Bob Draper wrote:

>Chris Bonds wrote about composers merits in the baroque and finshed up:
>
>>Popularity and personal preference are not necessarily the only things to
>>consider when ranking composers, a process I find odious anyway.  There
>>is what I call musical truth, but I don't know what others call it.
>
>I agree with most of what you said in your post Chris.  But I think that
>odious is possibly too strong a word here.  Perhaps tedius?

Not too strong a word, but admittedly inappropriate.  I don't HATE doing
it, I think it serves no purpose.  So the correct word is "pointless." Why?
Because after you've made your ranked list, what good is it? I may say,
well, I have my reasons for putting one composer over another.  And when
Don Satz writes:

>Whatever we might call it [truth], where are we going to find it? I
>contend that it can only be found within each of us.  I have my musical
>truth, and it only applies to me and is germane to me.  Another person can
>*adopt* my musical truth, but that's just the lazy way to handle it.  And,
>I see an individual's sense of musical truth as being the foundation for
>personal preference.  If Chris is aware of any other source where musical
>truth can be found, I'll go there promptly.  At this point, it would be
>like looking for the Holy Grail.

he seems to be saying that all we can ever have is our own reasons, which
we call "truth." Then of what possible interest could they be to anyone
else? If by chance we value a composer or work for the same (or closely
similar reasons), we may be drawn closer.  But I digress...  so I make my
list of reasons why X is greater than Y (not to be confused with "I like X
better than Y") and feel somehow justified, as though I've accomplished
something.  What I've accomplished is that I have thought about some things
I consider important in music, and decided which composer exemplifies those
qualities more.  The act has given focus to my thoughts about what I think
important in music.  So these things represent truth TO ME by virtue of my
finding them important.  So far Don (I think) would go along.  But I would
go farther and suggest that the notion of shared importance is vital to a
robust community of art lovers.  If all art is personal (in the way that
I think Polanyi argued for knowledge in general), then it's not really
possible to sustain community through art.  I believe this has been the
prevailing state of affairs in much of the 20th century.

You may have to discover on your own whether composer X enhances your
life.  But (importantly) how this takes place depends on the humanly
important qualities residing in the music.  I wonder if Don believes that
these do not reside in music but that we ASSIGN them to music (looking
for "meaning") from our personal perspective.  I would disagree with that
analysis.  I believe they reside in the music because the composer put them
there when he or she made the music.  They are there whether we recognize
them or not.  When we pick up on those qualities communication has taken
place.

>But, musical truth? I would like to hear your definition of this.

It's easier for me to talk about "truth in performance" than truth in
composition, but I'm not sure why.  Truth in performance happens when you
do all the right things without trying--and with power and intensity.  You
have become the music.  Audiences can sense when that happens and that is
what gets standing ovations.  The music pours forth in a seamless thread of
feeling and concentration from beginning to end and the audience gets roped
into it.  I suppose truth in composition comes when a piece just "goes."
The right things happen at the right time.  You never feel like you've been
"had" or deceived when it's over.  Created art orders the universe.  Cage
tried to make us experience "nature in her manner of operation." I.E.
without our imposing any order on her.  Nice idea but I think he missed
the boat.

Chris Bonds