Musical Aesthetics

BY R ICH AR D CAR R IER / O N J U LY 2 6 , 2 0 1 2 / 47 COMMENTS

It’s been two years since I updated my blogging on music, but alas it’s finally time to get up to speed! I
promised I’d get around to it in my inaugural post here last year, where I listed my best and favorite blogs
from my previous blogspot (which I still maintain, frozen in time), all except my blogging on music, which I
said I’d get to later. Well, here it is. The latest in musical science, philosophy, and likes. I’ll brief the “boring”
stuff (philosophy and science) and then get into my latest musical playlist and how it confirms my previously-
blogged theory that we live in a “postmusical age” (a phrase that doesn’t mean what you think). Ready?
Here we go…

Philosophy of Music

To get to the science, we first need a wrap up on the philosophy: I discuss the metaphysics and
epistemology of aesthetics as part of my naturalist worldview in Sense and Goodness without God (Part
VI: Natural Beauty, pp. 349-66). I used the neuroscience of visual beauty response as my primary example,
but I note that similar principles apply across the aesthetic spectrum, including the domain of music.
Aesthetics is a subject often neglected by philosophers, even philosophers keen on building worldviews.
(Which is why I was so happy that I got to talk a lot about it in my favorite interview about my naturalist
philosophy for the presently-dormant Polyschismatic Reprobates Hour.)

Understanding the best attributes of art and beauty and their causes and effects adds an important
dimension to human experience, happiness, communication and understanding. Our aesthetic response is
partly evolved, partly cultural, and partly idiosyncratic. But it always has its basis in the biology of the brain.
And it has fundamental adaptive functions evolved into us over vast spans of time. And part of that started
with our sophisticated use of sound to communicate. (Hence of all animals likely to be found in the average
home, only humans and birds independently evolved the ability to perceive and respond to rhythm–
basically, your pets don’t hear music, they just hear noise…unless your pet is a bird; or a gimp locked in a
trunk or something…consensually, we hope).
My three principles of higher art (the functions we add on to art’s biological
foundations to make art greater than something it would otherwise be) are
art’s fulfillment of the roles of communication, education, and display of skill
(VI.3.3, pp. 363-66). And my favorite demonstration of how music can fulfill
those roles are the interviews with composer Greg Edmonson on the
artistic decisions he made in scoring the series Firefly (IMO, one of the
most brilliant film scores ever made, and it wasn’t even for a film) [he is
briefly interviewed in the making-of-Firefly special feature on disk four of
the series DVD set, and again inDone the Impossible], and its
theoretical analysis by Jennifer Golz (“Listening to Firefly”) inFinding
Serenity: Anti-heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss
Whedon’s Firefly (ed. by Jane Espenson, 2005), pp. 209-15–combined,
of course, with a hearing of the score itself.

Science of Music

But for Sense and Goodness without God I chose visual aesthetics as my paradigm example because at
the time that was the one field in which the scientific study of aesthetic perception was the most advanced.
And good philosophy always builds on and coheres with the well-established findings of the sciences. But
since my book came out in 2005, the science of aesthetics exploded with all manner of new studies, which
have essentially confirmed the general philosophy that I laid out in my book (to catch up, read Denis Dutton,
The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution [2010] and Paul Bloom, How Pleasure
Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like [2010]).

These new scientific studies include the aesthetics of literature (Lisa Zunshine, Why We Read Fiction:
Theory of Mind and the Novel [2006] and Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible:
Cognition, Culture, Narrative [2008]), the aesthetics of smell (Rachel Herz, The Scent of Desire:
Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell [2007]) the aesthetics of humor (from before I published,
there was Robert Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation [2000], but now there is Matthew Hurley,
Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams Jr., Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind
[2011]) and play (Stuart Brown, Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and
Invigorates the Soul [2009]), and of course the aesthetics of music.

Top works on that subject now include:

Daniel Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Aniruddh Patel, Music, Language, and the Brain (2007)

Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia (2007)

Philip Ball, The Music Instinct (2010)

All of these fields are very young and new, so not all their claims and
theories are necessarily well-established or true, but you can see
tremendous progress already toward increasingly verified conclusions in all
these domains. The overall finding is that music is both a byproduct of our
various neurological tools of communication, and a tool in itself adapted to
communicate emotion and coordinate action, and may have co-adapted to
facilitate social cohesion and sexual selection.

As to that last possibility, whether biologically or not, it has certainly been

culturally adapted to those functions; but an example of evidence that it
has biologically evolved to promote social cohesion is the fact that rhythm
perception in the brain is deeply integrated with motor control: beats are
hard-wired to be infectious, which cannot easily be explained as a
byproduct of language use, but looks more like serving the function of community harmonization (playing
music together; dancing to music). Evidence of its role in sexual selection include links between sexual
arousal and musical and harmonic performance (the ability to sing, play, and dance well), and the fact that a
passion for music tends to arise and peak in intensity around and shortly after puberty. These features could
have other explanations, but they certainly do have some explanation. They are not accidental.

What science can also help us explain is why we like what we like, why we universally respond in certain
ways to certain kinds of music, how musical pleasure is generated, and how we can make use of these
facts to enrich our experience and better our lives. Science is making great strides toward these ends
already. But that’s the biological and objective side of the matter. Now to the cultural and subjective…

What Is the Postmusical Age?

My blogging on music began with The Postmusical Age. Apart from explaining how eclectic and
undefinable my musical interests were, the basic thesis of it was this:

“
I’ve been telling people about a realization I’ve had: we now live in a Postmusical Age. I don’t
mean music is dead. Quite the contrary. It has finally arrived. Every decade of the 20th century
has had its distinctive “sound.” The teens and twenties had their jives and folk ditties, and the 30s
and 40s evolved into big band (I still love Glenn Miller) and pre-rock pop like The Ink Spots
(which I love even more). And then the 50s spawned rock and roll, Elvis became the King, and
there definitely was some good stuff going around then (though I have a hard time finding the
grittier roadhouse stuff I like rather than the radio bopper crap, but that’s another story–any help
with great 50s music would be appreciated!).

Still, the first half of the 20th century generally isn’t my area of expertise. Stock sounds become
much clearer to me after that. The 60s had such a distinctive sound you need merely name the
decade and everyone can hear its music. The 70s, again, with its Disco and protean metal and
punk–though diversity was rising, you can still peg almost any song to that decade when you
hear it. The 80s, once again, with its New Wave, and though a diversity of alternative sounds was
rising even more, you can still peg almost any tune to that decade. But in the 90s, things started
falling apart. You had Grunge, and so-called “Alternative Rock” (which I still call “Alternative to
Talent”…sorry, but the 90s was the worst decade ever for music). Along with this came a general
confusion and creative malaise. No one was really sure what the 90s should sound like. But they
cobbled together a kind of banal sound, which you can still peg to that decade, as bland and
 pretentious as it was.

And then the 21st century began. And sound was no more. There is no distinctive sound now.
None. Zero. There is no identifiably 00’s music. Why? Because every sound is now explored,
and often brilliantly. People are doing what they want rather than what the decade expects. Real
creativity, true freedom from the constraints of cultural and corporate expectation, truly rules the
music scene now. And I don’t mean the pop crap that radios play and corporations still peddle.
I’m not talking about bulk sales. By “rule” I don’t mean “at the bank.” I mean the good stuff that’s
being made and sold, often under the boring crowd’s radar, stuff that’s being heard the world
round, regardless of whether it makes millions or is even noticed by the bland masses. New
technology has made this possible, at every stage of the game, from composition, recording,
and mixing, to distribution and consumption. Now anyone with talent can join the fray–and not
only make great music, but sell it, and actually expect people, anywhere, to buy it and listen to it.
All on the relative cheap.

I then gave a tour of my latest music list to illustrate the point: retro-50s,
60s, 70s, and 80s music is being produced next to creative hybrids of
them next to experimenting with completely new sounds. Just listen to
Nouvelle Vague, Goldfrapp, Belle & Sebastian, Queens of the Stone
Age, Lily Allen, and Arcade Fire and try to figure out what their
decade’s “sound” is. There isn’t one. It’s all divergent. Yet all brilliant. I
don’t think this will change. There will never again be a “sound”
distinguishing a decade. Art has been liberated.

