Dave Lampson:

>>There is no objective truth about the quality of music because it's all
>>based on subjective perception.
>...
>It's not a very attractive or satisfying idea, I admit.  I've been
>kicking it, hitting it, trying to knock it down for some time now,
>to no avail.

You can chip away at it, but if you persist in framing the problem in
these terms you will get nothing but trouble.  The objective/subjective
disjunction, when applied to music, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and
is akin to the tree falling in the wilderness conundrum.  For that crash to
make "sound" there have to be ears, or the equivalent, because what sound
is, or means, is the aural perception of certain kinds of waveforms, caused
by the falling tree in this case, or the relationship between the waveforms
and certain physiological processes in a biological organism.  Without the
waves, no sound.  No silence, either.  "Silence" also is meaningful only in
the context of aural perception.

"Music" can mean a score, which may lie unheard on a shelf, but
potentially, it has to be something that people can hear (lets leave
out my cats, who seem to like Stravinsky and Bartok, and creatures from
other planets.) Mostly it is musicians or music librarians who think of
written scores as music, though.  Most of us think of music as satisfyingly
organized sound (without getting into boundary questions of a Cagean
sort which need not concern us here) where the "satisfying" part implies
listeners.  In the more usual sense, "music" thus requires a multi-part
relationship between (1) the score (if written), (2) the performance
(on instruments or the human voice) and (3) the audience or individual
listener.  These three elements all pass through the minds of the
composer, the performer and the listener (which of course could be a
single individual.) I make all this fuss just to show that music is a
relational sort of thing.

Now, if music itself is inherently "relational," quality or value in
music is even more so, and calls for judgment (opinion, if you like)
or, perhaps, recognition of the quality on the part of the listener (or
critic).  If someone wants to claim that quality is an "objective" fact
or true statement about the work of music, even if it has never been heard
or performed, such a claim can only make sense if this means something like,
"well, if this piece were in fact performed and heard then some listener
or other could enjoy it or get aural satisfaction out of it; or maybe a
musician could appreciate the overall structure and details of this written
work even without actually hearing it.  But that still makes sense only on
the understanding that the sort of thing the music is, is something that is
meant to be heard and, in a musical sense, understood.

The proponents of "subjectivism" may say that if it makes sense to say
that a composition has quality or merit or musical value, all this means
is that some individual person has some private, personal (incommunicable)
experience or reaction to the music of the sort summed up in expressions
like: "Hey!  I like that!  So I'm calling it good." But even if this is
what someone means by musically good, there is still this piece of music,
outside the listener--because others can hear and like or dislike it,
too--and that composition is not merely part of someone's (other than its
composer if it isn't written out yet) private consciousness (and anyone who
thinks THAT is off the deep end of solipsism.) There have to be things
about the music that a person can like (or dislike.)

Now let me get back to the comment by Dave which I quoted.  I
particularly have problems with the phrase "subjective perception." I
don't have a problem with calling taste subjective, i.e.  personal, whether
an individual has it or many persons share it, because taste refers to
personal responses, and this is at one pole of this relation of a person
to the music.  But perception, unless distorted somehow, is always of
something, say a musical composition, at the other pole of the
person/object relation, and unless we assume that people generally hear
things wrong, why would want to call such perception "subjective?"

In some cases it is clear that even quality differences can be perceived
in things by people.  Anyone with functioning eyes can see that the quality
of the images produced by the Hubble Telescope over its useful lifetime
have clearly improved following the optical corrections and added power
of resolution that it has been given on two momentous occasions, and this
is not an odd use of the word "quality." The differences in quality of
the cabinetry in my home is striking, and could also unquestionably be
perceived by anyone: the cabinets I made to hold my CDs, audio components
and video setup are not disgraceful; they are strong, serviceable and
custom-designed for their function and the size of the contents.  However,
I hope no one would be so insincere as to flatter me that they compare in
quality to the work of a master cabinetmaker who made me a bookcase with
an eight foot mitred corner that completely conceals the fact that there
was ever a cut in that wood at all.

There are two important points I want to make about these examples.  Each
is acomparison of the same kind of thing.  And questions of taste do not
arise.

Can we make a similar kind of quality comparison with works of music? Yes,
we can, if we are talking about the same kinds of music; we can even leave
out matters of taste and say some sensible things.  For instance, surely
anyone capable of hearing the difference between Schubert's Great C Major
Symphony and the same composer's Symphony No. 3, or Mozart's Symphony No.
40 and that composer's Symphony No. 3 would recognize that the later work
in each case is qualitatively better.  This judgment is surely not a matter
of taste; it is flat out recognition of the huge gain in inventive power,
over the time it took for the composers to move from the composition of
the earlier work and the later work, which produced strikingly impressive
results for each composer.

Where you would get into real trouble, though, is if you try to say
whether the Schubert C Major or the Mozart 40th is the better work.
That is at most a matter of taste (if the question even makes sense),
thus personal-- "subjective" if you must, but I would rather simply call
it a foolhardy venture.  That is because each of these works is a superb
example of thesymphonic form.  You don't even have to like Mozart or
Schubert to say that.

To link this up with where this discussion thread has been going,
you get into even more trouble when you try to compare works of widely
different style within the realm of "classical music." The Mozart and the
Schubert aren't all that far apart, stylistically.  Comparing Mozart and
Stravinsky would be more than a stretch.  Better to try apples and oranges.
And if you try to compare "classical music" as a whole to any kind of
non-classical music there is even less basis for comparison.  Saying that
non-classical music is less inventive, for instance, may simply be false,
depending on what kind of example you point to.  And saying it represents
less skill doesn't work either.  I've heard some really bad classical
performances, and there are certainly bad student works, as well as some
truly schlocky popular songs from the early 50's, say, but in general
professional composers or performers of any kind of music are really
good at what they do; and if they aren't they shouldn't be doing it.

To go back, finally, to Dave's first statement, I am tempted to try
rewriting it, for the sake of discussion, without this troubling
objective/subjective stuff, to read, "There is no truth [in claims] about
the quality of music because it is all based on perception." I am not at
all sure he would want to say anything like that, but I will say that for
him to make the other points he, and others here, want to make, one doesn't
have to talk in such terms at all.

Whether one can take my claims about perceiving quality in music any
further than I have is something I have been banging around for decades
myself, but I have mostly given it up because (1) I don't really feel
musically qualified enough--the "objective" consideration" and (2) I
like to think I have outgrown what I now see as the cultural snobbery
and wishful thinking-- the "subjective" element-- that once made me
think I could.  But I will try to keep on chipping away at it.

Jim Tobin