Beauty in music as in all art is whatever harmonizes with our human nature, and I think that allows for such a wide range of experience that we tend to perceive it as purely subjective when it is not. That’s why matters of aesthetic taste are beyond criticism (except through snobbery). That doesn’t mean there are no limits, however. Some art including music is objectively not beautiful, or ugly, that is, when aesthetic appeal is either beside the point or being actively opposed. It’s a violation in some sense of our human nature.
I doubt whether one in a thousand could (rightly or wrongly) answer the problem of aesthetic value. I am satisfied that the basis of value is creativity in a universe which treads the narrow path between chaos and the void. Beauty is new pattern. Ugliness is discordance.
Beauty in music as in all art is whatever harmonizes with our human nature, and I think that allows for such a wide range of experience that we tend to perceive it as purely subjective when it is not. That’s why matters of aesthetic taste are beyond criticism (except through snobbery). That doesn’t mean there are no limits, however. Some art including music is objectively not beautiful, or ugly, that is, when aesthetic appeal is either beside the point or being actively opposed. It’s a violation in some sense of our human nature.
Poetry is the best words in the best order.
Exactly.
And this:
“But why, you ask me, should this tale be told To men grown old, or who are growing old? It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Morituri Salutamus”
If Longfellow had said, 'Real poetry- musical poetry - is the universal language of mankind', it would have been a much finer statement.
I doubt whether one in a thousand could (rightly or wrongly) answer the problem of aesthetic value. I am satisfied that the basis of value is creativity in a universe which treads the narrow path between chaos and the void. Beauty is new pattern. Ugliness is discordance.