Steven Schwartz wrote:

>Yeah, but then you wind up with the Max Reger Syndrome, in which
>craftsmanship - and, by the way, a specific kind of craftsmanship, strongly
>related to contrapuntal skill and Germanic symphonic methods and aesthetic
>notions of form - becomes sine qua non.  These criteria themselves may be
>based in the "reality" of the work, but not their acceptance or application
>- really subjective matters, as the discussion on "superfluity" I think
>demonstrates.  What's wrong with it is that one can build solidly but not
>well - horribly ugly houses that cost an awful lot of money and are solidly
>made.  Think of a lot of Victorian furniture and Academic painting.  We
>wind up talking about means without considering whether we even want the
>ends.

I agree with you to an extent.  I have never had the desire to get to know
Reger's music (and am suspicious of those who do).  Where I would put it a
different way, is that it isn't really craft until you get the result that
moves you.  But paradoxically that is beyond craft.  If you don't have that
inside you all the contrapuntal skill in the world won't save your music
from the flames, as it were.  In the case of Bach, I might argue that his
supreme mastery of the craft of composition made it possible to express his
humanity or whatever more fully than he would have been able to had he been
a less gifted composer.  Am I saying you need both the gift to move people
and mastery of craft in order to be great? Maybe.  I think that because if
you take the case of a hypothetical great soul whose music moves many
people deeply, so deeply they can overlook the deficiencies in craft, one
of 2 things will happen.  Either the moved listener has a blind spot about
craftsmanship in music, or else eventually the flaws in workmanship will
become more and more noticeable with repeated hearings until it's quite
impossible to be moved anymore.  For me it is ultimately craft that allows
for further discoveries with repeated hearings.  There's nothing to say
that these discoveries won't be emotional or even spiritual in nature.

>"Does the work move me" is of course more obviously subjective, but it does
>take care of the ends first.

Only if one agrees that to be moved (I'm assuming emotionally) is the
supreme end of music.  And why isn't it possible to be moved by supreme
craftsmanship? Music awareness/cognition/appreciation/understanding exists
on many levels--an emotional high being only one of them.  There are many
people who are quite moved by the beauty of a mathematical proof.  Who's
to say this isn't as much a validation of our humanity as deep emotional
response to music?

Case in point--my wife is currently quite enthralled with a composition
entitled "The Prayer Cycle." I haven't gotten on the bandwagon yet, but
I respect her response totally.  She isn't the least interested in the
compositional aspects of the work, just the raw emotion it engenders.  I
am having trouble with it compositionally and I think that is impeding me
somewhat.  I feel like I should just be giving in to the persuasive power
of the voices.  But I can't get past the feeling that somehow the person
who wrote this is an amateur who knows a few button-pushing techniques
and uses them over and over.  One technique I particularly dislike is the
building up of expectation of a certain chord and then not going there in
a very obvious way.  Now this is not uncommon as anyone who knows Wagner
can attest.  But Wagner usually gives you something to chew on in place
of the chord that never comes.  I don't get that (yet) in this music.

Second case in point: Gavin Bryars' "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet."
Is it sincere, failed experiment, capable of inspiring deep feeling, or
a total ripoff? I sold my CD knowing I'd not be listening to it again,
because whatever rewards I might reap were small in proportion to the time
I would take listening to the CD all the way through, which you MUST do in
order to "get" it.

Third case in point: Gorecki 3rd.  My initial response was pure feeling.
Man, this is oceanic!  It's still oceanic, but having sought more from it
I've come up empty handed.  It's simply not enough of a piece for me to
continue to listen to it.  Sure, I'll put it on occasionally perhaps, but
for me it made its point a long time ago.  But I think still that it is a
totally sincere effort, and I respect that.

>And it may lead us to means - "why does this work move me so," "what has
>the composer done to achieve this end." Ever since I found out that some
>people who know a lot about music dislike Bach, I've been willing to accept
>the notion of artistic judgement as basically subjective and critical
>argument as finding objective reasons to account for a subjective reaction.

You have cleverly shifted the flashlight from the work to the person
experiencing the work.  I'm almost tempted to call you a postmodernist.
No one today really doubts that the processes going on in the observer
are important.  But there still has to be a stimulus for response, and the
nature of the stimulus, i.e.  the work is vital to our understanding of the
total process.  It isn't just personal opinion (IMO!!!!!).  People who know
music and don't like Bach could also be experiencing an excessive reaction
to certain aspects of his musical personality that could be described as
obsessional--the desire to have the last word in working out of
contrapuntal complexity, or completion of cycles of compositions in
accordance with some exterior plan, or his use of symbolism maybe--or his
piety--or maybe they are just reacting to the fact that he always sounds
like Bach and is therefore self-limiting.  Or maybe it's the late-baroque
style in general they can't get into.  Maybe it's too repetitious and
predictable in its use of tonality for some people.  You've heard one
sequence you've heard 'em all, that sort of thing.  I can't remember
reading too many comments suggesting that JS Bach is a poor representative
of late baroque style, so if you don't like Bach you don't like baroque.
All or any of these things if focused on will blind the listener to what
Bach was able to do within the limitations (if indeed they are) of
late-baroque style.  I for one find it curious that a style itself could
be intolerable.

Chris Bonds