Is some music better than other music?

[Allan F]

Why shouldn't the performing arts not be recognized? Performing arts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[semente]

That's an absurdly narrow definition. So when Ella sings or Coltrane plays, there's no creation there? (Note that your definition excludes most of jazz from the realm of art. Just a bunch of Tin Pan Alley songs being played by whomever.)

 

Or in classical music, there's really no need for "name" soloists, since they're interchangeable above a certain, requisite technical level?

 

And the same goes for actors and dancers, I assume? (That Astaire, just putting his feet where Hermes Pan said to. What a hack. And then he sang some Gershwin songs. More hackery.)

 

What about theater or film directors when they're working from a script they didn't write? I guess they fall into the same second-class status?

 

It might be useful, as others have pointed out, to consider that some art centers on individual acts of creation (say, writing, painting), whereas other art is highly collaborative (say, drama, film, dance, most music). IOW, for all intents and purposes, there's no Wagner without a big goddamn orchestra and a bunch of fat singers. This might be why, when Le Sacre du Printemps is reviewed in the paper, it's a performance (or these days, a recording) that's reviewed, not Stravinsky's manuscript.

 

Hi David,

 

Coltrane interpreted his own creations as well as standards and works of others, and as far as I know Ella only interpreted other people's works.

Soloist interpret solo, the others interpret in groups of different sizes.

 

Acting and dancing dance are both forms of interpretation.

 

In cinema things become a bit less clear...who is the artist, the director or the screenwriter?

The French (Spanish, Italian or Portuguese) word for "film director" is "réalisateur".

The verb "Réaliser" can be translated as "to produce", "to perform", "to accomplish" or "to achieve"; the director is also a performer, he follows a script and makes "it" happen...

 

The Oxford dictionary describes "performing arts" as "forms of creative activity that are performed in front of an audience, such as drama, music, and dance" so I guess that in that sense, an interpreter is a performing artist.

 

Some people go even further:

Is Music A Fine Art?

By John Francis

What "is" the place of music (classical or other) and the other fine arts in general education and cultural literacy? What should it be? This is a very tough question, and one about which even the most articulate and passionate advocates have serious problems making reasoned and persuasive arguments. It's even a serious question whether music is a fine art at all; Peter Kivy, for one, argues that the label is recent and chiefly a matter of prestige, and the nature of music makes it more a decorative art.

Now of course it's possible to be intellectual "about" music, and one can say that it's possible to be intellectual "in" music (that is, in the music one composes). But can one be intellectual "without" music? I think the burden of proof goes the other way: one needs to show why and how music is "essential intellectual equipment," or at least essential to cultural literacy. And that, I believe, hasn't yet been shown - certainly not in Douglas McLennan's article, and not really in anything else I've read.

Ancient history doesn't signify. "Back as early as Pythagoras, music was considered a key to helping understand the universe. Musical tones helped explain mathematics and scientific principals, and certain combinations of notes were thought to have profound effects on the emotions." But did the ancient Greeks really understand the universe, and can music help "us" do so, or understand mathematics and scientific principles? Surely not. And while music does indeed affect us emotionally, what has this to do with cultural literacy or intellectual life?

One might as readily argue that religious knowledge is essential to cultural literacy. And indeed, though not a religious person myself, I'd say that one can't really understand the history and current state of the world without some knowledge of the great religions. But when fundamentalists of any stripe actually put religious teachings into school curricula, whether in Arabia or Alabama, many of us worry that the development of the intellect, or merely of cultural literacy, is not being furthered but blocked. And we're right.

I care passionately about classical music; I can't imagine life without it, and it's one of the things I live for. But when I look for valid arguments that "everyone" should be musically literate (whatever that is taken to mean), I don't find them. Not even in ArtsJournal.

Is Music A Fine Art? - - ArtsJournal Letters: Daily Arts News

 

Best,

Ricardo

[InfernoSTi]

Remember our discussion earlier about some art being a "conversation"?

 

Please consider applying this idea to the singer who is an artist in a "conversation" with the original work and, through their interpretation, creating a new work of art.

 

Please also consider applying this idea to a movie where the screenwriter, the director, and the actors are in a "conversation" with each other and create a work of art that any one of which would not have been able to create but for the "conversation" itself.

 

The concept (I purposely will not use the word "definition" because as soon as you define something, you exclude something which may be art that you simply had no knowledge of) that art is creation, that the artist can witness their own creation, and that art can be a conversation between artists is a pretty clear way of opening your mind and heart to art that may be outside one's current perspective.

 

When faced with something unfamiliar to you, simply ask yourself where it falls in the range of these three concepts and soon you begin to see the work through a new lens that isn't validated simply because it is a derivative of something familiar.

 

You stop looking at a work and trying to see if it similar enough to another work you have already accepted as art and start to see the work of art on its own merit.

 

This practice will enrich your life in many ways that extend far beyond the realm of art.

 

John

[orgel]

Coltrane interpreted his own creations as well as standards and works of others, and as far as I know Ella only interpreted other people's works.

Soloist interpret solo, the others interpret in groups of different sizes.

 

Acting and dancing dance are both forms of interpretation.

 

First, thanks to InfernoSTi for articulating something I could never have stated nearly as tactfully.

 

Second … Semente, you've provided a lot of food for thought, but I have to say I disagree at a fundamental level. If you want to create a hierarchy with regard to what's more important in art, and that helps you sort things out, I'm not going to quibble about it, but I think it's pretty limiting. All this hairsplitting about what's fine art and what's folk (or decorative) art, what's creation and what's interpretation, just doesn't serve much of a purpose, IMO, when it comes to actually understanding and appreciating said art, or even being in a receptive frame of mind. What it all apparently leads to, reductio ad absurdum, is a slightly crazy letter in an "arts journal" (something that's pretty definitely not art, BTW), where some dude's arguing that knowing something about music and the history thereof is irrelevant to cultural literacy.

 

I get that people need to find ways to occupy their intellect, and I can be as much of a culture snob as anyone, but I think we'd all be better off at least trying to maintain some sort of "art is where you find it" approach. That way, similar to InfernoSTi's concepts, we're more open to whatever aesthetic opportunities present themselves.

 

--David

[semente]

Do note that my views in the subject of Art vs. Entertainment are merely a matter of semantics and have nothing to do with merit or with my appreciation of a work or performance per se.

 

Going back to the original question, I think that if the answer to Is some music better than other music? is an obvious yes when we compare works whithin a particular musical genre but apparently very much debatable when comparing genres...

 

R

[bluesman]

Where the heck are you? I know he has lots of displays around the country but that sure looks like the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.

It is the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. We love the place and visit every time we're close.