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Music that isn't art

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Music that isn't art

Omninescience
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Posted 08/20/06 - 12:19 PM: Subject: Music that isn't art	#1
I've had a few discussion with people over the forums a while back, they consider bands like Simple Plan, good charolette and the likes of them, art. I have a problem with that notion, mainly because I don't see any art in their music. There may be music, but there is no art. But then we would have to consider the music itself art, but then again, there is nothing about the music itself that compells me to sit down and listen, there is no active stimulation within the music. In your opinon forum, what would you consider art. We all know music is subjective, but what kind of music is the authentic and cloned music. We know there are people who are natual musicians and there are others who pick up a instrument for commodity (These are the people who clone other people music, maybe they can make a break since the trend is in). what are your thoughts?
Don't believe everything you've been told if you haven't seen everything, questions everything.

salokin88
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Posted 08/20/06 - 06:36 PM:	#2
the question of what is art is one that cannot really be won. I beleive that it really depends on your point of view. You would have to go to great lengths to define art. Another question is if music that is designed to just be ambient such as elevator music is art?

saaaam
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Posted 08/20/06 - 11:53 PM:	#3
I think all you can define art as is an arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements, etc, that you have defined as individual or particular. Hence I call that sofa over there "a sofa" and not art. I may then decide that the sofa is art, and so I distinguish it from other sofas as "that sofa". I call this the process of individualisation that one carries out in creating art. This canvas, with this particular arrangement of paint, is singular, individual and particular, distinguished from the thousands of other canvasses throughout the world, and is thereby deemed to be art. We have certain criteria that we test any object with before carrying out this process. One such criterion is beauty. I find a particular canvas beautiful, and so I call it art through individualising it as "this particular canvas". Often this individualising is reflected by it being given a title, such as Kandinsky's "Composition 7". Someone else finds a work of art repugnant, and so they refuse to call it art. They deindividualise the object by placing it into a general category such as "rubbish", "tat" or "the same old modern art crap". But this criterion of beauty falls down, as it begs the question: why must beauty be a criterion for the individualising of an object into a work of art? There is no persuasive answer for this, other than "because we like beauty". Often beauty, or the lack of it, is the deciding factor in someone feeling a certain way about an object. But, many can still appreciate an object for its lack of beauty, or even its mediocrity. Beauty is an especially subjective term anyway, and so to dismiss reams of art on the grounds that one does not find them beautiful is incredibly rash and short-sighted when one considers how many others are likely to find something beautiful when another may not. Thus, I think it is not beauty that we use for a criterion but particularity. We commonly deem objects to be art because they are distinctive, particular and individual amongst other objects. It is often not our decision that we deem an object to be art in this manner; an object may have always been it as it has always been individual and particular. Beauty is merely the most obvious and immediately likeable form of particularity, and so it features more prominently when we criticise art. Other criteria appear: workmanship, emotionality, complexity, simplicity, size, semantics. The last one is important because it defines why modern art is so appealing. People like Tracy Emin's "Bed" because of what it means, in a woman pouring the contents her life out in front of us, seemingly quoting the biblical injunction: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Now, the criterion of semantics is important here because I've added that biblical reference to the work of art myself. I don't care if Emin thought about that in the construction of her piece, she probably didn't anyway. I am interested in the piece because I find that that is what it means to me, and that is all that interests me about this piece. Thus, we see a work of art whose individualisation is upheld solely by the criterion of semantics. Other works are upheld by emotionality: this is key in appreciation of romantic music. The difference between Mozart and Beethoven is the introduction of emotionality. Mozart was entirely about beauty; beauty in the melodic lines, beauty in the perfectly developing harmonies, etc. Beethoven took this aesthetic principle, but added emotionality as another one, at the expense of the former. If one listens to his first symphony, it is very Mozartian in many places, but often features incredibly contrasted louder, “grittier” sections, designed for their emotional effect on the listener. I also believe that art can be defined by its function, and this is where the ideas merge. Beauty is an end, and so a piece of music can be carrying out the function of creating beauty, as in the case of Mozart. Another function can be mood or atmosphere, as in ambient music or music for films. Both are viable works of art, both have very different functions. We can of course may criticism of different types of art. I personally don’t like Simple Plan, but that does not stop it being art. I really enjoy the Serialist works of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg, and later composers such as Boulez, but many people absolutely despise this type of music. However, it is still art. It is merely a different type of art. Simple Plan and other bands of that nature must be considered art. So too must elevator music be considered art. If we keep the view that you seem to hold, that some works are not art while others are, we will never develop and move forward in art. We need simple, unsophisticated works like these to provide contrast with the more challenging and difficult works we may encounter.

