# Can Music Be Bad?



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I was going to make a general thread asking whether or not it's possible/reasonable to call an artwork 'good' or 'bad' (nothing to do with ranking; just taking an individual piece on its own merits). However, my OP became too long, and I could tell we'd all get bogged down in silly details or focus on all the wrong things.

So, instead, I want to ask a very particular question. First, accept the position (which I find bizarre, but this is a thought experiment) that you cannot call music 'bad'. That all music has the _potential_ to be good, it just depends on how you're listening. How do you answer the following objection?

If you cannot say something is 'bad', then in what way is it fair to say something is 'good'? To be consistent, I think you have to throw out praise if you're going to throw out criticism, and yet the people who say that art can't be bad are always singing the praises of something they find sublime. "No, no, dear listener, my music isn't good at all - you just managed to make a good experience out of my inquantifiable sounds."

Of course, if you think these are irreconcilable positions and that we have to be able to label something 'bad' if we can label something else 'good', feel free to say so, but let's hold back on the vitriol.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Well, there is 'good' and 'bad' music. Although much of the time this will be at least partly subjective, there is some truly appallingly bad music. One example that springs immediately to mind is the 'music' of Richard Nanes. He wrote some of the worst music ever conceived - it ill-thought-out, badly-constructed (well, not constructed at all, really) and loses the listener's interest within a few minutes due to the paucity of decent musical ideas and his inability to do anything worthwhile with the ones he had.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Having watched a few episodes of American Idol, I can assure you that there is such a thing as bad music.

Also, some professional music is bad. Such as:





















There is even classic bad music:


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)




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## opium (Dec 15, 2011)

But putting that aside and referring to classical music, I don't think there's a such thing as 'bad' music.

Historically, as music progresses, dissonance becomes more acceptable and so what we listen to now and think "that's awful - too dissonant" could well be the standard of acceptable music in the future.

I dislike Serialism music - but that's not to say it's bad, it's just that I can't interpret it into something enjoyable.


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

opium said:


> But putting that aside and referring to classical music, I don't think there's a such thing as 'bad' music.
> 
> Historically, as music progresses, dissonance becomes more acceptable and so what we listen to now and think "that's awful - too dissonant" could well be the standard of acceptable music in the future.
> 
> I dislike Serialism music - but that's not to say it's bad, it's just that I can't interpret it into something enjoyable.


There inevitably IS bad classical music though? If not there would be no point in trying to come up with something good because everything you put down on paper would automatically be good, just as long as it can be classified as classical music.


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

Absolutely it can be bad.


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## NightHawk (Nov 3, 2011)

Socrates and his protege Plato, and maybe Aristotle, as well, thought 'certain modes' had the power to corrupt the morals of the youth, just as there were modes that could promote noble sentiment and I think, courage. 'David Eaton' (I dunno) says this:

_Throughout history the unspoken but highly evocative language of music has exerted powerful influences on individuals and societies alike. Felix Mendelssohn once remarked that 'music is more specific about what it expresses than words written about those expressions could ever be'. That music has the power to express, convey and illicit powerful emotions is without question, however the issue of music's moral and ethical power, and how that power affects individuals and societies, is one that receives too little attention in our post-modern world. Ancient cultures held strong beliefs in the moral and ethical power of music and as such it was imperative for artists within those cultures to exercise a certain moral and ethical responsibility in their creative endeavors._

NightHawk: we know that Fascist, Communist, dictatorship-ist and perhaps some Theocratic regimes regard music and all the arts as either 'Party Line' and thereby potential fruit for propagandistic use, or 'decadent' and contrary to the health of the nation (read, survival of those in power) - and I can certainly understand how those repressive societies would feel the need to keep their thumb on the artistic pulse of their people.

The tones are not bad. Words can be bad. The 'right' music for the 'bad' words could make the 'bad' words 'badder'.  oh, that should be


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## opium (Dec 15, 2011)

I'm sure all music which is put down on paper can appeal to _somebody_.

However, if you set out to write something and it sucks, and the audience who would have appreciated it say it sucks, then yeah - it can be considered bad music. But it doesn't mean it won't appeal to some people's tastes somewhere...

I think there is a definite distinction between bad music and music which can't be appreciated. The latter is much harder to come across.


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## Guest (Dec 16, 2011)

Good and bad imply moral distinctions, no?

Or will for some posters, anyway. A discussion of good and bad in an area that doesn't have much to do with morality (or does it?) will inevitably shipwreck on these shoals.

Put it another way, is this going to be a philosophical discussion or a practical one? I can be as philosophical as the next guy. More. But on this good/bad thing, I have come to be severely practical: *how does this piece of music affect you?* Of course that practical approach leads straight into another philosophical arena, namely "who are you? what are your orientations and abilities and prejudices?" Answers to which can lead to very practical actions.

Hey! Philosophy and practice are intimately intertwined. Who woulda thought?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

some guy said:


> Good and bad imply moral distinctions, no?


No, they don't necessarily, and it is not intended in this discussion. When I exclaim over a bucket of KFC, "Mmm! This is good chicken!", I am not speaking of its moral integrity.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

some guy said:


> Good and bad imply moral distinctions, no?
> 
> Or will for some posters, anyway. A discussion of good and bad in an area that doesn't have much to do with morality (or does it?) will inevitably shipwreck on these shoals.
> 
> ...


I am amazed,how do you go off on a tangent in this ludicrous way? Can't you find an answer to the question? If I go to a restaurant and the food is bad it's bad---not morally bad but just bad. Please don't start one of the ridiculous philosophical discussions that go on interminably among certain members. I imagine they just bore most people or make them laugh.


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## Guest (Dec 16, 2011)

moody, thanks for your kind words. They do seem a bit tangential, though, which is something you report as not favoring. At least not the ludicrous kind. I sense a wee bit contradiction here.

Polednice, except in the most trivial of contexts (moody's restaurant, perhaps), good and bad imply moral issues. And if you've read any of the other posts to this thread, you would have already noticed that several posts have so implied.

For both of you, since finesse and nuance seem so utterly distasteful, here's something blunt:

There can be good experiences and bad ones.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

some guy said:


> Polednice, except in the most trivial of contexts (moody's restaurant, perhaps), good and bad imply moral issues.


From my dictionary:



> *Good*: _adj_. 1. having admirable, pleasing, superior or positive qualities.
> 2. morally admirable.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

We sure do have a lot of different threads about the same sort of subjective vs. objective deal. Whether you think music can be bad or can't be bad, there's gonna be someone writing a thousand word philosophical treatise to prove you wrong.

Rather than humor that kind of vague language, I'm going to say this: there's such a thing as music that fails to live up to its values, and there's such a thing as music with values too shallow to bother living up to.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

some guy said:


> Polednice, except in the most trivial of contexts (moody's restaurant, perhaps), good and bad imply moral issues. And if you've read any of the other posts to this thread, you would have already noticed that several posts have so implied.


I've defined what I mean by "good" and "bad", so if you don't like it, don't bother engaging with me on this issue.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Polednice said:


> I was going to make a general thread asking whether or not it's possible/reasonable to call an artwork 'good' or 'bad' (nothing to do with ranking; just taking an individual piece on its own merits). However, my OP became too long, and I could tell we'd all get bogged down in silly details or focus on all the wrong things.
> 
> So, instead, I want to ask a very particular question. First, accept the position (which I find bizarre, but this is a thought experiment) that you cannot call music 'bad'. That all music has the _potential_ to be good, it just depends on how you're listening. How do you answer the following objection?
> 
> ...


