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From: DFUSER.KRAVITZ@MIT-XX.ARPA (Duddy)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Jethro Tull, Kate Bush, and jcp losingness
Message-ID: <10465@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 7-May-85 10:47:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.10465
Posted: Tue May  7 10:47:49 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 10-May-85 08:23:51 EDT
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Rich,
	I believe I have a partial answer to your question about criteria 
of musical (anything, really) worthiness.  This question is discussed in 
_Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance_, by Robert Pirsig.  What
follows is my distillation of some of what he says.

	There are two ways of `seeing' any situation, a classic way and a
romantic way.  The classic ways involve adherence to particular forms which
are merely customs developed by humanity during the past n millenia.  Thus
the "symphony" is a particular classic form (which doesn't mean it doesn't
evolve) which musical works can be compared to on a relatively objective
basis.  The romantic ways involve unadulterated perceiving, a sort of
pre-hearing if you will, in the case of music.  This type of perception is
what makes you pound your foot, snap your fingers, etc.  

Both ways of perceiving can lead to appreciation of music, chills down the
spine, and other reactions.  Something that adheres well to the classic form
can be called beautiful (like an elegant proof), just as much as a passage
that impresses you for some indescribable reason is beautiful.  Don't get
the idea from what I say that these two conceptions are seperate and
incommensurable.  They are intricately related, as you'll find out if you
read the book.

To summarize, there is some mainly objective criterion to evaluate music by,
but this criterion is itself subjective despite the amount of agreement on
it.  (What makes the symphony form so great?)  There also exists an equally
valid (invalid) way to judge music (art, etc.) -- the romantic method.  I
hope this helps and that it creates some meaningful discussion.

-- David Kravitz
MIT Lab for Comp. Sci.
Cambridge, MA
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