After making my point with a whole tour of examples, I then updated

that list year after year. If you want the whole tour (which is essentially a tour of my favorite music all up to
2010; this post will get you up to 2012, but I still listen to all of it) here is a complete link-list in chronological
order (I’ve rigged each link so it will open a new window or tab and not take you away from here; if that
feature works with your browser):

The Postmusical Age (22 July 2007)

The Postmusical Age II (12 February 2008)

More Music of Late (28 May 2008)

Musica Hauntica Nostalgica (27 March 2009)

The Music of May (28 May 2010)

But now on to the latest…

The Latest Best and Greatest

Many of the artists I mentioned or praised in previous posts have come
back with more good work since. Too much to survey. So I’ll just
mention the new stuff, and how it reflects my Postmusical Thesis.
Except I have to mention the latest by Garbage (Not Your Kind of
People) , Arcade Fire (The Suburbs) , Moby (Destroyed) , Schiller
(Breathless), and Ringside (Lost Days). Because those are such
masterpieces you really can’t afford not to have heard them. And they
are, altogether, a living example of our postmusical age.

That said, now to the new. Everything I’ll list below is on my playlist and
among my favorites (collected since 2010).

I’ve been discovering a lot of new, cool music over the years not only from reading the music reviews in The
Week but also from watching So You Think You Can Dance, in which professional dancers and
choreographers produce often brilliant works of performance and dance art in competition–a show that
alone often captures and exemplifies my three higher virtues of art; if you don’t know what I’m talking about,
watch this, this, this, and this. That last piece in particular is an example of what I mean here: it introduced
me to DeVotchKa, a postmusical group if ever there was one.

Of course by now everyone has noticed Swedish pop star Lykke Li (you haven’t? get a listen…that’s a
postmusical girl). And I hardly need tell you about Adele or Florence and the Machine, or Gotye or The
Black Keys (I don’t like everything they all do, but I love a lot of it, and altogether they also demonstrate the
postmusical). But have you heard Kasabian? It’s rare that any group produces
one album almost the whole of which is great (usually even for good artists you
cherry pick the brilliant stuff and leave the often outnumbering failures behind).
Kasabian has produced four. Try it. Listen to what the Beatles would sound like if
they were still playing today (and had evolved as they always did, absorbing the
influences of the last forty years). This is now my favorite band (second perhaps
only to The Black Angels). They combine 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s sounds and
add in the original and new, to produce a classic postmusical product.

And hey, want to hear a postmusical hybrid of oldtimey big band

having sex with modern pop and sixties soul and giving birth to
another British white girl who does Motown better than Motown did?
Just like Duffy, Joss Stone, and Amy Winehouse, yetPaloma Faith
sounds like none of them–welcome to the postmusical age! Just
listen to her tracks “Upside Down” and “Broken Doll” to get an idea of
what she’s about, and then realize how different this is from anything
else going on today, how much it really doesn’t fit any identifiable
“sound” of this or the last decade, how much it incorporates retro
elements, yet would not have fit into any past decade whose sounds it
borrows. Then contrast Paloma with Phantogram (Eyelid Movies)
and you’ll see what postmusical means.

Then there are film scores, which I have always said are the “classical music” of our era. They are written by
the Mozarts and Beethovens of our age. Because movies are really the modern operas. The film score to
Inception (by Hans Zimmer) is an example of the recent best, but surprisingly so is the film score to the 80s
post-apocalyptic “wigga” film parody The FP (score by George Holdcroft).
My wife and I watched The FP one night because it was in the On
Demand queue and looked and sounded like one of the worst movies
ever made. After the first five minutes it was already so appalling we
really couldn’t tell if it was mind-blowingly offensive or a deliberate
parody–we had to pause and grab the iPad and find out. It’s a parody.
And as such, awesome. I won’t describe it further. Unfortunately no one
can be “told” what The FP is. You have to see it for yourself (click to
watch the film trailer…warning, offensive language and nudity). When my
wife heard I’d bought the entire film score she thought for a moment I was
lame…until she listened to it…and admitted it was, okay, like, totally
awesome. Imagine the best 80s film score possible for a Warriors–Repo
Man–Assault on Precinct 13 genre flick, and that’s the film score to The
FP. It’s something when a parody becomes even better than what it
parodies. And lo, this did.

But it’s not the greatest achievement these last few years. One of the most brilliant film scores produced in a
very long time is the score to Tron: Legacy (by Daft Punk). Say what you will about the movie, the music is
a 100% must-have. But this is just as true of Trent Reznor’s score to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (for
which Reznor paired with Atticus Ross). That last I especially love, not only because it’s so brilliant yet so
unlike anything ever done before, but because I had always wondered why he had never done this, ever
since I heard “A Warm Place” on The Downward Spiral (for those who don’t know, Reznor essentially is
Nine Inch Nails), one of the most beautiful compositions ever produced by a heavy metal band, bizarrely
out of place on that album, but to this day my favorite NIN track. Well, my wondering was answered when
Reznor finally did indeed produce a film score. And it’s as good as I expected it to be.

That wraps up my latest. Now you know what I’m listening to. And how wildly diverse it is. And how
postmusical.

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EHRM A N ON HISTORICITY RECA P B A D SCIE NCE PROVE S DE M IG ODS E XIST!

47 comments
J . D A N I E L S A W Y E R • J U LY 2 6 , 2 0 1 2 , 1 : 4 0 P M
Heya Richard —

To provide a solid point-of-contact for the Reprobates episodes until I’ve got time to redo the site,
I’ve put up an archive page here, which includes all three of your episodes:

http://jdsawyer.net/2012/07/25/reprobates-hour-archive/

Hopefully we won’t stay dormant forever!

All the best

-J. Daniel Sawyer
a.k.a. Dan The Demented of The Polyschizmatic Reprobates Hour

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 4 : 2 6 P M

I emended the article with that link. Thanks!

R E P LY

R I C H A R D M A R T I N • J U LY 2 6 , 2 0 1 2 , 1 : 5 2 P M

Hi Richard,

If I understand you correctly, you say we live in a ‘post-musical’ age because there is no longer any
distinctive sound that can be identified with the first decades of this century?

Richard Martin

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 4 : 2 8 P M

Yes. That is, no distinctive sound in the way there were distinctive sounds for
every decade of the 20th century. (Except in the meta-sense: the distinctive sound
of our decade is that there is no distinctive sound of our decade. But even that will
soon not be true, as I expect any decade in the 21st century will “sound” the same
in that respect.)

R E P LY
 J O S E F J O H A N N • J U LY 2 6 , 2 0 1 2 , 7 : 0 3 P M

I think Semir Zeki’s budding project on Neuroaesthetics is an interesting general purpose field.
He’s even got a blog and a website with what I think is a very nice manifesto on
Neuroaesthetics.

He has attracted criticism from others about “the limits of neuroscience” (here in a nyt op-ed).
What’s fascinating to me is, we appear to be at a point where neuroscience can effectly deal with
the laymen contention that all of aesthetics is irreducibly subjective and outside the scope of
science. For some this is a very controversial issue, and I think it is very important to push for
advancement in public understanding on the issue.

I would go so far as to say that anti-scientific beliefs about the nature of aesthetics and their
relation to the objective world are among the most prevalent anti-scientific beliefs held by people
today.

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 4 : 3 9 P M

That’s a good point. You are probably right. Because it doesn’t touch much on
public policy, it just doesn’t get noticed as much.

R E P LY

J A M E S C R O F T • J U LY 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 , 9 : 5 7 A M

I agree that “anti-scientific beliefs about the nature of aesthetics and their relation
to the objective world are among the most prevalent anti-scientific beliefs held by
people today.” Sadly such anti-scientific beliefs are rife within the scientific
community as well, and Zeki is a champion of them. Zeki’s whole project
proceeds from philosophically naive premises to unjustifiable conclusions via
mildly interesting excursions into the neuroscience of very basic aesthetic
phenomena – and this is characteristic of some of the foremost figures in the field
of “neuroesthetics” (Ramachandran has done some poor work, as has
Martindale). Levitin, although in general an excellent researcher, also succumbs
to some methodologically questionable decisions in his work, with some of his
experiments wildly over claiming.

Evolutionary “explanations” of art are often equally problematic, and I’d include
Dutton’s (in my view shallow and generally uninteresting) book in this category. I’m
glad to see you put in a caveat regarding these studies, noting that “All of these
fields are very young and new, so not all their claims and theories are necessarily
well-established or true.” This is a critical reminder.

What’s needed for neuroesthetics to be a valuable enterprise, in my view, is a

 solid grounding in a defensible and rigorous philosophical aesthetics, so that
experiments can be designed which do not beg questions or focus on aspects of
the aesthetic experience which are not so important. At least we could develop a
common language which would enable researchers to dialogue meaningfully with
each other on these topics.

