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Is 'good' music objective or subjective?

#43
Purely subjective and 100% tied to your age and moment in history of mankind.

Also music isn't "art" to me ... music is just entertainement and nothing more and no matter the difficulty or the beauty it evoke in you, it is still entertainement. No one would write music if it was purely for the beauty and elevate his/her soul. It is just for the money. It isn't even to express themselves, it is for the pleasure of being on stage, put a good show, hear people scream ... it has nothing to do with art.
 
#44
The categorization of music as either "good" or "bad" is a value judgement, and therefore by definition, is subjective in nature. But the elements that comprise a particular piece of music, whether one classifies them as "good" or "bad", can more or less be understood objectively, i.e. whether or not it observes the technical or aesthetic conventions of accepted composition for the time & place in which it was composed, whether it takes chances or not, whether it is more or less original or derivative, whether it challenges the listener or soothes the listener, and so on.

This explains why a particular piece of music can be almost universally panned, disparaged or ignored at the time it was first released to the public, falls into obscurity for many years...and when rediscovered perhaps 50 or 100 years later, can be hailed as unrequited artistic genius. The music itself hasn't changed. But public taste has changed, i.e. finally caught up to it: the classic scenario of music that is ahead of its time.

So there is generally an objective consensus of sorts about the various constituent parts that a given piece of music contains. But the valuation of that music, as defined by those parts, will differ according to the value system of each individual listener, which in turn is typically influenced by the cultural norms of the society in which he/she lives, and so is subjective.

MM
 
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#45
Clef_de_fa said:
Purely subjective and 100% tied to your age and moment in history of mankind.

Also music isn't "art" to me ... music is just entertainement and nothing more and no matter the difficulty or the beauty it evoke in you, it is still entertainement. No one would write music if it was purely for the beauty and elevate his/her soul. It is just for the money. It isn't even to express themselves, it is for the pleasure of being on stage, put a good show, hear people scream ... it has nothing to do with art.
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I can't say I agree with your classification of music has exclusively "entertainment", and not "art". It may not be art to you, but it certainly is to me.

MM
 
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#46
gully_jones said:
I would say "good musicianship" is objective and that "good music" is subjective. There are plenty of very talented musicians who are very good at their craft who I cannot listen to and some very marginal musicians who I can.
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I'm inclined to ask - if you cannot listen to them, how good can they be at their craft?

Sounds a little like some people I've played with that had the physical pronunciation of music down pat, with little to no regard to it's aural aspect. (I'll refer here to the similar complaints made about slap bass - all though I love slap)

:)
 
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#47
I'm inclined to ask - if you cannot listen to them, how good can they be at their craft?

I'm inclined to answer - there are tremendous country (insert any other style of music you don't care for here) musicians who display nothing but excellent musicianship but, I don't care to listen to it. Life is too short to listen to music you don't care for.
 
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#48
Debussy said, "There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the only law." I take that to mean that the forms and rules applied to music are meaningless, therefore any objective means for judging music are worthless. If "pleasure is the only law", and we all derive pleasure from different sounds, music is clearly subjective.
 
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#49
Clef_de_fa said:
Purely subjective and 100% tied to your age and moment in history of mankind.

Also music isn't "art" to me ... music is just entertainement and nothing more and no matter the difficulty or the beauty it evoke in you, it is still entertainement. No one would write music if it was purely for the beauty and elevate his/her soul. It is just for the money. It isn't even to express themselves, it is for the pleasure of being on stage, put a good show, hear people scream ... it has nothing to do with art.
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To suggest that music is not art is incredibly narrow-minded. Perhaps in the pop/rock world your assumptions ring more true, but there are thousands (possibly millions) of musicians who write and play styles that have little or no financial advantage. If the only motivation is to get rich and hear screaming fans, why would anyone ever consciously choose to play music that offers little chance of either?
 
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#50
Mystic Michael said:
I can't say I agree with your classification of music has exclusively "entertainment", and not "art". It may not be art to you, but it certainly is to me.

MM
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We live in a society which is all about entertainement. All the music we hear now are nothing more than consomption object for our entertainement. Once consummed it is thrown in the trash can and we move on to the next songs. We don't produce anything long lasting, nothing that in 100 years will be regarded as art. Once Nickleback will stop making their music, no one will remember them. We will jump on the next rock band flavor of the month and go with that.

Sorry I must be too cynical too put something on a pedestrial anymore.

Painting, sculpting etc it is all about making something that we will buy and consume. It is all about the money and making something that will interest people.
 