Some folks will respond by saying music is neither good nor bad, that it is your task to establish an enjoyable listening experience out of it, and the fact that there is always someone on this planet, maybe just one individual out of the several billion who finds piece X enjoyable proves that a human being can make a positive listening experience out of it. But if you cannot, then the fault is yours, not the music, and you better be a good Gingerbread boy by trying harder and not come here to TC to bash it (only calcified conservatives do that).

Well, I don't buy that mono-partyline. This is an example of bad music. It is bad because it could give you tinnitus even when listening to at relatively low volumes to say the very list. Music by Clarence Barlow (born 1945), supposedly some classical and electroacoustic music composer. Sound perversion? I suspect so. Can this all be good? I doubt it.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Some folks will respond by saying music is neither good nor bad, that it is your task to establish an enjoyable listening experience out of it, and the fact that there is always someone on this planet, maybe just one individual out of the several billion who finds piece X enjoyable proves that a human being can make a positive listening experience out of it. But if you cannot, then the fault is yours, not the music, and you better be a good Gingerbread boy by trying harder and not come here to TC to bash it (only calcified conservatives do that).
> 
> Well, I don't buy that mono-partyline. This is an example of bad music. It is bad because it could give you tinnitus even when listening to at relatively low volumes to say the very list. Music by Clarence Barlow (born 1945), supposedly some classical and electroacoustic music composer. Sound perversion? I suspect so. Can this all be good? I doubt it.


I rather enjoyed that piece. Thanks HC!


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I think whether a piece of music is "bad" or not depends on context and what you want out of music.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

jalex said:


> From my dictionary:


The good = morally admirable is when you are describing something or somebody being good in a holy way.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

regressivetransphobe said:


> We sure do have a lot of different threads about the same sort of subjective vs. objective deal. Whether you think music can be bad or can't be bad, there's gonna be someone writing a thousand word philosophical treatise to prove you wrong.
> 
> Rather than humor that kind of vague language, I'm going to say this: there's such a thing as music that fails to live up to its values, and there's such a thing as music with values too shallow to bother living up to.


Yes and the person writing those thousand words is probably named Some Guy.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Polednice, except in the most trivial of contexts (moody's restaurant, perhaps), good and bad imply moral issues.

Glad we have someguy to clarify that for us. Aesthetic judgments are moral judgments. Spoken like a true Modernist:

"Ornament is Crime." - Adolf Loos

"The producer of 'kitsch' does not produce 'bad' art. He is not an artist endowed with inferior creative faculties... rather he should be judged as an ethically base being; a malefactor who profoundly desires evil." 
- Hermann Broch


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*good*- adjective, bet·ter, best, noun, interjection, adverb
adjective
1.
morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious: a good man.
2.
satisfactory in quality, quantity, or degree: a good teacher; good health.
3.
of high quality; excellent.
4.
right; proper; fit: It is good that you are here. His credentials are good.
5.
well-behaved: a good child.
6.
kind, beneficent, or friendly: to do a good deed.
7.
honorable or worthy; in good standing: a good name.
8.
educated and refined: She has a good background.
9.
financially sound or safe: His credit is good.
10.
genuine; not counterfeit: a good quarter.
11.
sound or valid: good judgment; good reasons.
12.
reliable; dependable; responsible: good advice.
13.
healthful; beneficial: Fresh fruit is good for you.
14.
in excellent condition; healthy: good teeth.
15.
not spoiled or tainted; edible; palatable: The meat was still good after three months in the freezer.
16.
favorable; propitious: good news.
17.
cheerful; optimistic; amiable: in good spirits.
18.
free of distress or pain; comfortable: to feel good after surgery.
19.
agreeable; pleasant: Have a good time.
20.
attractive; handsome: She has a good figure.
21.
(of the complexion) smooth; free from blemish.
22.
close or intimate; warm: She's a good friend of mine.
23.
sufficient or ample: a good supply.
24.
advantageous; satisfactory for the purpose: a good day for fishing.
25.
competent or skillful; clever: a good manager; good at arithmetic.
26.
skillfully or expertly done: a really good job; a good play.
27.
conforming to rules of grammar, usage, etc.; correct: good English.
28.
socially proper: good manners.
29.
remaining available to one: Don't throw good money after bad.
30.
comparatively new or of relatively fine quality: Don't play in the mud in your good clothes.
31.
best or most dressy: He wore his good suit to the office today.
32.
full: a good day's journey away.
33.
fairly large or great: a good amount.
34.
free from precipitation or cloudiness: good weather.
35.
Medicine/Medical . (of a patient's condition) having stable and normal vital signs, being conscious and comfortable, and having excellent appetite, mobility, etc.
36.
fertile; rich: good soil.
37.
loyal: a good Democrat.
38.
(of a return or service in tennis, squash, handball, etc.) landing within the limits of a court or section of a court.
39.
Horse Racing . (of the surface of a track) drying after a rain so as to be still slightly sticky: This horse runs best on a good track.
40.
(of meat, especially beef) noting or pertaining to the specific grade below "choice," containing more lean muscle and less edible fat than "prime" or "choice."
41.
favorably regarded (used as an epithet for a ship, town, etc.): the good ship Syrena.

Hmmm... it seems to me that a few of these definitions have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with making a "moral" judgment.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

violadude said:


> I think whether a piece of music is "bad" or not depends on context and what you want out of music.


Violadude, let me have a little chat with you seeing as you have a level head! 

Let me redirect the question to be relevant to your studies. After all, given your recent thread of judging pieces of music, you'd probably accept that we can get a general (even if not exact) idea of a piece's artistic qualities and merits, right? This surely leads to an appreciation of a work as either 'good' or 'bad'.

It seems to me that this whole 'goodness' and 'badness' thing can essentially be divided into two main categories:

1) Good and bad experiences. This is the realm of taste.
2) Good and bad artistic qualities. This is harder to define, being partly taste, and partly loose objectivity.

I'm sure we can all approach a piece of music where it is good in the sense of number 1, but bad in the sense of number 2 and vice-versa (for example, I recognise Bach as being tremendously artistically creative, but I very rarely enjoy the music).

I'm losing my train of thought, but reply as you will.


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## Guest (Dec 16, 2011)

Polednice said:


> I've defined what I mean by "good" and "bad"....


Wow, really?

Not on this thread you haven't.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

I wasn't even thinking of it but St. Luke's mentioned art and I thought right away, "well, there may or may not be bad music out there...but there is certainly terrible 'art' and crap that likes to pose as art when in fact it is hiding behind a modern wall of sadness; built of a sheer lack of imagination". I didn't tell myself exactly that but something just along those lines.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

kv466 said:


> I wasn't even thinking of it but St. Luke's mentioned art and I thought right away, "well, there may or may not be bad music out there...but there is certainly terrible 'art' and crap that likes to pose as art when in fact it is hiding behind a modern wall of sadness; built of a sheer lack of imagination". I didn't tell myself exactly that but something just along those lines.


Do you think your intuition is a fair assessment of art and music?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

violadude said:


> I think whether a piece of music is "bad" or not depends on context and what you want out of music.


I agree with this.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Polednice, you have to say whether good/bad is a quality assessment or a moral one
Do you mean a piece of music can _do _good (moral) ir it can _be _good (quality)?


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

Good means the individual finds it pleasing to hear.

Bad can't exists here so all music is pleasing to hear.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Probably is good and bad, but most things are in between in life, the grey areas. That's where it gets more debatable & interesting.

Problem is that "bad" and "good" are loaded terms, laden with ideology.

