Greatness in Music

[Josquin des Prez]

But I'm not denigrating Bach in any way when I say that I am pleased to listen to other composers too.

Another straw man. Recognizing the greatness or superiority of a composer doesn't preclude enjoyment from lesser figures. We have already went over those points in the other thread. 

There are ways to denigrate Bach, of course. For instance, what if his reputation is the result of brainwashing? 

[JoshLilly]

You love tilting at windmills, don't you, Josh?

Someone apparently does.
None of this is tilting at windmills. None of these are strawman arguments. Just saying such dismissive things does not make them true. People are insisting that some composers are "factually" superior to others. They're doing it on this very thread, even. I am arguing against it, directly. That precludes the possibility of it being a strawman argument, as I have not invented any target against which to argue.

[Larry Rinkel]

But I'm not denigrating Bach in any way when I say that I am pleased to listen to other composers too. In what way does it harm Bach if I happen to delight in Vivaldi, for example? Or does it harm Mozart if i happen to really enjoy Ditters' "Symphonies after Ovid's Metamorphoses"?  It doesn't, and the reason it doesn't is because I am not comparing Vivaldi to Bach, nor Ditters to Mozart. I am simply enjoying their legacy. By the way, the Corrette gamba sonata I'm listening too is virtually great.

Straw man again. Nobody says you can't enjoy whatever you want. In fact, to my mind, the greatest works are not always the most "enjoyable." I need to put myself in a frame of special concentration to experience works like the St. Matthew Passion and the late Beethoven quartets. They inspire not only the most intense engagement, but a sense of awe that makes me even fear listening to them in case they annihilate me, or that I cannot devote to them the single-minded concentration they deserve. Vanhal and Vivaldi do not require so much. What I'm talking about, in literary terms, was what Keats wrote in his sonnet on reading King Lear:

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
    Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
    Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
    Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
    Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
    Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
    Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

[Scriptavolant]

We don't know what music will be valued by the culture of 100 years from now

So our knowledge, good and reasonable, is still relative to our time and culture.

Another straw man. Recognizing the greatness or superiority of a composer doesn't preclude enjoyment from lesser figures. We have already went over those points in the other thread. 

That raises the question of what bearing the acknowledgement of greatness has on our everyday lives, or in the enjoyment of music. I suspect very little.

[Josquin des Prez]

People are insisting that some composers are "factually" superior to others.

They are. It's insanity to even suggest either wise.

[Larry Rinkel]

Bach? Great? Do you mean Johann Sebastian in that? Why? I for one don't think so, and never have. What's so great about him? I don't normally talk about or think about what I don't like, and avoid posting to threads that are devoted to pieces or composers I don't care for. But I'm just asking a question: why do I have to acknowledge something as great when it isn't? Here: Bach isn't great.

Who's insisting that some composers are "factually" superior (or in this case inferior) to others now?

[Larry Rinkel]

So our knowledge, good and reasonable, is still relative to our time and culture.

Yeah. So what?

[JoshLilly]

I'm not telling anyone else that J.S. Bach's music is not great for them. That's the difference. I'm not saying that there is some proof or indeniability to my taste.


"They are. It's insanity to even suggest either wise."

Prove. It.
Facts are facts. There are none to be had here. My challenge to prove it is unanswerable, because there is no such proof, not within all the bounds of physical reality, not within all the cosmos, or within the bounds of time immemorial from beginning to end, or beyond. There is no such proof because it is not a statement of fact. Good or bad, great and poor, none of these things are facts, none can ever be proven. To insist that non-facts are factual is what is insanity.

[Josquin des Prez]

That raises the question of what bearing the acknowledgement of greatness has on our everyday lives, or in the enjoyment of music.

Are you questioning why the acknowledgment of truth and it's defense is relevant to our lives? Where would human achievement as a whole be without it?

[Larry Rinkel]

Collected opinion is not collected fact.

Who said it was? You seem to be so stuck in a logical positivist way of thinking that you can't conceive of an alternative. We're not dealing with mathematical proofs here. We're dealing with the culture of classical music, and the enthusiasm and devotion shown to a body of work that for many lovers of classical music is transcendent by virtue of its imagination, power, beauty, technique, and originality. You can choose to hear it or not, but if you don't the only person who loses out is you.

