People appreciate air travel without study of aerospace engineering.
People appreciate being able to conduct secure transactions without study of cryptography.
People appreciate cell phones without study of EM physics and information theory.
And in case you think I’m limiting it to science/engineering:
People appreciate acrobats without study of acrobatics.
And the Beatles without study of musical history.
In all of these cases, the field, in a sense, forces you to care about it. You may not be able to understand its details, but you can’t deny that there is a genuine achievement behind it that can’t be faked.
In contrast, there are fields where the best thing you can say is that, well, the people who already invested a huge portion of their lives in it think it sure is swell… . What should I make of those?
People appreciate air travel without study of aerospace engineering.
But much less rarely do people appreciate a good plane without study of aerospace engineering. Exceptions would be people who think “a good plane” is a plane with reclining seats and champagne, and the stealth bomber.
In this sense, people can and do appreciate the Beatles without study of musical theory, but rarely can they appreciate ‘classical masters’ without it. (Of course, this is blurred by cultural and social forces requiring you to signal enjoyment and admiration for the names Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, etc)
I think the key point is
you can’t deny that there is a genuine achievement behind it that can’t be faked.
and that in some cases (classical master), it requires understanding of the specific field to recognise the achievement, and in other cases (Beatles) it doesn’t. Or rather, it relies on something that’s already present in the vast majority of humans, and so isn’t considered a specific field. The Beatles were playing on understandings that were already present; current masters are playing on understandings that require training.
I think people without the specific understandings conflate “appeals to pre-existing understandings” with “good” and “doesn’t appeal to (my) understandings” with “bad”—and that people with specific understandings conflate “appeals to pre-existing understandings” with “pandering to the unwashed masses” and “appeals to a specific understanding (which I value highly because I have sunk effort into)” with “good”.
But much less rarely do people appreciate a good plane without study of aerospace engineering.
Sure they do, by virtue of the fact that they appreciate that the (purported) good plane affords them opportunities that they like, and which can’t be faked. They don’t have to know all the details about the structure and engine to know that, “wow, this plane sure holds a lot of people, moves them a long way, very quickly, and does so in a way that I can afford”.
The Beatles were playing on understandings that were already present; current masters are playing on understandings that require training.
But is that training in objective achievement, or in how well you know a clique’s inside jokes? I claim that for academic art, it’s the latter—that there’s no sense in which it’s great other than “this group has decreed it so”, just as it is with theology.
They don’t have to know all the details about the structure and engine to know that, “wow, this plane sure holds a lot of people, moves them a long way, very quickly, and does so in a way that I can afford”.
But could they look at a plane, without seeing it in action, and predict that it would very quickly move a lot of people a long distance in an affordable way? It doesn’t seem like this metric could appreciate the differences between any of the main passenger planes in use.
But is that training in objective achievement, or in how well you know a clique’s inside jokes?
I contend the former—the sense in which it’s great (other than “approved by elites”) is that it takes large amounts of effort and very refined skill.
I see “predicting how good a plane is without seeing it in action” closer to “predicting how nice a piece of music is by looking at a printout of its waveform”, rather than appreciating music one listens to.
(I was about to say “looking at sheet music”, but that’s closer to “looking at engineering blueprints”. Sure, in general an aerospace engineer might have a general idea of how a type of plane might perform by looking at it—like a good sound engineer could get a sense of rhythm and tempo from seeing a soundwave—but it’s hard to tell if the particular plane you’re looking at actually has a plausibly functional engine without looking at the details in a form meant for reading them, just as it’s hard to see from a soundwave if the sounds are actually pleasant or not.)
Sorry, I got a bit wordier than I meant to explaining it; the point, I don’t think “predicting a plane’s behavior” is a very good example for this discussion.
If you want an example, take something closer to what people have more-or-less efficient hardware for (as they seem to have for music). For example, one does not have to be a good athlete or sportsman to be able to appreciate one, and can predict somewhat how good an athlete might be in a particular situation by looking at one in “inactive” state. (Though, of course, accuracy and confidence would be low. It’s hard to predict the winner in a championship, similarly to how it’s hard to predict which particular song will be most popular in some genre. But one doesn’t need to be an expert to appreciate that I suck at singing as well as at basketball, most people could determine both after hearing me try a single note, or seeing my height.)
In contrast, there are fields where the best thing you can say is that, well, the people who already invested a huge portion of their lives in it think it sure is swell… . What should I make of those?
Presumably, it depends what drove them to invest time in it in the first place.
If someone ended up as a advanced composer because they really liked Beethoven etc. when they were young, and subsequently followed their nose, up through Schoenberg, until they finally became Milton Babbitt, that should suggest that something may be going on other than a cynical pursuit of status.
Now, whether you would want to bother following a path to appreciation of contemporary music will depend quite simply on how much enjoyment you think you can get out of music in the first place.
And it should be noted that this is somewhat hypothetical anyway, because it’s already been pointed out that non-specialists can and do enjoy advanced music.
The stigma against small groups of people experiencing large amounts of enjoyment—as opposed to large groups of people experiencing small amounts of enjoyment—ought to be abolished.
So you think in that comment, komponisto has sufficiently broken the similarities I have cited to theology as an academic field? If so, please elaborate further about how you came to this conclusion.
The main problem with theological ideas isn’t that they aren’t interesting, but that they aren’t true. But art doesn’t have truth-values; interestingness is all there is.
I didn’t say that he did that, but he clarified an argument which I think if fairly plausible. I’m not claiming he’s compelling. Certainly it could be made in some situations and its case still not hold, but its pretty significant evidence, I think, for his position. He can argue more if he wants to. FWIW, I still think that something has to be fairly wrong with the field if it can’t make a better opera just to prove that it can and to make some money, but something can be fairly wrong with a field without the field being bogus.
I like Lady McBeth of Mtsensk District, from 1934, but its not in cannon. I have heard great things about Dr. Atomic, but I haven’t seen it and don’t know much about it. Of cannon operas, I don’t know anything comparable to Figaro or to the very different Ring Cycle. There must be possibilities for operas that good and that different from anything else. Aida is probably my favorite ordinary cannon opera, but I don’t like it nearly as much as the others I just mentioned. I enjoy Phantom, which isn’t an Opera but which makes use of operatic vocals and melodrama and I generally enjoy pop music that incorporates highly trained vocalization skills.
