The Evolution of Taste

Ted Cohen has a paper on taste in the Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics titled "The Philosophy of Taste: Thoughts on the Idea." He begins by mentioning that there seem to be two senses of the idea of taste. In the one, there is the idea of a preference for better things as in "his taste in music is impeccable." The other sense is the one in which there is the idea of discrimination between different things as in when a master of wine is able to identify different vineyards and vintages by tasting them. These two different senses are often run together because there seems to be a link between them. The wine connoisseur is able to distinguish finer from lesser wines because of his ability to identify, i.e. "taste" the various flavor and odor components in the wine.

Ted Cohen identifies a possible problem in the logic of this by looking at the case of literature. Is it really possible to definitively agree that one person's taste in literature is better because he prefers poetry to thrillers? Or a particular poet to another? This argument would likely not be compelling to most people because they are likely to assert some variation of "one person's taste is as good as another's" or "taste is entirely subjective." But, following Cohen, if we change the questions slightly, we might ask what if you reflect on your own personal taste over time? What if, over time, you find your tastes changing, as they do. Cohen mentions the examples of Smetana and Mozart. What if, over time, you find yourself enjoying Smetana less and Mozart more? What is going on there?

Is it the case that your faculties are becoming more capable of finer differentiations? Are we just born with a set of capacities or can they be developed or trained over time? The whole educational establishment, with some reason, certainly believes so. Else why would we have all those ear training courses?

I bring all this up because of a listening experience I just had. Let me give a little background first. I have been around music all my life and so in one sense I have had my faculties with regard to music and sound cultivated for my whole life. But I also attended the music departments of two different universities where I took several courses of ear training designed to develop my ability to hear and write down in notation rhythms, melodies and harmonies as well as to sing melodies at sight from notation. Music history courses also acquainted me with the specific sounds of widely ranging musical styles. As a performance major I was focused on the execution of pieces of music.

But in the last decade and more, I have been approaching music from a different standpoint, that of a composer. I find that I am listening a bit differently, though in exactly what way I am puzzled to describe. Let me offer an instance.

When I was in first year, I had a roommate that loved Ravel and used to listen to his Daphnis et Chloé quite frequently. I confess I didn't pay a lot of attention to that particular piece. Over the last couple of months I spent quite a lot of time listening to the box of CDs from Esa-Pekka Salonen a conductor who is also a composer. Therefore, there was a great deal of modern music in the box, but no Ravel (there were a couple of discs of Debussy). There was some Schoenberg, the Piano Concerto, the Second String Quartet and Verklärte Nacht. Also, not long ago I was listening to the Violin Concerto. Then, this week I read a couple of essays on some early Schoenberg, op. 16 and op. 22 and I also listened to those pieces. So you might say that my faculties were "cued up" for Schoenberg.

Browsing around on YouTube I noticed a clip of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé which I hadn't heard since undergrad. I was anticipating a lovely experience as Ravel is a fine composer and this is a well-known piece. But I was greatly surprised to find that the music had no interest to me. It seemed to have virtually no content whatsoever, nothing but long-held harmonies with irrelevant noodling. Extremely boring! So what has happened here? Am I just a nincompoop, unable to appreciate the subtleties of M. Ravel? Or have my faculties been fine-tuned by Schoenberg and other contemporary music to where I find the information content of Ravel to be unacceptably low? I think I might vote for the latter as, where before I found Schoenberg rather difficult to listen to, now I am hearing him as being very rich with content and a delight to hear. Good lord, next I might even be liking Elliot Carter!

Ok, musical examples. Schoenberg, Five Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16, followed by Ravel Daphnis et Chloé:

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