[Luchesi]

I think the current "orthodoxy" would be that if someone subjectively prefers the stick man, then it's "greater". That's the modern dismantling of "art" in a nutshell.

Yes, 'greater' for that numbskull but should anyone else care? People have all kinds of silly and transitory moods and preferences. They're not even understandable..

 

[Luchesi]

Are you expecting some of us to consider ourselves "objectivists" who would possess "Universal Laws of Objective Value"? And of whom it would be honest to admit that the aim of all this has been to prove that objectively Mahler is the absolute pinnacle of Western music? And that everyone objecting to this are subjectivists who can be considered really bad listeners and who just do not have a valid right to dislike Mahler?

If there are this kind of fears and attitudes in the TC community, then I am worried.

What do we do when we want to learn/appreciate any serious subject, and save time? We seek the experienced and the knowledgeable.
You don't have to agree, but the likelihood is that you will eventually agree with (or more fully understand) their objective approach. Whether you end up liking a piece is wholly separate, and isn't predictable.

 

[Luchesi]

I'm sorry that I used the word numbskull. To me it's always meant willfully ignorant person, but I remember that there are other connotations.
In astronomy it was discovered that our small group of galaxies is located under the right armpit of the Stick Man. So that triggered an unfitting response in me. Mozart probably had a mild form of Tourette Syndrome, but I don't have that excuse..


 

[Luchesi]

A certain member in the past made a good point by posting the following in another thread (something for us to think about):

"All of the factors contributing to greatness are interrelated and dependent on each other. For example, one factor mentioned above is the tradition of received wisdom: belief in A's greatness has been passed down from generation to generation, reinforced by music textbooks and concert performances and internet forums, while belief in B's greatness has not. Another factor mentioned above is the test of time: A seems greater than B because the former's music has survived till today while the latter's has not. But these two factors are mutually reinforcing: if music textbooks have chapters on A but not B, then of course the former is going to have a leg up on the latter when it comes to the test of time. Conversely, if A's music is still performed today while B's is not, then of course music textbooks are going to have chapters on the former but not the latter. Likewise, another factor that has been mentioned is influence: A has demonstrably had a lasting influence on later composers, even today, while B has not. This is also inherently connected to the above factors: since A appears in textbooks and is more widely performed than B, then of course he is going to have a greater influence on later composers than B will.

In other words, the concept of greatness is a complex and circular system. By this point in time it's also a self-sustaining one, precisely because of the circularity. After all, this system is basically what we call a canon, and it is the very purpose of a canon to be self-perpetuating. As I wrote about in another thread some years ago, it is difficult to imagine any canonical composer being removed from the cycle and losing their canonical status, and it's difficult to imagine any non-canonical composer being inserted into the cycle and acquiring canonical status. I don't think the canon was always closed, and I don't want to think it is now, but if I'm being honest with myself then I have to think realistically that it is."

If John Field was composer A and Chopin was composer B, then we wouldn't have to even look at the scores to conclude that Field was better, because of historical circumstances and the ‘preferences’ which had developed.

 

[Luchesi]

I am composing a symphony, you know. It doesn’t happen by itself. Creating it demands huge amount of time, effort, perspiration, cognitive functions, technical expertise and artistic and aesthetic knowledge and contemplation. I pour my whole personality and history and being into this piece of work.

This symphony of mine is deeply and thoroughly rooted and anchored in this world, the very same reality where I have taken a funicular up a huge mountain. This symphony could not happen without the history of music, without the musical field, this very time and place and existing as a human being.

Nobody has to like it. But this symphony is not merely an abstract object or an opinion. I wish people were able to see something of what is built into it and somehow be interested in it. I wish it communicated something of this existence. I wish people heard something else in it other than their own opinion and ****.

Sorry.

Yes, musicians and composers care much more about this debate than non-musicians, for all the obvious reasons.

There are many more of them... so we get into this quagmire every time.

 

[Luchesi]

I would have accepted and even suggested myself that ”the SM approach” would have been a one convenient and practical way of seeing things, one articulation on the matter. One ”mode of being” like expressed in the article.

Nevertheless SM insisted that their approach is the only right way of seing this, just like the earth is round. That’s where the claims became fundamental with profound consequences in ontology.

I will never accept that in the deepest sense of reality and ontology an art object would be entitled to different kinds of laws of physics than a mountain.

