Good and bad
Fri, Apr 5 2013, 12:38AM
"There are only two kinds of music, good music and bad music". I've come across this statement, or similar, quite often - even in interviews with eminent musicians. However, for me it's utter nonsense. What do others think?
Fri, Apr 5 2013, 10:43AM
#2
RE: Good and bad
I completely agree with the statement, although as usual, there are lots of grey areas in between. It is not a popular way of thinking in middle class liberal London as it actually means making value judgements. But the term 'art' in itself is a 'value judgement'. Smug middle class liberals prefer to pretend all music is of equal value, however rubbish it may be. It is the kind of thinking that allows John Cage to not write anything for 4 minutes and 33 seconds or for a leading French socialist politician to say a black youth banging on a tin can is the equal of Mozart. He of course was looking for ethnic votes so he had a motive. We should all be making more qualatitive judgements not less. However diddley do nothing liberals and marketing men would much prefer we all turned into little mice and stopped thinking altogether.
Fri, Apr 5 2013, 12:06PM
#3
RE: Good and bad
To quote the dutch composer Louis Andriessen: "You don't have "good" music or "bad" music, but music with "good" notes and "bad" notes". It's all about the context..
Rolf
Fri, Apr 5 2013, 12:51PM
#4
RE: Good and bad
Who!
Fri, Apr 5 2013, 11:48PM
#5
RE: Good and bad
In the sense that there's music I like to listen to and music I don't like to listen to, I agree completely -- but by that measure, everyone's idea of "good" and "bad" is different. But then, that's true about everything. :-)
Sat, Apr 6 2013, 11:38AM
#6
RE: Good and bad
Good and bad, as far as quality is concerned, can be measured. We measure good and bad in most things. We gather together the leading minds in any subject and we take what they say as accepted knowledge. It is considered by some as being politically incorrect but they are really just doing as they are told by the people that they view as being the leading minds in left wing politics. Do we have any trouble in placing artistic value on more tangible art forms, no, of course not.
Sat, Apr 6 2013, 6:19PM
#7
RE: Good and bad
Gramophone, like all the magazines of the same kind, deal with good or bad recordings of a music that is supposed to be great (in the various shades of it).
Parla
Sat, Apr 6 2013, 6:34PM
#8
RE: Good and bad
Can we not add jazz to the mix, that would make it - The good, the bad and the ugly.
Sat, Apr 6 2013, 10:34PM
#9
RE: Good and bad
To quote the dutch composer Louis Andriessen: "You don't have "good" music or "bad" music, but music with "good" notes and "bad" notes". It's all about the context.
And of course the people at the "good" side of the politican spectrum decide what's "good", right?
Reminds me of Konrad Boehmer who once came lecture us at the conservatorium about tonal music being bad and atonal music being good. He demonstrated this with a piece he wrote and which had tonal elements that the ideal audience would percieve as bad sounding and atonal ones that would sound "good".
This is what these marxist clowns (Andriessen included) actually believe. Time to finally close the lid on this 60's-70's Darmstadt agitprop garbage and condemn those idiots and their works to a well deserved oblivion, I say.
To start with, Guillaume, we should agree on the definitions of "good and bad", particularly when they are used in music.
Since, from my experience, there has never been (anywhere) such an agreement, I'm with you: it's an "utter nonsense".
However, it will be interesting if you can come up with some definitions that we may converge in one or the other way.
Parla