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