An art object status given to an object is a choice made by human cognition. This is obvious and not debatable.

Trying to seperate an art object from it’s natural environment and laws of physics and to give it a totally new status at the mercy of the omnipotent listener is the lazy and selfcentered and naive way of perceiving the field of art.

Thank you all.

I was just going to say that this is an excellent post and then I was going to say something that would get hackles up, so I wanted to delete this post (but some programmers just don't include, for whatever reason, a delete function).

Yes, I think of some people as lazy and self-centered about the subject of music. And I definitely shouldn't do that, because I'm the same way about many other subjects.

 

[Luchesi]

Sorry but No Sale. You, like Woodduck and I, have discussed these matters to a point well beyond the time spent by reasonable people on subjects where there is no real chance of agreement, let alone understanding.. As I stressed to Woodduck, we all agree we love art, CM, so many other and varied things so that it is time to shut it down, Yes? As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. How about you?

I can't prove it scientifically, but I suspect there are very different consequences from the different views that both of you hold. 'Consequences for society and human advancement and life enrichment and of course every individual's potential for appreciation and self actualization.

 

[Luchesi]

Regarding to the ongoing objective-subjective debate here, I managed to dig up what I said in an old thread about it. Here's an extract from the post in which I summed up my position on the topic:



I think that intersubjectivity and the new musicology, which aren't talked about much on this forum, offer a way out of arguments between the two extremes. People here might not know about these, or might be hostile to them as with other approaches coming out of postmodernism, possibly because they don't fit well into modernist notions which are still prevalent at TC (e.g. less restrictive definitions of the canon, interpretations of music history outside the grand narratives view, and music which resists being subjected to traditional methods of formal analysis).

Yes, and we can even say that education offers "a way out". And doesn't it always...

 

[Luchesi]

If Strange Magic has left the thread I'm more than willing to take up for the "subjectivist" side.

The more I've had this discussion (not just on here, but elsewhere), the more I've come to realize that the terms themselves are at least partially to blame for why and how people talk past each other. At the least I think I've found four slightly different definitions people seem to be using when mentioning objectivity/subjectivity:

Subjectivity = Mind-dependent things or "individual opinion"
Objectivity = Mind-independent things or "facts not amenable to individual opinion."

There are probably more subtle definitions than this, especially with objective where I've also noticed a definition close to something like "unbiased."

To me, it's quite obvious that any notions of greatness, good, better, best, etc. do not exist as properties of objects without perceiving, feeling, thinking minds that create values and standards based on what they like/dislike. These values and standards can point to objective features of music, but this is very different from saying the greatness is IN those features that we like. This also doesn't mean all artistic judgments exist only as individual opinions. We do, indeed, have have the standards and values formed by groups whether they be as small as a sub-sub-sub culture devoted to a rather obscure genre of music, or the standards of a society/culture over long periods of time. The latter are valuable in large part because they determine what music survives for future generations to discover. It's fine, of course, if you only decide to care about what music you like/enjoy, but to me part of the reason to engage in discussions about greatness, canons, etc. is to play a role (even if it's a minor one) in determining what music is heard in the future. In a way it's a kind of Darwinian approach to aesthetics.

I think the difficulty of this subject is bound up in the messy tangle that happens in the interaction of subjects with art objects. We experience an art object and our reactions (aesthetically, emotionally, intellectually, etc.) themselves are an incredibly complex web of cognitive phenomena influenced by a billion different things that we can have vastly different levels of awareness of, ranging from our socio-cultural conditioning to our individual personalities and tastes to our knowledge about the art in question even to all of the evolutionary psychology that underlies why we appreciate and value art in the first place.

As far as I know, nobody has come close to unraveling this entire mess, though I don't doubt there are steps being made towards it in science that, at the very least, can alert us to some of the unconscious cognitive factors that go into shaping our aesthetic opinions and values, both as individuals and in a larger socio-cultural context. EG, I find it fascinating that generally people's music tastes tend to peak around their teenage years, with the music they latch onto during that period usually remaining lifetime favorites; and declining as they get older, resulting in the cliched attitude of "music in my day was so much better than the crap that's popular today!" Obviously such a phenomenon doesn't describe everyone, but clearly it's a common thing and must have some psychological/neurological underpinning. It's just one example of how I think science can move towards helping us understand why react to art how we do.

