Great vs. Favorite

[some guy]

I'd like to add my 2 cents to the general feeling that Elgarian's posts are the shizz.

I think the power to transform that he mentions is sufficient praise. Adding "great" onto that is like carefully applying paint to a lily. Oh, it's nice, but is it really necessary? Ain't the ol' lily fine just like it is?

Otherwise, I feel like asking for favorites is like asking me which of my sons I love best.

Um, all?

In any case, when I'm listening to music, I'm attending to the sounds. I'm not thinking (except very casually, in the sense that Karl extracted from the list of dictionary meanings) "this is great music," or "this is one of my favorites." And I'm more and more convinced, partly as a result of reading a few online discussions, that what I think after I'm done listening to a piece is not nearly as important as what I experience while I'm listening.

[drogulus]

     It isn't objective vs. subjective, it's how objective factors interact in a complex manner to produce the choice, the subjective part. Some kind of fuzzy logic is involved which can only partly be traced back to objective factors in the music, or in the persons pattern detection and appreciation apparatus. Subjectivity is mysterious only because it's complex, and only partly available to the consciousness. If we knew all the factors involved subjectivity as a stand-alone phenomenon would disappear. So it's an epistemic problem we aren't likely to solve any time soon.

     Another way of approaching the problem is through the concept of emergence. The higher level phenomenon of appreciation depends on the complex lower level interchange in the same way as chemistry depends on physical law. Chemistry is physics! It's just that we need a higher level language to describe the complex interactions involved. The same is true of the complexity of the brain activity involved in turning a dizzying variety of objective factors in a work or art and the person appreciating it into the enjoyment we experience and the higher level ideas which efficiently describe it. We don't think or feel anything at the electron level, or the neuron level. Yet everything that happens happens there or it doesn't happen anywhere. Elementary particles don't have feelings or subjectivity any more than they have chemistry or biology. These things emerge naturally out of the complex activity of particles when they arrange themselves in certain ways.

      I don't care that my electrons don't like Beethoven or think he's the great composer I think he is, and I'm pretty sure my electrons don't care either. Subjective choice must be the product of their activity, and the subjectivity of human consciousness is the shorthand way of describing the whole thing, by how it seems to us, and not the components that are doing the work. It stands to reason the the patterns of art and the pattern detectors of art lovers (that art lovers are) are produced by the same emergent phenomena. We were made for each other, and we have no more need to understand all the causal connections than bees need to understand the hive. You have to stand back and take a more distant view to begin to see how the whole system works.

     Subjective, then, should be seen as a name for conscious processes where only the result is available to us.

[Elgarian]

I think the power to transform that he mentions is sufficient praise. Adding "great" onto that is like carefully applying paint to a lily. Oh, it's nice, but is it really necessary? Ain't the ol' lily fine just like it is?

Yes. Speaking for myself, the word 'great' becomes redundant once I accept my own suggested definition. But 'great' has become a catch-all term which is used by a variety of people in a variety of ways, and I suppose what we're doing here is trying to establish what we all mean by the word. One could say that its meaning (as used in practice) is so vague that it actually impedes communication, but as long as people still use it, the problem persists.

In any case, when I'm listening to music, I'm attending to the sounds. I'm not thinking (except very casually, in the sense that Karl extracted from the list of dictionary meanings) "this is great music," or "this is one of my favorites." And I'm more and more convinced, partly as a result of reading a few online discussions, that what I think after I'm done listening to a piece is not nearly as important as what I experience while I'm listening.

At the risk of establishing a mutual backslapping society, I'd like to say that this is characteristic of your interventions in putting a fresh twist on things. I want to say in response, 'Yes. But ...' The 'Yes' is important because if while we're listening, we find ourselves thinking 'this is great music', then we're no longer listening. We're attending to our feelings instead of the music. I've a notion that we've been here before, you and I, differentiating between enjoyment and contemplation. I contemplate the music and enjoy the feelings it generates. When I start talking about my feelings, I'm attempting to contemplate the enjoyed, so no wonder I get into a muddle if I believe I'm talking about the music.

Now for the 'But'. I'm thinking here of the term 'hermeneutic circle', used in literary analysis, where if we read a novel for the first time and then return to read it a second time, this reading can never be the same as the first, because we bring to it all our thoughts and impressions that arose during and after our first reading. And so on, for subsequent readings. I think what I'm wondering is whether 'what I think afterwards' is no less important than the 'experience of listening as it happens' - not for its own sake (which is what you're saying here, and I agree with that), but because it can significantly change the 'experience of listening as it happens' - even if we don't recognise it as such.

It's hard to express this clearly. I'm suggesting that while the perception change is the important thing, it's not independent of the thinking and feeling I do in between actual perception-changing experiences. What we're saying to each other here and now may (will?) have some impact the next time we listen to a piece of music that we might consider 'great'.