Eg. if it's "bad" it's sometimes thought of as -

- lowbrow - eg. too easy, for morons
- cheap, commercial, a sell-out
- highbrow - eg. too complex
- fringe - eg. for small audience, so irrelevant
- to experimental, taken as disrespectful to the musical legacy of the past, etc.
- many other examples, just pick up a recently written book on musicology/music history, etc.

& what I think of as bad, or dislike is (these are just my opinions) -

- music on steroids (well most of it, or this type of music without relevance to me)
- rehash (or more accurately, pastiche, rehash that doesn't offer something beyond just rehash)
- music that's irrelevant to my life NOW (eg. wig opera, before Mozart came along, chucked out the jurassic conventions, esp. with Don Giovanni)

So there you go. As I said, these are loaded terms, in terms of our preferences, which all hinge on the "grey areas." Just like life, really, or kind of. I prefer brunettes to blondes, and I do have some preconceptions about blondes, but it doesn't mean they're "bad" per se, and I don't choose my friends on hair colour, that would be totally absurd.

Other thing is that people don't understand history, so they make rash judgements. Eg. the much maligned John Cage - poo-pooed for his antics, eg. the silent piano sonata 4'33" - influenced a whole generation of composers post-1945. Eg. Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Hovhaness, our own Aussie Peter Sculthorpe, many more. It doesn't mean they sounded exactly like him, or anything like him really, but they went off the bat of his innovations and ideas. In turn, Cage himself was influenced by Erik Satie, who is also much maligned, as he thought eg. that Wagner was pretentious junk, basically. 

So in the end it's kind of tied up with value judgements, ideology, not knowing key things, etc. etc. etc...


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

@OP

Yeah, just check TC's composers forum.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Rasa said:


> @OP
> 
> Yeah, just check TC's composers forum.


"Constantly caustic" is only a charming attribute for TV characters. You really oughtn't try so hard.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> *good*- adjective, bet·ter, best, noun, interjection, adverb
> adjective
> 1.
> morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious: a good man.
> ...


That was a _good_ post!


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Rasa said:


> @OP
> 
> Yeah, just check TC's composers forum.


Best response to anything I've seen for a while! 

I'm surprised we've got so bogged down in the meanings of 'good' and 'bad'. I just mean artistically good and bad.

To take a literary example: Dan Brown's novels are really, really bad.


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

regressivetransphobe said:


> "Constantly caustic" is only a charming attribute for TV characters. You really oughtn't try so hard.


Come @ me son


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Polednice said:


> Best response to anything I've seen for a while!
> 
> I'm surprised we've got so bogged down in the meanings of 'good' and 'bad'. I just mean artistically good and bad.
> 
> To take a literary example: Dan Brown's novels are really, really bad.


So are Danielle Steel's! Plain bad!


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Violadude, let me have a little chat with you seeing as you have a level head!
> 
> Let me redirect the question to be relevant to your studies. After all, given your recent thread of judging pieces of music, you'd probably accept that we can get a general (even if not exact) idea of a piece's artistic qualities and merits, right? This surely leads to an appreciation of a work as either 'good' or 'bad'.
> 
> ...


Well, the difficult thing for me in discussing these sort of things is that I'm not so sure the 1 and 2 that you separated are all that different in my mind. I enjoy a piece of music almost exclusively for its artistic merits. And artistic merits is kind of a vague term in my opinion anyway. Artistic merits regarding what? It reminds me of a post I made in the Mozart Vs. Beethoven thread, I enjoy Beethoven for his sense of theme development and revolutionary treatment of harmony, rhythm and form, I would say he is artistically merited in those aspects. Mozart on the other hand, has artistic merits in terms of grace and elegance, melody and lyricism, and a very keen sense of chromaticism. Basically, when I listen to a composer I seek out what his particular artistic merits tend to be and focus on that.

I feel like I'm rambling now...I'll leave it at that and see if it's the kind of answer that is helpful for the discussion.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think, as I've said zillions of times on this forum, people are confusing their own self made canons with other canons, the so-called "real" or legit canons, which are:

- pedagogical/teaching canons
- musicological canons
- performance/repertoire canons

What is "good" or more accurately, valued in this present time, is in the three above canons. Of course, these vary from things like region to region, culture to culture, if you like, or ideology, etc. They are not immutable or unchangeable. But unlike personal judgements of "good" vs. "bad," these canons reflect baseline or middle ground/consensus opinion.

Of course, there's the view that all these canons are like fossils of the past, dead as a dodo. I kind of agree in some way, but not in others. In any case, as I said, most things in life are the grey areas, reducing it to good and bad, black or white, is like a false dichotomy, it is a construct of our mind, it isn't "real"...


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

violadude said:


> Well, the difficult thing for me in discussing these sort of things is that I'm not so sure the 1 and 2 that you separated are all that different in my mind. I enjoy a piece of music almost exclusively for its artistic merits. And artistic merits is kind of a vague term in my opinion anyway. Artistic merits regarding what? It reminds me of a post I made in the Mozart Vs. Beethoven thread, I enjoy Beethoven for his sense of theme development and revolutionary treatment of harmony, rhythm and form, I would say he is artistically merited in those aspects. Mozart on the other hand, has artistic merits in terms of grace and elegance, melody and lyricism, and a very keen sense of chromaticism. Basically, when I listen to a composer I seek out what his particular artistic merits tend to be and focus on that.


Yes, yes, that's helpful! Now one final push! 

I totally understand all of the above. It's a largely contextual assessment of artistic merit, which is great because I'm not into comparing two composers of the same period, let alone across periods. However, taking individual composers on their own merits, do you accept that it is conceivable to say that a piece of music might have no artistic merits at all? Or at least hardly any? I mean, just a really dull, uninspired piece of music from any era. Crap themes, poor development, no harmony at all, simplistic rhythms and little form. That's artistically defunct, isn't it? Can't you then call it _bad_?!?!

That's all I'm asking!


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

I enjoy dance tracks though, even though they're music lacking the qualities I approve of such as interesting harmony, counterpoint etc.

But again, TC turns a simple question into a semantics seminar.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

YES music can be bad to me is like the sounds and lyrics-some bad music is like negative hip hop,negative rap,heavy metal and some other CRAP MUSIC.there are some music that is dull and lifeless that is bad.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Nobody bite that bait, please.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Nobody bite that bait, please.


Must. Resist. Sacriligious. Temptation.

Help me, Vishnu!


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Polednice said:


> I was going to make a general thread asking whether or not it's possible/reasonable to call an artwork 'good' or 'bad' (nothing to do with ranking; just taking an individual piece on its own merits). However, my OP became too long, and I could tell we'd all get bogged down in silly details or focus on all the wrong things.


Dear self, today I learned that no matter how hard you try, you can't avoid it.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

violadude said:


> Well, the difficult thing for me in discussing these sort of things is that I'm not so sure the 1 and 2 that you separated are all that different in my mind. I enjoy a piece of music almost exclusively for its artistic merits. And artistic merits is kind of a vague term in my opinion anyway. Artistic merits regarding what? It reminds me of a post I made in the Mozart Vs. Beethoven thread, I enjoy Beethoven for his sense of theme development and revolutionary treatment of harmony, rhythm and form, I would say he is artistically merited in those aspects. Mozart on the other hand, has artistic merits in terms of grace and elegance, melody and lyricism, and a very keen sense of chromaticism. Basically, when I listen to a composer I seek out what his particular artistic merits tend to be and focus on that.
> 
> I feel like I'm rambling now...I'll leave it at that and see if it's the kind of answer that is helpful for the discussion.


