacks, etc. So the rules provide the foundation for stats, which in turn provides the standard upon which we judge players. Without the rules, we wouldn't know a touchdown was more valuable than a field goal, or that scoring more points was the goal at all.

I don't see how that dictionary definition is in contradiction with what I said: "in/of the mind" is just a short way of saying "feelings, tastes, opinions" and anything else that exists in the mind. Stanford's online Philosophy Encyclopedia doesn't have an entry just on defining subjectivity/objectivity, but they have two pages on aesthetics which both mention the subjective/objective debate: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/ and https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-judgment/ Realism/Anti-realism is a related concept and it does have a Stanford page and Wiki page.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

DaveM said:


> One can play those games and try to tie people up in knots with them, but I'm having none of it. Scientifically, a tree falling in a forest always makes a sound whether a human is in hearing distance or not. Even a human not within hearing distance, but within eyesight of the area might see the results of the sound of the tree falling such a birds suddenly rising in the sky. Does the sun always give off light whether one can see it or not? Yes, because the light is tied to heat and if it didn't give off light even when many could not see it, the entire planet would freeze. Want to continue with that silliness?
> 
> You, and no one else, have decided that this is a philosophical discussion to the extreme of applying hardcore philosophical definitions which lead to fantastical things like the premise that rules of a game exist entirely in the mind, something you state as fact. Well, in most people's world, the rules of a game originate in many minds and once agreed on, established and written down now exist external to those minds. Those who play or watch the game long after the originators of the game have passed will know the rules not because they magically already exist in their minds, but because they came to understand the externally preserved rules.


The whole point of the "tree falling" example was to show that it depends on how we define "sound." Define it one way ("acoustic vibrations") and a tree makes a sound; define it another way ("auditory experience") and it doesn't. Simple, but illustrative.

This is fundamentally a philosophical discussion, and one that's been going on at least as far back as Plato. To pretend that it's not a philosophical discussion would just be willful ignorance. If people want to use their own definitions of words then that's fine, but they need to define them first. I defined how I was using them in my very first post on the topic so there shouldn't have been any confusion.

What you say about "writing rules down" doesn't mean the rules exist outside the mind. Language is a means by which an objective symbol--most commonly patterns of sound or visual characters--are associated with mental concepts. This association happens entirely in the mind. If the meaning of language was objective then you could look at/hear a foreign language and immediately understand it. The rules of games aren't the markings on paper; they're the mental concepts that those markings represent. People having the same, agreed-upon, mutual subjective understandings of the same things don't make those things objective.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Larkenfield said:


> If CM didn't have certain advantages over pop or other types of music, then I imagine that everybody would be on some other forum and not here.


Certainly CM does things that other types of music doesn't (perhaps can't) do, but the same is true for all genres. They all manage to express/embody some values that its fans would say speak profoundly to them. Personally, I've been on other music boards for other types of music too.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> Fake randomness was explained a little earlier. It is when someone (or people) try to create something that appears random by choosing what goes into it (they choose the numbers in a strong of numbers, they choose the events in a "random story"). It gives itself away because the authors edit out any patterns so as to keep it appearing random. Real randomness is just that - something that is genuinely random. Real randomness will tend to have patterns. In art, an artist might want to give something the appearance of randomness - and to do so through making crazy choices and removing any hint of a pattern (like the Dali & Bunuel collaboration) so that the point (the pattern if you will) becomes the randomness or lack of patterns. Or an artist might be interested in experimenting with chance, in which case they will usually use structure or rules to control or contain the true randomness that would result from taking this experiment to an extreme.
> 
> For the rest, I fear we will always disagree about whether some art has a greater aesthetic value than other art. I do feel it does even though it may not be possible to say anything about the value of a piece of art with any precision. But your position is one that many hold although I have seen little from any sources that persuades me that it is correct! I don't really see why you need to cut up perceptual processes - which are actually far more complex than you describe them and extremely fast - and label different bits as objective or subjective. Nor is the enjoyment (or not!) of art merely a perceptual process. You don't really need all that if all you want to do is say "everyone has different tastes and it would be wrong to say that one person's tastes are superior to another's".