[Elgarian]

my electrons don't like Beethoven

There you go, you see. Your electrons' problem is that they persist in thinking greatness has something to do with what they 'like'. It's the same with all leptons, in my experience. As long as they keep backing away from strong interactions, they'll never understand the transforming power of art.

[karlhenning]

my electrons don't like Beethoven

Anyway, given the subject of the sentence, I have no idea what the verb means.

[Elgarian]

Anyway, given the subject of the sentence, I have no idea what the verb means.

But the really important issue is: did you get my little particle physics joke?

[karlhenning]

But the really important issue is: did you get my little particle physics joke?

I need footnotes!  (Wuorinen has a cat named Lepton, IIRC.)

[Elgarian]

I need footnotes!

There are four fundamental types of force in physics, and the strong interaction (which is involved in holding the nuclei of atoms together) is one of them. Electrons belong to a class of particles called leptons, which have the characteristic that they don't experience the strong interaction.

My little 'double meaning' joke in reply to Ernie's post is in fact characteristic of most physicists' jokes, in the sense that they're appallingly obviously contrived and not in the least bit funny. Or maybe it's just the way I tell 'em.

[not edward]

I need footnotes!  (Wuorinen has a cat named Lepton, IIRC.)

Indeed he does. Here's Lepton! (Quark quark?)

[Elgarian]

Indeed he does. Here's Lepton! (Quark quark?)

He doesn't look weakly interactive to me!

[Szykneij]

Jim Morrison wasn't that great ; )

... but I did see a great documentary on him last night on PBS.

[karlhenning]

... but I did see a great documentary on him last night on PBS.

I do believe he yielded good documentary ; )

[Josquin des Prez]

Forget about the cat, what about his evil clone?:

[some guy]

I want to say in response, 'Yes. But ...'

I can't ask for anything more. "Yes, but..." is what keeps a conversation going.

...if we read a novel for the first time and then return to read it a second time, this reading can never be the same as the first, because we bring to it all our thoughts and impressions that arose during and after our first reading. And so on, for subsequent readings. I think what I'm wondering is whether 'what I think afterwards' is no less important than the 'experience of listening as it happens' - not for its own sake (which is what you're saying here, and I agree with that), but because it can significantly change the 'experience of listening as it happens' - even if we don't recognise it as such.

Of course each time is different. And of course we think; that's part of the experience. I was attempting to posit something much more modest, that adding the conclusion "great" to the situation is unnecessary. That is, concluding "this is great" doesn't contribute to the enjoyment of a piece in the moment, whichever moment that happens to be, the first moment or the hundreth. Perhaps we say casually in conversation, "such and such is a great piece." If that means, "I really like this piece, and you might like it, too," then all is well.

What I see happening over and over again is people trying to find objective confirmation of their tastes, building up responses to composers or styles or techniques (or tearing down same) into universal truths. That seems like nothing so much as evidence of extreme insecurity. (A poster on another board once asked me if it didn't bother me to think that fifty years from now such and such music that I liked probably wouldn't be considered all that cool. Well, no. I like what I like now. Once I'm dead, I'll be rather beyond likes and dislikes. To spend time now, while I'm alive, worrying about what people will think of my horrendous taste after I'm dead, seems a trifle otiose, eh?)

I'd rather listen to music than almost anything else. I also like talking about music. But arguing about whether something is "great" or not or trying to separate out the idea of greatness from favorite doesn't seem like talking about music, to me.

But then, very little* of what I've seen over the years on any classical music board has seemed to have very much to do with music. I almost added "oddly enough," but then I thought, "hmmm, maybe it's not so odd." We do like talking about ourselves more than anything. For the purpose of talking about ourselves, things like books and music and politics and sports are just convenient springboards for what we really value most!!

*You know, Elgarian, how much I've enjoyed the little I've gotten.

[karlhenning]

Very interesting, gentlemen both. Thank you!

[Elgarian]

I was attempting to posit something much more modest, that adding the conclusion "great" to the situation is unnecessary. That is, concluding "this is great" doesn't contribute to the enjoyment of a piece in the moment, whichever moment that happens to be, the first moment or the hundreth.

I'm not so sure ... [a variation on 'yes, but'.]

I'm thinking of Ruskin's notion of 'theoria' as opposed to 'aesthesis' - the latter referring to the merely sensual response to art, and the former the spiritual, or moral [or substitute a better word if you can think of one]. So his 'theoretic' response includes things like joy, admiration, reverence, gratitude, while aesthesis concerns only what he calls 'the mere animal pleasantness'.