I also think the objectivists have a point in that certain things--like the continuing appeal of the "great composers" like Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and their "masterpieces" over time--scream out for an explanation of why/how that happens. It's a truism that such composers/work are considered great people people continue to think they're great, but explaining why they think/continue to think that is another matter entirely. It could very well be that such great composers/works managed to tap into something that appeals to very fundamental elements in our psychology, allowing them to be appreciated/enjoyed across times/cultures and even by people who aren't well-versed in the social-cultural particularities of the era in which they made their music; but even if that's the case I would still caution against claiming this is any kind of "objective" standard for greatness. What it is is an explanation for why so many subjects think such things are great. You may think that's splitting hairs, but we're still also left with the problem that there is zero music that appeals to everyone, and even the enduring composers/works have relatively little stake in the big picture of all the music out there that people now like.

I would also like to applaud OP for suggesting that we move towards something like a reductionist approach to this issue in which we do try to consider these subjects more piecemeal rather than the big generalities that tend to get spoken about. As much as I'm interested in the subjective/objective distinction from a philosophical angle I do think it would be more useful if we took to discussing the "complex interaction between subjects and art-objects," but part of that has to come with a recognition that the subject, at the very least, plays an equal role in that interaction; that standards/values aren't God-given, aren't found in nature the way rocks and trees are, but are created by human minds with biases and values relative to their time, their cultures, their biases, personalities, individualities, etc. There's something that can easily happen in human cognition when standards are shared by a lot of people within a group that people start thinking those standards have an existence as objectively real as the sun and ignore the fact that they were originally created by other human minds that had their own biases and values relative to the things listed above. It's GOOD to question such things, even if we end up accepting them as our own.

One person says I like this I don't like that. Leave me alone. It doesn't matter that much.

The other person says, well let's look at what's in the scores, let's see what the different devices do to our brain and try to figure out how that all works in all the different combinations from Art. Perhaps what we learn can be applied elsewhere.. As Goethe exclaimed (we’re told) on his death bed, “More light, more light!”.

Which one is the constructive course?, which one is an investment in our future well-being?, which one will promote through education the best music to endure into the future?

It seems so clear to me, but other people approach many subjects as mere entertainment. Perhaps they’re weary from all the ‘schooling’ from every direction these days. 24 hour news and the whole Internet full of answers that are now so easy to look up, …you can teach yourself technical subjects if you're driven to do that.

 

[Luchesi]

Now I’m definitely outa here..

What?

 

[Luchesi]

“I would answer your questions with this question: constructive to what end, and what does either have to do with our future well-being? We're talking about understanding aesthetics, not curing cancer or learning how to do our taxes!”

I think about the children who are lucky enough to develop an interest in CM because it just might stick with them through the decades. Life is difficult and the music can grow with us. And then I think about the kids who have never had the chance.

“I don't see how either approach as you wrote them will "promote through education the 'best' music to endure to the future;" that kind of preservation for posterity falls on choices made by actual educators and, to a lesser extent, passionate music fans like ourselves. As to whether it actually promotes "the best music to endure," that's kinda the issue we're trying to get at, or maybe under.”

I think about the audiences down through the centuries who have had to become educated and accustomed to the rise of dissonance and the more complex forms and all the increasing artistically-constrained ambiguity.

“I don't disagree with anything in your last paragraph, though I'm also not sure how it relates to the discussion at hand since I didn't really mention entertainment VS learning technical subjects.”

It's just that people grow weary of being preached at, with no feelings of a personal interaction.

 

[Luchesi]

I believe Strange Magic does not approach art as simplistically as you suggest. I assume he is happy to discuss details of art and would engage with others about aspects of a work. I also assume he would and has changed his opinion of the value of works based on reading, discussing, and thinking about them. The only difference is that ultimately, he views all art appreciation as subjective. Everyone in the world could believe that a Rembrandt is superior to the stick figure and still view all art as subjective.

As you know, SM and I have talked for years about science stuff. So I'm surprised that he doesn't approach music as he would a subject in science.

