Music without tiers

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

The tiers are about ourselves, how we decide, what we like. Putting the "right" things in the right tiers shows others what good taste we have.* Putting the "wrong" things in the wrong tiers leaves us open to the sneering criticisms of those who have "better" taste than we do.

None of the about, note, has anything to do with music. Always always always the music is just an excuse to talk about something else. It seems to be, at best, a trigger. Music plays and we think of love or kittens or war or Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation or Beethoven's deafness or Soviet politics. The music has little or no importance in and of itself. It is good only in so far as it encourages us to think about other things.

Balls to that, I say.


*El principal enemigo de la creatividad es el buen gusto. --Picasso

This seems a lot more pessimistic than I thought............my view of 'tiers' and 'favourites' are merely about finding out what other people like. If someone likes a particular composer quite a lot and I don't know that composer (eg Luc Ferrari) I am very much compelled to find out what their music sounds like. Saying what one's favourite composer or musician or recording is seems to me to really be just a quick and indirect recommendation to whoever is curious out there to check out something they may also enjoy if they wish to take the time to listen.

[Madiel]

Oh what cynical rot. Two posts up.

Perfect explanation, one post up.

[Madiel]

In fact, reviewing the actual thread about tiers, there is a serious lack of the sneering criticisms that some guy seems to think should be involved. Most of the criticism in the thread consists of some guy dissing the idea of the thread's existence.

[(poco) Sforzando]

The tiers are about ourselves, how we decide, what we like. Putting the "right" things in the right tiers shows others what good taste we have.* Putting the "wrong" things in the wrong tiers leaves us open to the sneering criticisms of those who have "better" taste than we do.

None of the about, note, has anything to do with music. Always always always the music is just an excuse to talk about something else. It seems to be, at best, a trigger. Music plays and we think of love or kittens or war or Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation or Beethoven's deafness or Soviet politics. The music has little or no importance in and of itself. It is good only in so far as it encourages us to think about other things.

Balls to that, I say.


*El principal enemigo de la creatividad es el buen gusto. --Picasso

Ad hominem is never pretty.

A lot of accusations being made here, without much substantiation.

[some guy]

Ad hominem is never pretty.

True, but where is the ad hominem in the post you're referring to?

A lot of accusations being made here, without much substantiation.

Also, where are the accusations.

Coag asked a question: "How do tiers work to show off and/or to put down others??" This was in response to mc ukrneal's remark that "many people use tiers to show off, to put down others, etc."

I supplied an answer: "The tiers are about ourselves, how we decide, what we like. Putting the 'right' things in the right tiers shows others what good taste we have. Putting the 'wrong' things in the wrong tiers leaves us open to the sneering criticisms of those who have 'better' taste than we do."

OK? That's my answer to Coag's question of how tiers work to show off or to put down. Very specific context there, that unfortunately even Coag missed, taking what I said as a credo not as an answer to his question. Maybe that's because I went on with this:

"None of the about, note, has anything to do with music. Always always always the music is just an excuse to talk about something else. It seems to be, at best, a trigger. Music plays and we think of love or kittens or war or Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation or Beethoven's deafness or Soviet politics. The music has little or no importance in and of itself. It is good only in so far as it encourages us to think about other things."

Which is a wee bit riding of a hobbyhorse, admittedly. And not part of the answer to Coag's question. But answering his question did put me in mind of the recent kerfluffle about meaning in music, and I thought I'd try to get in a nice wee repetition of the idea that music is a thing beyond its admittedly extremely efficient ability to trigger things. Kind of like smells, you know. You smell something as an adult, and that can take you back to a moment in your childhood. Happens alla time. And that's fine, eh? But I think music is more important than being just a trigger. That music can make you think... of itself.

I apologize to the whole world for expressing that thought. Thinking that obviously comes from a deep core of black criticality and expressing it is a clear and obvious attack of everyone. Yeah.

[(poco) Sforzando]

"None of the about, note, has anything to do with music. Always always always the music is just an excuse to talk about something else. It seems to be, at best, a trigger. Music plays and we think of love or kittens or war or Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation or Beethoven's deafness or Soviet politics. The music has little or no importance in and of itself. It is good only in so far as it encourages us to think about other things."

And you don't see that as an ad hominem accusation? Honestly, I'm not in the mood right now for a detailed discussion, but I'll let the point speak for itself, and see what other members think.

[aukhawk]

After several years of watching GMG with interest, it seems to me that there is quite a strong culture here of "exploring the road less travelled".  This is probably partly because the mainstream is, well, just less interesting as a point of discussion - but also I think people like to demonstrate their independence of thought.

