Greatness

Started by Mandryka, November 10, 2020, 05:00:03 AM

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Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Florestan on November 10, 2020, 11:41:16 AM
How can you/we make the difference? An artwork-object without a subject observing it and assigining value and meaning to it is no more conceivable than an artwork-object without a subject creating it and supposedly investing it with value and meaning. The values and meaning of the subject-observer might or might not coincide with the values and meaning of the subject-creator but there's no escape for the essential subjective nature of art at both ends --- and in the case of music there's actually a whole triangle of subjectivities: composer-performer-listener.

Very good.
Imagine that a full-scale nuclear war began and all humans and animals died. But some paintings by Rembrandt and CD of Beethoven Sym. No. 9 survived. Did they lose their greatness since there is nobody to observe them? Secondly, As for the painting, it is the materialized artwork.  It physically exists regardless of the audience.  However, the CD is just a plastic disk. The music/sound is materialized only when humans listen to.

amw

I disagree with all of this, actually. "Great art" is just another way to say "I like this artwork, and my opinion should carry weight because of my class (or educational background, political ideology, etc), so that makes it objectively better than other artworks." There is absolutely no objective feature of any work of art one can point to that makes it better than any other work of art; there is only the weight of received critical opinion and this opinion is in turn directed by economic and political forces. When I say x is a great piece of music, or a great recording, etc, I try to always make clear that my opinion carries no weight whatsoever unless you happen to agree with me.

Coming from me this is probably unsurprising though. I prefer Bogdanov to Calvino.

Florestan

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on November 10, 2020, 11:50:55 AM
Very good.
Imagine that a full-scale nuclear war began and all humans and animals died. But some paintings by Rembrandt and CD of Beethoven Sym. No. 9 survived. Did they lose their greatness since there is nobody to observe them?

Of course. Absent any human being, a Rembrandt painting or a Beethoven symphony lose all value and meaning.

Quote
Secondly, As for the painting, it is the materialized artwork.  It physically exists regardless of the audience.

The first "audience" (if that's the right term for a painting) was the painter himself (and in so many cases, the people who modelled for it.)

QuoteThe music/sound is materialized only when humans listen to.

I don't see how this true assertion invalidates my point.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

#23
Quote from: Florestan on November 10, 2020, 11:59:03 AM
I don't see how this true assertion invalidates my point.

I meant to indicate that it validates your point.

For the first 2 points, I am divided, or I just don't know. I apologize my lack of insights.

Florestan

Quote from: amw on November 10, 2020, 11:52:19 AM
I prefer Bogdanov to Calvino.

Rather you prefer Marx to pretty much everybody else.  ;D
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Florestan

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on November 10, 2020, 12:02:21 PM
I meant to indicate that it validates your point.

Ah! It's rather late here, I should go to sleep and come back tommorow with a fresher outlook.  :)
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Mandryka

#26
Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on November 10, 2020, 11:30:54 AM
The label of greatness maybe vested by religious, governmental, or academic authorities.  However, this is a (correct or false) recognition of greatness ex post rather than greatness itself. Greatness must lie in the artwork (object) rather than the subject who observes it. Secondly, Greatness must be present at the moment of the birth of an artwork rather than the subsequent time.

OK let's assume that the greatness lies in the music. There is now the epistemological problem. How does anyone know that the greatness is there?

The idea I am proposing we explore is this. There are some people who, through education and experience, have grasped the idea of greatness so well that they can apply it confidently and authoritatively. This is a community of experts who have a special role in our society: they tell us all whether something is great. They will include arts professors from top universities, institutional investors, conductors of major orchestras . . . .

It's a little bit like with a natural kind concept like gold. There are experts who can tell us whether something really is gold, or whether it isn't (it's fools' gold, iron pyrites.) I defer to these experts when  I need to.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Quote from: amw on November 10, 2020, 11:52:19 AM
I disagree with all of this, actually. "Great art" is just another way to say "I like this artwork, and my opinion should carry weight because of my class (or educational background, political ideology, etc), so that makes it objectively better than other artworks." There is absolutely no objective feature of any work of art one can point to that makes it better than any other work of art; there is only the weight of received critical opinion and this opinion is in turn directed by economic and political forces. When I say x is a great piece of music, or a great recording, etc, I try to always make clear that my opinion carries no weight whatsoever unless you happen to agree with me.

Coming from me this is probably unsurprising though. I prefer Bogdanov to Calvino.

My problem is that I really don't like most of Beethoven's music, but I can see that it is great music. Do you think I'm contradicting myself when I say that?
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Mandryka on November 10, 2020, 12:12:40 PM
OK let's assume that the greatness lies in the music. There is now the epistemological problem. How does anyone know that the greatness is there?