I’ve written at length on the challenges of this field below, and will have a chapter
in a new OUP book on the topic next year:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-
228X.2011.01103.x/abstract

R E P LY

J O S E F J O H A N N • J U LY 3 1 , 2 0 1 2 , 1 0 : 4 8 A M

James, have you made this argument (or similar arguments) in any publicly
accessible space on the internet?

R E P LY

J O S E F J O H A N N • J U LY 2 6 , 2 0 1 2 , 7 : 1 3 P M

Also, I want to say I strongly agree with your July 07 The Postmusical Age post that Pandora is
overrated. Once you are deep enough into your search for new music, Pandora actually drags you
back toward the common taste more than it introduces new material to you.

However I’ve found Last.fm similar artists to be somewhat helpful. For your given favorite artist,
there will be several mildly satisfying similar artists at the top of the results. And if you are willing to
look through all 25 pages of similar artists, you will find at least one fantastic artist. It’s a lot of work
but worth it in my opinion.

The last suggestion I would make is to pay attention to what music influenced your favorite artists,
which they often share in interviews. I heard an interview with a member from Jaga Jazzist, who
claimed Joanna Newsom as an influence. This is how I discovered my most favorite artist ever. It is
also apparently Luke Muelhauser’s favorite artist ever, for whatever that’s worth.

R E P LY

G O T H I C E M P E R O R • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 5 : 5 7 A M

Reznor also cooperated for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s lead singer
Karen O. The Yeah yeah yeahs are probably one of my favourite groups in the post-punk rock
‘genre’ (it’s a very wide ‘genre’, though). Speaking of post-punk, it’s also very post-musical, taking
inspiration and musical styles from every decade since the 50’s.
Mind you, that does mean that almost all music today is ‘retro’ in a way. Has there come an end of
musical history, to paraphrase Fukuyama? I don’t know, I just listen.

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 4 : 5 9 P M

That most music today is somehow retro (using the sounds of previous decades)
does not mean it is wholly so. There are sounds and techniques being used today
that have no 20th century precedent. But you are right, musical history from here
on out will just be a track list with artist bios. The ability to identify a decade by its
sound is probably a thing of the past.

I’m also a fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, and I agree with your assessment. (I listed
them in one of my previous blogs on music as an example of the postmusical
phenomenon featured on my own playlists.)

R E P LY

D E M I A N • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 1 2 : 1 3 P M

Are you familiar with beardyman?

Skip to 18:40. Music on demand and loads of improv.

Thanks for the suggestions, just checked out Paloma Faith. I haven’t kept up since 2000.

R E P LY
 S I O D • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 1 2 : 4 4 P M

What do you make of Trout Mask Replica?

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 5 : 0 0 P M

Not familiar.

R E P LY

S I O D • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 5 : 3 5 P M

Trout Mask Replica probably the most critically acclaimed album in the last
century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trout_Mask_Replica

If you honestly haven’t heard of Trout Mask Replica, I wonder what you’ll make of
Scaruffi’s ratings (this is a man that has possibly listened to more music than
anyone alive): http://www.scaruffi.com/music/best100.html

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 5 : 5 2 P M

Oh, I see. That’s not 21st century. I’m talking about music post-
1995.

R E P LY

S I O D • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 6 : 4 8 P M

But you also briefed us on your philosophy and science of aesthetics; I was
wondering how they deal with profoundly weird examples of music that people
love (Trout Mask Replica being a perfect example). And Scaruffi
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Scaruffi) rates The Black Angels as
average while he rates Faust’s I(profoundly weird) as one of best albums ever.

If you need a more modern example, how about noise rock, or something like the
following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4v3gz5zU6k
R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 3 0 , 2 0 1 2 , 9 : 2 6 A M

Siod:

“
I was wondering how they deal with profoundly weird
examples of music that people love

It all depends on what criteria they are using to force rank

different music. The more idiosyncratic the criteria, the less
objective the measure you end up with. (And those seem to be
using very idiosyncratic criteria.)

More objective measures derive from universals of music

aesthetic response in the human brain (first) and the most widely
shared commonalities of a particular culture, subculture, or
listener-type (second).

The latter refers to the way music ranks with respect to certain
modifications of the brain basics within various cultures and
subcultures. Thus a really good critic can force rank music
according to how much pleasure it will produce in a country
music fan and then force rank that same music according to how
much pleasure it will produce in a punk rock fan; the two rankings
will not be the same, and neither will be any more “correct” than
they other, they will only be “correct” or “incorrect” with respect to
what they claim, which is the pleasure factor that that music will
typically produce within the given subculture. The same can be
done not with respect to subcultures but with respect to cross-
cultural memes. For example, some people across many
different subcultures still share common preferences (either due
to biological differences or differences in their background or
personality), and one can force rank music by “type” of music
listener in that fashion as well.

But the most objective measures will remain, and because of this
people in a given subculture or listener-type can be taught to
appreciate the artistic value of works outside their usual
appreciation zone (and can even learn that their favorite music
sucks and start to go off it). Once you learn, for example, how
complex or ingenious a particular composition is, how skilled the
artists have to be to play it, how well it communicates the
 meaning and emotion it was aiming at by playing on universal
sound response in the brain, and how much better it activates
pleasure centers of the brain than alternatives, you can start to
love a particular artist whom you might never have appreciated
or liked before (and start to dislike an artist whom you now
realizes scores low, or lower, on all these objective measures).

R E P LY

S I O D • J U LY 3 1 , 2 0 1 2 , 1 : 2 9 P M

Thanks for your reply.

So, basically, your explanation entails that our aesthetic response is partly
evolved, partly cultural, and partly idiosyncratic, but any factor can dominate
another. So, I assume then that the objective part comes in with whatever is a
cultural universal (i.e., not bound to culture or idiosyncrasy but fundamentally
human). Assuming I’m not misunderstanding you, do we know of any cultural
universals re aesthetic response, and if so would they agree with more aged
cultures?

(I ask if cultural universals re aesthetic response would agree with the standards
of more aged cultures, because idiosyncrasies of the elite seem to have a way of
diffusing into culture itself. For example, the discordant sounds of traditional
Chinese music wouldn’t play well with Western ears. I.e., the appreciation for blue
notes is cultural. Couldn’t it also be the case then that something like Trout Mask
Replica could overtake the ranking of The Black Angels culturally rather
idiosyncratically? And if that’s the case, then shouldn’t we be defining what is
objectively good music in terms of ideal observer theory? Because if what is
objectively good music (culturally universal) is something we no longer appreciate
due to cultural progression, then is your objective criteria for what is good
meaningful? Wouldn’t we then just create a new word for aesthetic response like
“xifirl response” for what we actually understand as sounding good?)

I hope that all made sense, and I suspect we’re in agreement with a lot of that. I
think we’re we might fundamentally diverge is in what you call the “universal sound
response in the brain.” Given the literally complete malleability of what we can
love as music (e.g. Derek Bailey), I wonder if such a universal sound response
would be meaningful even if real. I suspect there’s a more general function of the
brain that allows appreciation of anything. Something like the mere exposure
effect.

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 3 1 , 2 0 1 2 , 5 : 3 7 P M

“
 “
So, basically, your explanation entails that our aesthetic response is
partly evolved, partly cultural, and partly idiosyncratic, but any factor
can dominate another.

Not dominate. Combine with or direct.

The only universals are the neurological ones. Culture and personal factors will
then channel how and when those universal neurological factors are stimulated.
Culture is really just an extension of the idiosyncratic (people sharing common
experiences), so in reality there are only two things: nature and environment. It’s
just that we recognize a difference between shared environments (like culture)
and unshared niches within those environments (like what actually happens to
each of us as we grow up), because they can cause different effects.

For example, music, like smell, is a strong nostalgia stimulator, and thus can
generate pleasure through that channel. Yet the underlying biology does not
change (what smells good or bad is a biological universal, with some bell-curve
variation; likewise musical stimuli). It could only be overridden by extreme stimulus
experience: if the pleasure caused by nostalgia effects far enough outweighs the
displeasure caused by the olfactory cortex, you won’t have eliminated the latter
but you will still prefer the smell because of the former (horse enthusiasts who
acquire an affection for manure, for example: ramp up the strength of the smell
and biological displeasure begins to overtake nostalgic pleasure, but ramp it
down and nostalgic pleasure overtakes biological displeasure).