I understand what you're saying with "fake randomness," but I'm just saying that, in the context of art, you're basically making randomness and impossibility because all art requires choices to be made for it to exist at all. FWIW, I don't believe in "real randomness;" I think "really" there's only determinism and that any and all "randomness" is just the appearance of such caused by our inability to predict something or find patterns. So I'm fine saying that any art that prevents our finding patterns is random for all intents and purposes. This is just getting into pure semantics, though.

I'm not sure what source or argument I could provide to persuade you that the subjectivist view of aesthetics was correct. I wouldn't say there's a "need" to "cut up perceptual processes... and label them," no more than there's a "need" for any such philosophical investigations, but doing so was part and parcel of my studying rationality. One thing rationality requires is making distinctions between the "map" (mind) and "territory" (reality), because otherwise people make all kinds of irrational mistakes.* My view of aesthetics is an outgrowth of my rationality; I didn't start trying to make the subjective/objective distinctions just to argue that "everyone has different tastes and it would be wrong to say that one person's tastes are superior to another's," that was just an inevitable conclusion that I reached.

*A common mistake that's quite relevant to my profession is people thinking that probabilities exist in reality rather than the mind. There are tons of examples that show how this is wrong, one of the most infamous examples being The Monty Hall Problem, which is so counter-intuitive that even the vast majority of math professors initially got it wrong.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> The question underlying this exhausting exchange is whether we accept that some human values - values in general, not only artistic values - are inherently superior to others. I do...
> 
> Both personal experience and observation tell me that it's possible, to a very substantial extent, for people to understand works of art in terms of the values (aesthetic and otherwise) which those works represent, _whether or not_ _they personally share those values_...
> 
> I consider your statement - "If it's obvious that all valuation occurs in the mind, then speaking of art being 'superior' to other art makes no sense except in relation to the minds that hold the values that they do" - to be wrong. "Valuation" may indeed occur in the mind, but fundamental "values" - _things which are in fact of value to man qua man_ - exist in reality... Bach is an indispensable expression of humanity. Dudes shrieking and squawking are dispensable - and history will dispense with them.


But what is your argument for the claim that values are inherently superior that doesn't solely rely on people feeling they're superior? And if superiority does rest on a feeling, then how can a feeling be wrong?

I agree with your middle paragraph. I do think it's entirely possible for people to, at the very least, appreciate art that is representing and appealing to different values than their own.

Yes, many things man values exist in reality, but you can't categorize something as "a thing of value" without first holding mental values; otherwise, the thing just IS. It ties in with the saying "a thing is worth what someone's willing to pay for it." Asking about something's "real value," as if its value doesn't depend on the mental values people set for it, doesn't make any sense. I'd also argue that man's most fundamental values--food, water, shelter, sex--are surprisingly UNDER-represented (or, in the case of sex, undervalued) in art. There's plenty of music that's lasted that was dismissed by its generations' critics as the equivalent of "shrieking and squawking."


----------



## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> There's plenty of music that's lasted that was dismissed by its generations' critics as the equivalent of "shrieking and squawking."
> 
> I'd also argue that man's most fundamental values--food, water, shelter, sex--are surprisingly UNDER-represented (or, in the case of sex, undervalued) in art.


But none of it actually was shrieking and squawking. That is a monopoly of the modern age.

Strange that among human needs you mention only man's physical, animal needs (though sex, of course, is complicated for us). Man's actual needs are much, much more complex than that, and thus so are the things which are of value to him. Higher order needs - things of objective value, irrespective of personal temperament and taste - are cognitive, psychological, spiritual, personal and social, as well as physical. I'm trying to withdraw from this thread, being quite tired of it, so I'll leave you to contemplate the diversity and subtlety of the things which humans require in order to live optimally as human beings, and the ways in which art can embody and communicate those things, in form as well as in subject matter.


----------



## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> But none of it actually was shrieking and squawking. That is a monopoly of the modern age.
> 
> Strange that among human needs you mention only man's physical, animal needs (though sex, of course, is complicated for us). Man's actual needs are much, much more complex than that, and thus so are the things which are of value to him. Higher order needs - things of objective value, irrespective of personal temperament and taste - are cognitive, psychological, spiritual, personal and social, as well as physical. I'm trying to withdraw from this thread, being quite tired of it, so I'll leave you to contemplate the diversity and subtlety of the things which humans require in order to live optimally as human beings, and the ways in which art can embody and communicate those things, in form as well as in subject matter.


You sound just like the previous generations in saying their "modern age" had the monopoly on shrieking and squawking. 

