This is one of a long string of posts on aesthetic questions that I periodically return to--possibly because I like to live dangerously! Let's look at a couple of statements about taste. First, from Pablo Picasso:
“Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.”
Very sensible thing to say for a modernist painter pursuing new avenues and techniques. The last thing he wants is some old fuddy-duddy telling him what he can or cannot do. But let's set aside this a essay that takes up the question from a more neutral position: On Taste from the Claremont Review.
...the very notion of taste contains within itself two ideas in constant tension. First, taste is always personal: a judgment, but one’s own judgment. The idea derives from our physical sense of taste. It takes no great powers of observation to notice that different people prefer different foods. I like cilantro, you do not. As the Latin tag has it, de gustibus non est disputandum—there is no disputing about tastes.
And yet, however much we have a right to our own likes and dislikes, such judgments are often measured against a standard. For instance, the man who refuses to eat spinach or asparagus is unlikely to be considered a discerning judge of fine food. These two principles—the autonomy of the individual taste and the existence of some broader principle of excellence—are perpetually at odds. Each of us navigates between them, sometimes vindicating our own preferences, other times yielding to (and perhaps learning from) the taste of others.
When you look at it more closely you see that artists themselves are constantly making their own judgments--how else could they possibly function? I have sometimes used Jordan Peterson's metaphor of the campfire in the wilderness. The job of artists is to venture out from the comforting light and warmth of the campfire into the surrounding dark, perhaps taking a brand from the fire to light the way. You can certainly overwork the metaphor, but it captures an important part of the creative process: you have to venture into the unknown to find new things with which to create new art. But the newness is only part of the puzzle. You also have to take the new thing and work it into an art object. Perhaps this process is raw with really new ideas, but the artist has to use judgment all the time in selecting, modifying and developing whatever he may encounter away from the campfire.
The act of judgment is not only necessary to the creative artist, it is also part of what performers, critics and audiences do. A performer chooses one new concerto to learn for the coming season--out of a hundred possibilities. How? Through aesthetic judgment. The music director of the orchestra chooses certain repertoire over other repertoire through aesthetic judgment as well. Ok, sure, these days the marketing department may be demanding more pop, but that is just one more thing that needs to be judged. Then come the audience--they purchase tickets according to their best judgment as to what programs they will most enjoy. And so on.
What is the role of taste in all this? You might say that taste is just one way of looking at judgment. Good taste is either the enemy of creativity, as Picasso said, or perhaps taste that is based on good judgment. Sure, there is a good deal of personal or subjective reaction in judgments of taste and people often find it pleasurable to assert their independence from consensus judgments of taste. But it seems to be the case that taste is something that can be developed through increased exposure, study of history, study of the materials and practices of art and so on. Every music appreciation class, and indeed music education in general, is based on the idea that one's perceptions can be made more acute and sensitive.
Someone who has no taste or poor taste is perhaps someone who has no interest in art or who is inherently insensitive to it. More from the Claremont Review essay written by Thomas Kaminski:
Those who see what is going on in an Old Master painting “without being told” can do so only because they already know something about the form. Art is never transparent. There are no wholly intuitive responses to it, not even to the Old Masters. We assume, perhaps rightly, that anyone can enjoy the beauty of a sunset or the scent of peonies: the pleasures of nature must certainly be available to all. But the response to art is different. Art is not a part of the natural world; it is a human contrivance, and to appreciate it we must undergo some form of acculturation. Before Western music conquered the world, the shamisen (a three-stringed traditional instrument) would have sounded as natural to Japanese ears as the guitar does to our own. But nature had nothing to do with it: we hear a culture’s vibrations in the strings of each instrument. No one, in fact, is born a connoisseur of Old Master paintings, just as no one is born a reader of Alexander Pope or a devotee of Mozart. Our responses to art involve both nature and nurture, an inherent sensitivity shaped by experience. Taste must always be trained.
This is fairly obviously true; but at the same time it is like a truth that no-one wants to admit in public as it not only smacks of elitism, it is based on several things that are anathema to our current thinking. Everyone's taste is equal to everyone else's, there can be no hierarchy of value in the arts because that somehow goes against equity, and this is all probably somehow racist. Best not to even mention taste!
But it is something that we use every day. And it is something that is constantly changing as our experiences change.