I’m actually not all that familiar with Lady McBeth, having only heard excerpts on occasion. My impression is that it’s one of his more adventurous pieces, but in general, Shostakovich is too conservative for me (for which he can’t entirely be blamed, since conservatism was imposed by the regime he lived under).
What do you think of Wozzeck? Lulu? (These are close enough to “canon” to count as such, from the point of view of music history and criticism. Particularly Wozzeck.) (Your answer here will probably determine whether anything more modern has a hope of satisfying you.)
I’ve seen Doctor Atomic, though only once. I doubt you’ll find it comparable to Figaro or The Ring, but I could be wrong.
Sorry for the delay, didn’t have a chance earlier. I just checked out Wozzeck.
My assessment--
The positives:
Decent pure instrumentals when no-one is singing. Locally there is clear and interesting musical structure at times. Not repetitive. Definitely music.
The negatives: No characters, no conflict, no interesting music for the first two scenes, no emotional range, no large scale structure, insipid cliche propaganda themes, intentionally ugly in every respect, repetitious, extremely boring and repetitious vocals.
My net assessment is that it was written by someone who knew how to compose, or at least how to compose interesting short snippets of symphonic music and plausibly short experimental songs but who had no idea at all of how to make an opera.
Yeah, so if you don’t like Wozzeck (probably the greatest opera of the 20th century), then it pretty much follows that you would think opera died in the 20th century.
My reaction to some of your negative points:
no large scale structure
This is demonstrably false, so I’ll have to interpret is as an assertion that you didn’t perceive any large scale structure. Which is possible, if this was your first hearing and you weren’t already acquainted with this kind of music (i.e. able to perceive large-scale structure in other works of the Second Viennese School).
It seems that you did perceive structure on the level of phrases, but not on the level of acts or the whole opera. What about intermediate levels, e.g. did you perceive structure on the level of scenes?
insipid cliche propaganda themes
This is arguably true now, after works like Wozzeck, etc., but it wasn’t true at the time it was written (WWI and aftermath), and it certainly wasn’t true at the time of Büchner’s original play a century earlier.
no interesting music for the first two scenes
I can see why you might say that about the first scene, if you’re new to this kind of music, but I’m surprised you would say it about the second scene, especially given that you did find interesting music elsewhere in the work. (I assume you must have liked Marie’s lullaby in the third scene, which is everybody’s favorite part.)
intentionally ugly in every respect
As a statement about the composer’s intentions, this is most assuredly wrong. (Just as our enemies don’t perceive themselves as evil, neither do artists we don’t like typically perceive themselves as creating ugly work.) I’m pretty familiar with Berg’s life and personality, and feel very confident in asserting that “intentionally ugly” is not at all how he would have described his own music.
repetitious
This seems to contradict “not repetitive” from the “positives” list, so you might want to elaborate. You seem to be referring more to vocal passages here, but these don’t contain more repetition (probably less) than the instrumental passages.
My net assessment is that it was written by someone who knew how to compose, or at least how to compose interesting short snippets of symphonic music and plausibly short experimental songs but who had no idea at all of how to make an opera.
Your disagreement with the musical establishment (and also with me personally) is quite severe in the case of this work and its composer, and so I would predict with reasonable confidence that your opinion is susceptible to updating upon further musical exposure.
Scene-level structure: I could see that the scenes were integrated pieces, and the endings were obviously appropriate endings for the sort of material that the scenes consisted of, but it seemed to me that in most cases one could have broken the scenes into 1-2 minute segments, choosing natural break points and adding transitions. You could then have shuffled the middle segments without detracting from the scenes.
The themes were obvious in 1925, but arguably not in 1914 when the opera began and definitely not in the 19th century. OTOH, I don’t think they were handled well at all.
Some artists (I’m thinking of Celine in particular) explicitly have said that they wanted to create ugly work. For that matter, some business-people I know do see themselves as ‘bad guys’, though they probably wouldn’t say ‘evil’.
Yep, complaint was about the vocals.
The point of the discussion was to figure out whether I could believe that the musical establishment is doing the same thing that earlier classical composers were doing. My impression is agnostic and remains agnostic. I’m sure that they are doing something technically difficult, and was already sure of that, but I’m just not convinced that its something worth while. The key question is essentially one of whether Beethoven or Wagner (or Gauss or Hilbert) would consider the history of music (or math) from their day forward to be interesting (and whether Beethoven etc would consider modern academic music more or less interesting than jazz, Indian classical, Pink Floyd, etc,)
still think that something has to be fairly wrong with the field if it can’t make a better opera just to prove that it can and to make some money, but something can be fairly wrong with a field without the field being bogus.
You have forgotten Goldman’s Law (of Hollywood, but it applies to all art, and particularly to making money from art): “Nobody knows anything.”
Okay, this clarifies our dispute greatly. Let me say, then, that my position here is not based on disliking “small groups that get large amounts of enjoyment”. What distinguishes music as an academic field is this purported enjoyment plus the cultural capture—the belief, which you keep repeating, that not enjoying the elite-designated music is a failing of the listener, and academia is the one that gets to make this call.
If there were a real accomplishment here, rather than a mere agreement to applaud other members of the clique, academic-produced music should outperform in blind tests, but it does not, and this is (mistakenly) dismissed as a failing on the listeners’ part. But if you’re going to permit yourself that standard, you can call absolutely anything great, and rook society into respecting it, as I have shown with the theology comparisons.
If you can hype up me the way Joshua Bell gets hyped up for his performances, then sure, I could command big fees for apparances. But this would say very little about what I have to offer.
So this has nothing to do with a stigma against small groups that have found a way to amuse themselves. No other group gets the academic respectability in the absence of objective results that art does—except perhaps other lost academic fields. And all the answers you’ve given me could work just as well to “prove” anything good and excuse why it can’t pass any objective test.
What distinguishes music as an academic field is this purported enjoyment plus the cultural capture—the belief, which you keep repeating, that not enjoying the elite-designated music is a failing of the listener, and academia is the one that gets to make this call.
I think we need to taboo the highlighted term.