 

[Luchesi]

In modern times with the internet making all music of all times and cultures immediately accessible we have less reason to worry about kids not having a chance to be exposed to any music; the more pressing issue is one of time and interest. Most people are happy with music being a background soundtrack to their lives and aren't too picky about what that soundtrack is or if there are other options out there they aren't aware of but might like more if they took the time/effort to find it. This is still pretty trivial in the grand scheme of "well-being."

Not sure what you're getting at with the "audiences down through the centuries..." part...

Do you feel anyone is being preached at in this thread? Or are you referring to some other preaching happening elsewhere?

Firstly, sorry about that post. I'm still learning the quote function.

I'll answer this when i come back

 

[Luchesi]

I'm also back like DaveM but only to chide Luchesi for asserting despite all evidence to the contrary that I am not approaching this subject in accordance to my science-based focus. Indeed, it is because I know a bit about how to conduct science that my approach to this topic is as it is. The assertion that there are "objective" aspects of art other than measurable properties that can be replicated by all perceivers who do not suffer from a brain erosion or deprivation of their several senses, is To Be Demonstrated (and is not).

Those measurable properties, as I have stated beyond misinterpretation, include properties such as mass, color, size, when created and by whom, duration if applicable, units moved in commerce, and polling results that are carefully examined as to group polled, etc. Can't get any plainer.

I know you so I don't think you're mad at me, but I don't see any emoticons..

I only meant that scientists pull things apart and try to make sense of the separate objective facts. Musicologists and musicians and composers do that too. We pull things apart for whatever the immediate task is. We reduce them until we can find something to proceed with objectively

Hand a musician two very different scores and he can probably very quickly tell you which one is better. How does he do it? It doesn't matter if he sounds correct to someone else. He can point to the score and give objective reasons for his evaluation, so it's a level playing field among knowledgeable people. Does that sound condescending?

 

[Luchesi]

Oh shucks, just when the discussion was getting started... Oh well:

I've seen the one with the see-through dress, but I hadn't seen this one.

 

[Luchesi]

My friend, no rancor intended!

But despite all of the verbiage, despite the special pleading for some kind of transcendent trans-physical, quasi-mystical prolixity enveloping the objectivist view, it still boils down to who likes what. It is a chicken-and-egg thing--we hear something we really like (so do the critics and other Experts) and then we begin the process--ex post facto--of "discovering" or concocting all the reasons why we (and every other thinking person) should and must, really, like that something. That is the way it really works. People who prefer Beethoven (poor Ludwig!) are many among the select CM audience, and those who prefer the energy and novelty and acidity and bite of Prokofiev (for example) are fewer in number. Therefore, What? It's a poll.

If it's merely a poll there's a lot of questions left unanswered.

 

[Luchesi]

I did say the color analogy was an absurd one, but it only served to illustrate the point about the gap between an expert on objective features of a subject and judgments or valuations about that subject. However, I would defend the value (or at least purpose) in rating/ranking things in general as it serves in large part to dictate what art is passed on to future generations. I think it's important despite the fact it all boils down to a fundamental level of subjective likes and dislikes.

“I think it's important despite the fact it all boils down to a fundamental level of subjective likes and dislikes.”

It’s true that anything is possible with our changeable attitudes (our every mood is at the mercy of what's going on in our lives, for good or bad), but I don't think I'll ever agree with that quote.

Because when I was first attracted to CM I read from experts (authors anyway) what they admired about Beethoven and Bach and Mozart. I remember I had a couple of books about each composer (I didn't read them all the way through (skimming over bio trivia), I didn't have to. I understood that the approach was constructive and I could do it myself if I applied myself.)
I hasten to add that it's not that we immediately agree with the advice of experts, but that they guide us and save so much time (but then again, to some listeners saving time is certainly not a priority).

One thing is for sure I didn't ask my neighbor or my coworkers or my relatives or even my trusted friends about their likes and dislikes. Do other new CM fans do this?

Well, we do it online because it's so easy and fun to get a reply from the great unknown, or someone whom we admire (but we don't really know anything else about them). What was their method? Does it matter? or is it actually true that everyone arrives at pretty much the same conclusions about the rankings of the great composers or the great works (because the objective facts are the same for everyone, whether they can be appreciated or not). I realize that to some people this can feel like a blow to their own ego. It's a very complicated psychological state to be in.

 

[Luchesi]

Most of the writers here do acknowledge both the subjective freedom of the listener to like or dislike whatever they desire, and that to various degrees music has qualities that can be researched and discussed through the common methods of science and philosophy and common talk aiming at objective values.

