Does "greatness" in music exist, and if so what defines it?
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Cythraul
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Ok, well I certainly hope you're not using these considerations as your justification for the claim that talk about aesthetic value is not objective, since it seems question-begging.
V.V.V.V.V.
Houses Ov Mercury
I don't understand what you're saying tbh. Art does not have any objective value. Art is assigned subjective aesthetic value by people who experience it and by the artist him or herself. There is nothing objective about it ever.
Cythraul
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Ok, great. What's your justification for this view?
The considerations you adduced in your previous post for the view that claims of aesthetic value are not objective do not constitute adequate justification for said view. You claim that art and science cannot be talked about in the same way and then you analyze the different types of talk in terms of factuality and non-factuality. If you're using that as support for the view that claims of aesthetic value are not objective, you're begging the question. That's why I said that I hope it's not your justification for the view.
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That there's absolutely NOTHING that makes one artist better than another? That Trivium and Wicked Wisdom are just as notable and worth listening to as Pink Floyd is? Come on.
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I think that the greatness of music depends upon how obvious the melodies are and whether or not I perceive the first song on the album to be the only good one. Extreme metal bands are also lesser music than pretty much everything else because their music contains so much meaningless filler and pointless things like screaming, dissonance and minimalism.
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Ooh - Blackmail made a banal, thinly-veiled ad-hominem which is pretty much irrelevant to the actual discussion. How remarkable.
My serious opinion is that a large amount of what makes music good comes from the listener's perspective, though I don't think that's all there is to determining the musical quality of something. If the listener doesn't understand what the artist is trying to do, they don't really have any right to criticize them for it.
The topic presented here is not something I miss sleep over, and I don't see any point in even worrying about it.
The topic presented here is not something I miss sleep over, and I don't see any point in even worrying about it.
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In other words, you're just not that interested in the topic. That's fine. But it's something that interests me, and I think there's room to at least develop some coherent theories about the matter even if it may be impossible to reach absolute certainty on. At the very least, it's an interesting philosophical question.
edit: That's not to say I haven't shot off some strong, baseless opinions about it in the past. I acknowledge that. But I think I'm entitled to challenge the "it's all fuckin' relative, man" perspective, which I see as similarly baseless, even if it may be the majority view here.
whiskey funeral
Mother North
I voted the last option because in all honesty, what makes music great varies and depends on the person and what their tastes are. And that's all I going to say about that.
V.V.V.V.V.
Houses Ov Mercury
You're missing the fundamental point here; that there is no such thing as objective notability or "worthlisteningtoness" of music or of any art (switch "listen" to whatever).
AchrisK
Weakling
All of this lofty talk aside, I do think greatness exists in music. I think that many subsets of this board will agree on the greatness of certain releases. Greatness is born as a given music fan is moved to declare it about an album. That greatness is affirmed and expanded as one or more other people agree about it.
I still think that songwriting is the most important factor in what makes music that people consider great. In music I can't see that it could be any other thing. Music is sound arranged in time. Not just sound, but arranged sound. The arrangement is what makes it unique.
I still think that songwriting is the most important factor in what makes music that people consider great. In music I can't see that it could be any other thing. Music is sound arranged in time. Not just sound, but arranged sound. The arrangement is what makes it unique.
V.V.V.V.V.
Houses Ov Mercury
AchrisK
Weakling
Who said anything aboot objectivity? I thought it would be clear that I was speaking more about subjective agreements. (EDIT: Okay, I see I did not make that clear.) But how many times have you praised an album as "great"? That is what I am talking about. We can argue philosophical ideas about music and art, and it is interesting and fun, but what really matters in a practical world is what a piece of art does for us personally. And there is much agreement there.
Zephyrus
Tyrants and Slaves
"Greatness" is too vague a term to make this debate worthwhile. In literature, I think of the "great books" which have withstood the test of time at least several decades (and at most three thousand years). If you apply that to music, we've still got a ways to go before 80's and 90's bands can be put up on such a pedestal.
But if you're looking for any definition of "greatness" either than something analogous to "the great books" then it should be the final option, pure individual value judgment.
But if you're looking for any definition of "greatness" either than something analogous to "the great books" then it should be the final option, pure individual value judgment.
no country for old wainds
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no country for old wainds
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i did a loooong essay on dogville a while back and i'm gonna post the intro 'cause it's totally relevant. and no i can't be bothered with tidying it up.
Is 'Dogville' a 'GOOD' film? If not, what makes a film good? (Include some reference to other films we have watched in your discussion.)
The evaluation of film, and indeed the arts in general from literature to sculpture, has been and continues to be a matter of fierce debate for everybody from philosophers down to the most casual of viewers. Even though all film-going experiences are filtered through an individual’s senses into an individual’s mind, with no objective perspective from which to posit a definition of such concepts as “goodness”, we nonetheless harbour a sense that certain opinions are more justified than others. This essay constitutes an attempt to pin down definitively what might constitute a “good film”, and by extension evaluate the qualitative value of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville.