easyjacksn
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Posted 08/21/06 - 02:23 AM:	#4
What of commercial jingles? They are technically music, but I don't think most would consider them to be art. In what way does the music of a commercial pop band differ from that of a commercial jingle? Both are used merely to sell a product. In essence, pop music is simply lengthy commercial jingles created with the intention of getting you to buy the cd on which they are recorded. This is not art -- it is simply very effective advertising.

saaaam
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Posted 08/21/06 - 03:57 AM:	#5
So in this way you would distinguish commercial music from musical art? What exactly are your criteria for what kind of music is marketed commercially and music that is art? I do not see how you can escape thus naming all music that is marketed commercially, reaching from pop music to jazz to recent classical recordings, as "not art". Is it that you think a piece of music can only be art if it is in score, on paper? Because then someone wouldn't be making money out of it, and so it allowed to be art? But then, what about, say, most composers I can think of, who definitely composed their music with some kind of financial gain in mind? Mahler is quoted as saying that he wrote his third symphony with the intent on creating a popular work to make him a rich man. People make music for a living as well as for the sake of creating beauty, etc, and this does not in any way degrade their music. By your criteria there is no music that can be classed as art. In regards to what you said about jingles, they are works of art with a function. They may not reach accepted aesthetical standards that cause us to deem a work of art good, but they are still art.

Goaswerfraiejen
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Posted 08/21/06 - 12:17 PM:	#6
When is a hammer a work of art? Not when you are using it to bash nails into plywood, but rather when it is displaced from that utilitarian context and into a context that invites more speculation and consideration, such as a Neolithic artifact. Note that "hammer" can easily be replaced with ancient Greek chamber pots and so on. How does that tie to music? I'm not entirely sure because I haven't given music a whole lot of thought, but here's a start: Music as we think of it is typically intended as art, and so it comes part and parcel with that artistic contextualization. When music is used in advertising, however, it is displaced from that context into another in which it is meant not to sell itself, but rather to sell something else, to generate interest in a specific, non-related product. In that case, it has been displaced into a more utilitarian framework (like the hammer bashing nails), and ceases to function as art, although the song itself is still a work of art. The song never really ceases to be a work of art (since it is always divorcable from immediate context and can be enjoyed on a purely auditory level), but it can and does cease to function on an artistic level. All that is not to say that some music (and thus some art) is just awful, bad stuff.

Ausonius
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Posted 08/21/06 - 12:25 PM:	#7
Art is “art” to the extent that it reflects the truth. Commercial art more likely reflects the marketplace.

Goaswerfraiejen
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Posted 08/21/06 - 12:28 PM:	#8
Ausonius wrote: Art is “art” to the extent that it reflects the truth. Commercial art more likely reflects the marketplace. You'll need to expand on that, because I fail to see much of a reflection of truth in the art historical canon.

Ausonius
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Posted 08/21/06 - 12:42 PM:	#9
I don’t think that I can explain it directly. The truth is that it is not communicable - I cannot make you see what you cannot see for yourself. The best I can say is that nature is truth; and that our perceptions, if they are valid, are a reflection of that truth. Ruskin, in his critique of modern painters, looks at art in the focus of truth: “Of Truth of Space,” “Of Truth of Water,” “Of Truth of Skies.” John Ruskin, Modern Painters, I (1843). One’s impression of such analysis is that it would be “subjective,” i.e., that art is subjective; that beauty, as the saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. But is truth subjective? - Can a great piece of music, for example, be measured scientifically (viz.“objectively”) by the number of its notes? (Is Mozart greater than Beethoven by sheer volume?) I think not. A great work of art - its distinguishing characteristic, so to speak - is that it reflects the truth. This is not objective or subjective, for, in truth, they are the same. Both the artist and the scientist - in their passion and precision - seek the same thing: the truth.

Goaswerfraiejen
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Posted 08/21/06 - 12:44 PM:	#10
Yes, but what do you understand by "truth"? Truth to subject matter?

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