I enjoy a piece of music because of the noise it makes, if I don't like that noise I don't listen to it again. I am not interested in thinking about harmony, rhythm and form because they are impressing themselves upon me as I listen. Music is written to have an effect, sometimes even to enjoy, it's darned hard to remember that when reading the comments of some of the musical curmudgeons here. I am not studying music I am merely listening to it !


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

some guy said:


> moody, thanks for your kind words. They do seem a bit tangential, though, which is something you report as not favoring. At least not the ludicrous kind. I sense a wee bit contradiction here.
> 
> Polednice, except in the most trivial of contexts (moody's restaurant, perhaps), good and bad imply moral issues. And if you've read any of the other posts to this thread, you would have already noticed that several posts have so implied.
> 
> ...


Ah! That's better.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

moody said:


> I enjoy a piece of music because of the noise it makes, if I don't like that noise I don't listen to it again. I am not interested in thinking about harmony, rhythm and form because they are impressing themselves upon me as I listen. Music is written to have an effect, sometimes even to enjoy, it's darned hard to remember that when reading the comments of some of the musical curmudgeons here. I am not studying music I am merely listening to it !


Hmm... you might be interested in this comic: http://www.classicalmusicisboring.com/archive.html

Sort by "Title" and look for "Idea and Style." Both characters have valid points.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

If it's Rap or R&B, it is most likely bad.


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## Guest (Dec 17, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Dan Brown's novels are really, really bad.


This is a bit embarrassing for me to have to admit, but I agree with this.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

moody said:


> I enjoy a piece of music because of the noise it makes, if I don't like that noise I don't listen to it again. I am not interested in thinking about harmony, rhythm and form because they are impressing themselves upon me as I listen. Music is written to have an effect, sometimes even to enjoy, it's darned hard to remember that when reading the comments of some of the musical curmudgeons here. I am not studying music I am merely listening to it !


Ok...So are you saying I am listening to music for the "wrong" reasons?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Knowing you very likely. I think you use it as a status symbol.


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

moody said:


> Knowing you very likely. I think you use it as a status symbol.


Violadude has a broad interest in music. I doubt very much that he just uses it as a status symbol......

But yes - there probably are people who have a bias against light and/or tune-based music. That's a pity - just like it's a pity that you seem to have a bias - not only against the music they are listening to, but also against their reasons for doing so.

But take for example someone like 'some guy.' Regardless of if you like the music he listens to - there's no doubt that his interests are sincere. Listening to truckloads of contemporary music and seeking out concerts where they play it seems like a very unlikely activity to me if there's no real love for the music involved. Just doing it for bragging rights makes no sense because the world at large doesn't care and on internet forums other members aren't exactly standing in line to give him a pat on the back for it.

Having said that, I understand where you're coming from and I agree that it's unfortunate that some can't appreciate (or don't allow themselves to appreciate) a pretty tune or certain pieces for no other reason than that they appeal to the masses. But when it comes to trying to understand why other posters like what they like we won't get very far if Lehar fans just consider Schoenberg fans snobs and Carter fans consider J.Strauss fans simpletons.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

jhar26 said:


> ...But when it comes to trying to understand why other posters like what they like we won't get very far if Lehar fans just consider Schoenberg fans snobs and Carter fans consider J.Strauss fans simpletons.


Yes it's this aspect of false dichotomies that I was talking about before. They were all great in what they did. & Mr Carter is still with us at 103! Even that longevity may well be an achievement in itself!...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

moody said:


> ... I am not studying music I am merely listening to it !


Yes, it's that "in the moment" aspect of music that often gets me. Even on repeated listen, I notice different things each time. For what reason I don't know. So much is an unknown quantity re art and music esp. So that's what I was talking about before, the grey areas. So many grey areas in life, good and bad are like opposite extremes of the spectrum for me. Most of the spectrum is in the middle, somewhere between these kinds of extremes. So it's useless lable such vague, subtle things. But okay to talk about them, eg. our individual impressions of them, what we like, dislike or middling with. That's the point of this forum with me, basically, to share Ideas and kind of mull over them, with others "eavesdropping" so to speak...


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

jhar26 said:


> Violadude has a broad interest in music. I doubt very much that he just uses it as a status symbol......
> 
> But yes - there probably are people who have a bias against light and/or tune-based music. That's a pity - just like it's a pity that you seem to have a bias - not only against the music they are listening to, but also against their reasons for doing so.
> 
> ...


With all due respect, I think you misunderstand my point of view. I made no comment about Some Guys taste in music, I have no interest in disparaging his choices. What I was objecting to was the ceaseless psychobabble that appears from certain participants. ( "object" is slightly overstrong). I don't and never have wished to philosophise about music,I probably wouldn't know how to unless unconsciously. I think it is entirely false because most composers did it for money and there's not much philosophy in that. You will find no example of me running down anyone's choice of music, I have criticised Mr.Rieu but only because I don't think he's very good compared with others in the same genre. My tastes cover a vast field but I am not interested in Bach or the very modern composers. However I would not dream of telling Some Guy or anyone else that they were wrong. I had a disagreement recently about film music but only because I did not consider it to be " classical " music, I am having some second thoughts on that subject because a great champion put his point of view to me. Nevertheless, there are some very pretentious members pontificating on these threads and remember I am looking at it from a newcomer's point of view..


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

moody said:


> With all due respect, I think you misunderstand my point of view. I made no comment about Some Guys taste in music, I have no interest in disparaging his choices. What I was objecting to was the ceaseless psychobabble that appears from certain participants. ( "object" is slightly overstrong). I don't and never have wished to philosophise about music,I probably wouldn't know how to unless unconsciously. I think it is entirely false because most composers did it for money and there's not much philosophy in that. You will find no example of me running down anyone's choice of music, I have criticised Mr.Rieu but only because I don't think he's very good compared with others in the same genre. My tastes cover a vast field but I am not interested in Bach or the very modern composers. However I would not dream of telling Some Guy or anyone else that they were wrong. I had a disagreement recently about film music but only because I did not consider it to be " classical " music, I am having some second thoughts on that subject because a great champion put his point of view to me. Nevertheless, there are some very pretentious members pontificating on these threads and remember I am looking at it from a newcomer's point of view..


If I misunderstood your point of view I apologize. Btw, I was only mentionning some guy as a example of someone who's often under attack for liking what he likes.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I don't understand why a few members insist on saying "I don't like 'philosophising'" in obviously 'philosophising' threads. Some people like it. Some people will talk about it. If you don't want to, go and talk about something else in a different thread.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

moody said:


> Knowing you very likely. I think you use it as a status symbol.


Wow...so now you "know me" then huh?

I talk about the inner workings, "psychobabble" as you call it, because I am studying composition in school, and that is the kind of thing that interests me about a piece. Do you really have a problem with it?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

violadude said:


> Wow...so now you "know me" then huh?
> 
> I talk about the inner workings, "psychobabble" as you call it, because I am studying composition in school, and that is the kind of thing that interests me about a piece. Do you really have a problem with it?


Here since November and he's got your character down perfectly.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

Shakespeare, _Hamlet _II ii

[I thought I'd make my 500th post a good one!]


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

violadude said:


> Wow...so now you "know me" then huh?
> 
> I talk about the inner workings, "psychobabble" as you call it, because I am studying composition in school, and that is the kind of thing that interests me about a piece. Do you really have a problem with it?