There are, in fact, cognitive/intellectual prerequisites to being able to enjoy music. This shouldn’t be surprising: chimpanzees presumably don’t get human-level enjoyment out of the Beatles, much less Beethoven. (And even if they do, mice still don’t, etc.) I doubt the infant Beethoven would have appreciated the works of his adult self. And so likewise, some humans (like my current self) are better equipped to appreciate Ferneyhough than others (like my 12-year-old-self).
It occurs to me that what this argument is really about is status. I read you as resisting the idea that the kind of abilities involved in being able to enjoy academic music are something that one should be awarded status for possessing. I think this may be because you misunderstand the nature of those abilities.
(It’s very important, by the way, to understand that we’re not talking about aesthetic evaluation, at this point. We’re talking about the ability to hear the music as music, as opposed to incoherent nonsense. Only after you can actually perceive the musical structure of a piece can you begin to talk about the extent to which that structure suits your own personal tastes. But most people who say they “don’t like” contemporary art music aren’t at that stage; what they are expressing is the fact that contemporary music sounds like nonsense to them, and they are mistaking their non-enjoyment of nonsense for aesthetic disagreement, evidently not quite realizing that the music actually sounds different to people who “get” it.)
If there were a real accomplishment here, rather than a mere agreement to applaud other members of the clique, academic-produced music should outperform in blind tests
Outperform what, in what kind of test? What test does a piece of music have to pass for you to consider it a “real accomplishment”?
Meanwhile, I have some empirical predictions for you. If any of these were able to be decisively falsified, I would be confused and would have to reevaluate my model:
The average IQ of the population of Beethoven enthusiasts should be higher than the average IQ of Beatles enthusiasts, and lower than the average IQ of Schoenberg enthusiasts.
Among professional musicians, enthusiasm for the music of Schoenberg should be positively correlated with IQ to an even greater extent than among the general population. (High-IQ should be greater evidence of Schoenberg enthusiasm conditioning on the person being a professional musician.)
People who enjoy Beethoven should perform better on aural skills tests (sight-singing and musical dictation) than people who don’t. This should be true to a lesser extent if “Beethoven” is replaced by “the Beatles”, and to a greater extent if “Beethoven” is replaced by “Schoenberg”.
Answered here. No, that humans are smarter than chimpanzees does not imply that the music you like is objectively better than other music, nor does it having the capacity to be worked at for years.
(I am given caution by having heard similar arguments from rock musicians who have fifty Frank Zappa albums. Technical complication is an emotional button for art to press, that humans have and chimps don’t, but that does not make it the highest of all possible buttons.)
that humans are smarter than chimpanzees does not imply that the music you like is objectively better than other music
I did not use the highlighted phrase in my comment. You will have to spell out an argument that what I said implies that, because I don’t see it. You’ll have to start by telling me what “objectively better” means.
And then, assuming you’re actually disagreeing with me about something specific, you’ll have to tell me why the argument I presented is wrong. Which of my predictions do you disagree with, and by how much?
There are several disparate issues that I’m going to need to tie together, and I think they represent an excellent example for how to apply the lessons from the sequences, so I’m going to save my replies on this topic for an article that more coherently presents my intuitions in context.
Tentative titles: “Truly Part of Your Values”, “Excellence in the Dojo Alone”
Now, whether you would want to bother following a path to appreciation of contemporary music will depend quite simply on how much enjoyment you think you can get out of music in the first place.
Quite simply seems simply mistaken, even if you are mentioning one important factor.
If someone ended up as a advanced composer because they really liked Beethoven etc. when they were young, and subsequently followed their nose, up through Schoenberg, until they finally became Milton Babbitt, that should suggest that something may be going on other than a cynical pursuit of status.
In my experience of this sort of thing, it’s motivated by the pursuit of a personal obsession. I’ve watched this in the rabid variety of record collector, back in the ’80s and ’90s when this sort of thing could be difficult and expensive. I’ve been that record collector. It involves turning into an obsessive crank, at a penalty to status.
Note that what you have created for all this effort (obsessive record hunting, studying twentieth century music, etc) is a subjective experience. This exists only inside your own head. Perhaps you can communicate it back out again—justify the effort by perpetuating the meme—perhaps you can only tell others that it’s possible.
As I noted, at times it feels like being really fussy over the variety of heroin you’re going to ruin your life with.
We’re talking about aesthetics here, in which the end product is a subjective feeling in the listener’s brain.
As such, a useful analogy would be you refusing to believe that a novel in a language you don’t speak (say, The Brothers Karamazov in the original Russian) could possibly be better than Red vs Blue fanfic, because if it was you’d be able to read it, c.f. your list of analogies above.
That is: the key point your analogies above miss is the concept of inferential distance. Even if the inferential distance is huge (e.g. learning Russian), that doesn’t make claims of the art’s quality fraudulent.
What’s annoying you, I suspect, is komponisto’s apparent assertion that his chosen favourite music is not only good, but objectively the best music there is, and that the qualia one experiences from this music are the best available from music. This is ridiculous to me too. However, that there is inferential distance between you and the music does not make the music a fraud. This apparent assertion of yours is also ridiculous. The purpose of all forms of art appreciation course—degrees in music, a newspaper article, a record review—is to lessen the inferential distance to a given piece of art.
What’s annoying you, I suspect, is komponisto’s apparent assertion that his chosen favourite music is not only good, but objectively the best music there is, and that the qualia one experiences from this music are the best available from music.
I’d like to know which specific statements of mine give this impression, because that isn’t what I see myself asserting.
From my perspective—of having to endure a constant stream of casual remarks to the effect that contemporary music sucks, often coming from people who aren’t particularly familiar with contemporary music, but think themselves sufficiently informed because they enjoy listening to Mozart to show off their own status—I’m basically just defending the existence of the music I like. In the process, of course, I expressed enthusiasm for this music, and what I’m seeing here appears to be pushback from violating the social taboo against expressing high levels of enthusiasm (for pretty much anything).
What’s annoying you, I suspect, is komponisto’s apparent assertion that his chosen favourite music is not only good, but objectively the best music there is, and that the qualia one experiences from this music are the best available from music.
I’d like to know which specific statements of mine give this impression, because that isn’t what I see myself asserting.
