Chris Bonds writes:

>I don't presume to offer rigorous criteria for assessing works as to their
>greatness.  What I had in mind, I think, relates more to the composer's
>craft than to individual opinions of value to the listener. ...
>
>That is what I tried to do.  It has less to do with whether a particular
>piece moves a particular person.  That's rather subjective, and can be
>related to a number of factors, nostalgia being one.

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.

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

Steve Schwartz