But nevertheless, in the case of (let’s say) tonal versus atonal music, it must be acknowledged that tonal music has various features that make it more pleasing to most people, and this can look like objective superiority in some respects (though I myself insist that it is best described as widespread agreement on its subjective superiority).
And that is objective superiority, for sufficiently high values of “most”. Because we’re only talking about humans here. Ants will not value that kind of music highly, because they can’t hear it. But we can make some claims about objective superiority when we limit ourselves to humans.
Hi Phil, that Skytopia web page doesn’t mention 12-tone music being superior. It mentions “12 notes to the octave”, and maybe that’s what you meant (tonal music—the stuff most people like).
But ’12-tone’ (with the word ‘tone’) in its strict definition is actually usually atonal.
And that is objective superiority, for sufficiently high values of “most”. Because we’re only talking about humans here. Ants will not value that kind of music highly, because they can’t hear it. But we can make some claims about objective superiority when we limit ourselves to humans.
Hi Phil, that Skytopia web page doesn’t mention 12-tone music being superior. It mentions “12 notes to the octave”, and maybe that’s what you meant (tonal music—the stuff most people like).
But ’12-tone’ (with the word ‘tone’) in its strict definition is actually usually atonal.