I was looking through your posts, but this one appears to say precisely that.
No, it does not make you smarter than everyone else. Some people have more capacity than others, but you haven’t magically hit the sweet spot for all of human music. That is the bit I’m seeing and going “that’s ridiculous”.
Art works by pressing buttons in someone’s head and generating a subjective experience. The artist first, then others because humans in a particular time, place and (sub)culture will have similar enough buttons to be able to talk about them. Inferential distance kicks in when you take the art out of its time, place and (sub)culture, and at that point it may in fact take a degree’s worth of bridging to get there (and to a huge number of other places as well).
Art is great for effect in general, not just for your carefully defined personal category of “interestingness” (and I can’t find the post right now, but I recall you saying you were using your own personal definition of “IQ” as well). That presses your personal buttons very effectively, but it’s not a universal button and—and this is the key point—it’s not the greatest of all buttons.
Can simple art be effective? Can there be simple art that is more effective than complicated art? Here I include “simplicity on the far side of complexity” as “simple”, though arguably one may not.
I was looking through your posts, but this one appears to say precisely that.
That was written after the grandparent, first of all. Secondly, see my reply to you there: it doesn’t say that at all, unless you invoke additional premises (such as “utilizing more intellectual resources” implying “objectively better”) that I haven’t stated.
No, it does not make you smarter than everyone else.
Do you deny that appreciation of contemporary art music (or even Schoenberg) is Bayesian evidence of high IQ?
but I recall you saying you were using your own personal definition of “IQ” as well
For purposes of this specific sub-discussion (regarding empirical predictions), you may assume that I am talking about “the thing measured by IQ tests”.
That presses your personal buttons very effectively, but it’s not a universal button and—and this is the key point—it’s not the greatest of all buttons.
I haven’t come close to claiming that my buttons are universal. As for “greatest”, well, obviously I think the music I like is the greatest music. But this isn’t an information-free statement: there are reasons I like the music I like, and those reasons are not unrelated to musical ability and experience. Obviously, there’s a personal component, too—I like some composers and works better than others of equal sophistication—but that personal component plays a much smaller role in explaining my “disagreement” with nonspecialists than it does in explaining my disagreements with specialists (which will tend to be much narrower).
Can simple art be effective?
Yes, as long as interest comes from somewhere. Superficial “complication” is not the only way to create interest.
That presses your personal buttons very effectively, but it’s not a universal button and—and this is the key point—it’s not the greatest of all buttons.
Are there universal buttons? That there is any controversy at all over value of music so many thousands of years after its inception, and that music taste is tagged ‘personal’ (and indeed, uses words like ‘taste’ and ‘preference’) suggest there are not.
In the absence of universal buttons, how do we rank ‘greatness’ of buttons? Again, ‘music taste is personal’ is an impediment. There are several options:
Ranked according to percentage of population affected positively (possibly minus percentage affected negatively)
Ranked according to intensity of positive effect (possibly minus intensity of negative effect)
Ranked as some synthesis of percentage and intensity.
Ranked according to correlations with positive or negative traits, as determined by which traits increase or decrease fitness (musical tastes as an indicator of fitness)
Ranked according to correlations with positive or negative traits, as determined by which traits increase or decrease social ability (musical tastes as a derivative of status and signalling)
The first three suffer from all the problems common to majoritarianism solutions—a self-approving effect (where the individuals who prefer ‘what the majority prefers’ make up the majority). The fourth is a pure evo-psych idea. The fifth is a twist on the fourth, but suffers to some extent from issues relating to cultural relativism (‘greatness’ of buttons is heavily dependent on current cultural settings).
Some of these systems at first glance seem to rank appeals-to-intelligence quite highly. Possibly appeals-to-desire-for-status could take top spot.
I could see a milder claim of universality that isn’t on your list—a claim that a large majority of people over an extended period of time like (or perhaps love) the music which is claimed to be universal.
It’s amusing to see claims that some types of music (usually classical) are wonderful because they’re universal, but also that people these days need to learn to like them.
That is: the key point your analogies above miss is the concept of inferential distance. Even if the inferential distance is huge (e.g. learning Russian), that doesn’t make claims of the art’s quality fraudulent.
I don’t see how this comparison holds, since I can read a translation of TBK, and nothing I’ve said implies that not knowing the language it’s written in suffices for any kind of dismissal. Certainly, you can enjoy it more if you learn Russian and read it in the original, but it probably wouldn’t be worth the effort to do so just to enjoy this book (plus some other set) -- yet that’s basically what’s claimed of the top academic music/theology, and I hope you can see how that position is in error.
What’s annoying you, I suspect, is komponisto’s apparent assertion that his chosen favourite music is not only good, but objectively the best music there is, and that the qualia one experiences from this music are the best available from music.
I don’t know if komponisto asserts this, but by selecting one clique’s favored music (which cannot show its superiority in unfakeable tests), academia is saying something like this, and it is that position that I reject.
I don’t see how this comparison holds, since I can read a translation of TBK
OK then, you don’t get that analogy. Do you believe it is possible to learn about a piece of art and understand much better what it’s about where you didn’t before, thus increasing the quality of your subjective experience of it?
(which cannot show its superiority in unfakeable tests)
This phrase reads like a mindboggling category error on the level of this Robin Hanson post. Could you detail what sort of tests you are thinking of, and preferably any past examples? I cannot imagine what you could possibly be thinking of which would actually usefully answer any question about art as far as someone interested in having a superior artistic experience is concerned.
No, I got the analogy just fine—it just didn’t prove what you thought, and my position didn’t imply what you claimed.
Do you believe it is possible to learn about a piece of art and understand much better what it’s about where you didn’t before, thus increasing the quality of your subjective experience of it?
Yes. But when you get to the point where you’re claiming I must first be (in effect) indoctrinated into an insular clique, you’re going way beyond that. Once you start getting to pre-suppose feeding the listener a long cirriculum, it’s no longer sufficient to say, “hey, after that indoctrination, they liked it, so we were right all along!” As I keep saying, you can make anything likeable by this metric! My point is that any such priming of the subject means you have a higher standard to meet: that work needs must then be compared to other entertainment venues that can apply a similar amount of priming—you have to account for opportunity costs, in other words.