The preliminary task, perhaps the ultimate task, is to illuminate what exactly we mean when we talk about good films. Wittgenstein felt that it is misleading to assume all words have external worldly counterparts - such an idea suggests that by boiling language down to its fundamentals we can understand the metaphysical nature of the world. This is not the case because language doesn’t have fundamentals, there tends not to be an underlying common property which ties together all specific cases of a general concept (PI 28-30). Using the example of games, he suggests that there is no attributes common to all games, but rather, a network of criss-crossing similarities. Those things we call games are akin to a family, resembling one another in some ways and not others, with no underlying common property tying them together. Language, then, is merely “a family of structures relating to one another” (PI 108), and so there are no necessary or sufficient conditions for what can be classed as a “good film”.
The implications with regard to the concept “good film” are pessimistic; it seems as though it will be difficult if not impossible to define what makes good films if there is no property common to all cases. But Wittgenstein suggests that this doesn’t matter because we don’t need such definitions - “good film” is at base a linguistic concept, a way of presenting reality as opposed to some externally existing thing represented by language - there is no naturally necessary definition, there are only conventions of usage (PI s30). We already know how the phrase is conventionally used, indeed an acknowledgment of this is implicit in any attempts to find ostensive definitions, and ultimately these conventions of usage are the only real “meaning” a word or phrase can have - to understand or clarify “good film” further we only need to observe the ways in which the term is used in the specific communicative context we are considering.
A useful place to start would be the filmworld - a word I’m adapting from Danto’s “artworld” which I mean as “an atmosphere of film theory”, or an established knowledge-base of film history (TA p571-584). Danto believed that our understanding of terms like “good art” are inexorably, relationally bound to the surrounding artworld, and presumably the same might apply to film. It certainly doesn’t seem debatable that common conceptions of quality are steeped in theoretical history. One helpful website (TSP) sources a wide array of “great film” lists from established critics past and present, and systematically forms a list of those films most highly acclaimed, a list topped by such movies as Citizen Kane, Vertigo, The Godfather and 2001: A Space Odyssey the likes of which can provide examples of what is universally meant by the phrase “good film”.
if you agree with this idea then the question 'what constitutes great music?' isn't implying that the essence of greatness is out there in some platonic sense waiting to be found, but rather it's another way of asking 'how does the word greatness function in human communication in this context'. we're moving away from notions of 'objectivity' because they're nonsensical, we're now talking about linguistic usage. this is the only way of discussing or communicating about 'greatness' as far as i can tell, which renders a lot of posts in this thread confused to say the least.
Is 'Dogville' a 'GOOD' film? If not, what makes a film good? (Include some reference to other films we have watched in your discussion.)
The evaluation of film, and indeed the arts in general from literature to sculpture, has been and continues to be a matter of fierce debate for everybody from philosophers down to the most casual of viewers. Even though all film-going experiences are filtered through an individual’s senses into an individual’s mind, with no objective perspective from which to posit a definition of such concepts as “goodness”, we nonetheless harbour a sense that certain opinions are more justified than others. This essay constitutes an attempt to pin down definitively what might constitute a “good film”, and by extension evaluate the qualitative value of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville.
The preliminary task, perhaps the ultimate task, is to illuminate what exactly we mean when we talk about good films. Wittgenstein felt that it is misleading to assume all words have external worldly counterparts - such an idea suggests that by boiling language down to its fundamentals we can understand the metaphysical nature of the world. This is not the case because language doesn’t have fundamentals, there tends not to be an underlying common property which ties together all specific cases of a general concept (PI 28-30). Using the example of games, he suggests that there is no attributes common to all games, but rather, a network of criss-crossing similarities. Those things we call games are akin to a family, resembling one another in some ways and not others, with no underlying common property tying them together. Language, then, is merely “a family of structures relating to one another” (PI 108), and so there are no necessary or sufficient conditions for what can be classed as a “good film”.
The implications with regard to the concept “good film” are pessimistic; it seems as though it will be difficult if not impossible to define what makes good films if there is no property common to all cases. But Wittgenstein suggests that this doesn’t matter because we don’t need such definitions - “good film” is at base a linguistic concept, a way of presenting reality as opposed to some externally existing thing represented by language - there is no naturally necessary definition, there are only conventions of usage (PI s30). We already know how the phrase is conventionally used, indeed an acknowledgment of this is implicit in any attempts to find ostensive definitions, and ultimately these conventions of usage are the only real “meaning” a word or phrase can have - to understand or clarify “good film” further we only need to observe the ways in which the term is used in the specific communicative context we are considering.
A useful place to start would be the filmworld - a word I’m adapting from Danto’s “artworld” which I mean as “an atmosphere of film theory”, or an established knowledge-base of film history (TA p571-584). Danto believed that our understanding of terms like “good art” are inexorably, relationally bound to the surrounding artworld, and presumably the same might apply to film. It certainly doesn’t seem debatable that common conceptions of quality are steeped in theoretical history. One helpful website (TSP) sources a wide array of “great film” lists from established critics past and present, and systematically forms a list of those films most highly acclaimed, a list topped by such movies as Citizen Kane, Vertigo, The Godfather and 2001: A Space Odyssey the likes of which can provide examples of what is universally meant by the phrase “good film”.
if you agree with this idea then the question 'what constitutes great music?' isn't implying that the essence of greatness is out there in some platonic sense waiting to be found, but rather it's another way of asking 'how does the word greatness function in human communication in this context'. we're moving away from notions of 'objectivity' because they're nonsensical, we're now talking about linguistic usage. this is the only way of discussing or communicating about 'greatness' as far as i can tell, which renders a lot of posts in this thread confused to say the least.
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Einherjar86
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