
Originally Posted by
DjPooChoo
You should feel special. It's the power of your imagination that makes Beethoven's 9th great. Beethoven had nothign to do with it.
Not sure why you say that. Many people of experience find Beethoven's 9th to be great personally, because humans come from one another, but no true path or objective for the existence of musical greatness has ever been proven likely, as humanity has been more subject to change and evolution of standards and opinions than an ability to locate any static, permanent standard of 'beauty' or 'meaning'. The latter will never happen, as diversification is the cause of all things we can measure.
To give my input on this then, there are
certain people arguing in sane manners that objective greatness exists, and I agree with them, because great is an objective term, it means big or influential. However I don't like to focus on greatness, I prefer looking at subjective acclaim and criticism: Many experienced listeners and critics have noted qualities in the Big 3 they enjoy immensely.
That's it.
Finally, to tie this to the thread question, "Do you believe in total subjectivity concerning the evaluation of music's merits?" the answer is yes. While many of us have similar musical preferences, none of these preferences are objective. Objectivity concerns facts only. The radical subjectivist will continue arguing that these qualities enjoyed are objective to all humans, and as long as their fantasies and fiction writings don't include everyone, they can be right.