Emotion is the core of music

Certainly. The spoken word is certainly a valid musical object.

Two possible uses of better in aesthetics.

"Beethoven's first symphony is better than Brahm's; it makes me happy, I enjoy listening to it more, etc etc." - Here you can be wrong, of course, but that would mean misjudging yourself. This is the kind of use we learn from childhood up.

An example of the second use: "Bach's 48 are better than Shostakovich's 24; the number is larger (to display the arbitrariness of deciding criteria) and so is the number of contrapuntal devices." This use is harder to learn, since you have to know facts about the music. A tone deaf person would not be able to learn this. (Or, in a sense, he could by learning notation as a kind of picture game.)

Confusing the two can cause heated debate.

"Coca Cola is better than milk, it is tastier."

"But it is bad for you! It is made up of..."

How do we settle this? We avoid misunderstanding each other by specifying what we mean. It is as if Gianluca wanted to exclude the first of these uses from our language. (Perhaps with the motive of making us aesthetically healthier, with a change in our musical diet.)

What I am interested in is: What compels us (you Gianluca) to believe that there are objective criteria for judging all music? The idea is that we find, rather than invent, the criteria; and if we had truly searched, we would all have found the same.

But why the search at all? Will God punish a false judgement of music?

...you simply keep evading all points I bring up by bullshitting your way around them.

I don't wish to waste my time ... I'm not going to make any further comments on this.

:sadtears:

It was fun while it lasted. While I enjoyed watching you flail about like that, I'm kinda glad it's over. Your posts are excruciating to read!

Honestly, you're entitled to your opinion - I'll never begrudge anyone that. But I hope, for your sake, that one day you leave the library, expand your listening habits a bit, and perhaps you'll realize that the musical world is a lot bigger than you think.

Till our next meeting.

So melodramatic, rob!

I for one couldn't care less about his opinion, just thankful he stopped posting as advised pages ago!

You only focus on exceptions to prove me wrong.

Of course there may always be exceptional cases in which certain pop artists score higher on a particular criterion than certain classical composers, but compare them on many different criteria and you'll find numerous criteria on which Bach scores way better than Eminem (contrapuntally far more complex,harmonically richer, melodically more inventive, etc.). So those examples are just plain silly.

But at some point (and this is MY last post in this thread), you have to stop and wonder - "Why the hell are there so many exceptions?" Not very objective of you to ignore contradictory evidence...

I think understanding and engineering the emotional response of the listener is probably more important than expressing your own emotions; the engineering is a personal process and, in some cases, self expression can be effective - depends on compositional technique or genre I guess - but it's not a requirement.

Two possible uses of better in aesthetics.

"Beethoven's first symphony is better than Brahm's; it makes me happy, I enjoy listening to it more, etc etc." - Here you can be wrong, of course, but that would mean misjudging yourself. This is the kind of use we learn from childhood up.

An example of the second use: "Bach's 48 are better than Shostakovich's 24; the number is larger (to display the arbitrariness of deciding criteria) and so is the number of contrapuntal devices." This use is harder to learn, since you have to know facts about the music. A tone deaf person would not be able to learn this. (Or, in a sense, he could by learning notation as a kind of picture game.)

For the sake of clarity, it's just as I've been saying all along: "Better" only works in an objective sense if we define and agree on what the criteria for "better" is. Are Mahler's symphonies "better" at being longer than Beethoven's? Sure!

But the thing is, such statement is not only really retarded (despite the actual veracity of it) but it can end up leading to misunderstandings. It'd be a lot simpler to just say "Mahler's symphonies are longer than Beethoven's."

Wow... and now it's my turn to say that this discussion has neared pointlessness.

Although, by this time it's safe to say that the score is

Robin, SSC, and co. - uncountably large number

New people who are idiots- 0

To address gianlucia...

They've all raised intelligent points since you've stopped posting on here... so maybe when you say you're going to address intelligent points you must mean points that only you can attack while sounding like you know anything about what you're talkinga about.

To address the topic:

Music is defined in Merriam-Webster's dictionary as "the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity." If you (gianlucia) must blather along about art having to be emotional, I again refer you to the same dictionary, in which art is defined as skill acquired by experience, study, or observation concerned primarily with the creation of beautiful objects."

Don't you dare give me any of that bs that states that any of that has to do with emotion... Math can be "beautiful," and yet I daresay beautiful math will not make any of us cry/become happy/angry/etc.

I'll take my dry, "boring," and utterly emotionless Bach because it's what I LIKE... not because it makes me feel emotions... Saying that emotion is the core of music means that rap is inherently better than anything else because it makes me angrier than hell (sorry to all you rap fans) faster than anything else makes me happy or sad.

I think any argument that claims objective judgment out of a primarily subjective field is, uh, retarded at best.

Which sums up the entire damn thread, thx.

If you (gianlucia) must blather along about art having to be emotional, I again refer you to the same dictionary, in which art is defined as skill acquired by experience, study, or observation concerned primarily with the creation of beautiful objects."

I think you're confusing gianluca with PoseidonsNet.