[Josquin des Prez]

Prove. It.

No such thing. Go see for yourself...

[Larry Rinkel]

That raises the question of what bearing the acknowledgement of greatness has on our everyday lives, or in the enjoyment of music. I suspect very little.

Enormous value, in my life. Not being a believer, the existence of staggering works of the imagination like Hamlet, the Divine Comedy, the C# minor quartet, the Mass in B minor, the Ring, etc., is the closest I can come to religious experience.

[JoshLilly]

If it can't ever be proven, then it's not a truth.


And how am I losing out? I listen to whatever I want, whenever I want, and without anyone telling me what's great or what isn't. My music collection is gargantuan, I constantly seek out and listen to things I've never heard before, eat foods I've never tasted before, visit places I've never visited before. I want to experience as much as I can, and learn as much as I can, before I die. Just what am I missing out on by this approach? Cultures are fine and dandy, I have no problem with them... just when a culture says that its set of beliefs is "right" universally, and everyone else's taste is wrong... well, I'm sure people can finish that thought.

[Scriptavolant]

Enormous value, in my life. Not being a believer, the existence of staggering works of the imagination like Hamlet, the Divine Comedy, the C# minor quartet, the Mass in B minor, the Ring, etc., is the closest I can come to religious experience.

The thing you seem to be concerned with is the effect those magnificent art works have on your individuality and or spirituality; which I think is something that maintains great importance even without the consent of the moltitude and the approval of a groundswell of opinions.

[Josquin des Prez]

If it can't ever be proven, then it's not a truth.

Says who?

And how am I losing out? I listen to whatever I want, whenever I want, and without anyone telling me what's great or what isn't.

I'm not so sure about that. You original reply was a textbook example of the usual 'anti-conformism' that lurks around this forum. Not only you dismissed Bach completely (total negation of the status quo, no repeal), but you also felt the need to tell us about your love for an 'obscure' (always) alternative, in this case Zelenka. I've seen this behavior so many times now i have an hard time believing it came out of your own free will. I can't help but smell a bias, perhaps even an unconscious one, but a bias still. Sorry.

My music collection is gargantuan

But strangely enough, it contains no Bach.

I constantly seek out and listen to things I've never heard before

You are not as unique as you think in this. We all do it, but some of us have enough sense to keep everything under the correct perspective.

[Larry Rinkel]

The thing you seem to be concerned with is the effect those magnificent art works have on your individuality and or spirituality; which I think is something that maintains great importance even without the consent of the moltitude and the approval of a groundswell of opinions.

Not at all. I wouldn't have gravitated toward those works had they not already been monuments of the culture.

[JoshLilly]

"But strangely enough, it contains no Bach. "

Well that's completely false, I have a myriad of CDs by multiple composers named "Bach", including Johann Sebastian. My second-to-most recent CD purchase was of J.S. Bach cantatas, of all things. Nancy Argenta singing. I like a few of the movements fairly well. Lesson: don't assume.


"I've seen this behavior so many times now i have an hard time believing it came out of your own free will."