I mention what's needed for basic survival, since man typically values survival most highly of all. Take away those things, make them scarce, and I guarantee you'd find that all the "higher order" needs suddenly become of not much value. That we're talking about "higher order" needs--I'd describe them more as desires--at all is evidence that our fundamental needs are being met and we're free to seek out and fulfill others.

Tolstoy wrote wonderfully about this in War & Peace in the section where Pierre becomes a prisoner and his daily life consists of walking, eating/drinking, and resting. Tolstoy describes how this return to basics puts him in touch with the simplest of life's pleasures, how valuable food and sleep become after a long day's hard toil. Before this, Pierre had been fraught with all kinds of psychological and philosophical anxiety, but suddenly found himself strangely contended with the basic necessities of life.


----------



## Woodduck

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I mention what's needed for basic survival, since man typically values survival most highly of all. Take away those things, make them scarce, and I guarantee you'd find that all the "higher order" needs suddenly become of not much value. That we're talking about "higher order" needs--I'd describe them more as desires--at all is evidence that our fundamental needs are being met and we're free to seek out and fulfill others.
> 
> Tolstoy wrote wonderfully about this in War & Peace in the section where Pierre becomes a prisoner and his daily life consists of walking, eating/drinking, and resting. Tolstoy describes how this return to basics puts him in touch with the simplest of life's pleasures, how valuable food and sleep become after a long day's hard toil. Before this, Pierre had been fraught with all kinds of psychological and philosophical anxiety, but suddenly found himself strangely contended with the basic necessities of life.


Oh come now. The fact that we must generally satisfy (minimally) our bare animal needs before we have time to deal with our higher needs means absolutely nothing for art, which exists specifically to meet cognitive and emotional needs (and then, derivatively, social ones). That man places value on art even when his physical needs are met less than satisfactorily speaks to its importance, not to its unimportance; life is cruelly capricious, but art is always there for us. However, I'm not talking about "valuation" in any case, but rather objective value. Man values art because it is of actual value: it makes his life better. They made music in the Nazi concentration camps.

The questions for art: what cognitive and emotional needs does art fulfill? How does it do this? All the above droning on about "subjective" and "objective" gets us nowhere in answering these questions, and no question about artistic quality can be meaningful without examining man's cognitive and emotional makeup and the ways in which the perceptual languages of art represent and speak to it. I wouldn't necessarily expect people who are not artists to have much of a feel for this, and so I'm more or less finished here except for a terse remark now and then. My animal needs - getting to bed at a reasonable hour - must take precedence.


----------



## Guest

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I don't see how that dictionary definition is in contradiction with what I said: "in/of the mind" is just a short way of saying "feelings, tastes, opinions" and anything else that exists in the mind.


No, it isn't "just a short way". It's taking a particular set (opinions) within a set (anything within the mind*). The Stanford articles debate Beauty and whether it is subective or objective. It doesn't debate 'objectivity/subjectivity' except as it is relevant to beauty. I don't see any point in wandering off (in this thread) into a philosophical debate about 'objectivity/subjectivity' unless it's with reference to aesthetics, hence my objection to the analogy with the rules of sport.

*I wonder in whose mind is the 'subjective' schizophrenia - the psychiatrist who diagnoses it or the sufferer who reports the symptoms?


----------



## Nereffid

Woodduck said:


> The questions for art: what cognitive and emotional needs does art fulfill? How does it do this? All the above droning on about "subjective" and "objective" gets us nowhere in answering these questions, and no question about artistic quality can be meaningful without examining man's cognitive and emotional makeup and the ways in which the perceptual languages of art represent and speak to it.


And pop songs that you and I find trivial quite clearly speak to the cognitive and emotional needs of some or many people. The argument really is over whether those cognitive and emotional needs should themselves be considered trivial.


----------



## KenOC

Nereffid said:


> And pop songs that you and I find trivial quite clearly speak to the cognitive and emotional needs of some or many people. The argument really is over whether those cognitive and emotional needs should themselves be considered trivial.


Ultimately it all boils down to this: The only support we have that _our _tastes are superior to _their _tastes is that _we_ are superior to _them_.


----------



## janxharris

KenOC said:


> Ultimately it all boils down to this: The only support we have that _our _tastes are superior to _their _tastes is that _we_ are superior to _them_.


