Mats Norrman:

>>For example, what's the harm of Beethoven?
>
>None which I know of.  I wouldn't even hold it against Beethoven that his
>"Eroica" symphony was the model for Schoenbergs first [published] String
>Quartett.

The harm of Beethoven is that most people don't like the music.  It thus
creates a schism between intellectuals and normal people.  This is bad.
Intellectuals are bad.  Intellectuals are troublemakers.  Normal people
are God's Gift.  Therefore, we really shouldn't have Beethoven.

>>Schoenberg?
>
>Because no one in any of the 8 flats of my house, to whom I have played
>Schoenbergs avanti-guard music likes it, and they are all normal people.

Schoenberg isn't avant-garde.  But even if he were, so what? I have
absolutely no interest in the avant-garde because it's avant-garde.
Avant-garde means very, very little in the great scheme of things, as does
"traditional." Neither terms says anything about the quality of the music.
Rather, they simply conjure up boogymen in people's heads.  Everybody
thinks they know what is meant, but if you actually get them to name
examples, the results range from Nielsen to Moran.

>And now, those who like 12-tone will chime in and say "But all people in
>MY house likes 12-tone".

Numbers are absolutely irrelevant to art.  You don't listen to music --
at least, I hope you don't -- simply because most people like it.

>>How does classical music -- listened to by a definite minority,
>>if sales figures mean anything -- affect society at all?
>
>Mr. Schwartz, You make me sigh.  And probably that was the only point you
>had with writing this.

Well, you keep bringing it up.  You claim the music we listen to affects
society.  I simply ask you the question.

>>Yes, I have heard and even read of these things.  All of them are
>>historical categories under which one can list certain works of art.  Now
>>tell me how any of them establishes a paradigm of good art, which is, after
>>all, what the paragraph was about.
>
>Because I have the similar wiew of what a paradigm can be said to be and
>how it "works" like the one you suggested.

Okay, now answer the question I asked.

>...  However I don't think you would ever systematisize a writer like
>say Hafiz under "Western European tradition of art".

Of course I would, because Hafiz has influenced that tradition, especially
in the late 19th century and in the 1960s and 1970s US.  The "deep image"
school of American poetry came under Hafiz's (and Persian poetry in
general) influence, just as the late 19th century and the Twenties were
influenced by Japan.

>The issue about eternal aesthetic principles is then a bit trickier.
>The question is here why all horses look like horses, or better said: our
>ability so percieve visuals and audials stem from that man developed in a
>certain milieu under certain condictions.  Kierkegaard said that "nature is
>incredibly detailed", and this is an important observation.  Variation
>in detail has always been important as the world shall proceed.  Back to
>percieving it is interesting to argue that there is a certain form on
>conscensus, that I think you have to agree with.

Agree with it?  I don't even understand it.

>And that is that many people think a rose smells fresh (or which postitive
>adjective they might use to express their experience smelling it).

Actually, the smell of roses makes me slightly ill.

>On the other hand few would agree on that (excuse me) shit smells
>particulary nice.

Depends on what I eat.

>I think Mr.Schwartz would be so kind to agree on this meaning of
>conscensus, but perhaps when Mr.Schwarz has read his daily list posts, he
>walkes out in his kitchen and cooks a pile of shit for his plate instead
>of a roast beef=?

How clever of you.  You've been told by several people, not just by me,
that we happen to like certain music that few others like (I won't make
this incredibly complicated by pointing out that few others like classical
music at all).  You choose to ignore it and argue for some sort of
"naturalness" of aesthetic taste.  Indeed, then you -- by associative leap
-- equate aesthetic taste with physical taste and, indeed, with physical
harm.  You have obliged yourself to showing the physical harm of listening
to X.  Good luck.

>>and that this says absolutely nothing about a paradigm of artistic goodness.
>
>Jo, as a paradigm of artistic goodness can only be said to be actively
>valid bound in time and geographical location.  You said this with the
>words: "It seems to me that the paradigm is only historically, rather
>than Platonically, true, only for a brief moment".  I mean roughly the
>same thing.

In that case, I question the aesthetic (rather than the historical) value
of a paradigm, valid for, perhaps, only months.

Steve Schwartz