Juozas Rimas:

>I will probably digress from the initial point.  Joseph's opinion about
>John Cage seems to coincide with mine and, starting this thread, I was
>actually expecting a better developed idea of what I wanted to say.  I
>think that people who claim to love Cage's music must deliberately or
>unconsciously force themselves to believe they really feel the affection.

Oy vey!  as my grandma used to say.  I hold no special affection for John
Cage's work, but I would never presume to question someone's sincerity as
they reacted to it.  As Felix Delbrueck pointed out, this is an offshoot of
the "truth" of music.  My corollary: Because *I* don't find it interesting
or moving, no one else can.  Again, this same general criticism was
leveled against Brahms well past the composer's lifetime.  Let me suggest
Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective - a compendium of great composers'
bad reviews, many of which were probably read by the composers themselves.
I think it should disabuse anyone of the idea of the Eternal Pantheon of
Art.

>A trace of snobism can be observed here.  In every kind of modern art
>(especially in painting!) there are charismatic personalities to be adored
>by the formula of "a connoisseur has told me it's good so it must be good".

Sure.  And there are also people who love it.  What about the connoisseur
himself? It's possible, I suppose, that he would promote something he in
truth disliked - careerism is everywhere - but I doubt this to be true in
every case.  A connoisseur, among other things, is someone who's seen a lot
of different paintings and heard a lot of different music.  They have
experience with art most people have almost no acquaintance with.  They've
even thought about it seriously, unlike the person who says the equivalent
of "My 3-year-old can do better" and goes on to other things.  Are they
every single one of them liars, hypocrites, and snobs? That's a rhetorical
question.

>Authoritative teachers can almost hypnotically persuade their students that
>those vague and ugly blobs of paint on linen are deep and meaningful.

Perhaps to some authoritative teachers, those blobs of paint *are* deep
and meaningful - perhaps to some students as well.  Why deny them the
sincerity of their response? Let me turn it around.  Let's say I absolutely
cannot abide Bellini's music or, truth be told, a great deal of Schumann.
However, why would I impute the sincerity of those who claim to love
Bellini or Schumann? I'd have to have an unshakeable belief in the
"correctness" of my taste.  If a person eats brussels sprouts and says
he likes brussels sprouts, an unreasonable response, it seems to me, is
"You're lying or a self-deluded snob."

>It's always interesting to observe people trying to criticize Mozart.  Why
>do they choose this composer? "The most overrated composer" is a frequent
>label.  I'd be really glad if someone explained to me why it's so.

I don't think Mozart overrated, even though much of his stuff puts my
dandruff to sleep.  On the other hand, there's an awful lot of Mozart and
a fair amount of it is astonishingly good.  On the other hand, he may be
overrated by people who know only two classical composers: Mozart and
Pachelbel.  Furthermore, if I believed Bach better than Mozart (although
why anyone would bother to rate them is beyond me), I might resent someone
calling Mozart "the perfect composer" or "the world's greatest" -
Mozartolatry.

>If he'd lived another 20 years or so he'd probably have become
>the greatest composer ever.

If baby buggies had three wheels, they'd be tricycles, as my grandpa was
fond of remarking.  I'm interested.  How would you go about finding out
who the greatest composer was/is? If Mozart weren't the greatest composer,
would you stop listening to him?

>Superlatives in a text about music never appealed to me.  In the above
>sentence Joseph states that Mozart "is not number one".  Maybe he regards
>Beethoven as number one, maybe other great composer.  "The best composer",
>"the greatest ever", "number one", "second-best composer of the romantic
>era"...  Value of music shouldn't be measured in numbers.  It's not a sport
>and there can be no world records.

I agree.  But I doubt anyone measures the value of music by numbers.

Steve Schwartz