Robert Clements wrote in reply to me:

>>I think music does not have to be beautiful.  It is art: art wants to
>>express and sometimes it wants to express things which are not beautiful,
>>things like anger, grief, ugliness, crime, jealousy etc.  Then the music
>>must not be beautiful.
>
>But that which is not beautiful is not necessarily art; otherwise we
>would place landfills on museums (there are some museums, admittedly...).

I didn't say that everything which is not beautiful is necessarily art.
(Things which we consider to be beautiful are also not necessarily art.)
I just said that an artist who wants to express something unpleasant has
the right to use unpleasant artistic means.

Robert Peters
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