 Can't help knowing you and your sidekick Poldnice there's no escaping you. I some how knew you were at school I don't really know how ! I have no problem and wish you luck.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Here since November and he's got your character down perfectly.


You give yourself away, you give the impression that you own the place. While Sid James who makes more noise doesn't.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

Come on Polednice, stop asking silly questions. 

One man's good is another man's bad. There is no 100% objectivism here, since music itself does not have to fulfill any functional obligations.

Music is not like a fork or a keyboard or an umbrella or any other object that has to fulfill some sort of purpose. The lack of purpose, or "abstractness" of music is what makes it great.


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## Guest (Dec 17, 2011)

moody said:


> Can't help knowing you and your sidekick Poldnice there's no escaping you. I some how knew you were at school I don't really know how ! I have no problem and wish you luck.


Wow, now _there's_ pretentious!:lol:

Anyway, jhar, what a nice post you made there awhile back about me. Sweet! Now I have this goofy grin on my face that just won't go away!!:tiphat:


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I've been reduced the role of sidekick?! **** that! If I own this place, I'm taking on the title of Overlord. Watch yourself Mrs. Moody or I'll banish you.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

good comment on the subject:


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Polednice said:


> I've been reduced the role of sidekick?! **** that! If I own this place, I'm taking on the title of Overlord. Watch yourself Mrs. Moody or I'll banish you.


I thought I should say that I know you put your heart and soul into your posts. I just like to josh you a bit, don't take it too seriously. In fact try to take it easy and relax more altho' I know you're surrounded by fools who don't understand.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

moody said:


> I thought I should say that I know you put your heart and soul into your posts. I just like to josh you a bit, don't take it too seriously. In fact try to take it easy and relax more altho' I know you're surrounded by fools who don't understand.


Awwww, moody, thanks ever so much for caring you little sweetheart. Don't worry, I couldn't give a **** how I'm treated here. My posts are just intellectual farts, so I hope you come to understand that through my bitter humour and sarcasm. :tiphat:


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## Glissando (Nov 25, 2011)

Yes, I think there is such a thing as bad music. I would distinguish two types: music that is genuine but just not terribly interesting, and music that is an insincere attempt to either gratify the artist's ego or appeal to the lowest common denominator. Because of the way the music industry is so commercialized, the latter type of music unfortunately seems to pervade a lot of places I occasionally find myself in: shopping malls, restaurants, outdoor music festivals, etc. Personally, I dislike almost all rap, techno, country, heavy metal and contemporary pop music but I can think of at least one artist from each of those genres that has made music I've found appealing.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Forum member moody, wordy anti-intellectualism is still anti-intellectualism. Wanting to understand a piece of music in greater depth does not necessarily preclude you from simply enjoying it.

I never saw the appeal in throwing around your way of enjoying art as the correct way.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

In case any of you are still looking at this thread without a knife hovering over your wrists, I have a more specific reformulation of my original question which might help us along.

So, instead of "Can music be bad?" with 'bad' potentially meaning a hundred different things, "Can music be _artistically lacking_?"

I imagine even more people will be thinking, "well of course!" now. It seems like a stupid question with an obvious answer. Certainly to musical professionals and students, the entire basis of analysis is founded upon the assumption that you can assess the quality of certain artistic traits. Those traits may depend on context - perhaps they're theme development or improvisational quality - but you can nevertheless get a feeling for whether or not they are achieved _well_.

My objection was that it seems to me that some people think that this is either not true or is irrelevant. That, if a work completely lacking in artistic qualities is still enjoyable or enjoyed by some, then it isn't bad _at all_, you're just looking at it the wrong way. *My impulse, instead of saying "well people like it, so it can't be bad" is to say "well it's bad, but people still like it."*


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

"Art" is kind of an ideologically loaded word too. That doesn't make your question not worth asking, but it's no easier than the last one. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is: it depends what your definition of "is" is.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Polednice said:


> ...
> So, instead of "Can music be bad?" with 'bad' potentially meaning a hundred different things, "Can music be _artistically lacking_?"
> 
> ...


I think it can, based on a range of opinions, not necessarily just gut reaction. Eg. I don't trust some so called professional reviewers online, they are junk. That Hurwitz guy comes to mind. But there are others who are much more balanced, like our own Prof. Roger Covell. I like the least bias possible when making assessments about music. As well as common sense (sorry, I'm overusing that word, but that's how I can express it).

A personal example is a friend and I were talking about Stockhausen. He said that years ago, a friend of his played him a vinyl record of Stockhausen and it was like fingers scraping on a chalkboard for like one hour. He said it was like horrible. But the Stockhausen that I have in my collection, are works that are not like that, they are not hard to listen to, eg. a piece for solo percussion (_Zyklus_), some quite new agey electronic things (_Pole, Wach, Japan, Spiral I & II_), and also the delightful theatrical chamber piece, which I caught live, called _Tierkreis_, after the signs of the zodiac. Also I have some of his musique concrete and the klavierstucke pieces.

Both this friend and I know the notorious _Helikopter Quartett _and we don't care for it much. Point is that we agree on what things by Stockhausen doesn't appeal to us and wouldn't appeal to the vast majority. But the works I have on disc, I played some to this friend, and we both enjoyed it quite a bit. Even to my family, they said those chance based electronic works were pretty good and chill out vibe.

So moral of the story is that as I said above, what is valued for me as worthwhile opinion about art is -

- about experience of it
- baseline/common sense/middle ground opinion
- informed by knowledge can also be important, not too biased
- exposure to just not one view/work/ideology/style etc, but many, so you know the diverse range out there, you don't just stereotype & make stuff up as you go along
- etc...


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

When Rebecca Black's Friday became prominent in the middle of March, there was an unrivaled, unprecedented outpouring of hatred on the internet and the mainstream internet press.

1. Time magazine called her song the "worst song ever", despite the fact that there are many mainstream pop songs that are far worse. http://www.salon.com/2011/03/21/songs_worse_friday_rebecca_black_lady_gaga_ke_ha/

2. She received a record breaking number of dislikes on her music video and a recording breaking number of comments, most of them overwhelmingly negative and some of them vehemently violent. Comments like "this music is torture", "this is the worst song ever", "talent is gone from this earth", *"she's the type of person Hitler had in mind",* (I'm quoting verbatim here) and variations on these themes filled the comments so fast that at its peak you needed to refresh every 10 seconds to see all the new comments. Sadly they were all deleted when the original video itself was deleted.

While we connoisseurs of Bach and Beethoven argue over whether what we love is really better than the Beatles and whether we should feel guilty about that inkling of elitism we have in our hearts, the general public has no problem thrashing the dignity of a 13 year old girl to pieces for producing a low budget but nonetheless catchy pop song.

http://www.forkparty.com/12198/song...lacks-friday-vs-the-beatles-a-day-in-the-life

And here we are, wondering if music can be bad. Whatta world.

Edit: The period of the most egregious comments have passed, but there are still some pretty terrific one's out there. Some samples:

"My life hurts.
I can feel my IQ rapidly dropping as this song drills itself through my ears.
There is no escaping the pain or the suffering. She is permanently engrained in your mind once exposed to.
I hate this song. So ******* bad.﻿ It's poison to the ears. The only reason i'm here is just so i can share my pain with other people.
I can't imagine, Rebecca Black and those ******* arrow to the knee jokes eating me alive. It just hurts so badly."

"I just **** out of my﻿ mouth"

"ok,, I'm gonna kill you on friday I can't wait!!!!!"

"All I see is a chick with no talent, her﻿ daddy had money to do this video. Wow, society has gone to ****."

"WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF*FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF*FFFFFFFFFFFFFF I WANT KILL MY SELF"

For contrast, here's what some people said about the Beatles when they first came out.

Mark Steyn: "Recently, I was sent a clipping from Newsweek's 1964 cover story on the arrival in America of the Beatles:

Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian-Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair. Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of "yeah, yeah, yeah!") are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments."

"Drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees" is "as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs."

-James Bond, secret agent in "Goldfinger," 1964

"The Beatles are not merely awful, I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music."

-William F. Buckley, author and commentator, 1964

"The Beatles laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music while entertaining in this country during the early and middle 1960s."

-Elvis Presley, as recorded by an FBI memo, during a 1970 visit to Richard Nixon at the White House and FBI headquarters

------------

*Notice how more courteous the critics of the Beatles are.*


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> When Rebecca Black's Friday became prominent in the middle of March, there was an unrivaled, unprecedented outpouring of hatred on the internet and the mainstream internet press.
> 
> 1. Time magazine called her song the "worst song ever", despite the fact that there are many mainstream pop songs that are far worse. http://www.salon.com/2011/03/21/songs_worse_friday_rebecca_black_lady_gaga_ke_ha/
> 
> ...


Ya Rebecca Black is definitely not the worst that record company has come out with, I'll tell ya what.


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## Trout (Apr 11, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> *Notice how more courteous the critics of the Beatles are.*


Yeah, well, those comments were made almost 50 years ago. Now we live in the digital and viral age where people can be blatant and opinionated as they want over the internet.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Trout said:


> Yeah, well, those comments were made almost 50 years ago. Now we live in the digital and viral age where people can be blatant and opinionated as they want over the internet.


You think William F. Buckley would insinuate that the Beatles deserve to be in a concentration camp, even in the most private of settings?

These comments were exceptions; there was literally over a million comments by April 2011, most of them in the same vein as the examples I gave.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Let's not forget that Black's Friday led to Stephen Colbert's wonderfully meaningful rendition on the Jimmy Fallon Show.


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## TRendfrey (Apr 17, 2011)

Trout said:


> Yeah, well, those comments were made almost 50 years ago. Now we live in the digital and viral age where people can be blatant and opinionated as they want over the internet.


Because they post without a care as to how stupid they sound, as the internet is "anonymous"

But really, if your trolling a youtube video are you really going to write a treatise on the matter?


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

TRendfrey said:


> Because they post without a care as to how stupid they sound, as the internet is "anonymous"
> 
> But really, if your trolling a youtube video are you really going to write a treatise on the matter?


They're not trolling. The troll is a contrarian. Everyone was writing negative comments. The people who approved of the video were the trolls.

I find it strange that people can write off hundreds of thousands of comments as merely the excesses of the internet, but Mark Steyn is an elitist for dismissing the Beatles.

The reception to "Friday" is incontrovertible proof that the plebs are the most elitist of them all.


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## Trout (Apr 11, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> You think William F. Buckley would insinuate that the Beatles deserve to be in a concentration camp, even in the most private of settings?
> 
> These comments were exceptions; there was literally over a million comments by April 2011, most of them in the same vein as the examples I gave.


I'm afraid that misses the point entirely. There is also another matter of the people giving their opinions- professional critics vs. millions of kids (mostly). This comparison of comments does not make any sense to me.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Whoah! What a tangent! Can we curtail this discussion of internet trolling on our own, or shall I ask for a mod's help?


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Music can't be bad in the same way that food goes bad i.e. it kills you, harms your body, etc but it can be a fad i.e. lose popularity over time. 

Bad music is simply fad music, or music whose merit derives from extra-musical momentum and the caprice of the crowd. Bad music is simply music that will be forgotten in a century or so. 

There's plenty of fad music.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> Music can't be bad in the same way that food goes bad i.e. it kills you, harms your body, etc but it can be a fad i.e. lose popularity over time.
> 
> Bad music is simply fad music, or music whose merit derives from extra-musical momentum and the caprice of the crowd. Bad music is simply music that will be forgotten in a century or so.
> 
> There's plenty of fad music.


So...does that mean we have about 70 years left to see if Stockhausen's music is really as bad as you say it is?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

yes, listen to my compositions


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

violadude said:


> So...does that mean we have about 70 years left to see if Stockhausen's music is really as bad as you say it is?


Yes.

My judgment is not 100% sure. Just 99%.

Look, if Stockhausen's music catches fire, even in ten years or two years and becomes as popular as Mahler, I'm wrong, dead wrong.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> Yes.
> 
> My judgment is not 100% sure. Just 99%.
> 
> Look, if Stockhausen's music catches fire, even in ten years or two years and becomes as popular as Mahler, I'm wrong, dead wrong.


I think there is a hole in your theory. Neither Mahler nor Stockhausen have ever been popular...ever. What you define as "now popularity" has always existed as people of all time periods have generally gravitated towards simpler music. Really, simple music that doesn't make people too uncomfortable is the true "timeless popularity."


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

brianwalker said:


> ...Bad music is simply music that will be forgotten in a century or so...


Yeah, well problem is, you can't predict what will be remembered and valued and what will be forgotten.

Even great minds of the past like Rimsky Korsakov got such prophecies wrong. Eg. re his student Anton Arensky he said -

_"In his youth Arensky did not escape some influence from me; later the influence came from Tchaikovsky.* He will quickly be forgotten." *_(source - wikipedia article on Arensky).

Today, Arensky's _Piano Trio #1_ is now part of the chamber repertoire. It's often performed here and I'd guess in most places. His _Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky _also gets a run now and then, his most well known orchestral work.

So better not to waste our time and play prophecy games and try to be a musical equivalent of Nostradamus or something, and just listen to whatever music we want.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Another interesting thing is that "forgotten" can be a temporary state. 

For instance, if I'm reading the scene correctly, we're currently seeing a revival of many late romantic composers (Casella, Langaard, Brian, Alfven, Lyadov, Pejacevic, Chausson, Nielsen) who twenty years ago would've been called forgotten or nearly forgotten. 

More famously, Bach was recovered by Mendelssohn. 

And of course the "early music" movement is a fairly recent phenomenon, a few decades old - fifty years ago you would've had a very hard time hearing Gombert or Gesualdo or Binchois, which are now practically household names (if you are in a house where classical music is heard). All of that has been, un-forgotten, if you'll let me call it that.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

What is this, the third or fourth thread today where brianwalker has given this unsubstantiated view of popularity as everything?! Even if we accept that popularity is important, it is not a quality in itself, only an indicator of quality. The real question to answer is _why_ is something timelessly popular, or _why_ was something only a fad?


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Polednice said:


> What is this, the third or fourth thread today where brianwalker has given this unsubstantiated view of popularity as everything?! Even if we accept that popularity is important, it is not a quality in itself, only an indicator of quality. The real question to answer is _why_ is something timelessly popular, or _why_ was something only a fad?


