Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site olivej.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!oliveb!olivej!greg
From: greg@olivej.UUCP (Greg Paley)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Discussion (Response to Greg Taylor's article)
Message-ID: <267@olivej.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Jan-85 20:13:33 EST
Article-I.D.: olivej.267
Posted: Wed Jan  2 20:13:33 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Jan-85 04:43:38 EST
Organization: Olivetti ATC, Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 93



This is in response to Greg Taylor's comments on an article
I posted, in which I expressed my conviction that there exist
concrete levels of "greatness" in music, and that these are
objective in that they are not the creation of the person
perceiving them.

Anyone accusing me of taking a Romantic view of art is
quite justified, since the view I express follows the 
"ivory tower" concept of art and the artist which was most
clearly set out at the peak of the literary Romantic movement,
particularly by Goethe.  In essence I believe that a great 
work of art, be it a symphony, painting, play, or set of
choreographed movements, contains at its core a life of its 
own which, although dependent on cultural artifacts for its
expression, transcends any particular culture and the artist
himself.

The artist is, in my view, a passive vehicle whose responsibility
is to convert into physical material an abstraction which
is actually external to him.  His greatness as an artist depends
on the clarity with which he can perceive that abstraction and
the skill and sense of responsibility with which he is able to
transform it into his material, whether it be paint, prose,
sound or motion.

For this reason, I am essentially unconcerned with knowing the
details of an artist's private life or the culture surrounding
him, since I consider these extraneous.

This will be indigestible to many people.  I'm not particularly
concerned with convincing anyone that this is, in fact, true
and infallible.  I suppose if I wanted to support this view
(for which there will ultimately be no physical proof), and
answer as to how it would be possible to not be limited by my
own cultural/environmental biases in perceiving a work of art,
my only recourse would be to say that there are others who have
attained some degree of eminence who think so too.  Specifically,
I would end up using Jung's discussions of the Collective
Unconscious.

I don't think that's necessary or relevant.  My comment referring
to "anyone who loves music" cannot in any sense be equated with
a comment about "anyone with enough exposure" since my statement
referred specifically to the particular situation of someone who
genuinely loves an art form, as I do music.  The statement was not
an attempt to prove the validity of my views, but was, rather,
merely a comment, based on my own feelings and discussions with
other art-lovers, that part of that love is a tremendous conviction
that what is loved is real and "objective" - i.e., not synthesized
by the lover himself.

Perhaps there is a means by which someone could prove that my

>> diagnosis of greatness is potentially fraught with
>> cultural (possibly political) and ethnocentric biases

I won't admit it because I don't feel it as such.  I feel,
on the contrary, that it is the limitations imposed on me 
by my cultural and ethnic situation that prevent me from 
making more than a stumbling effort at expressing what I
perceive.  Is it being "upfront" to admit to things in yourself
that you're not really convinced are there?

>> So it seems to me that I can construct a number of alternative aesthetics that
>> don't have quite such an elitist taint, and might conceivably do everything
>> your aesthetic claims *without* being bourgeois and exclusivist. But secondly,
>> I think I have some more general problems with what you refer to as taste. It
>> seems to me that it looks a little like one of those nasty sense that 
>> can be explained only in terms of itself. Why not discuss the notion of making
>> choices in terms of something other than an appeal to cultural supremacy? 
>> Say, in terms of every evaluative discourse? *Why* are choices about art
>> different than any other sort of choice?

I'm obviously  more simple-minded.  I'm unaware of having ever
consciously constructed a primary aesthetic, much less an alternative one.
If mine is bourgeois and exclusivist (?) then that's what it is.
Although my expression of it is conscious, the development of it was not.
Likewise, I've never found myself actually making choices when being
confronted with a work of art (except the choice of whether or not I
can afford to buy tickets or, in the case of a painting or record,
buy the object) - I either perceive that abstract something that
sets my pulses racing or I don't.

If it seems like I back out of arguing, it's because I don't particularly
care to argue, although I don't mind trying to explain further something
I feel or have expressed previously.


	- Greg Paley