Something like Stalin with Shostakovich.


----------



## KenOC

Well, Stalin won that in the short term, but few listen to his symphonies today, eh? :lol:


----------



## DaveM

Eva Yojimbo said:


> The whole point of the "tree falling" example was to show that it depends on how we define "sound." Define it one way ("acoustic vibrations") and a tree makes a sound; define it another way ("auditory experience") and it doesn't. Simple, but illustrative.


Well thanks, but it's a silly distinction that goes back a long way and is something that navel-gazing philosophers apparently still think is profound.



> This is fundamentally a philosophical discussion, and one that's been going on at least as far back as Plato. To pretend that it's not a philosophical discussion would just be willful ignorance. If people want to use their own definitions of words then that's fine, but they need to define them first. I defined how I was using them in my very first post on the topic so there shouldn't have been any confusion.


No, you have decided it's purely a philosophical discussion so you can school the unwashed masses with endless repetitive, off-topic pseudo-philosophical fluff.



> What you say about "writing rules down" doesn't mean the rules exist outside the mind. Language is a means by which an objective symbol--most commonly patterns of sound or visual characters--are associated with mental concepts. This association happens entirely in the mind. If the meaning of language was objective then you could look at/hear a foreign language and immediately understand it. The rules of games aren't the markings on paper; they're the mental concepts that those markings represent. People having the same, agreed-upon, mutual subjective understandings of the same things don't make those things objective.


Yes they do. You are diluting the definition of 'objective' to the point that it has little meaning. This is a consequence of your fixation on interpreting everything as philosophical. Your use of objective and objectivity do not fit the definitions of the term. However, the main problem, just as in your post above, is that you are talking down to the crowd here. We aren't students.


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## science

janxharris said:


> You discount solipsism?


Completely. I don't think it's serious. It's a perfect example of an idea that only a particular sort of philosopher would waste time on.


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## Jacck

science said:


> Completely. I don't think it's serious. It's a perfect example of an idea that only a particular sort of philosopher would waste time on.


I believe in solipsism. I believe that God is one light in many lamps, the One that self-multiplied in many forms across space and time, the Unmoved Mover (Aristotle) who dwells beyond space and time.


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## KenOC

science said:


> Completely. I don't think it's serious. It's a perfect example of an idea that only a particular sort of philosopher would waste time on.


It's quite imaginable that a solipsist could imagine figments that didn't believe in solipsism. I do it all the time.


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> I believe in solipsism. I believe that God is one light in many lamps, the One that self-multiplied in many forms across space and time, the Unmoved Mover (Aristotle) who dwells beyond space and time.


Imagined God....


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## science

Jacck said:


> I believe in solipsism. I believe that God is one light in many lamps, the One that self-multiplied in many forms across space and time, the Unmoved Mover (Aristotle) who dwells beyond space and time.


Very little of this makes any sense to me, and I am not sure it really is solipsism, but if it works for you I suppose it's fine!


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## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> I understand what you're saying with "fake randomness," but I'm just saying that, in the context of art, you're basically making randomness and impossibility because all art requires choices to be made for it to exist at all. FWIW, I don't believe in "real randomness;" I think "really" there's only determinism and that any and all "randomness" is just the appearance of such caused by our inability to predict something or find patterns. So I'm fine saying that any art that prevents our finding patterns is random for all intents and purposes. This is just getting into pure semantics, though.


Yes, so true randomness and nothing but true randomness in art would be poor art 99.999% of the time and would not survive. If you don't believe randomness exists in reality why did you bring it up? You raised and maintained it as an argument about whether our surprise and initial inability to identify patterns in some new art was randomness (which seemed to be your position) or merely our not knowing the language (my position).



Eva Yojimbo said:


> I'm not sure what source or argument I could provide to persuade you that the subjectivist view of aesthetics was correct. I wouldn't say there's a "need" to "cut up perceptual processes... and label them," no more than there's a "need" for any such philosophical investigations, but doing so was part and parcel of my studying rationality. One thing rationality requires is making distinctions between the "map" (mind) and "territory" (reality), because otherwise people make all kinds of irrational mistakes.* My view of aesthetics is an outgrowth of my rationality; I didn't start trying to make the subjective/objective distinctions just to argue that "everyone has different tastes and it would be wrong to say that one person's tastes are superior to another's," that was just an inevitable conclusion that I reached.


I see. But is "the map" subjectivity in the way you have used the term? It is a representation of reality and unlikely to be perfect. How good a representation it is will depend upon the ability of the mind to decode "reality" (which will come down to experience, cognitive abilities and so on).



Eva Yojimbo said:


> *A common mistake that's quite relevant to my profession is people thinking that probabilities exist in reality rather than the mind. There are tons of examples that show how this is wrong, one of the most infamous examples being The Monty Hall Problem, which is so counter-intuitive that even the vast majority of math professors initially got it wrong.


The existence of cognitive biases (that are typically found in the thinking of a good majority of a population (but that is a probability, too) or the particular bias uncovered by the Monty Hall Problem do not demonstrate that probability is not real. Probabilities are measurements (or predictions based on previous measurements). There is much in statistics that seems counter-intuitive but that seems to me to be more about rationality and truth (equates with objective) not always being recognised by people (equates with subjective), even those relatively experience and educated in related fields. I can't see how it demonstrates that probability doesn't exist in reality.

I sense that your system of aesthetics removes too much from the consideration and ends up unable to discriminate at all. I guess aestheticians end up on the dole queue?


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## Enthusiast

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Asking about something's "real value," as if its value doesn't depend on the mental values people set for it, doesn't make any sense. I'd also argue that man's most fundamental values--food, water, shelter, sex--are surprisingly UNDER-represented (or, in the case of sex, undervalued) in art. There's plenty of music that's lasted that was dismissed by its generations' critics as the equivalent of "shrieking and squawking."


To take the second point in the quote above, first, it has regularly been the case that great art is controversial in its own time and that there is often little consensus about what art will last. This only demonstrates that most people - including "experts" - have to struggle with the new and don't find it easy to discriminate between the very worthwhile and the less worthwhile.

The "real value" of a piece of art is of course derived from what people make of it. This doesn't mean that we cannot arrive at coherent views about its value. Why should it? And, as for the under-representation of basics in art, what does that prove? Art addresses "higher needs" (Maslow's hierarchy etc) which exist for all of us, even the hungry. I have myself talked with people who were devastatingly poor (eg pavement dwellers in Mumbai) but were still sacrificing food to "higher things" (gods, the education of their children etc.).


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## San Antone

ArsMusica said:


> He (Woodduck) chooses to because he is a smart guy who knows what he is talking about and is absolutely correct.
> 
> He is looking through the correct end of the telescope...the one used by people who are interested in the truth and not political correctness.


Because western European classical music is based on a written tradition and vernacular musics are based on oral traditions does not mean that western classical music is superior. And to judge vernacular music because it does not exemplify the qualities found in western classical music is comparing apples to oranges.

The irony is that western European composers such as Dvorak, Brahms, and others, as well as Americans such as Copland all recognized the richness and value of folk forms. Bartok actively sought to preserve the music, to cite just one of many examples, Copland borrowed an Appalachian fiddle tune for his ballet Rodeo, and Stravinsky, Milhaud and Ravel, as well as other composers, borrowed blues and jazz idioms.

Political correctness has nothing to do with my comment, and my reference to the wrong end of the telescope was meant to imply that the way he saw music of the world was very narrow.


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## Enthusiast

Woodduck said:


> Complexity can mean different things: it can refer to the sheer quantity of elements in a work, to the degree of nuance with which they're presented, to the dynamic relationships between them, or to the shades and layers of meaning the work communicates. In the latter sense the idea of complexity merges with the idea of depth or profundity.
> 
> There's no sense in worrying about quantifying these things ("I'm not sure how many other such elements or qualities would be needed before we had anything close to being able to give me a sense of how we value a work"). Works of art are in effect infinitely varied, and they can be analyzed, but it's the gestalt that matters. In the end we see it and hear it or we don't.
> 
> No, complexity is not an "essential." Complexity might even be a defect if the artist can't control it. It's just one of many qualities that we can enjoy and admire in a work, either for its own sake or in relation to other qualities. And as you say, it's _relative._ I think most art - most good art, most art that endures - is more complex than it seems, or ought to seem. It's an artist's goal, and a sign of his mastery, to make the complex seem simple.