I see a lot of people--those who don't want to "waste" any time on "crappy" music--wanting likes and dislikes to precede experience, ...

[raises hand] - but I'd prefer to put it this way - listening to a piece of music takes a significant chunk out of my life, that I will never get back.  I'd really prefer not to be looking back and thinking "well that was a waste of time". 
Obviously you could argue that exploring new music is never a waste of time, but I don't see it that way.  I know what I like, and I generally stick with it.  All I ask - in those limited areas of interest which I have - is very good music, very well performed, and very well recorded.

[some guy]

Wow, well if for you listening to music takes a significant chunk out of your life, I really don't know what else to say.

Listening to music adds significant chunks to one's life is how I'd put it.

Doing things is not taking. Doing things is making. Doing things is the living. Life is not something you have, something of a certain amount, and then everything you do takes from that amount. Everything you do is what makes a something (life) out of a nothing (existence).

((poco), next time you're in the mood, look up a good definition of "ad hominem." Then read the bit of my post that you quoted. (Publically retracting, while that would be very satisfying to me, is purely optional. ))

[North Star]

This rant has a markedly Rob-Newmann-esque flavor...

Ad hominem is never pretty.

But this one seems particularly ugly.
The confident assertions countering nothing are becoming more and more confident recently, it seems to me, and the countering more and more assertive, too.

some guy, next time you're in the mood, look up a good definition of "ad hominem." Then read the bit of Florestan's post that you quoted. (Publically retracting, while that would be very satisfying to me, is purely optional.

[Brahmsian]

Mike (some guy), I don't see how one listing their preferences and favourites (in tiers or otherwise), takes anything away of value?

Hard for me to imagine that anyone who listens to music of any kind, doesn't have preferences and favourites.  Quite frankly, it seems unrealistic.  Completely.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

True, but where is the ad hominem in the post you're referring to?
Also, where are the accusations.

Coag asked a question: "How do tiers work to show off and/or to put down others??" This was in response to mc ukrneal's remark that "many people use tiers to show off, to put down others, etc."

I supplied an answer: "The tiers are about ourselves, how we decide, what we like. Putting the 'right' things in the right tiers shows others what good taste we have. Putting the 'wrong' things in the wrong tiers leaves us open to the sneering criticisms of those who have 'better' taste than we do."

OK? That's my answer to Coag's question of how tiers work to show off or to put down. Very specific context there, that unfortunately even Coag missed, taking what I said as a credo not as an answer to his question. Maybe that's because I went on with this:

"None of the about, note, has anything to do with music. Always always always the music is just an excuse to talk about something else. It seems to be, at best, a trigger. Music plays and we think of love or kittens or war or Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation or Beethoven's deafness or Soviet politics. The music has little or no importance in and of itself. It is good only in so far as it encourages us to think about other things."

Which is a wee bit riding of a hobbyhorse, admittedly. And not part of the answer to Coag's question. But answering his question did put me in mind of the recent kerfluffle about meaning in music, and I thought I'd try to get in a nice wee repetition of the idea that music is a thing beyond its admittedly extremely efficient ability to trigger things. Kind of like smells, you know. You smell something as an adult, and that can take you back to a moment in your childhood. Happens alla time. And that's fine, eh? But I think music is more important than being just a trigger. That music can make you think... of itself.

I apologize to the whole world for expressing that thought. Thinking that obviously comes from a deep core of black criticality and expressing it is a clear and obvious attack of everyone. Yeah.

I was actually not responding to the latter part of your post because I simply agree with that bit. Perhaps I should have made that clearer.

[mc ukrneal]

Mike (some guy), I don't see how one listing their preferences and favourites (in tiers or otherwise), takes anything away of value?

Hard for me to imagine that anyone who listens to music of any kind, doesn't have preferences and favourites.  Quite frankly, it seems unrealistic.  Completely.

I think one of the problems is that there are two types of tiers: 1) A simple list of preferences and favorites, and 2) A factual list (based on some sort of criteria) as to which composers are 'better' than others. The problem I have is that #1 is often masquerading as #2. I have no problem with #1 on its own (even if they are manipulating their list or it is unsubstantiated). But there have been posts in these forums where people put forth a list/tiers of some sort as being more than their simple preferences. Personally, I find this frustrating.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I think one of the problems is that there are two types of tiers: 1) A simple list of preferences and favorites, and 2) A factual list (based on some sort of criteria) as to which composers are 'better' than others. The problem I have is that #1 is often masquerading as #2. I have no problem with #1 on its own (even if they are manipulating their list or it is unsubstantiated). But there have been posts in these forums where people put forth a list/tiers of some sort as being more than their simple preferences. Personally, I find this frustrating.