The idea I am proposing we explore is this. There are some people who, through education and experience, have grasped the idea of greatness so well that they can apply it confidently and authoritatively. This is a community of experts who have a special role in our society: they tell us all whether something is great. They will include arts professors from top universities, institutional investors, conductors of major orchestras . . . .

It's a little bit like with a natural kind concept like gold. There are experts who can tell us whether something really is gold, or whether it isn't (it's fools gold.) I defer to these experts when  I need to.

Dear Mandryka, thank you for your kind response and thoughts. Please allow me to reply tomorrow. I am in the middle of work now.  Thank you.

amw

Quote from: Mandryka on November 10, 2020, 12:14:39 PM
My problem is that I really don't like most of Beethoven's music, but I can see that it is great music. Do you think I'm contradicting myself when I say that?
Not necessarily. You've heard that it is great from a lot of people. Perhaps through repeated listening and intensive study you can understand what it is trying to do, and why the people who like it insist on its value. None of that means that Beethoven's music is objectively great; it just means that you can intellectually grasp its appeal without having an emotional response, but the reason you can do that is because you've studied it. I have the same reaction to most genres of popular music.

I should add I know a decent number of classical musicians who dislike the music of Beethoven, find it not particularly great, and won't play it unless required to (e.g. if they are a member of an orchestra, etc). So not everyone who studies the music of Beethoven in detail can comprehend the appeal, and I don't think that's a personal failing on their part.

premont

Quote from: Mandryka on November 10, 2020, 12:14:39 PM
My problem is that I really don't like most of Beethoven's music, but I can see that it is great music. Do you think I'm contradicting myself when I say that?

I have got the same problem with much music, e.g. Wagner's. His music is evidently the result of superior craftsmanship, but I am deaf to his musical "message". So it may be boiled down to that if I don't think a musical message is great, it isn't great to me but maybe to others and vice versa. Artistic greatness can't be objectivised. Even if leading experts and 1 billion of listeners told me, that .e.g. "Strangers in the night" is great music, it still wouldn't do anything for me. But of course I respect, that others think otherwise.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Karl Henning

Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning

Quote from: Mandryka on November 10, 2020, 12:14:39 PM
My problem is that I really don't like most of Beethoven's music, but I can see that it is great music. Do you think I'm contradicting myself when I say that?

No, I don't think so, in fact, I appreciate that you do not consider "I like it" to be a pre-req, for greatness.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

some guy

I feel sometimes* that the whole idea of greatness is so alien to anything to do with the arts.

But then, I think "greatness" is more appropriate for cars and movies and pictures of kittens, so maybe there's the problem right there, eh?

As an artist, I try to do good work. I try to do the best work I can. And I hope that what I do will please people. I'd be OK with being famous, though at 68, well, I probably should have started a bit sooner with that goal....

But what's at the core of things is none of that. What's at the core is simply a deep love for materials. What gets me going every morning is loving language and seeing what happens when I write strings of words. That and loving color and shape, whether I'm using a camera or some water and pigment.

I suppose greatness could be our way of showing how much we love the works of artists. I guess. I guess I'm OK with that. But it still doesn't seem to be anywhere near the center of anything I've ever done. And as I've spent most of my life hanging out with composers (Hi Karl!!) and novelists and poets and other artists, I should probably know one or two little things. And most of the people I've spent any time with feel, as I do, that sounds and shapes and colors and sentences are just the coolest things.

*all the time

T. D.

#34
Quote from: some guy on November 10, 2020, 08:25:17 PM
I feel sometimes* that the whole idea of greatness is so alien to anything to do with the arts.

But then, I think "greatness" is more appropriate for cars and movies and pictures of kittens, so maybe there's the problem right there, eh?
....

Aren't there artists who actively strive to be great?* For instance, in mid-20th century America, many writers were hell bent for leather to write "The Great American Novel", and there seemed to be a hard-drinking pugnacious life-style (Hemingway, Norman Mailer) associated with that.

In music, Beethoven and Wagner strike me as yearning with every fiber to create "Great Works". I enjoy both composers, though I'm currently much less of a Wagnerian than 25 years ago.

*I'm reminded of a passage by Morton Feldman, the beginning of Frank O'Hara:Lost Times and Future Hopes:

The day Jackson Pollock died I called a certain man I knew - a very great painter - and told him the news. After a long pause he said, in a voice so low it was barely a whisper, "That son of a bitch - he did it." I understood. With this supreme gesture Pollock had wrapped up an era and walked away with it.

It was big stakes we were after in those times...

