On 17/4/08 04:58, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mando apparently feared forum listers were bullying Derek -- "Why don't you > all leave him alone? -- but I think Derek enjoyed the debate. In the bout > between Derek and Allan Sutherland, I'd say Derek won on points by a goodly > margin. > 20 love... But you incorrectly summarise my account and confuse it with the argument of some others. > Derek wrote, among other pejoratives: "Jazz is tedious, > unexpressive, flat, and wearisome. For me an evening of jazz is sheer musical > torment. In my opinion it is vastly inferior to Mozart et al." > > Allan believes he has a two-pronged rebuttal. First: > No: First was that jazz was a heterogeneous form, and that Derek did not, and never did say which kind he was discusssing, nor that he actually understood that variety. Second: > "You did not provide the criteris by which you consider all jazz music > inferior. There must be substantial reason underpinning that judgement. > [Without] > adequate criteria we cannot conclude that the music of Johannes Ockeghem is > without doubts vastly superior." Allan takes Derek to task for not > "explicating" > some works of Mozart to justify considering them -- the Mozart pieces -- > superior. > Yes, good reason underpins thinking, I said nothing about Mozart. > Michael Brady's citation of Mark Twain's remark puts its finger on the > silliness of Allan's first prong: "Wagner's music is much better than it > sounds." > No, you may think so, but if there are no criteria then we cannot say that any music is better or worse. Then I will to be silly say this email is music, I can hear it as I type... > Allan's suppressed premise is that a music piece is in some vague absolute > way either "good" or not. He believes there are absolute criteria that can be > appealed to. This is absurd. Other than some fatuous truism like, "The music > must be audible," Allan can't name any such criteria -- absolute standards > that > can "prove" a given work -- or an entire sub-genre -- is "good" or "not good". > No, wrong, I do not believe so. There is no need to jump from good reason to absolute values. Reason is a collectively arrived at procedure, this is the striving of Habermas, though I think his approach is ill-informed. But there are reasoned accounts, sometimes these will be correct and sometimes they will be incorrect. This is where I would need to argue for the procedure of reaching reasoned account, but am writing an email, not a treatise on reason. > Derek takes a few more words to make the point: "As for not providing an > 'explication' of Mozart etc, do I need to 'explicate' a composer to admire his > work? At that rate I would admire no-one. Particularly since I've never seen > an > explication of any artist by anyone, no matter how > expert, that amounted to a proof of why their work should be admired. The > work convinces you - or doesn't. The critic can never do that." > Fair enough, but Derek wants to have his cake and eat it: he wishes to say he does not like jazz - unspecified as to what this means, fine, but then he wants his dislike to become a judgement of jazz itself; that it is worthless because tedious, etc... Read his email for his jump from I do not like therefore it is rubbish. > Personally, I actively recoil with something very like pain from the works of > Samuel Beckett, and no laudatory commentaries on his work have diminished my > loathing one bit. > > But Derek did make a tactical mistake in saying that "jazz is inferior". By > saying 'jazz' -- and thereby conveying ALL jazz -- he left Allan an opening. > But Allan was not up to taking advantage of that opening -- though he tried to > with his second prong. > Exactly. > Allan seized on Derek's dismissal of the entire genre. He says in curiously > hobbled English, "Curiously you did not mention who the musicians were who you > listened too? Curiously too you did not say why you thought these musicians, > on the performance occasion, were capable of typifying in a single instance > all the possible instances of jazz performance. Surely, it is essential that > these musicians must do so represent all jazz and lack aesthetic adequacy to > conclude that all jazz is aesthetically worthless." > Apologies for emails and lack of proofreading, but this is an email, I am writing with some haste. In essence, surely the music you are listening to, and then using to class all jazz as rubbish is of importance? If all the music is the same, then it does not matter I can dismiss all of classical music by listening to any single composer or performance of any single composer. If not, then I need to know if Derek's evaluations of who he was listening to are correct or not; this cannot be reached without knowing if he was listening to Cecil Taylor or Kenny G. > Allan's insistence that Derek must consider "all the possible instances of > jazz performance" before pronouncing on jazz as a whole comes across as > ludicrous. > No, do not put words in my mouth. > Peace be to William, but Derek's biggest verbal mistake in saying "Jazz is > inferior" is not the word 'jazz'. It's the word 'is'. Derek is entitled -- > even > though he has not heard every piece of jazz ever played or to be played -- to > conclude reasonably that he that he will never never enjoy any jazz. > > In all walks of life we are justified in rejecting entire genres without > exposing ourselves to every possible instances of them. My wife will not watch > any > prize fight; she hates the genre. I wouldn't require her to watch an > interminable number of bouts before she would be entitled to say she hates the > genre. > I know someone who would pay money not to have to sit through another recital > of German lieder. How many dog shows, golf matches, flower shows, wrestling > matches, Kabuki shows does one have to watch before he's justified in saying > he > finds it a consistent occasion for boredom or misery? > > Sure, if someone, say, dismisses all of opera after hearing just one work, we > disapprove. But in fact Derek conveys he has been exposed to a great deal of > jazz in his lifetime. "My judgements were not based on this group alone. Who > has not heard huge dollops of jazz one way or another at various points in > their life? On the radio, on film, on the telly. One would need to live in a > cave to avoid it. Only the music can do the persuasion. Jazz has persuaded me > - > not to like it." > Ace, game set and match, Allan is out and has lost.. Enough. Toodle-pip. Allan. > If only he had stayed at that: "I don't like jazz," Derek would have been > okay despite its being a dismissal of the entire genre. But he goes beyond > saying > he doesn't like it to saying it IS inferior. No genre -- jazz, ballet, opera, > prize fights, dog shows -- is inferior or superior in any absolute way. > > This is not a rogue inadvertency on Derek's part. Derek believes in "real" > quasi-Platonic ontic categories in this area. He has conveyed that Mozart is > "real music" and jazz is not. Indeed, he has written: "There is a difference > in > *kind* between jazz (rock or pop) and Mozart. One is art the other is not." > > At this point Derek was standing with his entire flank undefended, but Allan > wasn't seeing it, he was reduced to a blinded non-sequitur: > > "If you are dismissing it simply on the basis of putting into the box for > contempt because the word jazz is associated with it, then this discussion is > going nowhere..." > > That's enough for this posting. We'll examine Derek's exposed flank in a > later message. > > > > > > ************** > Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car > listings at AOL Autos.