Similarly, the connections between certain musical sounds and emotive response
(e.g. screeching violins cause fear) is biologically universal, but whether this is
appreciated or disliked will depend on the context and how it’s used (e.g.
sometimes people enjoy being scared, or enjoy strong emotional experiences of
any kind, as long as they are partaken in safe conditions, which is the role
cognition plays in aesthetics, a common example being BDSM vs. actual rape:
cognitive context can entirely transform the aesthetic value of [superficially]
physically identical circumstances).

I should also note that by biological “universals” I mean only species-specific

universals (and only at our present stage of evolution); they are not cosmic
universals. Aliens might have a radically different musical neuroaesthetic,
unfathomable or even intolerable to us. But it would be valid for them (their music
would cause pleasure to them, in ways we could theoretically predict, once we
knew enough about their neurological response systems).

Although there could be a possible near-universal, if there are inevitable factors of

convergent evolution in this domain, e.g. rhythm detection is as obviously the
easiest path to action-coordination in social species as jointed limbs are to tool
use, and so it might be a near-cosmic-universal. Rhythm appreciation
independently evolved in birds and primates, for example, so it might be
 statistically common throughout the universe, but not necessarily cosmically
universal (just as actual jointed limbs are likely to be common among civilized
species, but not universal, e.g. squid people or snail people might develop
unusual ways to efficient tool use; likewise, music).

At any rate, when it comes to us expanding our aesthetic horizons, we will expand
our understanding and appreciation of the world the more we learn to recognize
the value of different genres of music. We need not learn to appreciate all
systems of music. But more is better than few. And when we understand what it is
about music (biological or environmental) that brings us pleasure, we will be
better able to zero in on music that is optimally pleasurable to us, but also we will
derive even more pleasure from the music we already liked, by more fully
grasping the attributes of it that are pleasurable (like the way learning through skill
and experience can turn someone who hates wine into a connoisseur).

R E P LY

JOSEF JOH A N N • AUGUS T 1 , 201 2, 7:43 AM

Richard- it should be emphasized that even cultural and individual variation are in
an important sense driven by biology.

Just as water could take any number of paths down a hill, the path it actually takes
will be constrained by geography and the properties of water, the paths taken by
culture and individuals will be shaped by our neurobiology and the degree to
which neuroplasticity is accommodating of change.

Certain destinations are more likely than others. Sometimes the same kind of
aesthetic appreciation can be discovered from two completely different
directions. (I think of metal music and some forms of dubstep which both go for
extremely “heavy” frizzled tones.)

At no point is our understanding of music released from the constraints imposed

by our biology. It doesn’t just dictate our embedded inclinations, but also the
means by which we change to have new inclinations. I think this is important
because sometimes people view culture/individual variability as if it’s an
independent force that in some sense overrules biology. As if biology is just about
hardwired preferences but not about the means by which we change.

R E P LY

A N T A L L A N • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 2 : 5 7 P M

This post really deserves a more erudite comment than this, but I’d like to thank you for your earlier
recommendation of the new Garbage album, which I bought and like a lot.

Now you’ve prompted me to preview Paloma Faith’s album, which I might not have done
otherwise, and I’ve added that to my (far-too-long) wishlist. But if you like that album, have you
heard The Noisettes’ Wild Young Hearts? It seems to be in a similar vein.

I never expected that FtB would become a source of music recommendations!! (And Ophelia’s got
me reading Shakespeare again!!)

/@

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 5 : 5 0 P M

The Noisettes…good call. That’s totally postmusical! It’s a little too bubblegum for
me. But it is yet one more example of how diverse our music has become.

R E P LY

D W • J U LY 2 7, 2 0 1 2 , 1 1 : 4 9 P M

I mostly agree with your postmusical thesis. I guess my take on it would be that there are certainly
some distinctive trends in the last decade or so, but none of them have become dominate since
they are competing against so many other sounds. So the heavy sub-bass in styles like drum ’n’
bass and dubstep would be one of these trends. I didn’t have a subwoofer till I got a surround
sound system after getting a HDTV. So now all that low bass sounds great.

My favorite artist working low sounds is Emika. If you’ve not heard her, you should:

.
R E P LY

A N D R E S C H U I T E M A N • J U LY 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 , 5 : 2 1 A M

As if pop music is all there is. Did pop music ever produce anything equivalent to Beethoven’s
piano sonata opus 106, Wagner’s Ring, Debussy’s Trois Nocturnes, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring,
Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead, etc., etc.? I have listened to some of the artists you mention, but
I find the music utterly boring.

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 3 0 , 2 0 1 2 , 3 : 1 3 P M

Many people today would say the same of the composers you list. Culture and
experience changes how you perceive music. Yet all good music (by any cultural
standard) will share features in common. Thus, you might just have to expand your
aesthetic horizons, rather than simply stubbornly focusing on one particular,
geographically and historically idiosyncratic product.

(The more so as the correct analogy would be to compare modern pop with folk
music, drinking and work and festival songs, and similar common music, also
being composed in the lifetimes of Wagner, Debussy, and Stravinsky but ignored
by elitists then and now; while the proper analog to Wagner, Debussy, and
Stravinsky are modern film composers, like Moricone, Williams, Horner, and
Edmonson.)

R E P LY

A N DR ESC H U I TEMA N • AUGUS T 2, 2012, 6 :30 AM

Ultimately it is all a matter of personal taste. To me the difference between, say, a

piece by Debussy and a typical modern pop song is the difference between
trekking through a wonderful landscape and sitting in a bar (without company).
Some people prefer sitting in a bar.

But I think you’re just mistaken where you state that those film composers are the
modern counterparts of Beethoven c.s. Sorry, but that is vastly overrating the film
composers (not that they are all completely bad, but they are for the most part
wholesale dealers in clichés). I never listen to film music for its own sake. If you
want to look for modern analogs you could consider people like Pierre Boulez or
John Adams. In fact, when I started reading your post, coming across words like
‘musical science’ and ‘philosophy’ I expected an essay on the latest
developments in contemporary classical music. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
R E P LY

R IC H AR D C AR R IER • AUGUS T 2, 201 2, 7:08 P M

“
Ultimately it is all a matter of personal taste.

I’ve explained in the article and in this thread why it really isn’t. It’s not “all [just] a
matter of taste.” Not only because of the biological understructure, but also
because you can learn other cultural aesthetics and not enslave yourself to only
one. There is no objective sense in which Beethoven is better artistically and
aesthetically than Muse or the Black Angels. You just choose to pay attention to
certain kinds of attributes you like, and ignore the aesthetic pleasure afforded by
others. You don’t have to do that. You can learn to “perceive” other attributes
(attributes which are objectively there, your brain is just overlooking them–or
connecting them with bad experiences, the effect of environmental idiosyncrasies,
which can be unlearned) and thus derive the same pleasure from other forms of
music (meaning, the aesthetic best in other genres…not just “all” other music).

“
To me the difference between, say, a piece by Debussy and a typical
modern pop song is the difference between trekking through a
wonderful landscape and sitting in a bar (without company). Some
people prefer sitting in a bar.

It sounds like you are conflating all pop music as aesthetically comparable in
quality. Which demonstrates that you have developed no perceptive skill in the
matter and thus don’t know what you are talking about, any more than someone
with no skill for appreciating classical music would know what they were talking
about when they said your preferred music is boring.

“
But I think you’re just mistaken where you state that those film
composers are the modern counterparts of Beethoven c.s. Sorry, but
that is vastly overrating the film composers (not that they are all
completely bad, but they are for the most part wholesale dealers in
clichés). I never listen to film music for its own sake.
Once again, it sounds like you cannot distinguish between mediocre artists and
excellent artists in film scoring. There were plenty of mediocre artists in
Beethoven’s time. You would not evaluate classical music by noting that fact. You
would select the very rare sample of great artists from among the hundreds of so-
so ones of the time. So, too, film scores.

To begin with, there is plenty of the cliche in classical music. Indeed, if it weren’t
full of cliches, it would not be identifiable as a genre. That’s why Beethoven
sounds a lot like Mozart, in precisely the way that neither sounds like Morricone or
Tangerine Dream. Once we dismiss your irrelevant dislike of cliches (since if you
don’t see them in your own music, then you are aesthetically blind), and focus on
how artists transcend the cliches they employ, then there is nothing any more
cliche or mediocre about Morricone’s “Ecstasy of Gold” or Tangerine Dream’s
“Grind,” than there is about Beethoven or Mozart.