Your complexity concept seems to include rather a lot if it includes "shades and layers of meaning". No worries but, yes, getting at profundity is an important aspect of the subject being discussed, here. I doubt that an agreement of this forum of what profundity is and which pieces are more "profound" than others will be possible. But I do think that extremes (very profound - very facile) can (again) be identified which (again) suggests that there is a consensus concerning some ranking of profundity.


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## Strange Magic

Enthusiast said:


> Your complexity concept seems to include rather a lot if it includes "shades and layers of meaning". No worries but, yes, getting at profundity is an important aspect of the subject being discussed, here. I doubt that an agreement of this forum of what profundity is and which pieces are more "profound" than others will be possible. But I do think that extremes (very profound - very facile) can (again) be identified which (again) suggests that there is a consensus concerning some ranking of profundity.


What is "profundity"?


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## Enthusiast

Strange Magic said:


> What is "profundity"?


That was my question! It seems quite an important one for this discussion.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> That was my question! It seems quite an important one for this discussion.


Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.


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## science

To take things in an oblique direction....



science said:


> The difference between good music and great music is not what genre they are but how much analysis it can provoke and withstand. There's nothing wrong with not being able to provoke or withstand analysis, but that's how the legitimate hierarchy (as opposed to the one in which some people's tastes are just superior to others') works.
> 
> The difference between ordinary listeners and great listeners is not which genres they enjoy but how much analysis they can perform. There's nothing wrong with listening to music with naive romanticism - that's how I am constrained to listen - but that's why some people's opinions count for more than mine.





science said:


> ... the community of listeners whose opinions I value is one that values analysis.
> 
> This is the taste/perception difference I've discussed before. All tastes (value judgments) are equal. All perceptions (awareness of facts) are not.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> To take things in an oblique direction....
> 
> The difference between good music and great music is not what genre they are but how much analysis it can provoke and withstand. There's nothing wrong with not being able to provoke or withstand analysis, but that's how the legitimate hierarchy (as opposed to the one in which some people's tastes are just superior to others') works.


Well said. :tiphat:

The question is: what does it mean for music to "withstand analysis"?


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## science

Woodduck said:


> Well said. :tiphat:
> 
> The question is: what does it mean for music to "withstand analysis"?


It means that upon analysis we find more things we like than things we don't like.


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## Woodduck

science said:


> It means that upon analysis we find more things we like than things we don't like.


That isn't consistent with the language of your previous statement, in which you speak of "good music and great music" and a "legitimate hierarchy." If you just mean "music I like more or less" that language is misleading, isn't it? You also say "This is the taste/perception difference I've discussed before. All tastes (value judgments) are equal. All perceptions (awareness of facts) are not." Obviously you're talking about more than "liking."


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## science

Woodduck said:


> That isn't consistent with the language of your previous statement, in which you speak of "good music and great music" and a "legitimate hierarchy." If you just mean "music I like more or less" that language is misleading, isn't it? You also say "This is the taste/perception difference I've discussed before. All tastes (value judgments) are equal. All perceptions (awareness of facts) are not." Obviously you're talking about more than "liking."


"Good," "great," and "legitimate" in my opinion and that of the community whose opinions and insights I value. That's why I included the second quote:



> .. the community of listeners whose opinions I value is one that values analysis.
> 
> This is the taste/perception difference I've discussed before. All tastes (value judgments) are equal. All perceptions (awareness of facts) are not.


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## science

BTW, this is why "understanding" is different than "appreciation." 

I might love the heck out of a certain work of art without knowing anything about it except the way I feel when I see it. That's appreciation without understanding. 

Someone else might know a lot of things about that work without liking it very much. That's understanding without appreciation. 

And that is why it is a mistake to value appreciation rather than understanding. 

Of course there are works of art whose value is not meant to be apparent to people without some special awareness. In fact, that's a fair first approximation of a definition of modernism!

As I tell my students all the time: I don't care if you don't like Shakespeare, or whatever we happen to be studying at the moment. You don't have to like it. But you have to understand why so many other people like it. If you don't understand why other people like it and you don't like it, that's your opinion and you're ignorant. But if you understand why other people like it but you still don't like it, that's your opinion and it's legitimate.


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## Jacck

janxharris said:


> Imagined God....


oh no, it is you who imagines that you are separate from God. Your "I" is a bundle of memories who thinks itself real while it is not. It is imagined.