Here are the Haydn Variations by Brahms played by Anastasia Gromoglasova and Lyubov Gromoglasova:
25 comments:
It's easy to sneer: "Everyone's taste is equal to everyone else's, there can be no hierarchy of value in the arts because that somehow goes against equity, and this is all probably somehow racist." But the fact is that in Europe, the US, and their colonies, the idea of objective artistic quality has been consistently used to elevate Western Europe's cultural products over those of the rest of the world. Within the US, it takes an enormous amount of effort to sustain a belief in the superiority of Western European music over African-American music, especially since the African-American stuff is so consistently popular. Not every classical music partisan has to be racist, but you can not look at the history of aesthetic music education and seriously deny that racial dynamics are at work.
It was quite a shock for me to get to college and hear a jazz professor say that Duke Ellington was the best composer of the twentieth century. Not the best jazz composer, the best composer, period. Once you hear someone say something like that, it opens the door to a lot of doubts that can't be silenced. On what basis should anyone believe that Ellington is better than, say, Stravinsky or Schoenberg or whoever? Ellington wrote a lot of dance music, which in my opinion supports the idea of his being better than Schoenberg. Who is to say that I'm wrong? On what basis? What is there to point to other than just the speaker's ability to command or persuade a consensus? What is in the music that compels a judgment one way or the other? What is there in any music?
By the way, I agree that taste changes in response to education. But there is no special reason why education has to evolve taste in any particular direction. It depends who is doing the educating, who is receiving the education, what is going on in the world around them.
It seems to me that your jazz professor had a very definite notion of a value hierarchy in music. What was it based on?
It was based on his belief that jazz was the condition to which all other music aspires. That belief is a highly subjective one, but no more or less subjective than any other hierarchy of value one might choose to have.
It’s not about a taste. It’s about the character:)
———————
From ‘History of Western Music’ 9th ed, by Burkholder
“Plato and Aristotle both argued that education should stress gymnastics (to discipline the body) and music (to discipline the mind). ln his ‘Republic’, Plato insisted that the two must be balanced, because too much music made one weak and irritable while too much gymnastics made one uncivilized, violent, and ignorant. Only certain music was suitable, since habitual listening to music that roused ignoble states of mind distorted a person's character.”
I suppose education or, even better, STUDY of music would normally result in better taste within the genres studied, simply by having a deeper appreciation for what goes into making it and a familiarity with a wider range of examples. The qualitative and comparative elements of taste require broad and deep exposure. Most genres include at least some music I could enjoy, and my favorite artists range from classical and early music to jazz, rock and country. I must have at least some taste because I definitely have preferences and about 6,000 CDs. But do I have "good" taste? Well certainly I think I do!!! But in the end it remains subjective, based on how the musics make me feel, perhaps taste is also a bit of a personality test.
Without wading too deep into the politicization of music and aesthetics, there was recently for me an experience that made me think deeper about how much I really do love the European music tradition the most, and appreciate what a rich legacy is there. I went to a local museum of Native American culture and finally appreciated just how primitive their music must have been. The paucity of musical instruments is no surprise considering neither did they have writing, metal work, or glass, no universities or factories. This was at a time when Europe had pipe organs, stringed and wind instruments, a repertoire of notated compositions, great scholas of singers, etc. Such contrasts are not about so-called "race" but rather about development of cultures in a specific place over long periods of time. Perhaps it could be argued the native American cultures had other qualities preferable over the European societies, but here we limit ourselves to music and I think here the European tradition is TRULY great. Whatever music native Americans made would have been close to the hearts and experiences of people in those cultures (and therefore of their taste), but at some objective level European music is much greater because it has been more elaborately developed. That's not about race, its about cultural development (including technologies).
Speaking of the European tradition, I just finished the chapter in Paul Johnson's Art: A New History about the rediscovery of classical antiquity in the 15th and 16th centuries. Architects in particular absorbed everything they could discover about Greek and Roman sculpture and architecture (the paintings not having survived) and went on to reimagine them in miraculous new ways. The situation in music was very different because all we have from the reportedly rich musical culture of the ancient Greeks is a few theoretical treatises and a couple of melodic fragments. So those creative Italians went ahead and simply invented new forms and genres inspired by nothing more than the IDEA of Greek music. And what did we get? Opera, ballet, vocal monody, and a host of librettos based on classical mythology.
European music may have historically been more complex than Native American music, but complexity is not quality. Working in music schools gives me ample opportunity to hear a lot of contemporary composition, most of which is extremely complex, and little of which is any good. "Amazing Grace" is possibly the most beautiful melody in the world and it would not improve if you made it more complicated.
Another thing: Technological advancement and musical advancement are not necessarily the same thing. If you believe the cultural conservatives, then hip-hop and dance music are severely musically impoverished, but they are made using the most sophisticated technology that has ever existed. (I do not believe this to be true, by the way. But Roger Scruton would be surprised to hear the assertion that advancing technology always advances the music.)