If you can’t see that, then you have narrowed your aesthetic perception so
narrowly it could almost qualify as a disability.

R E P LY

A N D R ESC H U I TEMA N • AUGUS T 3, 201 2, 7:29 AM

My initial reaction was prompted by irritation over this remark of yours:

“
”Real creativity, true freedom from the constraints of cultural and
corporate expectation, truly rules the music scene now.”

If anything, real creativity, true freedom from the constraints of external

expectation, has always been the hallmark of the great classical composers,
many of whom suffered because they refused to submit to the taste of the general
public.

“
”There is no objective sense in which Beethoven is better artistically
and aesthetically than Muse or the Black Angels.”
Just like there is no objective sense in which Rembrandt is better artistically and
aesthetically than my little daughter. But that doesn’t mean that Rembrandt is not
better than my daughter; it only means that we have no way of measuring
objectively in which way and to what extent he is better artistically. I am convinced
that Beethoven is infinitely better than Muse or the Black Angels, but I can’t prove
it to you by pointing out, for example, that his harmonies are more diverse, his
rhythms less monotonous, his motives and melodies less static, his dynamics
less predictable, his counterpoint more complex, or that Beethoven was evidently
incredibly talented (being able to compose his ninth symphony while he was
nearly deaf), etc., etc. These observations may all be true, but they don’t make the
music necessarily better. So I have to resort to circumstantial evidence, which is
ultimately my brain activity (and that of others) in response to his music. I doubt if
you respond in the same way to Muse or the Black Angels as I respond to
Beethoven. Maybe we should have our brains scanned while we listen to our
preferred music.

“
”You can learn to “perceive” other attributes (attributes which are
objectively there, your brain is just overlooking them–or connecting
them with bad experiences, the effect of environmental idiosyncrasies,
which can be unlearned) and thus derive the same pleasure from other
forms of music (meaning, the aesthetic best in other genres…not just
“all” other music).”

I do like lots of other music apart from ‘classical’ music, ranging from Balinese
and Indian music to, oh horror, pop music such as Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.
I just don’t derive the same kind of pleasure from such music. The pleasure is
more, dare I say it?, superficial.

“
”Once again, it sounds like you cannot distinguish between mediocre
artists and excellent artists in film scoring.”

I recognize that much of classical music is mediocre, cliché-ridden and boring

and I recognize too that some pop & film music is much better than others.
Morricone is excellent in his genre (and much more original than someone like
John Williams). But music like that just doesn’t touch me in the same way that the
great masterpieces of classical music do. I’m made to realize almost daily that
I’m in a minority here.
R E P LY

R IC H AR D C AR R IER • AUGUS T 3, 2012, 1:04 P M

“
If anything, real creativity, true freedom from the
constraints of external expectation, has always been
the hallmark of the great classical composers, many of
whom suffered because they refused to submit to the
taste of the general public.

This is not a true statement. Classical music (including the

greats) all sounds far more alike than 21st century music. By far.
Thus, it is an objective fact that artists now have more freedom
and are using it.

That the expectations of certain peers were extremely

constraining upon classical composers, and they were able to
wiggle a little bit outside of that box, does not make them more
free, it just means they fought harder to get what little freedom
they eventually did claim.

By analogy, a slave who, against all laws forbidding it, learns

how to read (as Frederick Douglas did) has gained a measure
of freedom much greater than the expectations surrounding him,
but he is still a slave. He is not more free than you or I, but still in
fact substantially less so. Even when Douglas was eventually
free, he was not as free as you or I, who have so much more
cultural liberty than was available to him.

Thus, that classical composers broke out of their culture’s tiny

box did not make them more liberated than present-day artists.
To the contrary, they were clearly substantially less liberated,
generating work in the same narrow genre with the same
instruments.

You are therefore not measuring the same things I am.

“
”There is no objective sense in which Beethoven is
better artistically and aesthetically than Muse or the
Black Angels.” Just like there is no objective sense in
 which Rembrandt is better artistically and aesthetically
than my little daughter.

This demonstrates that you still don’t get it. Because your
statement is false, and not at all comparable to mine. Muse and
the Black Angels are better artistically and aesthetically (by far)
than Britney Spears or LMFAO. And we can actually define in
objective terms how and why.

Thus, your “little daughter” (unless she is a prodigy) is simply not

better artistically and aesthetically than Rembrandt, because she
cannot achieve the objective aesthetic measures he could: for
example, in his ability to employ his materials to emulate real
features of human anatomy and lighting (which displays
knowledge of reality your daughter, and her art, lacks; and a skill
to communicate and represent that knowledge, which your
daughter, and her art, also lacks) and to intentionally evoke
emotional and cognitive reactions (an artist like Rembrandt can
set out to produce a particular effect in the viewer, in terms of
emotional response or cognitive rumination, and succeed in his
intentions; your daughter cannot).

Likewise in terms of the beauty response in the brain and how it

reacts (and generates pleasure) in response to particular kinds
of visual stimuli, which is a human universal: a Rembrandt
intuitively knows those features (from extensive practice,
observation, and experience) and how to manipulate them to
maximize aesthetic pleasure in the brain (and, similarly, avoid
those features that have a displeasing effect); a modern
Rembrandt could even know those features cognitively (and not
just intuitively) and thus do even better at this. These are
objective features, and knowledge of them consists of objective
facts, likewise knowing how to employ a medium (like oil on
canvas) to effect them also consists of knowledge of objective
facts.

And as for painting, so for music. There are features of the art of
Muse and The Black Angels that, like Rembrandt, intuitively plays
on universal neurological features that effect and maximize
pleasure in the brain, and that employ their materials (musical
instruments, including voices) to emulate real features of the
world and to intentionally evoke emotional and cognitive
reactions, especially such as are not superficial (the
paradigmatic examples are Muse, “Butterflies and Hurricanes”
and The Black Angels, “Young Men Dead”). These are all
objective properties. One must only have the trained perception
to detect them or notice them, to connect them with each other
and with the relevant concepts that then affect thought and mood.
And one must not still have strong negative emotional memories
attached to them (as one might idiosyncratically acquire from
contingent circumstances of their upbringing).

For example, the beauty of a Rembrandt (and this means, the

objective fact of a greater pleasure response in the brain)
substantially increases when you understand the skill required to
produce his effects on canvas, which requires you to know
something of how oil and paints work and how three dimensional
impressions are created by two dimensional images, and the
complexity of, for example, human anatomy and how difficult it is
to recreate it, and not just recreate it, but in such a distorted way
that the eye is tricked into seeing a realistic representation (just
as the columns of the Parthenon had to be deliberately screwed
up to appear straight and uniform to a distant viewer, owing to
the peculiar way our brains process visual images). And so on.
The more you know of these things, the more awed you are by
looking at the product.

Music is similar, only music is more abstract than visual media.

Understanding the performance aspect, the role of evoking
historical periods or landscapes or particular thoughts or
emotions (even of a rather complex kind) with particular sounds,
combinations of sounds, movements, and transitions, greatly
increases the pleasure of music heard. Likewise not blocking the
natural aesthetic response by pre-programming your brain to
react negatively to a certain kind of music, thus attaching it to a
negative emotional reaction (the way Beethoven was made to
sound abhorrent to a once-admirer in A Clockwork Orange).
This appears to be what you have done.

“
I am convinced that Beethoven is infinitely better than
Muse or the Black Angels, but I can’t prove it to you by
pointing out, for example, that his harmonies are more
diverse, his rhythms less monotonous, his motives
and melodies less static, his dynamics less
predictable, his counterpoint more complex, or that
Beethoven was evidently incredibly talented (being
able to compose his ninth symphony while he was
nearly deaf), etc., etc.

Notice what you are privileging:

The notion that “more diverse harmonies” makes music better,

when in fact simple harmonies can be just as pleasure-evoking
and beautiful and powerful in evoking emotion or thought
(indeed, simple harmonies can be used to a deliberate purpose,
and to make the changes even more subtle and beautiful); if you
do not notice this, then your aesthetic response is stunted
relative to other listeners, possibly through idiosyncratic negative
associations. “Diverse harmony” is not a requirement of beauty
in music. It’s just one way to achieve it. And that can become
monotonous in itself, when one seeks to diversify harmony to the
neglect of the utility of repeating harmonies (just like language:
diversity for diversity’s sake is not beautiful, whereas a lot of
beauty can be created by deliberately self-referencing and
repeating elements).