You can make me like your dance style after 10 years of indoctrinating me? So what? I can make you like Star Trek after 10 years of indoctrination—but Star Trek doesn’t get entire academic departments devoted to it.
This phrase reads like a mindboggling category error on the level of this Robin Hanson post. Could you detail what sort of tests you are thinking of, and preferably any past examples?
I already gave one—the Joshua Bell experiment. For others, it would be things like, “can people identify which ones academia has designated as ‘good’ without having been told in advance?”
Do you believe it is possible to learn about a piece of art and understand much better what it’s about where you didn’t before, thus increasing the quality of your subjective experience of it?
Yes.
That’s called “inferential distance” as it applies to music; the distance between you before you learnt more about the art and after you learnt more about the art is the inferential distance.
You appeared confused by and dismissive of the concept in music previously. Please go back and see if anything I or komponisto (who thinks quite different things to me, by the way) have said makes any more sense to you now.
But when you get to the point where you’re claiming I must first be (in effect) indoctrinated into an insular clique, you’re going way beyond that. Once you start getting to pre-suppose feeding the listener a long cirriculum, it’s no longer sufficient to say, “hey, after that indoctrination, they liked it, so we were right all along!” As I keep saying, you can make anything likeable by this metric! My point is that any such priming the subject needs must then be compared to other entertainment venues that can apply a similar amount of priming—you have to account for opportunity costs, in other words.
You appear to be claiming I said things that are a bit like things komponisto said (and which I disagreed with).
I already gave one—the Joshua Bell experiment.
You didn’t answer before so evidently I have to ask again: are you seriously asserting that, rather than being a human interest “fish out of water” story, the Washington Post seriously intended it as a scientific test of Joshua Bell’s artistic merits? What?
People appreciate air travel without study of aerospace engineering.
People appreciate being able to conduct secure transactions without study of cryptography.
People appreciate cell phones without study of EM physics and information theory.
And in case you think I’m limiting it to science/engineering:
People appreciate acrobats without study of acrobatics.
And the Beatles without study of musical history.
In all of these cases, the field, in a sense, forces you to care about it. You may not be able to understand its details, but you can’t deny that there is a genuine achievement behind it that can’t be faked.
In contrast, there are fields where the best thing you can say is that, well, the people who already invested a huge portion of their lives in it think it sure is swell… . What should I make of those?
But much less rarely do people appreciate a good plane without study of aerospace engineering. Exceptions would be people who think “a good plane” is a plane with reclining seats and champagne, and the stealth bomber.
In this sense, people can and do appreciate the Beatles without study of musical theory, but rarely can they appreciate ‘classical masters’ without it. (Of course, this is blurred by cultural and social forces requiring you to signal enjoyment and admiration for the names Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, etc)
I think the key point is
and that in some cases (classical master), it requires understanding of the specific field to recognise the achievement, and in other cases (Beatles) it doesn’t. Or rather, it relies on something that’s already present in the vast majority of humans, and so isn’t considered a specific field. The Beatles were playing on understandings that were already present; current masters are playing on understandings that require training.
I think people without the specific understandings conflate “appeals to pre-existing understandings” with “good” and “doesn’t appeal to (my) understandings” with “bad”—and that people with specific understandings conflate “appeals to pre-existing understandings” with “pandering to the unwashed masses” and “appeals to a specific understanding (which I value highly because I have sunk effort into)” with “good”.
Sure they do, by virtue of the fact that they appreciate that the (purported) good plane affords them opportunities that they like, and which can’t be faked. They don’t have to know all the details about the structure and engine to know that, “wow, this plane sure holds a lot of people, moves them a long way, very quickly, and does so in a way that I can afford”.
But is that training in objective achievement, or in how well you know a clique’s inside jokes? I claim that for academic art, it’s the latter—that there’s no sense in which it’s great other than “this group has decreed it so”, just as it is with theology.
But could they look at a plane, without seeing it in action, and predict that it would very quickly move a lot of people a long distance in an affordable way? It doesn’t seem like this metric could appreciate the differences between any of the main passenger planes in use.
I contend the former—the sense in which it’s great (other than “approved by elites”) is that it takes large amounts of effort and very refined skill.
I see “predicting how good a plane is without seeing it in action” closer to “predicting how nice a piece of music is by looking at a printout of its waveform”, rather than appreciating music one listens to.
(I was about to say “looking at sheet music”, but that’s closer to “looking at engineering blueprints”. Sure, in general an aerospace engineer might have a general idea of how a type of plane might perform by looking at it—like a good sound engineer could get a sense of rhythm and tempo from seeing a soundwave—but it’s hard to tell if the particular plane you’re looking at actually has a plausibly functional engine without looking at the details in a form meant for reading them, just as it’s hard to see from a soundwave if the sounds are actually pleasant or not.)
Sorry, I got a bit wordier than I meant to explaining it; the point, I don’t think “predicting a plane’s behavior” is a very good example for this discussion.
If you want an example, take something closer to what people have more-or-less efficient hardware for (as they seem to have for music). For example, one does not have to be a good athlete or sportsman to be able to appreciate one, and can predict somewhat how good an athlete might be in a particular situation by looking at one in “inactive” state. (Though, of course, accuracy and confidence would be low. It’s hard to predict the winner in a championship, similarly to how it’s hard to predict which particular song will be most popular in some genre. But one doesn’t need to be an expert to appreciate that I suck at singing as well as at basketball, most people could determine both after hearing me try a single note, or seeing my height.)
Presumably, it depends what drove them to invest time in it in the first place.
If someone ended up as a advanced composer because they really liked Beethoven etc. when they were young, and subsequently followed their nose, up through Schoenberg, until they finally became Milton Babbitt, that should suggest that something may be going on other than a cynical pursuit of status.
Now, whether you would want to bother following a path to appreciation of contemporary music will depend quite simply on how much enjoyment you think you can get out of music in the first place.
And it should be noted that this is somewhat hypothetical anyway, because it’s already been pointed out that non-specialists can and do enjoy advanced music.
The stigma against small groups of people experiencing large amounts of enjoyment—as opposed to large groups of people experiencing small amounts of enjoyment—ought to be abolished.
This is a very credible short version of the argument you are making as I understand it.
