Music Is Not Art

I would be willing to bet that the reason that you haven't heard really "moving" classical music is because 99.8% of performances of it violate the laws of aesthetics.

Amen!

When I began learning to play the violin, I become enthralled by Bach’s partitas and sonatas for solo violin. I ran out and bought every recording I could get my hands on to hear how all the different performers played these pieces.

I was quite disappointed! What disappointed me most was that almost everyone played them the same like they were all trying to duplicate some traditional interpretation! How sad!

I was anxious to learn how to play the violin just so I could play these pieces with feeling! I knew how I would like to play them, I just didn’t have the technical skill to play the violin well enough to express them. However I knew that these great violinist DID have the skill, why they were not putting emotion into these pieces was totally beyond me. Bach wrote very simplistic score! He didn’t intend them to be played precisely as written. I’m sure he just assumed that any artist would perform the pieces emotionally and use their own artistic freedom.

Then one day I found a CD of Hilary Hahn playing the Bach partitas and sonatas. Alas, EMOTION! What a wonderful violinist! Not only does she have the technical virtuosity, but she has superb musicianship. Her playing has LIFE. I can hardly even stand to listen to all the others now, and I’m talking world famous violinists here! They sound robotic. Like they are just playing the notes from the score without really becoming the music!

Hilary Hahn becomes the music! She is an artist!

Music itself may or may not be art. But PERFORMING music IS an ART!

Or at least it can be. I suppose it can be performed robotically too though, obviously.

It's easy. You can actually do it for real cheap at the very common(and cheap) U-Brew.

They're everywhere in my town.

I used to have my own grape vines (catawba) and the best wines I have ever had were from those grapes.

Have you ever made mead? That's with honey instead of sugar.

I even mistook a plant once for another and ended up with a poisonous wine. Nothing beats homemade wines and beer.

Fruit flavored yeast excrement with yeast farts....who would of thought of such a deal

I was talking with someone the other day about mead. They mentioned a "Lavender Mead" which sounded especially tasty. I think I might give it a whirl.

I've had some good meads, and some bad meads.

Seems plenty of SCA people know how to make some good mead. From the one event I attended.

But there was this stuff called "Apple Jack".. and it was fully of apple-cinnamony goodness.

A mead takes a little longer to make and a little longer to mellow out, but it is worth the wait. I have made Apple jack and it is delicious. I have a great recipre for it, but the book is buried in storage right now. It's nice to know that others share in this great hobby.

This conversation is way more productive than the one before. My apologies for wasting people's time.

:P

I think we made about as much progress as we could on the original topic though. No satisfying answer was about what you expected though right?

Ultimately, I did arrive at a clearer understanding of personally what I'm trying to do, even if it didn't help you out any. It ultimately wasn't a waste of time at all for me (despite the occasional diversions, such as above).

Yes your music does tell us something about the way you think or your attitude towards life. In some way it does. The artist is not always cognizant of this or the effect that this will have on a culture.

Care to elaborate?

:P

I think we made about as much progress as we could on the original topic though. No satisfying answer was about what you expected though right?

Ultimately, I did arrive at a clearer understanding of personally what I'm trying to do, even if it didn't help you out any. It ultimately wasn't a waste of time at all for me (despite the occasional diversions, such as above).

Well, that wasn't really it. With topics like these it seems like nobody really reads your posts. They just post their own opinion and defend it. It's hard to engage people via. the bulletin board system I guess.

I guess I meant that in the sense that, without a satisfactory definition for what art is in the first place, we can't say whether music is art or not. The definitions seem to be all over the board, even when considering the dictionary definitions and interpretations thereof.

And there's nothing to say that art can't be pleasurable in and of itself. Or extremely repulsive. If I define art as something which moves you one way or another, this definition fits. (That's the working definition of art that I usually use.) Art which promotes a sense of escapism is usually what I favor anyway.

Well, that wasn't really it. With topics like these it seems like nobody really reads your posts. They just post their own opinion and defend it. It's hard to engage people via. the bulletin board system I guess.