Similarly, “rhythms less monotonous” is just a pejorative way of

saying more consistent rhythms are less beautiful, which is
objectively false. In its natural state the brain will find a variety of
consistency and variation in rhythm equally pleasurable. You
have to actually train your brain not to, which is evidently what you
have done, thus reducing your ability to derive pleasure from
more diverse music.

Likewise every other element. None of the things you described

are neurologically necessary to producing a strong beauty
response. You can train yourself to hyper-value them (by learning
to appreciate the skill it takes to produce them, and perhaps
somehow learning to feel the emotions and thoughts they are
intended to convey, if such they were), and you can train yourself
to loathe other techniques (and thus conclude simpler music is
awful, a notion you certainly were not born with; nor that
complexity = good). But do this too much, to the point that only
one genre of music pleases you, is like musical castration.

Your last remark, however, is simply false. Beethoven was not

“more talented” because he could overcome his deafness. Such
a notion falsely presumes other artists could not also do this,
were they so afflicted and determined. And it falsely presumes
that overcoming a hardship makes the product aesthetically
better, which is not really true. Knowing the fact of it can add to
the pleasure and thus increase its aesthetic value (and
objectively), but this is not the doing of Beethoven; it’s the result
of you knowing and appreciating a fact about him, and not his
ability to do a better job of composing music than anyone else.

“
But music like that just doesn’t touch me in the same
way that the great masterpieces of classical music do.
 Which suggests you have acquired some sort of emotional
baggage in this debate that has distorted and altered the way
you emotionally respond to music. You over-value complexity,
and under-value anything outside one extremely specific
historical-cultural genre (which obviously cannot be biological,
since “the elite music of Western early modernity” is not
genetically coded). That’s a shame. Because it means you see
far less beauty in the world than most others do, and that most
everyone could.

R E P LY

A N DR ESC H U I TEMA N • AUGUS T 4, 2012, 11:54 AM

I am sorry that you feel the need to quote-mine me to make your point. Regarding
the characteristics of Beethoven’s music I explicitly said:

“
These observations may all be true, but they don’t make the music
necessarily better.

I know perfectly well that great music can be created with relatively simple means.
Listen for a wonderful example to Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie.

“
Classical music (including the greats) all sounds far more alike than
21st century music. By far. Thus, it is an objective fact that artists now
have more freedom and are using it.

You must know very little classical music for you to be able to say that. How much
alike is Ravel’s Ondine to Wagner’s Götterdämmerung? Besides, I don’t hear
your beloved Muse and Black Angels making much use of their freedom. ‘Young
Men Dead’ doesn’t sound terribly different from certain songs of The Doors to
me, while ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ has an incredibly trite and unoriginal
melody. The whole ‘design pattern’ of these songs is exactly the same as that of
thousands of others before them. They are constantly stuck in the same tonality
and as a result sound static and, to me, quickly become boring. Where is the
freedom and creativity in all this? I just don’t hear much of it. I really tried. I’ll admit
that is is far better than Britney Spears.
You also contradict yourself, where you say:

“
Muse and the Black Angels are better artistically and aesthetically (by
far) than Britney Spears or LMFAO. And we can actually define in
objective terms how and why.

Earlier, you had stated:

“
There is no objective sense in which Beethoven is better artistically
and aesthetically than Muse or the Black Angels.

Which is it? Your discussion of Rembrandt focuses on his skills, his

craftsmanship. But these are not what distinguishes the greater from the lesser
artist. Van Gogh couldn’t draw the human figure nearly as well as Bouguereau,
and was on the whole clearly the lesser craftsman of the two, yet most people
would consider Van Gogh the greater artist. What distinguishes great art and
music from the lesser is not the execution but the content, the semantics. This is
hard, perhaps impossible, to capture in objective criteria.

“
Which suggests you have acquired some sort of emotional baggage in
this debate that has distorted and altered the way you emotionally
respond to music. You over-value complexity, and under-value
anything outside one extremely specific historical-cultural genre.

I had the privilege of being able to visit the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam very
frequently in my teens and to attend numerous concerts and recitals under ideal
circumstances by the greatest artists and orchestras in classical music.
Therefore, rather than putting it so negatively as me having acquired ‘emotional
baggage’, I would say that I have gained a better ear for the qualities of this kind
of music. I realize that many people find it difficult to follow music with constantly
shifting rhythms and tonalities and in which many voices do different things at the
same time. But once you have mastered these hurdles you may be inclined to
become unsatisfied with simpler, more predictable music.

“
 “
“the elite music of Western early modernity” is not genetically coded

Of course it isn’t. But this is the second time that you introduce the word ‘elite’ in
connection with classical music. This suggests to me that your dislike of this kind
of music has some weird sociological component that has nothing to do with the
music per se. In other words, you look far more prejudiced towards classical
music than I am towards your so-called 21st century music (which is in reality a
narrow subset of contemporary pop music).

R E P LY

R IC H AR D C AR R IER • AUGUS T 6 , 2012, 5:27 P M

andreschuiteman:

You’re the one who is quote mining. To wit:

“
I don’t hear your beloved Muse and Black Angels making much use of
their freedom.

I didn’t say they did. I said the musicians of this century do. That is, we have artists
diverging much farther in style, constructing and pursuing their own. That is indeed
the entire point of my whole series on the postmusical era: next to Muse and the
Black Angels we have Hugh Laurie, Santogold, Neko Case, Moby, Arcade Fire,
DeVotchKa, Zachary Mechlem, Minnie Driver, Paloma Faith, Lily Allen, Nouvelle
Vague, Solar Fields, Bitter:Sweet, Shirley Bassey, Goldfrapp, Portishead, Naam,
Trent Reznor, Belle & Sebastian, Tom Waits, M. Ward, Juno Reactor, and Lupe
Fiasco. Compared to that field of options (and that’s just one culdesac of them),
classical music looks very constrained to common tropes and instruments and not
all that liberated.

“
‘Young Men Dead’ doesn’t sound terribly different from certain songs of
The Doors to me, while ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ has an incredibly
trite and unoriginal melody.
I doubt ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ actually has a “trite and unoriginal melody.”
You’re just making that shit up to be contrary. And the (very dim) evocation of The
Doors in the Black Angels is no different from the evocation of predecessors in
even the greatest of classical composers.

“
The whole ‘design pattern’ of these songs is exactly the same as that of
thousands of others before them.

The same can be said of all tunes whatever, given that all music adheres to a
universal structure, and the more so in periods and genres. That is again why all
classical music sounds so similar. Not identical, but far more alike than diverse
artists sound today. That can only be possible if they are using and reusing
numerous similar features and choices in design.

“
They are constantly stuck in the same tonality and as a result sound
static and, to me, quickly become boring. Where is the freedom and
creativity in all this? I just don’t hear much of it. I really tried.

And that’s why I called sad. You are like a man without a nose: unable to
appreciate most of the beauty of the world. For some reason as yet not
diagnosed, you are blind to almost all the beauty of the world’s music, and hung
up on one extremely narrow culturally specific product of a now-long-dead
Western-European elite.

“
You also contradict yourself, where you say: “Muse and the Black
Angels are better artistically and aesthetically (by far) than Britney
Spears or LMFAO. And we can actually define in objective terms how
and why.” Earlier, you had stated: “There is no objective sense in which
Beethoven is better artistically and aesthetically than Muse or the
Black Angels.” Which is it?

That you think this is a contradiction is proof again that you don’t get it. Beethoven
is to the mediocre composers of his day as Muse and the Black Angels are to
Britney Spears and LMFAO today. And that is an objective fact.

“
…most people would consider Van Gogh the greater artist.

He is not. There is no objective sense in which he is even a good artist. His

reputation is entirely the product of fashionable thought and not any actual
aesthetics. His art is valued because people were told it was valuable.

“
I realize that many people find it difficult to follow music with constantly
shifting rhythms and tonalities and in which many voices do different
things at the same time. But once you have mastered these hurdles
you may be inclined to become unsatisfied with simpler, more
predictable music.

Which would be awful. Fortunately, it’s not true. We can learn to appreciate both
kinds of ingenuity and creativity, without destroying our ability to derive pleasure
from either. You somehow destroyed half of yours.

“
…you introduce the word ‘elite’ in connection with classical music. This
suggests to me that your dislike of this kind of music has some weird
sociological component…

Hardly. Unlike you, I do love classical music. And modern music. You are the one
who has lost half the pleasure of the musical landscape. And you did this by
somehow obsessing on a single, highly-specific, historically and culturally
idiosyncratic genre of it.