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## janxharris

Jacck said:


> oh no, it is you who imagines that you are separate from God. Your "I" is a bundle of memories who thinks itself real while it is not. It is imagined.


always possible


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## Eva Yojimbo

science said:


> To take things in an oblique direction....


While I think your arguments work fine as a subjective statement of values (one that I don't personally disagree with), I would still disagree with anyone claiming that this makes for an objective standard for determining greatness. I might also mention that it prevents a chicken-or-the-egg problem: does art provoke and withstand analysis because it's great, or is it because we think it's great that it provokes and withstands analysis? I'd lean towards thinking the latter is more likely to be true than the former.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> To take the second point in the quote above, first, it has regularly been the case that great art is controversial in its own time and that there is often little consensus about what art will last. This only demonstrates that most people - including "experts" - have to struggle with the new and don't find it easy to discriminate between the very worthwhile and the less worthwhile.
> 
> The "real value" of a piece of art is of course derived from what people make of it. This doesn't mean that we cannot arrive at coherent views about its value. Why should it? And, as for the under-representation of basics in art, what does that prove? Art addresses "higher needs" (Maslow's hierarchy etc) which exist for all of us, even the hungry. I have myself talked with people who were devastatingly poor (eg pavement dwellers in Mumbai) but were still sacrificing food to "higher things" (gods, the education of their children etc.).


I don't strongly disagree with anything in your first paragraph; I only balked at Woodduck dismissing modern art he doesn't like as "shrieking and squawking" as if similar criticisms weren't made against music of the past that ended up having lasting value to many.

If by "coherent views about its value" you just mean "many people agreeing about its value" then, sure, that happens; but I don't see how this is arguing for any objective/inherent value that's independent of what people value, which is the crux of the debate, and which would have to take into account how all people would value it. Under-representing of the basics was just in response to Woodduck's notion of art addressing fundamental values; to me, the most fundamental values are what's necessary for survival. Art is a luxury that comes with having those needs met.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Enthusiast said:


> Yes, so true randomness and nothing but true randomness in art would be poor art 99.999% of the time and would not survive. If you don't believe randomness exists in reality why did you bring it up? You raised and maintained it as an argument about whether our surprise and initial inability to identify patterns in some new art was randomness (which seemed to be your position) or merely our not knowing the language (my position).


I don't believe randomness exists in reality, I believe it exists in minds; so our surprise and inability to identify patterns WOULD be randomness according to me. I was never talking about some kind of "real/ontological" randomness, but merely our attempts to remove comprehensible patterns and our inability to detect them.



Enthusiast said:


> I see. But is "the map" subjectivity in the way you have used the term? It is a representation of reality and unlikely to be perfect. How good a representation it is will depend upon the ability of the mind to decode "reality" (which will come down to experience, cognitive abilities and so on).


The map is subjective in that exists within the mind, yes. The idea that it's trying to represent reality while never being reality is a key idea, and indeed how good a map it will be depend upon the ability of the mind to "decode" (I would just say "accurately represent") reality.



Enthusiast said:


> The existence of cognitive biases (that are typically found in the thinking of a good majority of a population (but that is a probability, too) or the particular bias uncovered by the Monty Hall Problem do not demonstrate that probability is not real. Probabilities are measurements (or predictions based on previous measurements). There is much in statistics that seems counter-intuitive but that seems to me to be more about rationality and truth (equates with objective) not always being recognised by people (equates with subjective), even those relatively experience and educated in related fields. I can't see how it demonstrates that probability doesn't exist in reality.
> 
> I sense that your system of aesthetics removes too much from the consideration and ends up unable to discriminate at all. I guess aestheticians end up on the dole queue?


There's no way to prove that probabilities are not real but there are ways to show that probabilities change based on our knowledge, and if probabilities were objective and inherent in reality this should not be the case. The Monty Hall Problem is one example of this (of people not getting how knowledge changes our probabilities); there are many others. Probabilities are just statements of partial information applied to our prediction of future events. This is true even in cases where we know the outcome is physically determined like coin-flips, or pre-determined like the Monty Hall Problem. To project them onto reality without proof would be to both commit the mind-projection fallacy and to violate Occam's Razor.

I'm not sure why you think my system of aesthetics removes too much from the consideration and ends up unable to discriminate: what is being removed and what discrimination am I failing to make?