Is it something violent or something vile?

My new greatest joy in life is killing topics like this.

Is it really that joyful? Because I might have to try it.

Humanities 101:

What is art?

Art is subjective.

The End :) Have a Nice Day

Art is intentional beauty.

Art is intentional beauty.

Or intentional ugly.

Or intentional ugly.

Art has intention? Always?

Or intentional nothing.

THREE WORDS.

ART IS EXPRESSION.

Without music, what is the art for the ears? There's an art for the sense of taste (food), for the sense of sight (visual art), for the sense of smell (inscence, the forest at night, etc...), and for the sense of touch (the clothes you "feel right" in). We have the ability to control every one of these, and each of them provides their own sense of ecstasy. Music is the missing piece of the puzzle.

It is a philosophical question --

The answer is no, music is not art -- the reason is not that it is capable of evoking stronger emotions than other art, however.

The god-awful and pessimistic philosopher Arthur Shopenhaeur said that life is meaningless, and man's only hope of salvation comes through a life of detatched contemplation - and art (and music), he says, is one of the best methods with which to do this.

Thus, while art is not always aesthetic, it is always contemplative. A toilet can be considered modern art.

The pessimists will always say that music is art - they attach a specific meaning to each harmony and its relation to mankind. They have made the ultimate mistake in believing that the human psychology is the masterpiece of the universe.

Igor Stravinsky, on the other hand, says "Music is incapable of expressing anything other than itself". We only attach emotion to it. A happy trivial tune, to you and I, to Gustav Mahler would have represented great tragedy.

For lack of a better way of explaining it, music is a force of nature, and does not spring from the minds of any self-concious being, but the harmony has always been there, eternally as the cosmos have been there.

Of course it has. It is the composer's job to arrange that harmony in a way that the majority of humanity perceives as artful.

Yes, art is always intentional. But not always "beautiful". Or perhaps it is beauty that is subjective, and not art?

And what would you say to a fellow who tossed paint can at complete random intervals on a brick wall and called it art... would it be art simply because he believes it so?

I'm not saying you're wrong, because I cannot acknowledge anyone is objectively false, since everything is infinite by this philosophy, everything the composer "organized" into one "comprehensible" piece was already there too, except for the instrumental arrangement and performance aspect. There is absolutely no ego in composing, other than your mind could "hunt" for this elusive harmony - so, R. Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is like catching a Charizard in pokemon :)

And what would you say to a fellow who tossed paint can at complete random intervals on a brick wall and called it art... would it be art simply because he believes it so?

It would be, actually. He's creating art whether he calls it art or not.

Since no one seems to have really mentioned it yet, I should like to say that it is my belief that nothing is inherently art, yet virtually anything can become art. That is to say, a musician makes music, a painter paints, a sculpter sculpts, yet none are nessesarily artists. Similarly, a carpenter may achieve great feats of art with nothing more than a standard piece of bedroom furniture.

The qualifier is the tricky part, and I obviously have no more authority than anyone in trying to define it. Yet, I've always felt that it has to do with the inner workings of all things in relation to the ultimate reality (whatever it may be), rather than the human need to express oneself or feel emotions.

That is why all great and lasting works of art deal only superficially with such matters, while those focused on them generally have a limited shelve-life. In the works of a great artist, the emotions or thoughts felt are merely an abstract result of the methods and concepts applied and perceived by a (more or less uneducated and highly selfish) audience. Of course, this makes little sense today, in an age where it's not only perfectly acceptable to think about your childhood pet when listening to Mozart, it's recomended. It is also not to say that great artists weren't thinking about the e(a)ffects of their works, but rather, that we are probably missing the point when we as observers try and relate everything to us and our understandings of things.

But anyways, yeah. It is my belief that art in not subjective and that nothing is inherently art, meaning music is not, by definition, art. In order to be art, the work needs to speak on a universal level. It needs to attempt a homage to the great mysteries and workings of existance, not to brain chemicals that have been irriversibly made a part of "intelligent" life. When anything becomes that subjective, it is only so far away from not existing.