And that’s sad.

R E P LY
 A N D R E S C H U I T E M A N • A U G U S T 7, 2 0 1 2 , 4 : 2 6 A M

If I were to claim that left handed artists with black hair are better artists than
blond-haired, right handed ones I would be using objective criteria. Does this
prove that my claim is correct? No, it only proves that objectivity in itself doesn’t
validate a set of criteria. We can still choose between different sets of objective
criteria. How do we do that? We would need…objective criteria to choose
between different sets of criteria. But then, how do you avoid infinite regress?

In other words, when you state that there is no objective sense in which Van Gogh
“is even a good artist”, then this is true only with respect to your subjectively
chosen set of objective criteria. Ultimately it is therefore just a subjective
statement. According to my objective criteria, Van Gogh is a better artist than
Bouguereau but a lesser one by far than Rembrandt. Who is to decide whose
objective criteria are ‘better’? By what standard could such a decision be made?

“
His [Van Gogh’s] reputation is entirely the product of fashionable
thought and not any actual aesthetics. His art is valued because
people were told it was valuable.

‘actual aesthetics’? You sound like one of those academic, reactionary 19th
century artists who made fun of the impressionists and tried hard to keep them
out of the ‘Salons’. The academic artists were just as convinced of the existence
of indisputable aesthetic criteria as you are. And they were wrong.

Returning to music, when I started listening to ‘Young men dead’ (I had never
heard it before) I was impressed. There is no doubt that the Black Angels are
excellent musicians, perhaps — objectively — better ones than The Doors.
However, after a few minutes of ‘Young men dead’ there was no further
development musically. To me it felt as if they got stuck (as in so many songs in
this genre), which I found slightly annoying. I almost said to myself: okay, that was
a great start, but where do we go from here? Why do we stay where we are? It is
like driving to a fabulous national park and then spending the whole day on the
parking lot. You, Richard, obviously don’t experience this annoyance. But why
would you imply that I am somehow to blame for not enjoying something that is in
a way deficient? Is this deficiency only found in me or is it actually in the music?
Again, you seem to hide behind an objectivity that does not really exist.

An elusive (but perhaps the most important) difference between the Black Angels
and The Doors is that the latter have created some great songs (‘The End’, ‘Light
my fire’, ‘Killer on the road’) that millions of people know and love, while the
former haven’t (yet). Wherein lies the quality of a great song? It doesn’t reside in
any purely musical factor and a song is not great merely because millions of
people love it. You could write a song with the same instruments, the same
rhythms, the same harmonies, performed by the same artists, but with slightly
different twists and turns, and it wouldn’t work. Most of the other songs of The
Doors aren’t worth listening to, in my opinion. Why is that? As I said before, there
is a semantic aspect to art and music that is extremely difficult to define and may
well be impossible to capture in any particular set of objective criteria. That’s why
we will probably never agree about the relative status of Beethoven vs. the Black
Angels. De gustibus non est disputandum. Trite but largely true.

R E P LY

RICHARD CARRIER • AUGUS T 8, 2012, 11:18

AM

“
If I were to claim that left handed artists with black hair
are better artists than blond-haired, right handed ones
I would be using objective criteria. Does this prove that
my claim is correct?

That confuses correlation with causation. If it were a fact that “left

handed artists with black hair” produced objectively better music,
it would not be their left handedness or hair color that made the
music objectively better, but still the same attributes that I have
listed. Thus, left handedness and hair color would still not be
measures of music quality.

“
We can still choose between different sets of objective
criteria. How do we do that? We would need…objective
criteria to choose between different sets of criteria. But
then, how do you avoid infinite regress?

The brain.

What our options are is constrained to what the brain has

evolved to find pleasurable. Regress ends there…until we
acquire the ability to rewire a brain any way we want, then there
will literally be no constraint on what we could make pleasurable,
other than pragmatic desire, e.g. we would not want to make
pleasurable anything that would motivate self-defeating behavior.
Human music response has evolved in respect to what helps us
rather than hurts us, i.e. our musical neuroaesthetic is
fundamentally useful, as I explain in Sense and Goodness
without God. We would want to go further in that direction rather
than against it.

Thus what we have are a variety of options (all possible music

forms), each a different way to stimulate the biological
neuroaesthetic evolved in our brains. The more we train our brain
to receive and perceive the attractive qualities in a musical
variety, the more beauty we will see in the world, and the more
pleasure we will derive from it. We will then gravitate toward the
best in every variety, the “best” being that which stimulates the
most brain-based pleasure-producing attributes, the most
strongly.

“
In other words, when you state that there is no objective
sense in which Van Gogh “is even a good artist”, then
this is true only with respect to your subjectively
chosen set of objective criteria.

They are not subjectively chosen, though. If we are talking about

visual stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain, then it is an
objective fact that Van Gogh sucks (I particularly explain the
neuroscience of visual pleasure response in Sense and
Goodness without God, because that is still the best
understood). If we are instead talking about the pleasure caused
by the satisfaction of envy or pride (as comes from the thought of
owning something other people want or say is valuable) then we
are no longer talking about Van Gogh’s artistry at all, but the
aesthetics of capital consumption and display, in which event the
owner of the painting becomes the artist (a performance artist in
this case), not the painter. We are then no longer talking about
painting.

“
There is no doubt that the Black Angels are excellent
musicians, perhaps — objectively — better ones than
The Doors.
Which reminds me to interject that a great deal of the pleasure
we receive from music lies not only in the composition, but in the
performance. This is as much the case with classical music,
where a lousy performance can destroy even the most excellent
of compositions.

“
However, after a few minutes of ‘Young men dead’
there was no further development musically. To me it
felt as if they got stuck (as in so many songs in this
genre), which I found slightly annoying.

Which, as I have said, is sad. You have lost a huge chunk of your
ability to derive pleasure from music.

Modern music is largely based now on the principle of dancing.

Not literally (though people do literally dance to modern music of
course), but cognitively. Dancing is about reversals, repetitions,
and returns. The pleasure derived from a dance lies largely in its
repetition, not its constant changes (although a dance with no
changes would conversely be displeasurable). When we work,
think, dream, lose ourselves in reverie, our minds dance. It is by
allowing this part of the brain to be pleasurably stimulated that
modern music succeeds. Repetition stimulates our pleasure
centers that key on anticipation and expectation. Changes then
work on pleasure centers that key on surprise. Good music will
always have some measure of both. Bad listeners will obsess on
one and derive no pleasure from the other. ‘Young men dead’ is
an example: the most significant emotional change in the music
is after the mid point, beginning at minute 2:30, using the
repeated elements in an unexpected way, which becomes the
most anticipated bridge in the song (from 3:01 to 4:22),
combining simultaneously the pleasures of anticipation and
surprise.

Modern music is also often lyrics based: much of the beauty

comes from the correspondence between what is being sung
and the emotional effects of the music accompanying it, which
allows a much larger aesthetic space to be explored. For
example, the irony of juxtaposing an upbeat dance tune to the
happy nihilism of the lyrics in OMD’s ‘History of Modern Part 1’;
such an achievement is impossible with classical music outside
opera, and even there this kind of irony was rarely attempted;
‘young men dead’ is another perfect example of the role the
lyrics play in greatly enhancing the cognitive pleasure of the
song, one closer to traditional opera, only more innovative and
less constrained by stereotypes and elitist assumptions.

People love to sing along with songs, even if only in their heads,
and feel the meaning of the words, which is another key source
of pleasure that modern music affords but classical music almost
never does (not many great operas ever being composed in
English or Spanish, for example). This requires repetition and
cues accompanying the changes. The music of ancient Greece
was similarly based on singing, especially of epic and lyric
poetry, and it shows the same aesthetic use of familiar turns and
repetitions and cuing of changes. If you are aware of this and tap
into it and learn to surrender to it, you will derive pleasure from
modern music that you won’t typically derive from classical
(which does not make it better, just targeting of a different
pleasure pathway).

“
I almost said to myself: okay, that was a great start, but
where do we go from here?

Minute 3:01 to 4:22.

“
Why do we stay where we are?

You don’t. If you’d listened to the song, you’d know that.

More importantly, you then can move on to the next song, which
has the larger changes with respect to ‘Young Men Dead’ that
any classical piece would have. You can even choose what that
next song will be, and thus what the gear-shift will be.