You don't know how I got into listening to music in the first place. I had never heard anything by Beethoven, Mozart, &c. until my early teens. I'm sure I heard a hacked-up Liszt 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody on a Buggs Bunny Cartoon, but never heard any titles or names. Things like that, were my only exposure to any music other than the stuff from the 1960s that my parents liked, and a Boots Randolph record my grandfather liked (there were no CDs). That made me like the saxophone, and when I went into school, I went into band and wanted to play that. So I did. And round about, 7th grade comes along. I think by this one lifechanging concert I'd passed my 13th birthday. We were going to play a "Beethoven Medley". It included a few slices from the first movement of his 5th symphony, 2nd movement of the 7th, and 4th movement of the 9th. Get this: I'd never heard any of these before. Yes, even the 5th, though nobody believes me when I say that. I lived in a very rural, backward area, and such music just was not around anywhere. It wowed me, I heard it in my head walking around the hall in the school, I even remember whistle-breathing it all the time. I obsessed. I talked to everybody about it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'd never heard music like it before, and I never really cared for music before that at all, except when I was very little, the Boots Randolph record. Well, Summer comes along, school's out, and we take our yearly visit to my aunt and uncle's house on the coast. It turns out, my uncle has "classical music records". I didn't know what that meant, it's just what my folks told me. I should ask him if he'd let me listen. And he did. And I sat there on the floor of my cousin's bedroom (grown and moved out) with that record player and never wanted to get up. My uncle, well... he's not social. He doesn't talk to people much, or show affection, even toward his own wife or children, and never did talk to me about the records at all. And he didn't like children, and that definitely included me. Too much to tell about him, but yes, the family was really damaged. Literally not a single word, as far as I know, my aunt (who never listened to them once) got them out for me when I got there. Nobody told me what was great, good, bad, or anything. I had no idea. I just listened to every album he had over and over, everything.

I ended up being homeschooled the next school year, so I never went back for band. But doing homeschooling, I got to have the radio on during the day, because somehow - and I don't remember how - I had gotten told about the local NPR station. They played "classical" music most of the day. I got to have that playing during the day. And I did, always. But still, nobody told me what was good, bad, great, anything. The station played random stuff from various centuries, announcing the composer, and the piece, and usually who was performing or conducting. That was my whole knowledge base. I got a cassette tape recorder+radio and started to record everything that came on. If I didn't like it, I'd rewind and tape over it. I didn't have even the vaguest notions of who the "great" composers were, and that's being completely truthful. These names were not known to me. I would write down on the tapes the name and piece, trying to spell things as best I could. I threw them out years ago but was laughing at things like "Paizziello Piano Concerto 8" (Paisiello). Hey, I didn't know, I'd never read or been told anything, it was just me and the music coming on the radio. I thought Paisiello, based off that one piece, was just the bee's knees. I heard the "La Chasse" Symphony by Carl Stamitz and that became a serious obsession for a long while; when they played something else of his months later that I taped, and I just knew he was the ultimate based on those two things. Oddly, without realising it, I never kept one 20th century piece, not one. I don't know that I kept any late 19th century music, either. My tape collection was extremely huddled in the late 18th century. Was this bias? Yes, but I didn't know why. When I first started taping, and first gravitated toward those pieces, I didn't even know what century they came from.

Of course, eventually I read things, and learned things. Eventually the Internet was getting into homes, and I finally got my first job with a fledgling Internet Service Provider. It was there that I discovered a "Classical Music" website, complete with forum. Without knowing any better, based off my isolated reading, I had the idea that it was only about music from the "Classical Period". Well, I learned a lot from that site, but part of that was based off non-stop insults, when I was gushing excitedly about this or that piece by this or that obscure composer. I didn't know any better, but I was snobbed at something heavy.

Bias? Yes. My taste formed very naturally, with no guidance from any book or other human being other than the radio announcer (they purposely try to keep their opinions out of the lead-ins and followups, too). But my real bias formed against the people that slammed me just for liking what I liked. In the end, I think this is maybe the luckiest thing in my life, the way I fell into listening to music, all on my own. Now you know my life story. All this to say one thing: I claim to be about as non-propagandized as you can get. I was not spoonfed revolutionary theories by any stretch of the imagination. I wasn't around anybody that knew jack about it to be able to spoonfeed it to me. I had no book on the subject. I had no Internet. It was me and the radio. My preferences are my own, wholly my own, as are my ideas on greatness.


"but some of us have enough sense to keep everything under the correct perspective."

Having to get insulting says about all that needs to be said about your position, or lack thereof.