So you think in that comment, komponisto has sufficiently broken the similarities I have cited to theology as an academic field? If so, please elaborate further about how you came to this conclusion.
See this comment, where I wrote:
I didn’t say that he did that, but he clarified an argument which I think if fairly plausible. I’m not claiming he’s compelling. Certainly it could be made in some situations and its case still not hold, but its pretty significant evidence, I think, for his position. He can argue more if he wants to. FWIW, I still think that something has to be fairly wrong with the field if it can’t make a better opera just to prove that it can and to make some money, but something can be fairly wrong with a field without the field being bogus.
Out of curiosity, and for calibration: what, in your opinion, was the most recent (sufficiently) “good” opera?
This is very true, and there is plenty that is wrong with the field of music.
I like Lady McBeth of Mtsensk District, from 1934, but its not in cannon. I have heard great things about Dr. Atomic, but I haven’t seen it and don’t know much about it. Of cannon operas, I don’t know anything comparable to Figaro or to the very different Ring Cycle. There must be possibilities for operas that good and that different from anything else. Aida is probably my favorite ordinary cannon opera, but I don’t like it nearly as much as the others I just mentioned. I enjoy Phantom, which isn’t an Opera but which makes use of operatic vocals and melodrama and I generally enjoy pop music that incorporates highly trained vocalization skills.
I’m actually not all that familiar with Lady McBeth, having only heard excerpts on occasion. My impression is that it’s one of his more adventurous pieces, but in general, Shostakovich is too conservative for me (for which he can’t entirely be blamed, since conservatism was imposed by the regime he lived under).
What do you think of Wozzeck? Lulu? (These are close enough to “canon” to count as such, from the point of view of music history and criticism. Particularly Wozzeck.) (Your answer here will probably determine whether anything more modern has a hope of satisfying you.)
I’ve seen Doctor Atomic, though only once. I doubt you’ll find it comparable to Figaro or The Ring, but I could be wrong.
Sorry for the delay, didn’t have a chance earlier.
I just checked out Wozzeck.
My assessment--
The positives: Decent pure instrumentals when no-one is singing. Locally there is clear and interesting musical structure at times. Not repetitive. Definitely music.
The negatives:
No characters, no conflict, no interesting music for the first two scenes, no emotional range, no large scale structure, insipid cliche propaganda themes, intentionally ugly in every respect, repetitious, extremely boring and repetitious vocals.
My net assessment is that it was written by someone who knew how to compose, or at least how to compose interesting short snippets of symphonic music and plausibly short experimental songs but who had no idea at all of how to make an opera.
Yeah, so if you don’t like Wozzeck (probably the greatest opera of the 20th century), then it pretty much follows that you would think opera died in the 20th century.
My reaction to some of your negative points:
This is demonstrably false, so I’ll have to interpret is as an assertion that you didn’t perceive any large scale structure. Which is possible, if this was your first hearing and you weren’t already acquainted with this kind of music (i.e. able to perceive large-scale structure in other works of the Second Viennese School).
It seems that you did perceive structure on the level of phrases, but not on the level of acts or the whole opera. What about intermediate levels, e.g. did you perceive structure on the level of scenes?
This is arguably true now, after works like Wozzeck, etc., but it wasn’t true at the time it was written (WWI and aftermath), and it certainly wasn’t true at the time of Büchner’s original play a century earlier.
I can see why you might say that about the first scene, if you’re new to this kind of music, but I’m surprised you would say it about the second scene, especially given that you did find interesting music elsewhere in the work. (I assume you must have liked Marie’s lullaby in the third scene, which is everybody’s favorite part.)
As a statement about the composer’s intentions, this is most assuredly wrong. (Just as our enemies don’t perceive themselves as evil, neither do artists we don’t like typically perceive themselves as creating ugly work.) I’m pretty familiar with Berg’s life and personality, and feel very confident in asserting that “intentionally ugly” is not at all how he would have described his own music.
This seems to contradict “not repetitive” from the “positives” list, so you might want to elaborate. You seem to be referring more to vocal passages here, but these don’t contain more repetition (probably less) than the instrumental passages.
Your disagreement with the musical establishment (and also with me personally) is quite severe in the case of this work and its composer, and so I would predict with reasonable confidence that your opinion is susceptible to updating upon further musical exposure.
Scene-level structure: I could see that the scenes were integrated pieces, and the endings were obviously appropriate endings for the sort of material that the scenes consisted of, but it seemed to me that in most cases one could have broken the scenes into 1-2 minute segments, choosing natural break points and adding transitions. You could then have shuffled the middle segments without detracting from the scenes.
The themes were obvious in 1925, but arguably not in 1914 when the opera began and definitely not in the 19th century. OTOH, I don’t think they were handled well at all.
Some artists (I’m thinking of Celine in particular) explicitly have said that they wanted to create ugly work. For that matter, some business-people I know do see themselves as ‘bad guys’, though they probably wouldn’t say ‘evil’.
Yep, complaint was about the vocals.
The point of the discussion was to figure out whether I could believe that the musical establishment is doing the same thing that earlier classical composers were doing. My impression is agnostic and remains agnostic. I’m sure that they are doing something technically difficult, and was already sure of that, but I’m just not convinced that its something worth while. The key question is essentially one of whether Beethoven or Wagner (or Gauss or Hilbert) would consider the history of music (or math) from their day forward to be interesting (and whether Beethoven etc would consider modern academic music more or less interesting than jazz, Indian classical, Pink Floyd, etc,)
You have forgotten Goldman’s Law (of Hollywood, but it applies to all art, and particularly to making money from art): “Nobody knows anything.”
Also, these schools don’t teach music industry—just music appreciation and making. There are schools that are for the specific purpose of teaching music writing and performance in order to make money. (The younger teen just applied to go to that one.)
Okay, this clarifies our dispute greatly. Let me say, then, that my position here is not based on disliking “small groups that get large amounts of enjoyment”. What distinguishes music as an academic field is this purported enjoyment plus the cultural capture—the belief, which you keep repeating, that not enjoying the elite-designated music is a failing of the listener, and academia is the one that gets to make this call.
If there were a real accomplishment here, rather than a mere agreement to applaud other members of the clique, academic-produced music should outperform in blind tests, but it does not, and this is (mistakenly) dismissed as a failing on the listeners’ part. But if you’re going to permit yourself that standard, you can call absolutely anything great, and rook society into respecting it, as I have shown with the theology comparisons.
If you can hype up me the way Joshua Bell gets hyped up for his performances, then sure, I could command big fees for apparances. But this would say very little about what I have to offer.
So this has nothing to do with a stigma against small groups that have found a way to amuse themselves. No other group gets the academic respectability in the absence of objective results that art does—except perhaps other lost academic fields. And all the answers you’ve given me could work just as well to “prove” anything good and excuse why it can’t pass any objective test.
I think we need to taboo the highlighted term.
There are, in fact, cognitive/intellectual prerequisites to being able to enjoy music. This shouldn’t be surprising: chimpanzees presumably don’t get human-level enjoyment out of the Beatles, much less Beethoven. (And even if they do, mice still don’t, etc.) I doubt the infant Beethoven would have appreciated the works of his adult self. And so likewise, some humans (like my current self) are better equipped to appreciate Ferneyhough than others (like my 12-year-old-self).
It occurs to me that what this argument is really about is status. I read you as resisting the idea that the kind of abilities involved in being able to enjoy academic music are something that one should be awarded status for possessing. I think this may be because you misunderstand the nature of those abilities.
(It’s very important, by the way, to understand that we’re not talking about aesthetic evaluation, at this point. We’re talking about the ability to hear the music as music, as opposed to incoherent nonsense. Only after you can actually perceive the musical structure of a piece can you begin to talk about the extent to which that structure suits your own personal tastes. But most people who say they “don’t like” contemporary art music aren’t at that stage; what they are expressing is the fact that contemporary music sounds like nonsense to them, and they are mistaking their non-enjoyment of nonsense for aesthetic disagreement, evidently not quite realizing that the music actually sounds different to people who “get” it.)
Outperform what, in what kind of test? What test does a piece of music have to pass for you to consider it a “real accomplishment”?
Meanwhile, I have some empirical predictions for you. If any of these were able to be decisively falsified, I would be confused and would have to reevaluate my model:
The average IQ of the population of Beethoven enthusiasts should be higher than the average IQ of Beatles enthusiasts, and lower than the average IQ of Schoenberg enthusiasts.
Among professional musicians, enthusiasm for the music of Schoenberg should be positively correlated with IQ to an even greater extent than among the general population. (High-IQ should be greater evidence of Schoenberg enthusiasm conditioning on the person being a professional musician.)
People who enjoy Beethoven should perform better on aural skills tests (sight-singing and musical dictation) than people who don’t. This should be true to a lesser extent if “Beethoven” is replaced by “the Beatles”, and to a greater extent if “Beethoven” is replaced by “Schoenberg”.
Answered here. No, that humans are smarter than chimpanzees does not imply that the music you like is objectively better than other music, nor does it having the capacity to be worked at for years.
(I am given caution by having heard similar arguments from rock musicians who have fifty Frank Zappa albums. Technical complication is an emotional button for art to press, that humans have and chimps don’t, but that does not make it the highest of all possible buttons.)
I did not use the highlighted phrase in my comment. You will have to spell out an argument that what I said implies that, because I don’t see it. You’ll have to start by telling me what “objectively better” means.
And then, assuming you’re actually disagreeing with me about something specific, you’ll have to tell me why the argument I presented is wrong. Which of my predictions do you disagree with, and by how much?
Your comment makes detailed claims of inherent superiority of the fans of the music you like. Are you claiming that doesn’t constitute such a claim?
A claim that X utilizes more intellectual resources than Y does not constitute a claim that X is “objectively better” than Y, no.
There are several disparate issues that I’m going to need to tie together, and I think they represent an excellent example for how to apply the lessons from the sequences, so I’m going to save my replies on this topic for an article that more coherently presents my intuitions in context.
Tentative titles: “Truly Part of Your Values”, “Excellence in the Dojo Alone”
Quite simply seems simply mistaken, even if you are mentioning one important factor.
Yes, the pursuit of status without cynicism.
In my experience of this sort of thing, it’s motivated by the pursuit of a personal obsession. I’ve watched this in the rabid variety of record collector, back in the ’80s and ’90s when this sort of thing could be difficult and expensive. I’ve been that record collector. It involves turning into an obsessive crank, at a penalty to status.
How does it affect your enjoyment of the music?
Sometimes it feels worth it!
Note that what you have created for all this effort (obsessive record hunting, studying twentieth century music, etc) is a subjective experience. This exists only inside your own head. Perhaps you can communicate it back out again—justify the effort by perpetuating the meme—perhaps you can only tell others that it’s possible.
As I noted, at times it feels like being really fussy over the variety of heroin you’re going to ruin your life with.
We’re talking about aesthetics here, in which the end product is a subjective feeling in the listener’s brain.
As such, a useful analogy would be you refusing to believe that a novel in a language you don’t speak (say, The Brothers Karamazov in the original Russian) could possibly be better than Red vs Blue fanfic, because if it was you’d be able to read it, c.f. your list of analogies above.
That is: the key point your analogies above miss is the concept of inferential distance. Even if the inferential distance is huge (e.g. learning Russian), that doesn’t make claims of the art’s quality fraudulent.
What’s annoying you, I suspect, is komponisto’s apparent assertion that his chosen favourite music is not only good, but objectively the best music there is, and that the qualia one experiences from this music are the best available from music. This is ridiculous to me too. However, that there is inferential distance between you and the music does not make the music a fraud. This apparent assertion of yours is also ridiculous. The purpose of all forms of art appreciation course—degrees in music, a newspaper article, a record review—is to lessen the inferential distance to a given piece of art.
I’d like to know which specific statements of mine give this impression, because that isn’t what I see myself asserting.
From my perspective—of having to endure a constant stream of casual remarks to the effect that contemporary music sucks, often coming from people who aren’t particularly familiar with contemporary music, but think themselves sufficiently informed because they enjoy listening to Mozart to show off their own status—I’m basically just defending the existence of the music I like. In the process, of course, I expressed enthusiasm for this music, and what I’m seeing here appears to be pushback from violating the social taboo against expressing high levels of enthusiasm (for pretty much anything).
