Oh I understand my position quite well, though I grant it may be too nuanced for some. Objectively all art is equal in that it is inert, neutral, reflective with no power of generating light from within that all--all--would see. To this all-reflecting ball we bring our own individual personalities, neurochemistries, histories--our very uniqueness, and endow the neutral ball with its meaning, status, rank, stature, value, etc. Canals on Mars. Faces on the moon, or images of rabbits? Some have observed that you want to have your cake and eat it too. Well, so do I.
I am genuinely mystified that this is such a point of contention. And as I've said, this reality is entirely consistent with the fact that Beethoven and Chopin each had prodigious musical skills. To use Wittgenstein's term, each of these composers played a "language game". If that particular game (and Beethoven and Chopin played different games, similar in many ways but distinct in many as well) is not to your individual subjective taste, then all of the composer's skill in execution is for naught. So, the artist has the challenge, not only to play his game with great skill, but to choose a game that will appeal to many audiences.
As audiences begin to view art further in time (and place) from its creation, even centuries removed, the challenge for that art to remain relevant and compelling ever increases. Yet, some works are up to that challenge. Not that they remain foremost in the minds of millions centuries later, but they persist somewhere in the framework of a culture, and their echo often can be detected, sometimes obviously, sometimes subtly. Finding and analyzing these echos is the job of the cultural anthropologist. They collect their data and try to describe the common cultural values of a society.
When large numbers of subjective individual tastes happen to coincide in a society, those areas of coincidence (which may be approximate, of course) are what I am calling "values". Man is a social animal, and people living together in a society actively seek out common cultural values. This phenomenon can be objectively, empirically observed and measured. This is entirely consistent with the fact that our individual tastes are entirely unique and subjective.
That is why we can appreciate, respect and celebrate the greatness of certain composers and their music while acknowledging the uniqueness and complete subjectivity of our individual tastes. Not everyone will like the music of Beethoven and Chopin, and of those who do like it, some will like it more than others, or prefer the music of Beethoven to that of Chopin, and so forth. No matter. Their art, and that of Debussy and Stravinsky, and Shakespeare and Flaubert, Joyce and Proust, Rembrandt and Titian, Picasso and Kandinsky, Cage and Stockhausen, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg, all contribute to our cultural values in empirically observable ways. India and China, both with sophisticated, highly developed cultures reaching back centuries if not millennia, have their own cultural polestars.
So I say, like what you want to like. Become an amateur cultural anthropologist if you want. A connoisseur of cultural nuances. Or not. That's all there is to it.