Last thing: No one knows much of anything about Native American music, because it is a body of oral/aural tradition that was systematically stamped out by European colonizers along with the languages, religious traditions and so on. Look into the history of Native American "boarding schools" sometime. And this is after all the epidemics and murders and so on. There are certainly some Native musical traditions that survived all this, but we will never know how much was lost between 1492 and the *very* recent decades when scholars started taking an interest in non-European musics.
I'm getting pretty good at predicting when an EH rant is in the offing...
From my point of view neither Western European music nor African American music are "All that" on their own. What really elevates both is the amazing SYNTHESIS of the two, which has resulted in the International art form of pop music. The confluence of those two streams of culture is the big story of the 20th century.
Re: technological advancement, I think it could reasonably be said that technology (tastefully applied, heh) can do much to enhance music-making, but certainly there is a point of diminishing returns. Tech can't make bad music good.
suppressing might be an oversimplified history. Scholars have noted that attempts by Westerners to transcribe Native American song go back as far as the 1600s. Yes, the federal government made a point of suppressing dance and song but the history of white Europeans and Americans attempting to transcribe and preserve the musics of Native American tribes goes back centuries.
John W Troutman's got a monograph on US federal suppression stuff I've been meaning to read. I really enjoyed his monograph on the evolution of pedal steel from Joseph Kekuku's design and pedagogy. Turns out we've got Mormon trade schools in Utah being available to Hawaiian Natives as a reason members of the diaspora picked up the carpentry and luthier skills needed to revolutionize guitar playing and introduce slide guitar as we know (and personally love) it.
Hello Ethan, I've been thinking about what you wrote above and pondering why I'm not convinced. Certainly I'm sympathetic to what seems to be your deepest motive, the condemnation of historical atrocities committed by European colonists. But I don't see that as uniquely European sin but rather like similar tales of colonization and conquest seemingly at the origin of almost every country or society. Empires of Asia and the rise of Tenochitlan are non-European examples from 6 to many more centuries ago. The European difference seems to be one of scale, and pretty well explained by Jared Diamond, whose book Guns, Germs and Steel combines geography and technology to describe the unprecedented power of Europe as it embarked on voyages of discovery and conquest. All that said, it can feel righteous to judge the past by present standards, but doing so also prevents genuinely understanding the past, which had standards and principles and understandings different from our own and uninformed by the thoughts and experiences since then that developed into our present standards.
I digress into all this because you asserted that
that in Europe, the US, and their colonies, the idea of objective artistic quality has been consistently used to elevate Western Europe's cultural products over those of the rest of the world. Within the US, it takes an enormous amount of effort to sustain a belief in the superiority of Western European music over African-American music, especially since the African-American stuff is so consistently popular. Not every classical music partisan has to be racist, but you can not look at the history of aesthetic music education and seriously deny that racial dynamics are at work.
Outrage against colonialism and racism can lead to asserting there was nothing particularly great about the European musical tradition, and that the tradition is steeped in racism, but the richly developed elaborations of notated composition and fine instruments (and theory itself) deserve respect and deeply reward study and appreciation. Despite the genocide against the American natives, and the sympathies engendered in us today from reflecting on it, I still assert that the European musical tradition was objectively superior to the native music because the literacy and technologies and intensive study enabled more diverse explorations and forms of music. And despite this objective superiority of European musical traditions over whatever native Americans had in their paucity of instruments and lack of notation, the subjective realm of taste likely resulted in native Americans preferring their own music, because it was the voice of the culture that made them who they were.
There is nothing wrong with appreciating and respecting the Western European musical tradition. I appreciate and respect it too! But "objectively superior"? That is some atavistic nineteenth century language. Musical quality is always dependent on a subjective value system. The Western European "art" music tradition makes lousy dance music. If you value social dance, as most human societies around the world do, then Western classical is quite impoverished, no matter formally complex it may be. I happen to believe that Ellington is a better composer than Beethoven because he wrote for dancers, not just seated concert hall audiences.
Just a note about dance music: it was rated lower than music that was part of religious observance because of the patronage of the church, by far the most important patron of European music for the last thousand years, something that only began to change with the French Revolution. But it is a mistake to underrate the existence and vitality of dance music. Mozart was an enthusiastic dancer and wrote an enormous amount of dance music. Some was included in multi-movement works (symphonies, quartets and divertimenti), but the complete edition has six CDs just of dance music. Haydn also wrote a lot of dance movements in multi-movement works. But the requirements of the church were for music of devotion and contemplation so that is where the majority of the composers focussed their efforts.