Jo498

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on November 10, 2020, 09:53:25 AM
It seems to me for the many points listed, the cause and effects are mixed up. People with flu cough, but the coughs didn't make them infected with flu.
But other people's coughs infected them with the flu. So it's not that dissimilar in the chain of cause and effect because other people's reactions over centuries helped both establish Plato or Beethoven as so-called classics and also co-determine the reception of their works in later times (I think there was at least one cultural philosopher (Sperber?) who had worked out an infectional model for cultural transmission in some detail, I vaguely remember having heard a talk on this 10 years ago.)
You are of course right that the virulence of the original classic is not entirely explained by this but we get an indication that it does have such virulence because otherwise the chain could not get started in the first place. And this is true even when we need fairly special or rare conditions for successful transmission.

As there are many feedback loops here, cause and effect will often not be as clearly distinguishable as in some other areas. If one totally ignores or denigrates the classics one is rarely bound to become a recognized expert for the further transmission of classics. One will be either have no influence or be an outsider or a revolutionary genius who can establish a new paradigm or at least a revision of a canon. So if one is not properly affected by the virus one will not transmit it successfully.

Literature is different from music in several respects e.g., the time scale is different and there is very little "secondary music" but libraries filled with secondary and tertiary literature. But while the exemplary classics of literature almost all come from a time of which we don't still play the music (i.e. antiquity) we do recognize a lot of literary classics from the last ~300 years.
Literature also has a much more central status in general education than music which makes it different.
And nowadays with records etc. I can re-listen to Beethoven's 5th symphony every day but it would take me at least a week to re-read Der Zauberberg and several weeks or months to reread a translation of the Odyssey (not to begin with the original text), so overall the rereading of literature classics is even for someone who did this full time fairly limited. This is an advantage for music, it profits more from the technical advances of the 20th century, so classics can be established more quickly.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Mandryka

Artists are part of our world.

That world has standards, values, and institutions to keep them safe.

Greatness is one of those values, albeit a complex and elusive one.



Quote from: some guy on November 10, 2020, 08:25:17 PM


But what's at the core of things is none of that. What's at the core is simply a deep love for materials. What gets me going every morning is loving language and seeing what happens when I write strings of words. That and loving color and shape, whether I'm using a camera or some water and pigment.


I don't see how this is relevant, it looks like a claim about motivations, greatness is about the finished object.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Florestan

#37
Actually, for me greatness is defined not by any conclave of experts but by the audience and the surest sign of greatness is widespread popularity across the ages and all around the world. If a composer's music is still widely enjoyed and appreciated by the vast majority of concert- or opera-goers and recording-buyers, decades or even centuries after his death and in the vast majority of world's parts, including so many places he wasn't even aware existed, let alone set foot on, then that composer is a great one.

As for Beethoven, if one defines greatness as being what Beethoven did then not only is he great, but few if any other composers have achieved the same level of greatness. Just saying.

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Mandryka

Quote from: Florestan on November 11, 2020, 12:21:57 AM
Actually, for me greatness is defined not by any conclave of experts but by the audience and the surest sign of greatness is widespread popularity across the ages and all around the world. If a composer's music is still widely enjoyed and appreciated by the vast majority of concert- or opera-goers and recording-buyers, decades or even centuries after his death and in the vast majority of world's parts, including so many places he wasn't even aware existed, let alone set foot on, then that composer is a great one.

As for Beethoven, if one defines greatness as being what Beethoven did then not only is he great, but few if any other composers have achieved the same level of greatness. Just saying.

This issue of public support is interesting. Few people have read Dante and Homer, not to mention Mallarmé. Very few people have had the opportunity of more than a passing glimpse of the Mona Lisa, in less than ideal circumstances. All great I suppose.

What I'm suggesting is that the public's endorsement is partly the consequence of the institutional approval.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Jo498

Many people have at least seen a reproduction of the Mona Lisa. But "public" should be treated as a flexible term and troughout history. Homer's epics have been "classics" and used for educational purposes for about 2500 years without a break (and similar time spans apply to some Indian and Chinese Classics in their culture). Dante at least in Italy since it was written almost 700 years ago. So it's the accumulation of recipients throughout the centuries and also the "multiplication" by experts, educators or otherwise highly influential recipients that makes classics; I'd say.
So I agree with you that institutions or experts are usually more important and the general public follows. And one should also count popularized versions when considering how widespread something is. My father told me a simplified version of the Trojan horse story before I entered school; I had seen (probably severel distorted) cartoon versions of Don Quixote or Gulliver's travels (classics I still have not read unfortunately) at elementary school age.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal