That ugly 'relativist' argument rears its head yet again!

This is for all non-EC or peripheral-EC topics. We all know how much we love talking about 'The Man' but sometimes we have other interests.
Post Reply
User avatar
Jack of All Parades
Posts: 5716
Joined: Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:31 am
Location: Where I wish to be

That ugly 'relativist' argument rears its head yet again!

Post by Jack of All Parades »

This blog from today's NY Times presents a well reasoned argument as to relevance- an age old argument:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... ef=opinion
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
Poor Deportee
Posts: 671
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2006 7:30 pm
Location: Chocolate Town

Re: That ugly 'relativist' argument rears its head yet again

Post by Poor Deportee »

The interestingly-named Gutting makes a plausible case, and one that I've often contemplated - e.g., the irrefutable fact that a classical symphony lends itself to a vastly richer complexity and sophistication than a 3-minute pop song, and in that sense is, as a form, capable of objectively "higher" artistic achievement. Roger Scruton's An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture is my own preferred reference-point for this kind of argument. (Interestingly, I had a brief e-mail exchange with him on some of these very issues. He was most generous in this; I am not among the Scruton-haters).

This cuts on a personal level. Despite inhabiting the supposedly rarified air of academia, like many profs of my generation I remain fundamentally a child of pop culture. Notwithstanding the elaborate Foucaultian rationalizations, I suspect that this is why so many of us waste the world's time by writing about, say, Batman comics rather than Joyce. Having been in schooled in an era in which the old liberal-arts, humanist ideals of education had been thrown overboard, my education was insufficient to override the basically middlebrow orientations into which I was socialized. The result is that my musical tastes run to high-quality popular music (with significant measures of traditional/roots music and modest dashes of jazz tossed in for good measure) and pretty much stop there - I never really made the jump to being a serious listener of classical music, although I am capable of responding to it and may get around to it someday. Similar tendencies apply to film; I'll watch and respond to any good movie, but never sought out, say, Fellini, and the tragic fact is that junk like Star Wars occupies an unduly large space in my imagination due to the impact it made on my impressionable childhood . Nor am I a high-end master of our most demanding literatures. The post-humanist era of education perhaps equips me to respond to high art, but it hasn't trumped the more primal schooling of a suburban North American upbringing.

Oh, well.

However, it may be possible to challenge Gutting's analysis without resorting to sloppy relativism. He downplays the possibility that popular music's combination of lyric and music opens creative avenues not typically accessed by classical forms, save the (objectively bizarre) form of opera. He supports his case with reference to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" - possibly the Beatles' most flagrantly shallow and sensationalistic piece of hit-making, irresistible as it may be. Had he chosen "Strawberry Fields Forever," his case might have been harder to sustain. Sure, a classical symphony is open to a much higher degree of sheer musical sophistication. But the collision of lyric and musicality here arguably yields an artistic effect of a comparably high order. You could say the same thing about many of Dylan's best moments. I have never been prepared to deny that the net effect of Bob's combination of indelible phrasing, lyric, and musicality is "lower" than the net effect of a Mozart Concerto.

And this assumes that comparing quite different forms like this makes a lot of sense. It's harder than it looks. Indeed, you can turn Gutting's approach against different genres of classic music itself. Wouldn't his logic suggest that a symphony is intrinsically "higher" than a less complex form such as a concerto or a piano sonata? Barring recourse to my own nebulous category of "net artistic effect," doesn't his analysis risk sliding into a grotesquely quantitative account whereby, all else being equal, the longer and more instrument-laden form always "wins?" For that matter, is a long-form drama like The Sopranos really intrinsically inferior to "high" theatre? - wouldn't his focus on "complexity and sophistication" suggest that extended TV dramas have an in-built advantage over, say, the shorter-form dramatic genres in which Shakespeare wrote? Does it turn out that Shakespeare is The Beatles to David Chase's Beethoven?

Wow, sorry to drone on. Interesting post, though, Chris!
When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns
I hope no living thing cries over his bones
User avatar
Jack of All Parades
Posts: 5716
Joined: Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:31 am
Location: Where I wish to be

Re: That ugly 'relativist' argument rears its head yet again

Post by Jack of All Parades »

PD- well I have always abhorred that arrogant argument put forth by Ms Wolfe. And I am no prof just an everyday "common reader" and listener. Elitist crap. I am much more taken by the quoted paragraph from Alex Ross's essay:

"Music is too personal a medium to support an absolute hierarchy of values. The best music is music that persuades us that there is no other music in the world. This morning, for me, it was Sibelius’s Fifth; late last night, Dylan’s “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”; tomorrow, it may be something entirely new. I can’t rank my favorite music any more than I can rank my memories. Yet some discerning souls . . . say, in effect, “The music you love is trash. Listen instead to our great, arty music” . . . . They are making little headway with the unconverted because they have forgotten to define the music as something worth loving. If it is worth loving, it must be great; no more need be said."

