Robert Peters wrote:

>I think music does not have to be beautiful.

I think music must contain an essential core of beauty, or it's not music.

>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.

So novels, movies, paintings, sculptures, etc.  that deal with these issues
must themselves be ugly too? I don't buy that.  Just as I don't believe
music has to be ugly to portray the unattractive components of human
existence.

>Then the music must not be beautiful.

See above.  It's interesting:  I've seen this claimed over and over again,
yet I've never seen anything approaching a compelling (if not convincing)
argument.  Modern music lovers use this idea all the time as if it was some
sort of self-evident truth.  I don't believe it is.

>I do not want to find Tosca's screaming at the end of Puccini's opera
>beautiful: it has to be ugly, terrifying.

There are many types of beauty.  Would you want this sung by someone with
an ugly voice?

>And, yes, modern music cannot sound like Mendelssohn because we do live in
>different, less harmonic, much more disturbing times.

I don't buy this either, sorry.  Death, suffering, anger, grief, ugliness,
crime, jealousy, hate, betrayal, etc.  all existed back then in good
measure.  I think it's just an excuse for artists without an aesthetic
sense, and there do seem to be plenty of those.  Life was miserable back
in Mendelssohn time as well, yet their art rose above it.  This century
we've often decided to wallow in it.  I have no interest in immersing
myself in ugliness, I get enough of it in my everyday life.  I need
art that is striving to reach beyond the mundane, to elevate the human
condition.  Not only is this requirement nebulous, it's damn difficult
to fulfill.  But that's no excuse.

>That is why Lloyd-Webber is so disappointing: because the music is too
>smooth and "beautiful" to be true.

Millions disagree, including me, though I know that's de rigueur in
classical music circles.  His music is exactly what it needs to be for
what it is, and that's why it's so successful.

For music to have any meaning for me (and I suspect for most classical
music lovers), it must have a strong aesthetic component.  It's what drew
most of us to this music in the first place, and why so many of us feel
betrayed by modern styles.  This is not to say that music must be all about
beauty.  Unrelenting beauty, just like unrelenting ugliness, is difficult
to take in the long term.  For me art lies in the balance between the two.
Some can sit through an hour of ugly sounds for a fifteen second resolution
into beauty (if we are so lucky) and be satisfied.  I'd rather it be the
other way around.  One of my favorite quotes, which I think applies to a
lot of issues beyond art, is by Francis Bacon, and it goes something like
"Nature hath no great beauty without some strangeness in the proportion".
I really believe this.  It's the sprinkling of the unexpected, the unusual,
that allows us to put into perspective what has come before.  A work that
is all strangeness in the proportion is ineffective, for me, because there
is no perspective.

I realize I might be opening up old wounds here, but that is not my
intention.  As I have stated before, I think we all perceive music so
differently, it's a wonder we can agree on it at all, much less discuss
it semi-rationally.  I just rail at the idea that "music of our time"
shouldn't be beautiful, or that music that is beautiful is by definition
old-fashioned or backward-looking.  This is just my take, and I don't
propose it as a universal dictum, and I don't believe my personal
definition of beauty should be everyones.  I just truly do not understand
this seeking out and glorification of ugliness.

Dave
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