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## Eva Yojimbo

MacLeod said:


> No, it isn't "just a short way". It's taking a particular set (opinions) within a set (anything within the mind*). The Stanford articles debate Beauty and whether it is subective or objective. It doesn't debate 'objectivity/subjectivity' except as it is relevant to beauty. I don't see any point in wandering off (in this thread) into a philosophical debate about 'objectivity/subjectivity' unless it's with reference to aesthetics, hence my objection to the analogy with the rules of sport.
> 
> *I wonder in whose mind is the 'subjective' schizophrenia - the psychiatrist who diagnoses it or the sufferer who reports the symptoms?


Yes, "opinions" would be a subset of the set "anything within the mind." Frankly, I don't really understand what your objection is. My sports rules analogy didn't even depend on how we we were defining subjective/objective anyway; that wasn't crucial to the point. If you're happy with dictionary definitions then I could offer:

Subjective (#1)
Objective (#7 and #8)


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## Eva Yojimbo

DaveM said:


> Well thanks, but it's a silly distinction that goes back a long way and is something that navel-gazing philosophers apparently still think is profound.
> 
> No, you have decided it's purely a philosophical discussion so you can school the unwashed masses with endless repetitive, off-topic pseudo-philosophical fluff.
> 
> Yes they do. You are diluting the definition to the point that it has little meaning. This is a consequence of your fixation on interpreting everything as philosophical. Your use of objective and objectivity do not fit the definitions of the term. However, the main problem, just as in your post above, is that you are talking down to the crowd here. We aren't students.


Thankfully we have you to set us straight on how silly the thoughts of our greatest thinkers of the last several hundred years are, including navel-gazing kooks like Einstein.

Your personal attacks, baseless claims, and juvenile "uh-huh" assertions are ignored.

I'm not "diluting" any definition, I'm picking one definition of these terms among many and I explained my reason for doing so. Considering I just posted the definitions of subjective and objective above that perfectly fit how I'm using them, your claim about my usage not fitting the definitions is factually false. I'm not talking down to anyone; that you feel I am is your problem and not mine.


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## Eva Yojimbo

Woodduck said:


> Oh come now. The fact that we must generally satisfy (minimally) our bare animal needs before we have time to deal with our higher needs means absolutely nothing for art, which exists specifically to meet cognitive and emotional needs (and then, derivatively, social ones). That man places value on art even when his physical needs are met less than satisfactorily speaks to its importance, not to its unimportance; life is cruelly capricious, but art is always there for us. However, I'm not talking about "valuation" in any case, but rather objective value. Man values art because it is of actual value: it makes his life better. They made music in the Nazi concentration camps.
> 
> The questions for art: what cognitive and emotional needs does art fulfill? How does it do this? All the above droning on about "subjective" and "objective" gets us nowhere in answering these questions, and no question about artistic quality can be meaningful without examining man's cognitive and emotional makeup and the ways in which the perceptual languages of art represent and speak to it. I wouldn't necessarily expect people who are not artists to have much of a feel for this, and so I'm more or less finished here except for a terse remark now and then. My animal needs - getting to bed at a reasonable hour - must take precedence.


You're the one that first mentioned "fundamental needs" and I merely mentioned food, water, shelter, and sex as our most fundamental needs, things that art doesn't fulfill and doesn't typically represent (or when it does isn't always valued). I might even mention freedom; offer your concentration camp prisoners a front row seat to Beethoven or their freedom and see which they choose. I'm sure knowing that art was there for them was of great comfort to those in concentration camps (it may have been, at best, a temporary reprieve).

It's rather intellectually dishonest to keep dismissing this "droning on about 'subjective' and 'objective'" while you continue to make claims like "I'm... talking about... objective value. Man values art because of its actual value." Your very claims rest on the distinction you're tired of others "droning on about," yet you haven't really bothered to clarify what, precisely, you mean by your usage of it.


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## DaveM

Eva Yojimbo said:


> Thankfully we have you to set us straight on how silly the thoughts of our greatest thinkers of the last several hundred years are, including navel-gazing kooks like Einstein...


Einstein's interest was specifically philosophy of science, particularly epistomology, something that applies philosophical principles to scientific thinking in a constructive, useful way. In other words, Einstein was not a navel gazing kook.  I have no problem with the application of philosophical thinking if it helps to answer more questions than it raises or contributes in positive ways such as the application of more objectivity in solving difficult scientific problems.


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