Roberto Strappafelci replies to me:

>Since I cannot really understand what an artistic principle is, my best
>guess would be "...elevating taste to the level of aesthetic principle...",
>which confuses my mind even furter, being aesthetics and taste basically
>the same thing.

I can see why you're confused, because I agree wholeheartedly with what
you've said.  However, there are people - in the United States, at any rate
- who believe for some reason that their taste and that of people who agree
with them points to something universally true about art.  In other words,
their likes and dislikes are natural, true, and eternal, while my likes or
those of someone who may disagree with the canon thus created indicate an
inability to understand True Art or a weird mis-wiring of the brain.

In short, they mistake their own history and aesthetic experience as
universally applicable.  My reply, in short, is "Which is better, blue
or green?" As I say, I would expect some people to prefer blue to green,
others vice versa, others to have no preference, and still others to
withhold this kind of evaluation until they could discuss a particular use.
The problem with the case of new music is the tendency to condemn the whole
when 1) they haven't heard the whole and 2) they apply such sweeping
condemnation to no other period of music.  It seems screwy to me.

Steve Schwartz