[sonic1]

Bach? Great? Do you mean Johann Sebastian in that? Why? I for one don't think so, and never have. What's so great about him? I don't normally talk about or think about what I don't like, and avoid posting to threads that are devoted to pieces or composers I don't care for. But I'm just asking a question: why do I have to acknowledge something as great when it isn't? Here: Bach isn't great. And I mean that with absolute sincerity. His music has always sounded to me like something that an ancient steam automaton would write, devoid of imagination, spirit, emotion. Even when he tried to write something beautiful, it still sounds soul-lessly mechanical. If Heron of Alexandria had constructed a steam robot that would, based on gears and levers, punch holes into paper to create music based on some unthinking mechanical pattern, we'd have had J.S. Bach 1700 years before his time. And it's not the time period, because Zelenka wrote stuff that can make me happy. J.S. Bach's music makes me think: inhuman machine.

By the way, this is payback to the constant mocking of Dittersdorf     And another by the way, I do consider Dittersdorf (with 100% honesty) to have been a great composer. The great thing is, I'm not wrong, and can't be wrong. Then again, I'm not right and can't be right. It's all vibrations in the air, that's all it is, nothing more. The only facts involved would be to identify what note is what, at what frequencies they operate, what volume, so on. These things can be defined. But that's it. It's still vibrations in the air. There are no facts with this beyond identifying the specifics that make up the sound waves that bounce into your ear. I've never understood why people get so worked up over vibrations in the air, when someone says that they don't like one particular grouping, or someone likes another grouping that they don't. Wow. Woohoo. You know what? I didn't care for the movie The Godfather either.

The only thing I care about, is the arrogance - and that's what it is - of those who insist that one particular favouritism must be enforced on others. It doesn't matter how widely accepted a preference is, it's still just a preference. Even if the whole world's population agreed down to the last individual, it's still not a fact.


Oh yeah, one last thing: Elgar sucks!     ....... maybe I better run now.

I am a huge fan of Bach, but I find your post hilarious and refreshingly honest.

I do like Bach though; however I understand where you are coming from. I just happen to like the mechanical-ness of Bach. I would argue that his music does emote. But not in comparison with those damned romantics. 

[quintett op.57]

Sonic, With all you can hear about Bach's superiority, I have great respect for a guy who is a huge fan of Bach but admits he's not the best at everything.

There's not such a problem with Beethoven's fans (I'm one of them). It's very interesting. People could find so many things to argue about Beethoven's superiority over the rest, at least as many as Bach's fans.
But they don't do it. It's weird but maybe the difference comes from the fact almost everyone agree about Beethoven's greatness, there's no ideological confrontation.

Regarding Bach, it's different, He does not sell more CDs than his contemporaneous Vivaldi and there's a real ideological confrontation regarding them. It started during the XVIIIth century when the Austrian/German authorities tried to show german superiority (especially over italians, who represent the perfect opposite to german culture). Complexity, profundity... The same arguments have been used for centuries. As a result, we have forgotten that it's different from quality.
The influence of italians on the evolution of music in the XVIIIth century is often neglected, unless it's obvious. Just hear them and you understand if you really want to. 

Vivaldi is a victim of the confrontation between the non-classical fans, who love his music (not understanding anything because they're not serious listeners) and a part of the classical fans who need to show they're different from the crowd. They're often scornful : "please! Not Vivaldi!, no, I had enough when I was a beginner"
What the crowd love, they can't. It's only easy music!
All those who claim Bach's superiority are not like that, we can't generalize, but this idea comes from this and he's kept alive because of this.

Beethoven has composed both kinds of works : melodically pleasant and understandable by anyone and very complex and serious. Both kinds of works being often great. This is the point, he has no opposite.

[karlhenning]

It seems to me that the more narrow one's listening, the more likely one is to consider "greatness" within their own listening repertoire. The music more in what is THEIR fringe will never be considered "great". People who are more open in their listening palette are more likely to accept greatness in a broader sense, or even find the practice of assigning greatness a bit silly.

And yet, the experience of practically all of us is broader range of listening over time, the ear embraces more and more.  If we apply your theorem, doesn't it seem that the rule ought to be, the broader one's listening, the less apt to conceive of a canon?

Now, of course, there are many listeners to exemplify that;  but I don't see it as at all a rule.  So acknowledge that there's something to your idea here, Jared, but I'm not sure just where it fits firmly in the puzzle.