Ah I see, and perhaps this comes down to even a kind of superiority complex where one's taste in music is compared to others' tastes in music makes one feel like they are better or have 'better taste?' (I don't believe there is such thing as good taste or bad taste in music btw).

[some guy]

Ad hominem is never pretty.

But this one seems particularly ugly.
The confident assertions countering nothing are becoming more and more confident recently, it seems to me, and the countering more and more assertive, too.

some guy, next time you're in the mood, look up a good definition of "ad hominem." Then read the bit of Florestan's post that you quoted. (Publically retracting, while that would be very satisfying to me, is purely optional.

But my dear North Star, I never claimed that the bit of Florestan's post I quoted was an example of an ad hominem. Sorry to trample all over your joke, but there it is. I would have had to have accused Florestan of doing an ad hom for your joke to be genuinely funny.

[Madiel]

I think one of the problems is that there are two types of tiers: 1) A simple list of preferences and favorites, and 2) A factual list (based on some sort of criteria) as to which composers are 'better' than others. The problem I have is that #1 is often masquerading as #2. I have no problem with #1 on its own (even if they are manipulating their list or it is unsubstantiated). But there have been posts in these forums where people put forth a list/tiers of some sort as being more than their simple preferences. Personally, I find this frustrating.

There may well have been posts along the #2 line from time to time, but I would say they're a lot rarer than posts of the #1 kind, and I would also say that the thread about "tiers" that seems to have inspired this thread is little more than a long line of posts of the #1 kind.

The only person right now engaged in telling people that they listen to music the "wrong" way is some guy. We have an attack on people for thinking about the wrong things in response to music (apparently if you rank composers, it must be because they make you think of kittens or something), followed by a criticism of the notion that listening to music takes time.

[North Star]

This rant has a markedly Rob-Newmann-esque flavor...

Ad hominem is never pretty.

But this one seems particularly ugly.
The confident assertions countering nothing are becoming more and more confident recently, it seems to me, and the countering more and more assertive, too.

But my dear North Star, I never claimed that the bit of Florestan's post I quoted was an example of an ad hominem. Sorry to trample all over your joke, but there it is. I would have had to have accused Florestan of doing an ad hom for your joke to be genuinely funny.

this, pron. and adj.
1. Indicating a thing or person present or near (actually in space or time, or ideally in thought, esp. as having just been mentioned and thus being present to the mind); spec. as being nearer than some other (hence opposed to that, or in earlier and dial. use to yon: see 3, also that adj. 2).

a. a thing (concrete or abstract).
Sometimes, for emphasis (in mod. use), placed (as subj.) after the noun (as pred.) with ellipsis of is: cf. that pron.2 1a.

b. a person. Now indicating a person actually present, or a person speaking or (interrog.) being spoken to on a telephone, etc., and always as subj. of the verb to be, with the person as predicate; in which position the neuter þis was used in Old English (so German dies ist mein bruder).

c. Referring to a fact, act, or occurrence, or a statement or question, mentioned or implied in the preceding context.

d. Pointing to a statement, proposal, or question which immediately follows.

I commend your creative view on the meaning of the word 'this' in the English language.

[(poco) Sforzando]

To get away from ad hominems, real or imagined, I remember writing something about a similar question back in 1998 (I can't believe I've been writing about music on Internet boards that long, but it is what it is). I don't pretend that what matters to me in music will be what matters to anyone else, and while I might phrase things differently today, it represents more or less what I feel about the matter.

So with a few changes, here it is:

I too have trouble with the urge to rank composers, works, performers. I revere Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven as probably the three greatest composers, with figures like Haydn, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Stravinsky, and Bartok among others so close as doesn't matter, yet I cannot see any value in trying to award any of them a gold medal as if musical greatness is equivalent to winning at an Olympics event.

On the other hand, certainly there are degrees of merit. Mention Grieg, Sullivan, Chabrier, Rossini, Poulenc, and we know we're at a different level of achievement. But that doesn't mean this level isn't as valuable or necessary in its way as the rarified atmosphere of a late Beethoven quartet. There are times - many times in fact - when I simply would rather hear "The Mikado" or the Grieg Concerto than the B minor mass.