In a forumist environment, everyone should be allowed to address these issues the way they want whilst at the same time showing respect towards fellow forumists.

Do we all agree on this? Is there still a problem?

There must be a reason why these questions always come up. I never even think about it because it's such a silly question (to me).

the listener’s freedom to like or dislike?

allowed to address?

show respect?

most of the writers here?

You haven't been here very long, have you seen such things?

Other posters have felt the need to remind us — because they say they've seen things in the forum that are just too hard to take, or whatever. And monitors often agree so I am very interested to know what it is that they're routing out, if only so that I understand for the future..

 

[Luchesi]

What I'm interested in is whether you can demonstrate the above without reference to any subjective notions such as what we (as individuals, as a collective species, or even as just a community of classical music fans) like and value, because this strike me as saying that money has value regardless of whether anyone thinks it does. If the judgment of "well-composed music" depends upon standards we create based on what we like then it is not (by literal definition) objectively well-composed; If Mozart's "mastery of form and melodic inventiveness" depends upon our standards we create based on what kinds of melodies and forms we like then the judgment of their mastery very much is up for a vote and, in fact, that's all it depends on.

But what we like, as humans, is titillating, surprising and very effective expression. The greatest composers achieved this with the available tools (objective) better than others.

 

[Luchesi]

Even though you weren't responding to me I would give a tentative "yes" to this, though there are nuances. I often like to use the analogy of games because there's less emotional baggage and because the terms are clearly defined. Let's take chess: all of the rules and goals or chess are subjective in the sense that they were invented by human minds (they aren't found in nature, independent of human minds); but once the rules and goals are agreed upon we can "objectively" judge good and bad moves based on how well they accomplish the goal of, first, not losing and, second, checkmating the king and winning.

People take the rules and goals of chess for granted, so it becomes easy to talk about the objective judgments of moves based on those rules/goals (especially in the age of computer-assisted analysis where computers play chess far better than humans can). However, when you deconstruct it it's clear that any notion of objective judgment or valuation is inextricably tied to the rules and goals that were invented by subjective minds and do not, can not, exist without them. So is the evaluation of chess moves "objective?" I'd say yes ONLY if we are taking the rules/goals for granted. To me, what seems to be happening in all of these debates about subjectivity/objectivity in art is that the objectivists are constantly taking for granted all of the subjective machinery that goes into producing the "rules/goals" of art.

This analogy maps almost perfectly onto art, and the differences are in degree rather than kind. As an example, the "rules/goals" of music are nowhere near as clearly defined as they are in chess, and we don't all agree on exactly what they are. We may, to a limited extent, be able to agree on certain fundamentals that apply within a more limited sphere of music--like tonality. We may, to an even more limited extent, be able to establish shared values and standards, especially within smaller communities where we also share similar tastes.

A key difference between chess and music is that any values and standards we create are most fundamentally tied to what we (again, as individuals and as a larger community) like and dislike. This is why statements like "Mozart's mastery of form and his melodic inventiveness are not up for a vote" strike me as absurd because it should be immediately obvious that the only basis we have for judging such a thing is the fact that a lot of people LIKE Mozart's melodies and his usage of form. If most people listened to Mozart and his music didn't trigger in us the subjective feeling of liking it (whatever form that liking takes: pleasure, beauty, emotion, aesthetic, etc.), what objective, mind-independent thing would you point to to argue for it being good? AFAICT, there is no such thing.

This doesn't mean that the objective properties of the music have no role to play in triggering that "liking" effect, and I am extremely interested in understanding what those objective features are. However, you're never, ever going to get to a full understanding of why art effects us as it does without also unraveling all of the subjective, internal, intellectual and emotional and aesthetic cognition that's happening within the human mind that's perceiving the object; and you certainly aren't going to get to an understanding of how standards, evaluations, and judgments arise without that.

"To me, what seems to be happening in all of these debates about subjectivity/objectivity in art is that the objectivists are constantly taking for granted all of the subjective machinery that goes into producing the "rules/goals" of art."

I suspect that my main interest, and for me, the attractive premise for appreciating music is that the 'machinery' comes from physics and nature, and surely not from human beings.

Yes, you can't say that about chess, but you can say it about ALL kinds of music.