What I meant was that humans ultimately decide what quality is, and that quality isn't an "objective thing", because there's a hierarchy of subjectivity, and trying to find a universal pattern between music that will determine from *the outside, without reference to humanity or to human preferences, will always fail, and we cannot export our subjectivity.*

The why is different from the how, and we're only on the path of the how, that barely, because we do endless music analysis of the classics but then you've heard all the arguments before in the neuroscientific conducting thread. I'm *all for research,* but not for *premature conclusions.*

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger-aesthetics/



> In order to understand why Heidegger thinks the aesthetic approach to art reflects and reinforces subjectivism, we need to know why Heidegger characterizes humanity's ongoing attempt to master every aspect of our objective reality as "subjectivism" in the first place.[20] We saw earlier that in the modern, post-Cartesian world, an "object" (Gegen-stand), is something that "stands opposite" a human subject, something which is "external" to the subjective sphere. This subject/object dichotomy seems obvious when one is theorizing from within the modern tradition, in which it has functioned as an axiom since Descartes famously argued that the subject's access to its own thinking possesses an indubitable immediacy not shared by objects, which must thus be conceived of as external to subjectivity.
> 
> Yet, as Heidegger argues in Being and Time (1927), taking this modern subject/object dichotomy as our point of departure leads us to fundamentally mischaracterize the way we experience the everyday world in which we are usually unreflectively immersed, the world of our practical engagements. By failing to recognize and do justice to the integral entwinement of self and world that is basic to our experiential navigation of our lived environments, modern philosophy effectively splits the subject off from objects and from other subjects. In this way, modern philosophy lays the conceptual groundwork for subjectivism, the "worldview" in which an intrinsically-meaningless objective realm ("nature") is separated epistemically from isolated, value-bestowing, self-certain subjects, and so needs to be mastered through the relentless epistemological, normative, and practical activities of these subjects. Heidegger suggests that this problem is not merely theoretical, because the subjectivism of the modern worldview functions historically like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Its progressive historical realization generates not only the political freedoms and scientific advances we cherish, but also unwanted downstream consequences such as our escalating environmental crisis and less predictable side-effects like the aestheticization of art
> 
> So, how does the aestheticization of art follow from subjectivism? (This is easier to see than Heidegger's converse claim-that the aestheticization of art feeds back into and reinforces subjectivism-so we will address it first.) Being and Time does not undermine the subject/object dichotomy by trying to advance the incredible thesis that the self really exists in a continuous and unbroken unity with its world. Instead, Heidegger seeks to account for the fact that our fundamental, practical engagement with our worlds can easily break down in ways that generate the perspective the subject/object dichotomy describes. Most of the time, we encounter ourselves as immediately and unreflectively immersed in the world of our concerns rather than as standing over against an "external" world of objects. Just think, for example, of the way you ordinarily encounter a hammer when you are hammering with it, or a pen while you are writing with it, a bike while riding it, a car while driving it, or even, say, a freeway interchange as you drive over it for the umpteenth time. This all changes, however, when our practical engagement with the world of our concerns breaks down. When the head flies off the hammer and will not go back on (and no other hammering implement is available to complete the task at hand); when the pen we are writing with runs out of ink (and we have no other); when our bike tire goes flat or our car breaks down in the middle of a trip; when we find ourselves standing before an artwork that we cannot make sense of; or, in general, when we are still learning how to do something and encounter some unexpected difficulty which stops us in our tracks-in all such cases what Heidegger calls our ordinary, immediate "hands-on" (zuhanden) way of coping with the world of our practical concerns undergoes a "transformation" (Umschlag) in which we come to experience ourselves as isolated subjects standing reflectively before a world of external objects, which we thereby come to experience as standing over against us in the mode of something objectively "on hand" (vorhanden) (BT 408-9/SZ 357-8).


My theory on the "why" some music become fads while others don't? My answer is the same as Arnold Bennett's on why Shakespeare is esteemed today.

Historical accidents, such as the supremacy of Humanist Thinking which culminated in bardolatry, is partially responsible, but literature lasts because people in the next generation want to read it, and people who are immune to fads, people who appreciate art to the maximal degree are usually people with good taste, discriminating taste, smart people with power, the artists and the writers and the professors and the musicologists, etc, they influence things.

If the musical community had decided never to exhume Mahler the public never would've known. It was the effort of Bernstein and Mitropoulous in America and Barbirolli etc, in Europe.

How, "what is" "good taste" with regards to music, there's no definitive answer, nor is there a sufficient right now what makes a person have "good taste" except common neurometric correlations, that they tend to be smarter, more intelligent, better hearing, etc, but all the problems and scholarly objections with neurometrics and why "I.Q." doesn't mean necessarily "Intelligence", that platonic thing, I'm sure you know. I actually like IQ very much, much more than Steven Jay Gould.

Subjectivism is the worst thing in the world; you don't choose to like Brahms, I don't choose to like Wagner, our appreciation is something out of our own hands, and no, we don't "impose" meaning on it, and our appreciation of Brahms and Wagner respectively is not due to some bizarre psychological accident, and our perception of the beauty and magnificence in their works is not "an illusion" or something "we're projecting" in the same way that we could impose a false psychological motive on a person because beauty isn't representation. When I listen to Wagner and feel tremendous throbbing down my spine I'm not creating a model of an object, thus it can't be "an illusion", nor am I hypostatizing my feeling as "something" concrete i.e. "love" in the sense that a lover experiences feeling X and then concludes "this is _true love_", I merely note the presence of this wonder and this sublimity.

I wrote this on another forum on internet dating a few months ago on whether one could find "true love" on the internet - actually, it was 4chan, so excuse the vulgarity.



Anonymous said:


> do you think it's possible to fall in love with someone over the internet?
> 
> Suppose you meet a person over the internet. This person is smart, funny, has your same interests, and is actually cute to boot.
> 
> ...





Brianwalker said:


> Yes, historically people have fallen in love over letter correspondence. See; Balzac.
> 
> Whether "true love" "exists" or whether this love can be "real" is a philosophical and anthropological debate, beyond the scope of your question. Why can't it be real? Because it might fail? Because love that is formed "in real life", "face to face", etc, fall apart ALL THE TIME; failure doesn't perforce invalidate the feeling.
> 
> ...


*Beauty appears, it shines forth, it presences itself and flickers, overflowing and consuming the mind but it never "exists" in the same way that "fire" doesn't exist *(I'm using this analogically, I know that we can analyze the objective properties of fire, its temperature, color, etc) just because beauty, etc, is far less concrete than other things and is "subjective" insofar as people disagree about it doesn't mean that it's a projection; *some people have tough skin and don't feel the fire burn, but that doesn't mean that the fire isn't hot.* Some people are deaf, but that doesn't mean that Mozart and Stockhausen are the same, even if it's the same to him. *The person with good taste in music stands to the person with bad taste in music in the same way that the person with bad taste in music stands to the deaf person.* For the person with bad taste in music all classical music sounds the same, just as to the deaf person all music sounds the same.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

"Can Music Be Bad?"

I feel my favourite quotation from _Hamlet_ coming on:

_There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. _

(Hamlet to Rosencrantz, II.ii)


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

It seems to me that your entire argument is a huge shot in the foot - I don't see how you could claim that popularity is down to historical accident and ideas of objective measures are lacking in reliability, _therefore_ whatever is popular is good?!

If you instead mean what I think you may mean, I would say you're using slippery words - perhaps by what is "good", you mean whatever is largely enjoyed by the population at any given time. Thus, if everyone likes Wagner now and no one likes Brahms, Wagner is good and Brahms is bad, but if the enjoyment was the other way round, Wagner would be bad and Brahms good. Of course, another, simpler way of making that point is to say "what is popular, is popular." Equating goodness with popularity is rather vapid - even complete aesthetic relativism allows for quality to be found in neglected pieces.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Polednice said:


> It seems to me that your entire argument is a huge shot in the foot - I don't see how you could claim that popularity is down to historical accident and ideas of objective measures are lacking in reliability, _therefore_ whatever is popular is good?!
> 
> If you instead mean what I think you may mean, I would say you're using slippery words - perhaps by what is "good", you mean whatever is largely enjoyed by the population at any given time. Thus, if everyone likes Wagner now and no one likes Brahms, Wagner is good and Brahms is bad, but if the enjoyment was the other way round, Wagner would be bad and Brahms good. Of course, another, simpler way of making that point is to say "what is popular, is popular." Equating goodness with popularity is rather vapid - even complete aesthetic relativism allows for quality to be found in neglected pieces.


