Dave Lampson responds to Robert Peters: >My definition of music is completely listener-centric: music is what you >listen to as music. Many dislike this definition, but so far it's the >only one I've found that's universally applicable. I may not Think the >music that someone listens to is music, but I can't deny that it is music >for them. I'd agree that the listeners define for themselves what is music. However, I'd also include performers and composers themselves. Nevertheless, as Dave points out, a definition of music is in this case irrelevant, as is a definition of beauty. Both Robert and Dave agree that Ustvolskaya writes ugly music. They differ in that Robert thinks that ugly music is the most appropriate for ugly things. >>I think music must NOT contain an essential core of beauty to be music. Perhaps it's a problem with words. I don't believe music MUST be beautiful to enjoy it, but I certainly don't reject beauty when I encounter it. Yet far more important than beauty vs. ugliness, it seems to me, is art that gets me thinking. So, for me, art is not a matter of aesthetics only. Art becomes an object of contemplation for other things (I wasn't a Victorian lit scholar for nothing). What I hope to find in art is some revelation or insight into my life (I'm not an egomaniac for nothing, either) or the lives of others. The argument that ugly subject requires ugly treatment seems easily reducible to an absurdity. A boring subject must be presented in a boring way. An incompetent character must be presented incompetently. This perhaps corrupts the ancient concept of mimesis. It seems to me that any work of art should exhibit competence, craft, and coherence at least. Lear might be mad, but Shakespeare can't afford to be. A work of art is something made. One doesn't aesthetically justify something badly made on the grounds that it's suitable. Again, unlike Dave, I do seem to like more modern and new music than most other people do, but I'd never call what I like ugly (I haven't heard Ustvolskaya). Also, again, the opposition of beauty to ugliness isn't one I normally make, simply because, for me, most works - even most great works - are neither beautiful nor ugly enough to provoke those thoughts. Steve Schwartz