From: Michael Gogins ()
Date: Dec 31, 1969
Subject:
Re: Objectivity (Was maybe we can discuss the definition of)
What exactly is a "sharp sense of the real" in this context?
Anyway, the implication is that your personal enjoyment of music is an enjoyment of the play of chance and force. Do you similarly enjoy the place of chance and force in other parts of life, such as personal relations?
Regards,
Mike
-----Original Message-----
>From: Suk-Jun Kim
>Sent: May 16, 2008 2:50 PM [EMAIL REMOVED] >Subject: Re: Objectivity (Was maybe we can discuss the definition of)
>
>
>> I think is remarkable how this discussion tends to veer into jokes,
>> irony, and the like instead of actual argument. By any ordinary
>> rules of debate, this kind of move is -- a joke.
>
>Kundera said: "Jokes, anecdotes, funny stories: they are the best
>evidence that a sharp sense of the real and an imagination that
>ventures into the implausible can make a perfect pairing."
>
>> Ok, now I am prepared to put forward what I believe is a good
>> argument for the existence of objective norms in music. We are
>> living in a time of extreme ferment, musically. Thanks to the vast
>> store of written and sound records, thanks to the dissemination of
>> higher education, thanks to mechanical means of transportation and
>> foreign education and emigration of peoples and globalization and
>> what all, musical practice and style are under enormous pressure.
>> Genres multiply and divide, combine, influence each other, die and
>> are reborn.
>>
>> If musical norms are purely relative, this is a meaningless play of
>> events, in which my personal taste or your personal taste will
>> assert itself, or be ground down, for purely extrinsic reasons that
>> have nothing to do with music.
>>
>> If musical reasons have any part to play in this dialectic of music
>> history that we are living through -- as I am sure they do -- these
>> reasons transcend any personal or tribal taste by necessity, because
>> it is this very taste that is evolving. If any norm is guiding or
>> judging this evolution, it is a super-personal norm. An objective,
>> universal norm.
>
>Musical reasons, if they exist, transcend personal or tribal taste,
>not by necessity, but by chance or force. And if there is any 'super-
>personal norm', it is perhaps this very chance or force—which,
>ironically, defies the very objectivity.
>
>Best,
>Jun
>
>
>