Oh, and I didn't even mention ballet, a huge genre in itself and one that was a major part of French Baroque opera.
"an EH rant is in the offing"
Seriously. Brian, ban this man, otherwise he's going to take every opportunity to make your blog all about him and his "justice" obsessions.
It's so tedious how I keep dragging history into discussions of historical music.
"Seriously. Brian, ban this man"
I am challenged and fascinated by the back and forth and am glad to have divergent viewpoints.
Respect is a two way street, and I believe all commentators here are worthy of respect, even those who I don't necessarily agree with 100%.
I would suggest banning anyone (other than obvious cases of obnoxiousness) would lower the value of the blog. If you don't like a viewpoint, stop reading.
Finally, regarding the whole discussion. I look at it from a practical standpoint. The financier(s) call the tune. Good, bad or indifferent, people who want to here are going to support it and pay $$ to hear it. If they don't, it goes belly up and disappears into the mists of time. You can argue back and forth about objective standards of quality, but it won't really make a difference as to the music that is played and heard. The consumer will decide.
As to dance, wasn't it Bach who said that the further music gets from being danced-based, the less good it is?
Well I think we all agree that taste is personal preference that can be more or less informed but always remains subjective. Dance seems to have always been an important function of music, though other functions from liturgy and worship, to personal expression and story-telling (songs and ballades), to drama (opera and, lately, film scores) to concerts and recitals. In the consort music I've been exploring as a student of viola da gamba, the galliardes and sarabandes were everywhere. As ensembles and venues and audiences grew in size, dance seems to become less important and the concert (spectator?) aspect becomes more important. I have never missed the dance aspect of more modern classical music because I found that outlet and joy at Grateful Dead concerts, where we dancers were still a minority in the crowd, twirling in the aisles. Dance seems to create a more communal experience because the audience is literally moving with some synchronization. There was a Mahler symphony performance in Yale's Woolsey Hall where I did dance a little at the very back top of the upper balcony, but it took a certain courage or foolery because of course I was the only one. Not very communal and therefore not very satisfying.
I love the idea of people dancing at classical concerts. I met an older gent at the New School who was developing a whole dance style around Bach. It's going to be a long time before this is a social experience, unfortunately, but it's a worthwhile goal. I always thought popping and locking would go well with classical and apparently I'm not alone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuQfKktNWbw
Bryan you wrote that
an important part of the creative process: you have to venture into the unknown to find new things with which to create new art. But the newness is only part of the puzzle. You also have to take the new thing and work it into an art object. Perhaps this process is raw with really new ideas, but the artist has to use judgment all the time in selecting, modifying and developing whatever he may encounter...
An interesting example of this for me has been the "noise rock" of a band called Black Dice. It doesn't easily fit into the whole idea of music itself...so I ask, are there other kinds of art we experience aurally besides music? Ordered sound from voice or instruments is easy to accept, but what about taking noises and ordering them without sustained rhythm or melodies... The enjoyable album is called Creature Comforts and I laugh whenever I put it on...but that is not often. The pleasure seems to depend on novelty and surprise, which is lost by over-playing. In contrast to favorites where the love increases with familiarity.
Will, an artist you might want to explore is Merzbow and the entire Japanese noise scene alongside him: pure noise and feedback chosen just for visceral impact. I’ve seen Merzbow perform at festivals where the crowd has gone wild, with each spectator finding their own way to dance or respond physically to Merzbow’s noise.
This is why I find it so tiresome when certain conservative listeners on classical-music fora bang on about how twelve-tone serialism is inhuman because it lacks conventional harmony. They are unaware that over in the pop music world, musicians have given up scales and rhythm altogether, and they have gone so far out that Schoenberg and Boulez seem downright conventional, yet the result still draws an audience.
I'm often surprised at which post gets the commentariat engaged, but I'm very glad I wrote this post. It has inspired me to write another one soon that will get into that whole issue of the subjective vs the objective.
Thanks to all.
It's remarkable to hear Merzbow described as being in the "pop music" world. You're not wrong, that's where he lives! But it really says something about how meaningless the art/pop divide is. A guy named Ben Neill argues that at this point, the only meaningful musicological distinction to be made between "pop" music and "art" music is that the former uses metronomic beats and the latter doesn't. So even though Merzbow is extremely weird and inaccessible, his music has a steady pulse, so it doesn't belong to the "art" music world.
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