Prog Snobbery

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: The way in which music affects people is not completely subjective.  When a musician composes and performs a piece, he puts an emotion and a message into the song.  The devices used to accomplish the conveying of these emotions and messages have an impact upon the human brain, and though the responses may differ with the listener, they are going to fall within a certain range because they are triggered by the same stimuli.  Whenever a human encounters a piece of art, he interprets that art according to two "books," so to speak; the "book" of the piece of art, and the "book" of his own mind.  The "book" which the composer writes is the objective part; the "book" which the listener writes is the subjective part.  You can't do away with either. I'm not "struggling" with anything, by the way; I have thought about this subject quite a bit and have come to this conclusion based upon my own study of music and the analysis I have heard from others.  It has nothing to do with me wanting my music to have some kind of objective value, or being unable to deal with the subjectivity of music.  As you can clearly see, I do acknowledge subjectivity in musical value along with objectivity (though I do tend to emphasize the objective because the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" view is so prevalent in today's society).

Interesting story related to this post: I was discussing the music of Philip Glass (we all know Glass here, yes?) with a girl from Australia. She said that his music reminded her of trains, and that she found it very depressing. She also said that she had an American friend who also found Glass' music trainlike, but that he found it very uplifting.

She speculated that Americans have a romantic cultural attachment to trains that Australians lack, hence the differences in their perception of the music. So what Ambient Hurricanes says is right, the stimulus was objective (trains) but their reaction was subjective (depressing vs. uplifting)


Edited by thellama73 - October 24 2012 at 21:08

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: The way in which music affects people is not completely subjective.  When a musician composes and performs a piece, he puts an emotion and a message into the song.  The devices used to accomplish the conveying of these emotions and messages have an impact upon the human brain, and though the responses may differ with the listener, they are going to fall within a certain range because they are triggered by the same stimuli.  Whenever a human encounters a piece of art, he interprets that art according to two "books," so to speak; the "book" of the piece of art, and the "book" of his own mind.  The "book" which the composer writes is the objective part; the "book" which the listener writes is the subjective part.  You can't do away with either.

But music or any other art form is nothing without the reaction.  And how large the range of the reaction is depends on the work.  The more complex and the more abstract it gets, the more divergent the reactions.  And it's not even necessary that it has to be complex to trigger widely divergent reactions.   I find Jeff Buckley's Grace album frequently intense and melancholic but I have heard it described as polite and mannered.    

Without an audience, art remains merely an outlet of self expression for the artist.  He can attempt to second guess their feelings or simply go with the flow and remain true to his ideas.  But in either event, he relies heavily on an element of chance when he presents the work to the audience.  

Anyhow, long story short, my point is very simple: subjective + objective = subjective.  It cannot be objective because there's too much subjectivity involved and therefore an attempt to objectively determine the value of music is bound to be futile.  

thellama73 wrote: rogerthat wrote: But music or any other art form is nothing without the reaction.  If a Dream Theater album plays in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it still suck? (yes)

It obviously cannot play in the forest without somebody to operate a stereo system, so that's a poor example.

thellama73 wrote: rogerthat wrote: thellama73 wrote: rogerthat wrote: But music or any other art form is nothing without the reaction.  If a Dream Theater album plays in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it still suck? (yes) It obviously cannot play in the forest without somebody to operate a stereo system, so that's a poor example. Have you never heard of remote controls?

Remote controls to operate a system.  None that can move the thing to the forest.  In any case, the lions will get infuriated by the sound of JLB's voice and destroy the system before an 'audience' gets to hear it.

^^^ That is what I answered...if you left the record to play and ran away, the lions won't stand for it.  Since you asked, Asiatic lions live in scrub forests.  

I realized that in a while.  We don't have forests with towering redwoods, except maybe in the foothills of the Himalayas (not redwoods again, but tall trees).  Try grizzlies instead if that works, or jaguars.  I am telling you, they are all going to hate his voice.

I guess Geoff is right.  We just have to wind up every topic on our favourite punching bag, don't we? 

thellama73 wrote: If a Dream Theater album plays in the forest, and no one is around to hear it...

...somehow a 6th sense would tell you someone, somewhere is singing bad lyrics waaaaaaaay out of tune

+++hides+++

Yes for me it's hard not to be a snob since Prog is the greatest genre...