Don Satz reponds to Jim Tobin's idea that greatness is a lot of people
saying they really like a work:

>Through consensus, Mahler's symhonies were not considered great in the
>first half of this century; now, consensus tells us they are great.  Did
>Mahler revise his symphonies in the interim? No. Popular opinion changed,
>the symphonies remained the same.  Would you really want greatness defined
>by the "crowd" with all its capacity for the herd instinct?

I should say that while I'm on Jim's side of the question more than Don,
I'd say that Don has put forward an admirable analysis.  I would also say
that the crowd is not always as shallow as Don believes.  Also, when Don
says "crowd," he can only mean those people listening to classical music on
a regular basis.  The real crowd doesn't listen to classical music at all,
if it can help it.

To answer his questions:

1.  There's apparently no other way to define it that makes any sense at all.

>Does greatness have no permanency?

2.  Apparently not.  Historically, the pantheon of the great has not been
permanent.

>Is it just a fad of the moment?

3.  I quibble with the words "fad" and "moment." Some figures in the Temple
of Art - Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Sophocles, Beethoven - have been there
for quite a while.

>Maybe, but I'll stick with saying that greatness is defined by the
>individual while the group measures popularity.

A very Romantic notion, one that would have sounded strange to a classical
Greek, for example.

>"Greatness" means something to me, and I decide who
>and what is in that category.  You make your own decisions for yourself.

Almost true.  I would add that you've got to confront opinions other than
your own.  Samuel Butler (of The Way of All Flesh) wrote an interesting
crank book called Bach vs.  Handel, in which he concluded Bach's music
far inferior to Handel's and added that "all true musicians know this."
As I say, Butler was a crank.  I don't mean that he hadn't every right to
prefer Handel's music to Bach's or even to dislike Bach.  But he refused
to acknowledge the weight of opinion on Bach's side.  I, for example, don't
particularly care for a lot of Mozart (mainly the early stuff), but I don't
say that Mozart wasn't a very fine composer.  If people want to call him
great - and many people do - that's okay by me.  I have to acknowledge that
far better musicians and more adept listeners than I love Mozart.  However,
I'm not trying to be "objective" or "ontological" (trying to know the thing
in itself) because value - which is really what "greatness" is all about -
does not reside in the object itself.  It's something a human being confers
on the object.

Steve Schwartz