I can't speak for others, but this matches pretty well my own experience of what I'd call 'great' art. One result of attending closely to what I might call a 'great' piece of music or a picture is an awareness of gratitude, admiration, etc - not as something I'm specifically focusing on (I'm too intent on the music for that), but as something one knows is there - like the wallpaper in the room. That seems to be an important part of the experience - a sense that one is 'in the presence of greatness' (it sounds a bit naff when I say it like that). This isn't an inward-looking thing, not a wallowing in feelings: it's a sign that I'm responding to the 'other' - to the art and its maker, almost simultaneously I think, albeit differently.

Suppose you and I were walking down the street, and you said: 'Quick, look, don't miss it, there's a unicorn over there'. I look, and am amazed by a fleeting glimpse of the unicorn, and simultaneously grateful to you for pointing it out (because otherwise I'd have missed it). When I recall the incident, I'll remember it as 'the day Michael showed me the unicorn'. There's the experience of seeing the unicorn, the perceived 'greatness' of the moment, and the gratitude for it, all wrapped up in a bundle. I can of course attempt to separate them all out, distinctly, but when I do that I seem to be left with more or less lifeless bits. It's the whole package that seems to make the experience so valuable, and why we're always tempted to talk about 'greatness' as a catch-all term. But also of course it's what makes conversations like this one so tricky, and full of 'yes but's.

[drogulus]

Anyway, given the subject of the sentence, I have no idea what the verb means.

     Liking is emergent rather than something wholly different. The problem is understanding how "my electrons" as electrons don't like Beethoven but as "me", do. Part of the solution to great vs favorite has to do with following the path of purely objective facts (what the components do) all the way up to the complex interactions which produce the subjective, which are the subjective. The hang-up in most such conversations is that subjective tends to be viewed as something more than complex, an alien visitation unconnected to material processes. It works better IMO if the processes that produce the subjective are properly connected to the material substrate. Then the question of great vs favorite becomes a matter of balance and focus, balancing your opinion against others and focusing on the social rather than the personal.

[quintett op.57]

That said, there will always be people who put your opinion down no matter what. There will also be people who have a very narrow-mind and can't think for themselves. I've learned to tune them out and focus on what is important to me musically.

of course, but I find it really sad that beginners who come to this site are told what they should hear.
I remember a new member saying he loved the new world Sy and The 4 seasons. He was answered in a humiliating way that it was only music for neophytes.

[jochanaan]

     Liking is emergent rather than something wholly different. The problem is understanding how "my electrons" as electrons don't like Beethoven but as "me", do. Part of the solution to great vs favorite has to do with following the path of purely objective facts (what the components do) all the way up to the complex interactions which produce the subjective, which are the subjective. The hang-up in most such conversations is that subjective tends to be viewed as something more than complex, an alien visitation unconnected to material processes. It works better IMO if the processes that produce the subjective are properly connected to the material substrate. Then the question of great vs favorite becomes a matter of balance and focus, balancing your opinion against others and focusing on the social rather than the personal.

But how can we measure objectively something that happens primarily in the human mind and soul, since the mind and soul of each human is different in shape and quality from that of every other human?  We can only measure what humans report about such potentially transformative experiences as, say, a first hearing of Beethoven's Ninth or Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire or even John Coltrane's Giant Steps.  That, in fact, may be the only possible objective measure of musical greatness: how many people report being transformed by such music, and their descriptions of how greatly and deeply they've been transformed.  If a great number of a composer's works have such transformative power, we can say s/he's a "great composer."  If even one has it (I'm thinking of Holst's The Planets), then s/he is still "a great composer."

And my favorites tend to be the works that have most deeply transformed me.  At the first stage of my development as a "classic freak" , it was Bach's organ music and Brandenburg Concertos; a little later it was the Beethoven symphonies, then Mahler's, then--gradually--Varèse's works and others of the modernist school.  (I'm skipping a lot of transformations, but you get my point. )  Most recently it was Morton Feldman's "Piano and String Quartet." (Gotta hear that again! )  Each of these has opened its own space in my mind and spirit, a space that only it can fill.  That's why I call them both "great" and "favorite."  This is why I so passionately defend composers like Mahler, Schoenberg and Varèse; in this small sense, they're part of me now.  They may not be great for anyone else, and that's fine with me; yet if others report being transformed by them, we have a shared experience that draws us into friendship--the deeper the transformation, the deeper our friendship, and friendship is a great thing too.

[jhar26]

Does somebody else's judgement of Bruckner, Mahler, Gliere, Langgaard, Villa-Lobos, Guridi, Vaughan Williams, Delius, Tchaikovsky, Bartok, etc. shroud my own opinion of these composer's music? No, absolutely not.

Which is why I'm usually more interested in what people like than in what they dislike. I mean, if I like a composer or artist and someone says that he or she is no good I merely shrug my shoulders and their opinion has zero impact on me in terms of changing my mind. If however someone talks with sincere passion for composers or artists I had previously ignored or hadn't known about I might check them out and add some of their music to my collection. That has in fact happened a number of times, but nobody has ever changed my mind about someone I like.