#51
beggar98 said:
To suggest that music is not art is incredibly narrow-minded. Perhaps in the pop/rock world your assumptions ring more true, but there are thousands (possibly millions) of musicians who write and play styles that have little or no financial advantage. If the only motivation is to get rich and hear screaming fans, why would anyone ever consciously choose to play music that offers little chance of either?
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because they enjoy it and it "ententain" themselves. They make something they would like to hear and no one else is doing it ... it is still just entertainement
 
#52
If any of you are aware of sacred geometry, you'll know that the notes we tune to and play were discovered (to be 'good') according to precise vibrational/mathematical relationships, which are definitive and objective.

A great deal of histories most eminent art and architecture has been produced by incorporating these same principles, and has been prolific enough to be deemed good.

I could liken the way those images and buildings extended from their focal/starting points using interrelated geometric patterns to the way a piece of music extends rhythmically and melodically.

I'd like to contend that if our musical notes are considered correct/good because of their relationships and values - and we know they are - that same element of perfection should, and does, extend to our scales.

If it extends to our scales, can it not extend to the potential melodies within those scales? If mathematical relevance can be found in our melodies, why not also our rhythms?

If you see music as mathematical, it becomes objective.

Nobody is going to sit and work out equations to write a piece of music that is universally good. But everybody tries to write the 'correct' note (to their perception), and on the 'right' beat, for the 'right' duration, that follows the one before it. Funny that this is no more apparent than on a four-string.

But I do think that music can be universally good - I'll wrap it up with the following analogy.

In sacred geometry there is a 'golden ratio', which can be represented as the length and width of a rectangle.

An experiment was done where they showed people a series of shapes progressing from a square to a very long rectangle, and asked them to choose the one they liked.

The results showed an exponential curve toward the rectangle representing the golden ratio in its length and width.

So, some people preferred other shapes, for other reasons, sure. But there was an incredibly convincing consensus of what was good, in an objective manner.

If it applies to our eyes, why not our ears?



PS - this is beautiful

 
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#55
gully_jones said:
I'm inclined to ask - if you cannot listen to them, how good can they be at their craft?

I'm inclined to answer - there are tremendous country (insert any other style of music you don't care for here) musicians who display nothing but excellent musicianship but, I don't care to listen to it. Life is too short to listen to music you don't care for.
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For sure, all though that kind of suggests that music being good is objective, as opposed to musical taste (subjective)
 
#56
gully_jones said:
I would say "good musicianship" is objective and that "good music" is subjective. There are plenty of very talented musicians who are very good at their craft who I cannot listen to and some very marginal musicians who I can.
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I'm not sure I agree with the idea that good musicianship is objective... I won't name anyone but I'm sure we've all come across people who can (really) play but who don't exhibit excellent musicianship. What's good musicianship? The ability to execute music that is good... Musicianship for me is the ability to hear, imagine and then actualise music (or an approximation) that needs to be played. This isn't meant to be semantics but to link what seems in my mind simple enough- good musicians play good music; for me this locates music and musicianship in the same areas. When an otherwise good musician plays 'bad music' I tend to think they are not using their otherwise excellent musicianship. And without re-opening debates about amounts of notes reflecting quality I do tend to think that anyone can play good music, notey or otherwise. I like music that's 'simple', I also like music that's 'complex'; in neither situation do I think that skill is not being exhibited. Restraint and excess are just artistic choices that reflect a concern for the music and the musician's place within it.
:)
 
#58
Clef_de_fa said:
Purely subjective and 100% tied to your age and moment in history of mankind.

Also music isn't "art" to me ... music is just entertainement and nothing more and no matter the difficulty or the beauty it evoke in you, it is still entertainement. No one would write music if it was purely for the beauty and elevate his/her soul. It is just for the money. It isn't even to express themselves, it is for the pleasure of being on stage, put a good show, hear people scream ... it has nothing to do with art.
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I know many people who are not sensitive to art, it's normal. Fortunately deny the art existence doesn't cause it cease to exist.
 
#59
Art is an entirely useless thing. And it should be so. Sure, music and art are a form of language that can be used to convey ideas, concepts and emotions, it is not as quantifiable as say written words with laws of grammar and technical drawings.

The listener is free to be moved or not moved and interpret art at his own will according to his intelligence or internal biases. One could just as easily ask is it subjective or objective that there are good listeners of music.

Therefore, I would say that music and art is entirely subjective.
Those who think it is objective are projecting their own or someone elses point of view upon it and measuring it according to their own criteria. That is a delusion in itself. For if art could be measured it would cease to be useless and you could reliably communicate with it.

Yet the world NEEDs to have plenty of useless art in it to keep our imaginations stirring in strange and unpredictable ways. Without our imagination, all our knowledge is completely useless and we cannot advance as a species.
 

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