Larry Sherwood wrote:

>Dave Lampson- our esteemed moderator who richly deserves the many recent
>notes of appreciation for moderating this list (to which the writer adds
>his own [now is it safe for me to go on the attack?])- writes:

Oh, give me a break already.  A strongly argued idea is not an "attack".:-)

>>There is no objective truth about the quality of music because it's all
>>based on subjective perception.
>
>I don't believe that, and I think if I did, I would be so attracted to
>this genre we call CM and which some blue ribbon panel called one of the
>200 great inventions of mankind.

Well, I feel compelled to point out that by invoking what we believe, or
what a blue-ribbon panels tells us, we are firmly in subjective territory.

>Take the proverbial visitor- Mr. K- from the planet Klatu in a galaxy
>far far away.  He- "he" by default, not biological role- might be puzzled
>by Earthling music.  Suppose he tried comparing the music central to this
>list with that of, oh Madonna or the latest rap star, or even Brian Wilson.
>Irrespective of Mr. K's hearing and audial processing, I think he would
>recognize a certain banality in the rap genre as compared with, say, the
>music of Bach, Lizst, or Simpson.

I'm afraid the problems with this proposal are rife.  First, Klatu is going
to apply the processes and criteria to this task that have been designed
into him.  This programming presumably came from mortals, not Gods, and
therefore is subject to perceptual restrictions, just as are Earth people,
those these limitations might be quite different.  A determination of
banality - a value judgement that is itself completely subjective - would
be derived from the subjective programming created by Klatu's creators.

I should probably state at this point that I am not arguing for cultural
relativity, or the idea that all art is created equal.  What I'm saying
is that determining quality in music is a judgement based on personal
philosophies, cultural conditioning, and a variety of other issues that
are all subjective, personal, and therefore highly subject to imprecision
or flat-out error.

If we recognize the possibility of error in these judgements, as we
must when discussing non-objective issues, then we do ourselves no good
by making grand sweeping claims about the quality of this or that music,
especially when talking about huge, often amorphous, categorizations.
Further, if we cause ourselves to believe that because we know some good
music we know it all, or that only the music we like has value, then we're
headed down a slippery slope that not only muddies our own thinking, but
completely destroys our credibility with lovers of other music.  When we
lose credibility, our ideas lose viability, and ultimately this reflects
back on the music.

There are many factors that have contributed to the marginalization of
classical music in our own times.  I happen to think a pervasive snobbism
that ultimately makes us appear uninformed, or in the extreme bigoted, has
been an on-going issue.

Dave
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