I think he gets it right in that notion that what is perhaps best is that which persuades us there is nothing better in this world than that very thing at this very moment. 8)

I will readily argue with anyone that a work like "Almost Blue" or "A Day in the Life" or "I Threw It All Away" or the aforementioned "Strawberry Fields" have a complexity and depth of craft, emotion and feeling, and message as any classical symphony- they are just highly compressed in their fineness of artistic expression. My augerie is does it give me pleasure?

This little piece by William Blake has always been a talisman for me when engaged in this argument-

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."

I regularly use it to test the worth of a given piece against another. Wish some 3000 miles did not separate us- would gladly chew the fat of this one anyday over a libation of choice.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
Poor Deportee
Posts: 671
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2006 7:30 pm
Location: Chocolate Town

Re: That ugly 'relativist' argument rears its head yet again

Post by Poor Deportee »

Jack of All Parades wrote:PD- well I have always abhorred that arrogant argument put forth by Ms Wolfe. And I am no prof just an everyday "common reader" and listener. Elitist crap. I am much more taken by the quoted paragraph from Alex Ross's essay:

"Music is too personal a medium to support an absolute hierarchy of values. The best music is music that persuades us that there is no other music in the world. This morning, for me, it was Sibelius’s Fifth; late last night, Dylan’s “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”; tomorrow, it may be something entirely new. I can’t rank my favorite music any more than I can rank my memories. Yet some discerning souls . . . say, in effect, “The music you love is trash. Listen instead to our great, arty music” . . . . They are making little headway with the unconverted because they have forgotten to define the music as something worth loving. If it is worth loving, it must be great; no more need be said."

I think he gets it right in that notion that what is perhaps best is that which persuades us there is nothing better in this world than that very thing at this very moment. 8)

I will readily argue with anyone that a work like "Almost Blue" or "A Day in the Life" or "I Threw It All Away" or the aforementioned "Strawberry Fields" have a complexity and depth of craft, emotion and feeling, and message as any classical symphony- they are just highly compressed in their fineness of artistic expression. My augerie is does it give me pleasure?

This little piece by William Blake has always been a talisman for me when engaged in this argument-

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."

I regularly use it to test the worth of a given piece against another. Wish some 3000 miles did not separate us- would gladly chew the fat of this one anyday over a libation of choice.
I love what you've written here, Chris, and hanker too after that mythic libation. The trick, though, is the depth of your own sensibility. "Does it give me pleasure?" becomes a categorically different critereon when proposed by one like yourself (who quotes Blake in its defence!) than when invoked by some tweener for whom "Call Me Maybe" is the pinnacle of musical expression. I do tend to resist the idea that Justin Bieber's music is "just as good" as Dylan's, or Mozart's. Now it may impart just as much sheer pleasure, but only to a tin (or prepubescent) ear. So I'm with Gutting to that extent; but as noted before, I don't think his attempt to argue for the intrinsic superiority of a given musical form holds up.
When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns
I hope no living thing cries over his bones
User avatar
Jack of All Parades
Posts: 5716
Joined: Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:31 am
Location: Where I wish to be

Re: That ugly 'relativist' argument rears its head yet again

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Well like our boy, Jimmie, and his 'hip flask', I, too, would welcome such a repast- remember-

"O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!"

Though these days I am most partial to the sentiment of this one:

GREAT THINGS
(Thomas Hardy)

"Sweet cyder is a great thing
A great thing to me,
Spinning down to Weymouth town
By Ridgeway thirstily,
And maid and mistress summoning
Who tend the hostelry;
O cyder is a great thing
A great thing to me!

The dance it is a great thing
A great thing to me,
With candles lit and partners fit
For night-long revelry,
A going home when day-dawning
Peeps pale upon the lea;
O dancing is a great thing
A great thing to me!

Love is, yea, a great thing
A great thing to me,
When, having drawn across the lawn
In darkness silently,
A figure flits like one a-wing
Out from the nearest tree;
O love is, yes, a great thing,
Aye, greatest thing to me.

Will these be always great things
Greatest things to me?......
Let it befall that one will call
"Soul, I have need of thee":
What then, joy-jaunts, impassioned flings,
Love and its ecstacy
Will always have been great things,
Greatest things to me."


That would be most welcome on such a sultry day- good company and the thought of better times.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
Post Reply