Dave Lampson: >>There is no objective truth about the quality of music because it's all >>based on subjective perception. >... >It's not a very attractive or satisfying idea, I admit. I've been >kicking it, hitting it, trying to knock it down for some time now, >to no avail. You can chip away at it, but if you persist in framing the problem in these terms you will get nothing but trouble. The objective/subjective disjunction, when applied to music, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and is akin to the tree falling in the wilderness conundrum. For that crash to make "sound" there have to be ears, or the equivalent, because what sound is, or means, is the aural perception of certain kinds of waveforms, caused by the falling tree in this case, or the relationship between the waveforms and certain physiological processes in a biological organism. Without the waves, no sound. No silence, either. "Silence" also is meaningful only in the context of aural perception. "Music" can mean a score, which may lie unheard on a shelf, but potentially, it has to be something that people can hear (lets leave out my cats, who seem to like Stravinsky and Bartok, and creatures from other planets.) Mostly it is musicians or music librarians who think of written scores as music, though. Most of us think of music as satisfyingly organized sound (without getting into boundary questions of a Cagean sort which need not concern us here) where the "satisfying" part implies listeners. In the more usual sense, "music" thus requires a multi-part relationship between (1) the score (if written), (2) the performance (on instruments or the human voice) and (3) the audience or individual listener. These three elements all pass through the minds of the composer, the performer and the listener (which of course could be a single individual.) I make all this fuss just to show that music is a relational sort of thing. Now, if music itself is inherently "relational," quality or value in music is even more so, and calls for judgment (opinion, if you like) or, perhaps, recognition of the quality on the part of the listener (or critic). If someone wants to claim that quality is an "objective" fact or true statement about the work of music, even if it has never been heard or performed, such a claim can only make sense if this means something like, "well, if this piece were in fact performed and heard then some listener or other could enjoy it or get aural satisfaction out of it; or maybe a musician could appreciate the overall structure and details of this written work even without actually hearing it. But that still makes sense only on the understanding that the sort of thing the music is, is something that is meant to be heard and, in a musical sense, understood. The proponents of "subjectivism" may say that if it makes sense to say that a composition has quality or merit or musical value, all this means is that some individual person has some private, personal (incommunicable) experience or reaction to the music of the sort summed up in expressions like: "Hey! I like that! So I'm calling it good." But even if this is what someone means by musically good, there is still this piece of music, outside the listener--because others can hear and like or dislike it, too--and that composition is not merely part of someone's (other than its composer if it isn't written out yet) private consciousness (and anyone who thinks THAT is off the deep end of solipsism.) There have to be things about the music that a person can like (or dislike.) Now let me get back to the comment by Dave which I quoted. I particularly have problems with the phrase "subjective perception." I don't have a problem with calling taste subjective, i.e. personal, whether an individual has it or many persons share it, because taste refers to personal responses, and this is at one pole of this relation of a person to the music. But perception, unless distorted somehow, is always of something, say a musical composition, at the other pole of the person/object relation, and unless we assume that people generally hear things wrong, why would want to call such perception "subjective?" In some cases it is clear that even quality differences can be perceived in things by people. Anyone with functioning eyes can see that the quality of the images produced by the Hubble Telescope over its useful lifetime have clearly improved following the optical corrections and added power of resolution that it has been given on two momentous occasions, and this is not an odd use of the word "quality." The differences in quality of the cabinetry in my home is striking, and could also unquestionably be perceived by anyone: the cabinets I made to hold my CDs, audio components and video setup are not disgraceful; they are strong, serviceable and custom-designed for their function and the size of the contents. However, I hope no one would be so insincere as to flatter me that they compare in quality to the work of a master cabinetmaker who made me a bookcase with an eight foot mitred corner that completely conceals the fact that there was ever a cut in that wood at all. There are two important points I want to make about these examples. Each is acomparison of the same kind of thing. And questions of taste do not arise. Can we make a similar kind of quality comparison with works of music? Yes, we can, if we are talking about the same kinds of music; we can even leave out matters of taste and say some sensible things. For instance, surely anyone capable of hearing the difference between Schubert's Great C Major Symphony and the same composer's Symphony No. 3, or Mozart's Symphony No. 40 and that composer's Symphony No. 3 would recognize that the later work in each case is qualitatively better. This judgment is surely not a matter of taste; it is flat out recognition of the huge gain in inventive power, over the time it took for the composers to move from the composition of the earlier work and the later work, which produced strikingly impressive results for each composer. Where you would get into real trouble, though, is if you try to say whether the Schubert C Major or the Mozart 40th is the better work. That is at most a matter of taste (if the question even makes sense), thus personal-- "subjective" if you must, but I would rather simply call it a foolhardy venture. That is because each of these works is a superb example of thesymphonic form. You don't even have to like Mozart or Schubert to say that. To link this up with where this discussion thread has been going, you get into even more trouble when you try to compare works of widely different style within the realm of "classical music." The Mozart and the Schubert aren't all that far apart, stylistically. Comparing Mozart and Stravinsky would be more than a stretch. Better to try apples and oranges. And if you try to compare "classical music" as a whole to any kind of non-classical music there is even less basis for comparison. Saying that non-classical music is less inventive, for instance, may simply be false, depending on what kind of example you point to. And saying it represents less skill doesn't work either. I've heard some really bad classical performances, and there are certainly bad student works, as well as some truly schlocky popular songs from the early 50's, say, but in general professional composers or performers of any kind of music are really good at what they do; and if they aren't they shouldn't be doing it. To go back, finally, to Dave's first statement, I am tempted to try rewriting it, for the sake of discussion, without this troubling objective/subjective stuff, to read, "There is no truth [in claims] about the quality of music because it is all based on perception." I am not at all sure he would want to say anything like that, but I will say that for him to make the other points he, and others here, want to make, one doesn't have to talk in such terms at all. Whether one can take my claims about perceiving quality in music any further than I have is something I have been banging around for decades myself, but I have mostly given it up because (1) I don't really feel musically qualified enough--the "objective" consideration" and (2) I like to think I have outgrown what I now see as the cultural snobbery and wishful thinking-- the "subjective" element-- that once made me think I could. But I will try to keep on chipping away at it. Jim Tobin