I was looking through your posts, but this one appears to say precisely that.
No, it does not make you smarter than everyone else. Some people have more capacity than others, but you haven’t magically hit the sweet spot for all of human music. That is the bit I’m seeing and going “that’s ridiculous”.
Art works by pressing buttons in someone’s head and generating a subjective experience. The artist first, then others because humans in a particular time, place and (sub)culture will have similar enough buttons to be able to talk about them. Inferential distance kicks in when you take the art out of its time, place and (sub)culture, and at that point it may in fact take a degree’s worth of bridging to get there (and to a huge number of other places as well).
Art is great for effect in general, not just for your carefully defined personal category of “interestingness” (and I can’t find the post right now, but I recall you saying you were using your own personal definition of “IQ” as well). That presses your personal buttons very effectively, but it’s not a universal button and—and this is the key point—it’s not the greatest of all buttons.
Can simple art be effective? Can there be simple art that is more effective than complicated art? Here I include “simplicity on the far side of complexity” as “simple”, though arguably one may not.
But hey—tell me I’m wrong.
That was written after the grandparent, first of all. Secondly, see my reply to you there: it doesn’t say that at all, unless you invoke additional premises (such as “utilizing more intellectual resources” implying “objectively better”) that I haven’t stated.
Do you deny that appreciation of contemporary art music (or even Schoenberg) is Bayesian evidence of high IQ?
For purposes of this specific sub-discussion (regarding empirical predictions), you may assume that I am talking about “the thing measured by IQ tests”.
I haven’t come close to claiming that my buttons are universal. As for “greatest”, well, obviously I think the music I like is the greatest music. But this isn’t an information-free statement: there are reasons I like the music I like, and those reasons are not unrelated to musical ability and experience. Obviously, there’s a personal component, too—I like some composers and works better than others of equal sophistication—but that personal component plays a much smaller role in explaining my “disagreement” with nonspecialists than it does in explaining my disagreements with specialists (which will tend to be much narrower).
Yes, as long as interest comes from somewhere. Superficial “complication” is not the only way to create interest.
Are there universal buttons? That there is any controversy at all over value of music so many thousands of years after its inception, and that music taste is tagged ‘personal’ (and indeed, uses words like ‘taste’ and ‘preference’) suggest there are not.
In the absence of universal buttons, how do we rank ‘greatness’ of buttons? Again, ‘music taste is personal’ is an impediment. There are several options:
Ranked according to percentage of population affected positively (possibly minus percentage affected negatively)
Ranked according to intensity of positive effect (possibly minus intensity of negative effect)
Ranked as some synthesis of percentage and intensity.
Ranked according to correlations with positive or negative traits, as determined by which traits increase or decrease fitness (musical tastes as an indicator of fitness)
Ranked according to correlations with positive or negative traits, as determined by which traits increase or decrease social ability (musical tastes as a derivative of status and signalling)
The first three suffer from all the problems common to majoritarianism solutions—a self-approving effect (where the individuals who prefer ‘what the majority prefers’ make up the majority). The fourth is a pure evo-psych idea. The fifth is a twist on the fourth, but suffers to some extent from issues relating to cultural relativism (‘greatness’ of buttons is heavily dependent on current cultural settings).
Some of these systems at first glance seem to rank appeals-to-intelligence quite highly. Possibly appeals-to-desire-for-status could take top spot.
I could see a milder claim of universality that isn’t on your list—a claim that a large majority of people over an extended period of time like (or perhaps love) the music which is claimed to be universal.
It’s amusing to see claims that some types of music (usually classical) are wonderful because they’re universal, but also that people these days need to learn to like them.
I don’t see how this comparison holds, since I can read a translation of TBK, and nothing I’ve said implies that not knowing the language it’s written in suffices for any kind of dismissal. Certainly, you can enjoy it more if you learn Russian and read it in the original, but it probably wouldn’t be worth the effort to do so just to enjoy this book (plus some other set) -- yet that’s basically what’s claimed of the top academic music/theology, and I hope you can see how that position is in error.
I don’t know if komponisto asserts this, but by selecting one clique’s favored music (which cannot show its superiority in unfakeable tests), academia is saying something like this, and it is that position that I reject.
OK then, you don’t get that analogy. Do you believe it is possible to learn about a piece of art and understand much better what it’s about where you didn’t before, thus increasing the quality of your subjective experience of it?
This phrase reads like a mindboggling category error on the level of this Robin Hanson post. Could you detail what sort of tests you are thinking of, and preferably any past examples? I cannot imagine what you could possibly be thinking of which would actually usefully answer any question about art as far as someone interested in having a superior artistic experience is concerned.
No, I got the analogy just fine—it just didn’t prove what you thought, and my position didn’t imply what you claimed.
Yes. But when you get to the point where you’re claiming I must first be (in effect) indoctrinated into an insular clique, you’re going way beyond that. Once you start getting to pre-suppose feeding the listener a long cirriculum, it’s no longer sufficient to say, “hey, after that indoctrination, they liked it, so we were right all along!” As I keep saying, you can make anything likeable by this metric! My point is that any such priming of the subject means you have a higher standard to meet: that work needs must then be compared to other entertainment venues that can apply a similar amount of priming—you have to account for opportunity costs, in other words.
You can make me like your dance style after 10 years of indoctrinating me? So what? I can make you like Star Trek after 10 years of indoctrination—but Star Trek doesn’t get entire academic departments devoted to it.
I already gave one—the Joshua Bell experiment. For others, it would be things like, “can people identify which ones academia has designated as ‘good’ without having been told in advance?”
That’s called “inferential distance” as it applies to music; the distance between you before you learnt more about the art and after you learnt more about the art is the inferential distance.
You appeared confused by and dismissive of the concept in music previously. Please go back and see if anything I or komponisto (who thinks quite different things to me, by the way) have said makes any more sense to you now.
Er, I at no stage questioned this, and previously agreed with you in saying so.
You appear to be claiming I said things that are a bit like things komponisto said (and which I disagreed with).
You didn’t answer before so evidently I have to ask again: are you seriously asserting that, rather than being a human interest “fish out of water” story, the Washington Post seriously intended it as a scientific test of Joshua Bell’s artistic merits? What?