My logic is the circular logic of hermenutics, but that logic need not be a vicious circle. It's a combination of quality and historical accidents. Mahler went into obscurity but was revived, and so was Bach in the 19th century.

Music that has lasted in popularity a very long time doesn't become unpopular, Polednice - there's no example of that in history. After 100 years of *constant or increasing* popularity, music is timeless. I say constant or decreasing because music could be an incredibly universal fad during one's lifetime and its momentum could last generations, say, Liszt's piano playing. We have no access to it at all but word of mouth makes him top the lists of greatest pianists ever. This is the same for bad music that's really popular - it rides off its initial fad momentum.

All the great artists - they are far, far more popular today than they were in their own lifetime. Artists that are more popular in their own lifetime than in posterity are fads.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Let's not even get to the area of woefully inadequate and off track performance, but with the music itself.

The premise is like trying to establish a planet in sci-fi with nothing for the reader to relate to. There IS BAD MUSIC, wholly apart from subjective taste. It IS MUSIC THAT DOES NOT 'WORK' AS MUSIC - those pieces -- lets be sure to add superbly performed -- where even those with no training get, some pieces are quite clearly, as any kind of music, "FAIL."

So after that, its all hyberbole, with nowhere for me, anyway, to go with your construct.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

regressivetransphobe said:


> "Constantly caustic" is only a charming attribute for TV characters. You really oughtn't try so hard.


I think she is being herself, and less cartoon consistent than a TV character.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> Good and bad imply moral distinctions, no?
> 
> Or will for some posters, anyway. A discussion of good and bad in an area that doesn't have much to do with morality (or does it?) will inevitably shipwreck on these shoals.
> 
> ...


Music is amoral, pal. Sorry. Unless you're talking about influential Texts Set To Music, which is no longer a discussion about just music.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I can not bear to read any more of this collective for the most part wholly useless heap of verbal mire over how one judges if a bunch of played notes are good or bad. There is nothing 'moral' or otherwise about a bunch of written and played pitches. There is a quality, even across time and culture, which most people get, atavistic intuitive level.

Replicating another response I've made here, there are some pieces where about any human listener from any culture recognizes as 'not working' -- the notes just do not work well with each other, the thing has no shape or sense, and the overwhelming informed and uninformed global opinion is "Fail." That goes for any genre of music of any culture. This excludes dreadful performance, just 'talkin' 'bout bad selections of pitches, rhythm.

Duke Ellington: There are two kinds of music; good music, and the other kind."


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I used to think outrageously bad music was self evident... Then I found talkclassical and discovered people who steadfastly champion complete noise. Now I tend to wonder if maybe music isn't the thing that's good or bad. Maybe it's tastes in music that hits those extremes.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

bigshot said:


> I used to think outrageously bad music was self evident... Then I found talkclassical and discovered people who steadfastly champion complete noise. Now I tend to wonder if maybe music isn't the thing that's good or bad. Maybe it's tastes in music that hits those extremes.


And I'm guessing that your taste is good taste, and tastes that don't match yours are bad ones?


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Praise be to noise, as long as I can control it.


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## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

science said:


> Another interesting thing is that "forgotten" can be a temporary state.
> 
> For instance, if I'm reading the scene correctly, we're currently seeing a revival of many late romantic composers (Casella, Langaard, Brian, Alfven, Lyadov, Pejacevic, Chausson, Nielsen) who twenty years ago would've been called forgotten or nearly forgotten.
> 
> ...


I've been searching for stuff like this. GIVE ME MOAR!

... Please


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## sheffmark (Apr 9, 2012)

Good or bad?
Right or wrong?
No, its everyones personal taste which dictates what we as individuals see as good or bad or right or wrong.
Musical taste is a personal thing to each of us.
What a boring world it would be if we ALL liked EVERYTHING!


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

How about if I frame the original question slightly differently? Let's get away from this whole notion of absolute goodness and badness or, gods forbid, moral virtue, and instead accept from the outset that this is all a question of taste. Do you think it is possible for there to be a piece of music that is _universally_ disliked by all people?


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Polednice said:


> And I'm guessing that your taste is good taste, and tastes that don't match yours are bad ones?


Some of my tastes are good... Particularly in areas I've taken the trouble to study and think about a lot. But some things I just like that I know are awful... drive in exploitation movies from the 60s, calendars with photos of chimps playing golf, Toddlers and Tiaras, etc.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Do you think it is possible for there to be a piece of music that is _universally_ disliked by all people?


The National Anthem
It's A Small World After All (after the fourth chorus in)
100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall
Little Drummer Boy / 12 Days of Christmas (tie)


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

bigshot said:


> 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall


I'm not joking. Believe me, I truly love 100BoBotW.

What are you going to do now that your universal logico-aesthetical rule has been broken?


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> I'm not joking. Believe me, I truly love 100BoBotW.
> 
> What are you going to do now that your universal logico-aesthetical rule has been broken?


I'm going to call you up and sing it to you and see if you hang up before I finish.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

In other words, you can't believe that we have different tastes unless you verify that we do. Is it that inconceivable?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Do you think it is possible for there to be a piece of music that is _universally_ disliked by all people?


Do you mean:
a) Is it possible to intentionally create a piece of music that is disliked universally?
or
b) Could any piece that was written _to be liked_ instead be disliked universally?

I think the answer to "b" is "no". I'm really not sure whether someone could write a piece that everyone dislikes. Possibly one could write a piece that no ones likes a lot, but tastes seem so divergent that any work would have some component that would appeal to someone. The problem becomes - What would you include in a work to make people dislike it? I can't think of any component (i.e. absence of rhythm, syrupy melody, repetition, noise, jarringly disconnected sounds, even bagpipes ) that would make everyone dislike it.

Perhaps the closest you could come would be to put many short stretches of widely disparate music strung together (e.g. 10 seconds each of disco, Gregorian chants, noise, 4 year-olds singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Eastern Mystic music, etc.). Either that or 100 hours of electronic noise (maybe the repetition eventually drives everyone away), but I think that's cheating.

Maybe that's the next great reality TV show - Who can create the worst music?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I think both a and b are interesting considerations, though I suppose it depends what we call "music" (though we won't be getting into that!). My question would be, regardless of intentions, and excepting the composer's own opinion, could a piece be created that is universally disliked? I certainly think it's possible - for example, creating something that is painfully loud. That's an extreme, and I wonder to what extent we can minimise extremes while still finding something universally unlikeable, though perhaps as soon as leave the realm of pain it becomes a free for all.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> In other words, you can't believe that we have different tastes unless you verify that we do. Is it that inconceivable?


I think it's much more conceivable that people say things in internet discussions they don't really mean just to be contrary.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Especially if they disagree with your tastes. But not so much when they disagree with others' tastes (e.g. those intolerable avant-gardists), right?


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## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

My taste trumps all others'... unless of course I see fit to dub their tastes equivalent or superior to my own.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> Especially if they disagree with your tastes. But not so much when they disagree with others' tastes (e.g. those intolerable avant-gardists), right?


I find avant garde music much more intolerable than avant gardists, but please feel free to convince me otherwise.


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