Rather than the ranking concept, I'd like to offer a quotation which I find more illuminating. It's about literature, primarily Shakespeare, from the esteemed Canadian scholar Northrop Frye's "Anatomy of Criticism," but I believe it is as relevant to music:

"As a result of expressing the inner forms of drama with increasing force and intensity, Shakespeare arrived in his last period at the bedrock of drama, the romantic spectacle out of which all the more specialized forms of drama, such as tragedy and social comedy, have come, and to which they recurrently return. In the greatest moments of Dante and Shakespeare, in, say The Tempest or the climax of the Purgatorio, we have a feeling of converging significance, the feeling that here we are close to seeing what our whole literary experience has been about, the feeling that we have moved into the still center of the order of words. Criticism as knowledge, the criticism which is compelled to keep on talking about the subject, recognizes the fact that there IS a center to the order of words."

I have italicized one sentence above, and with a little substitution, I would say that I feel the "center of music" in works like the Monteverdi Vespers, the St. Matthew Passion and B minor mass, the late Beethoven quartets, Diabellis, and Missa Solemnis, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, the Winterreise, some things from Berlioz like the Love Scene from Romeo and the fourth act of Troyens, the Brahms Clarinet Quintet and some of his other chamber works, Tristan, Falstaff, La Mer, Erwartung, Wozzeck, the Carter Concerto for Orchestra, Gruppen. These are among the central works for me -- not a matter of rank-ordering them, but realizing that they are the heart of my musical experience, closer than any to defining to me what music is all about.

[Sean]

Premise 1
I have aesthetic sensitivity

Premise 2
I have explored art music and its aesthetic returns

Conclusion
I subsequently know what the great music is and anyone with any differing views has defective faculties and can be safely ignored

There you go, perfect logic.

[ritter]

To get away from ad hominems, real or imagined, I remember writing something about a similar question back in 1998 (I can't believe I've been writing about music on Internet boards that long, but it is what it is). I don't pretend that what matters to me in music will be what matters to anyone else, and while I might phrase things differently today, it represents more or less what I feel about the matter.

So with a few changes, here it is:

I too have trouble with the urge to rank composers, works, performers. I revere Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven as probably the three greatest composers, with figures like Haydn, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, Stravinsky, and Bartok among others so close as doesn't matter, yet I cannot see any value in trying to award any of them a gold medal as if musical greatness is equivalent to winning at an Olympics event.

On the other hand, certainly there are degrees of merit. Mention Grieg, Sullivan, Chabrier, Rossini, Poulenc, and we know we're at a different level of achievement. But that doesn't mean this level isn't as valuable or necessary in its way as the rarified atmosphere of a late Beethoven quartet. There are times - many times in fact - when I simply would rather hear "The Mikado" or the Grieg Concerto than the B minor mass.

Rather than the ranking concept, I'd like to offer a quotation which I find more illuminating. It's about literature, primarily Shakespeare, from the esteemed Canadian scholar Northrop Frye's "Anatomy of Criticism," but I believe it is as relevant to music:

"As a result of expressing the inner forms of drama with increasing force and intensity, Shakespeare arrived in his last period at the bedrock of drama, the romantic spectacle out of which all the more specialized forms of drama, such as tragedy and social comedy, have come, and to which they recurrently return. In the greatest moments of Dante and Shakespeare, in, say The Tempest or the climax of the Purgatorio, we have a feeling of converging significance, the feeling that here we are close to seeing what our whole literary experience has been about, the feeling that we have moved into the still center of the order of words. Criticism as knowledge, the criticism which is compelled to keep on talking about the subject, recognizes the fact that there IS a center to the order of words."

I have italicized one sentence above, and with a little substitution, I would say that I feel the "center of music" in works like the Monteverdi Vespers, the St. Matthew Passion and B minor mass, the late Beethoven quartets, Diabellis, and Missa Solemnis, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, the Winterreise, some things from Berlioz like the Love Scene from Romeo and the fourth act of Troyens, the Brahms Clarinet Quintet and some of his other chamber works, Tristan, Falstaff, La Mer, Erwartung, Wozzeck, the Carter Concerto for Orchestra, Gruppen. These are among the central works for me -- not a matter of rank-ordering them, but realizing that they are the heart of my musical experience, closer than any to defining to me what music is all about.

Very nicely put, (poco) Sforzando! Quite impressive post.

[Florestan]

I never claimed that the bit of Florestan's post I quoted was an example of an ad hominem.

Then either words have lost any meaning for you, or on the contrary they mean whatever you want them to mean (if you know what I mean...  ).

I commend your creative view on the meaning of the word 'this' in the English language.

Thank you, Karlo.