If you've a few moments to spare....

[Norfolk Born]

What have I started?

[Flosshilde]

Where's the Andre Rieu filter when you need it?.

Noooo Rob - I mentioned him in my first post (http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...ew-moments-to-) & started all the above wrangling!

Norfolk - you posted a perfectly innocent post (well, I thought I had, too )

[Nick Armstrong]

What have I started?

[vinteuil]

Why value anything? Because it has value for you - which does not mean that it will have the same value for others. It is a subjective judgement.

Why compare everything, including things which it is not useful to compare?

.

Caliban in his #28 turns to food as a possible analogy.

I would perhaps use wine. With effort (enjoyable) and perseverance one can learn to distinguish various kinds of wine - to develop a discriminating palate, identifying the good and bad characteristics of wines. You may come to prefer burgundy to claret - but you have learnt to differentiate between them; and further to appreciate the specific virtues of a particular style. And normally will learn to recognise that, within a particular style, some bottles of wine are great, good, indifferent, or bad. Now you may perversely say you 'like' what others find to be rough, over sweet, thin, sour - that is of course your decision - but I wd maintain that it is meaningful to say that certain wines are better than others, and that it's worth putting in the effort to find out what's what. You can then discover whether you prefer claret to burgundy - and also to recognise what is good or bad about a particular bottle.

Is that other "made thing" - music - so different that one cannot usefully discuss good, bad, and indifferent of various styles - and learn in the process?

[aeolium]

I just know that I totally disagree that "nothing can be shown objectively to be better than anything else"

I'd be interested in how one work of art can be shown objectively to be better than another - that is measurably and verifiably. Surely ultimately you come down to people's opinions, which can vary enormously (let alone across time and culture).

Short of that, though, attributing equal value to everything does seem to me to doom 'culture' or 'art' (or whatever phrase one wants to use) to a slide downwards to the accessible, the easy, the superficially sentimental... I want to find an analogy with nutrition: to say all art is of equal value seems to me as odd as saying that bubble gum has the same nutritional value as a good balanced meal.

But people are not 'attributing equal value to everything'. Everyone values some things more than others, but they are not the same things. I am saying that there is no objective agreement in our culture, and across other cultures, that certain types of music are better than others.

Is art sliding downwards to the accessible, the easy, the superficially sentimental? There is plenty of that in popular culture but so what - is it more so than say 100 years ago, 300? There is also plenty of very complicated art that is not easy or accessible, at least in modern music. I don't follow the analogy with nutrition at all - if you tried to live on bubble gum you'd die.

I'm all for making children aware of what's out there, but ultimately it's up to them to choose.

[Flosshilde]

But in the case of La Jenkins, she takes 'good' art & turns it in to 'bad' art - the music for the opera arias are re-written so that her voice can cope with them - yes, I know the composers did this, depending on who they had available, but they were adjusting or re-writing for good singers who they knew, & whose voices they approved of. I can't imagine they would have approved of Jenkins. The music as presented by Jenkins is a pastiche of the original, without its complexities. It's just not as good, & people who listen to it are fed a falsity.

[aeolium]

I would perhaps use wine. With effort (enjoyable) and perseverance one can learn to distinguish various kinds of wine - to develop a discriminating palate, identifying the good and bad characteristics of wines. You may come to prefer burgundy to claret - but you have learnt to differentiate between them; and further to appreciate the specific virtues of a particular style. And normally will learn to recognise that, within a particular style, some bottles of wine are great, good, indifferent, or bad. Now you may perversely say you 'like' what others find to be rough, over sweet, thin, sour - that is of course your decision - but I wd maintain that it is meaningful to say that certain wines are better than others, and that it's worth putting in the effort to find out what's what. You can then discover whether you prefer claret to burgundy - and also to recognise what is good or bad about a particular bottle.

Is that other "made thing" - music - so different that one cannot usefully discuss good, bad, and indifferent of various styles - and learn in the process?

That's an interesting analogy. I am not sure it holds, though. Even assuming that non-wine drinkers are prepared to abandon beer or whatever for wine and the intricacies of wine-tasting, developing a discriminating palate etc, surely there are much greater differences in musical styles (even if you confine it to classical music) than there are in wines. And you would presumably expect certain responses to the wines from someone experienced in wine-tasting - yet there is no such predictability in the responses of people to different composers. Can you grade composers within particular periods the way you would grade wines? I suggest you would get very much less agreement on the former. And your suggestion that it would be perverse to like a particular wine indicates to me that listening to music is very different.

[Flosshilde]

The question of 'grading' (shades of Mr Grew) composers is moving quite a distance from the question of whether Ms Jenkins, the Divis, Priests et al can be considered 'classical' performers, or the music they perform 'classical' music (or indeed if they are any good at what they do, artistically speaking).

[PatrickOD]

The question of 'grading' (shades of Mr Grew) composers is moving quite a distance from the question of whether Ms Jenkins, the Divis, Priests et al can be considered 'classical' performers, or the music they perform 'classical' music (or indeed if they are any good at what they do, artistically speaking).

No, Flosshilde, the question was whether this sort of thing is good for anyone?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXuuHx8ZtUM

[Flosshilde]

With respect, it was my original question. The question of whether it was good for anyone, or anything, was a later interpolation

[aeolium]

the question of whether Ms Jenkins, the Divis, Priests et al can be considered 'classical' performers

That is your question - I'm not really interested in it, but rather in the question PatrickOD raised and vinteuil was responding to.

[Flosshilde]

My question was the original one, & therefore would, I think, be classified as the question. Patrick's question is another (or the other) question. When there are so many questions being bandied around you really must be more careful & make it clear which question you are referring to.

[Nick Armstrong]

I can't see any questions in your early posts, Floss. As far as I was concerned, the one under discussion here was the question raised by vinteuil springing from a comment by Patrick.

[Flosshilde]

an attempt at humour - probably not advisable at 1.00am.

The question was implied, rather than explicit, in post no. 3.

But I'm not particularly bothered about which question is being answered, or if any are being answered at all.

[Nick Armstrong]

an attempt at humour - probably not advisable at 1.00am.

I did have a laugh, Floss, though... at the extent to which Norfy's innocent post about amazon had turned into a boiling crucible of debate on the nature of art and music