“
Is this deficiency only found in me or is it actually in
the music?
In you. This is talking about aesthetic response, not the qualities
of the music. Your brain (unless it’s damaged; I am assuming it’s
not) has the capacity to derive pleasure from all the same
qualities I derive pleasure from. Because we are biologically the
same in respect to musical neuroaesthetics. However, we can
rechannel how signals get sent around in our brains, and thus link
up certain qualities to displeasure centers, or decouple certain
qualities from their pleasure centers.

This is the role of idiosyncratic experience in molding aesthetic

response (culture being just one larger component of that same
environmental effect). If we allow idiosyncratic experience
(cultural or personal) to narrow our aesthetic response, cutting off
pleasure centers or increasing triggers to displeasure centers,
we are degrading our capacity for aesthetic experience and its
concomitant pleasure. If we do the opposite (and become
proficient in responding to many kinds of good music) we
enhance and expand our capacity for aesthetic experience and
its concomitant pleasure. We probably can’t expand it
completely (time, and limits to how many ways we can rewire our
brain, and other practical and personal considerations might put
a reasonable cap on how broadly we can expand our aesthetic
responses), but we can expand it enough to have a broad base
of enjoyment of musical experience. Which is obviously better
than narrowing it to an extremely small window of musical
experience.

“
It doesn’t reside in any purely musical factor and a
song is not great merely because millions of people
love it.

Actually, yes, it is. If you define great music as music known and
loved by millions of people, you are then setting that as a
criterion of “great.” If you instead admit that that can’t be a
criterion of greatness (for the obvious reason that access to the
music is limited: millions of people don’t even know about The
Black Angels and thus can hardly have had the opportunity to
assess them), then you can’t pick popular songs and call them
great just because they are popular.

In fact, popularity is more a function of nostalgia triggers (people

love the songs they associate with great times in their lives,
which is a historical contingency that often has nothing to do with
the actual quality of the music) and fashion (most songs topping
the charts in any given month suck, but they become fashionable
 for a variety of reasons, among them the lack of a well-
developed aesthetic taste in the general public–a taste they
could develop, if given the chance, e.g. most of the chart-picking
public think classical music sucks, but this is obviously because
they have not learned to appreciate it and allow it’s otherwise-
alien sounds to reach their innate biological neuroaesthetics,
and you and I know that could change–popular boredom with
classical music is not genetic).

“
Most of the other songs of The Doors aren’t worth
listening to, in my opinion. Why is that?

Because music is a more difficult art to compose in than, for

example, painting (owing to music being far more abstract and
indirect in how it reaches pleasure centers in the brain).

“
…there is a semantic aspect to art and music that is
extremely difficult to define and may well be
impossible to capture in any particular set of objective
criteria.

First rule of science: never say never.

Because you will almost always be proved wrong. Usually within

a couple of decades of making the claim.

R E P LY

A N DR ESC H U I TEMA N • AUGUS T 9 , 2012, 8:34 AM

I don’t want to misrepresent you, but it seems to me that this is what you are
arguing: When, on hearing the Black Angels, my brain’s pleasure centers don’t
jump into action, that means that there is something wrong with me. Why?
Because there are other people, like yourself, whose pleasure centers start
producing endorphins, or whatever they do, like mad as soon as this particular
band is listened to. This proves that the Black Angels are terrific. On the other
hand, your pleasure centers are not stimulated at all by Britney Spears, so that
must mean that Britney Spears is bad. Objectively so, because by measuring the
activity of your pleasure centers we can demonstrate that you are not faking your
indifference to Britney Spears. But there is hope for me, because I can learn to
appreciate, nay, even to love the Black Angels. That would be good, because the
more kinds of music I like, the more beauty I will experience in the world.

I see at least three problems with this line of argument.

(1) I’m fairly sure that there are many people who genuinely like to listen to Britney
Spears and whose pleasure centers are stimulated in the same objectively
measurable way as yours are when you are listening to the Black Angels. Why
would your pleasure centers be privileged over those of others?
(2) Why don’t you simply learn to like Britney Spears yourself? By your own
admission this would increase the amount of pleasure you derive from the world,
so that would be a good thing.
(3) If one can learn to like things that one previously didn’t appreciate then this
implies that we cannot use the response of our pleasure centers to measure the
objective quality of a piece of music or a work of art. Because if our pleasure
centers can be coerced into responding to stuff that previously didn’t register then
we can always put a poor response down to a lack of proper training.

According to George Orwell one can learn to love Big Brother.Does that prove
that he is worth loving? You are in effect claiming that something that is loved (=
stimulates the pleasure centers) is by definition worth loving (= objectively good). I
think you are wrong, objectively so.

“
If we are talking about visual stimulation of the pleasure centers of the
brain, then it is an objective fact that Van Gogh sucks

How the hell do you know that? Did you measure the brain activity of all the
visitors to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam? Are you claiming that people
who profess to love the work of Van Gogh are (like biologist Jerry Coyne here)
just pretending? Is the appreciation of Van Gogh by a large section of the public
all the result of a giant conspiracy?

Why can’t I turn your own argument against you, what prevents me from saying
that you need to train your own brain in order to increase the pleasure you derive
from a visit to a museum? Why am I handicapped because I don’t get all fired up
when listening to the Black Angels but you are not handicapped for not liking the
work of Van Gogh? I can almost imagine you visiting the Van Gogh Museum,
glancing around you scornfully, muttering “look at all those deluded tourists, buying
expensive tickets to see something that doesn’t even stimulate their pleasure
centers — this guy couldn’t draw humans properly, knew nothing of the laws of
perspective, and handled his paint as if it were tooth paste,” while completely
ignoring the dazzling colors, the striking compositions, the rhythms of the brush
strokes, the atmosphere, etc. Now that’s what I call sad.

R E P LY

R IC H AR D C AR R IER • AUGUS T 9 , 2012, 11:33 AM

“
When, on hearing the Black Angels, my brain’s pleasure centers don’t
jump into action, that means that there is something wrong with me.
Why?

This is like asking “if I have lost my sense of smell, that means that there is
something wrong with me. Why?”

Of course, if you don’t care that you’ve lost a dimension of pleasure experience,
then it’s not a great loss for you personally. It just means most people have
access to a source of aesthetic pleasure you do not. And unlike losing the sense
of smell, the inability to derive pleasure from modern music is not going to impair
you much in any way that matters to your welfare.

Nevertheless, it is from my perspective a sad loss.

“
Because there are other people, like yourself, whose pleasure centers
start producing endorphins, or whatever they do, like mad as soon as
this particular band is listened to. This proves that the Black Angels are
terrific.

Not in itself. I have discussed the properties of music generally, and modern
music specifically, that objectively correlate with pleasure centers in the brain and
relate to objective measures of better and worse art. I won’t go over all that again.

“
But there is hope for me, because I can learn to appreciate, nay, even
to love the Black Angels.
Ditto someone who hates classical music: they can learn to decouple the
connections that make them dislike it, and recouple the connections that will
make them see in it and love in it all the same things you do, and that you have so
aptly described. Those are objective properties, and the human brain has innate
facility to derive pleasure from them (in a way it does not have innate facility to
derive pleasure from many other noises). Thus, someone who has not taken full
advantage of their brain’s facility is missing out on aesthetic pleasures it could
otherwise achieve: they are missing out on what you experience when you listen
to great classical music. That is correctable. But whether any given individual
cares to correct it is a separate question. That is a question of the more general
value of aesthetic pleasure to human experience.

“
I’m fairly sure that there are many people who genuinely like to listen to
Britney Spears and whose pleasure centers are stimulated in the same
objectively measurable way as yours are when you are listening to the
Black Angels. Why would your pleasure centers be privileged over
those of others?

Comparatively, when they understand the objective differences between the two,
they will derive greater, deeper, and more lasting pleasure from the better art than
the worse. It’s the classic difference between the base pleasures and the greater
pleasures, the difference between enjoying garbage and enjoying displays of skill,
knowledge, artistry, and the intuitive command of the ability of art to evoke
specific emotions and thoughts beyond the superficial. It’s the difference between
being superficial and seeing little of the world, and having a deeper appreciation
and understanding of the world. It’s the difference between thinking you don’t
need to know anything, and realizing that knowing things makes life experience
more profoundly enjoyable.

It’s the same difference, in fact, between thinking classical music is just boring
noise, and realizing it is so much more than that that it is absurd to ever have
thought it was that.

“
Why don’t you simply learn to like Britney Spears yourself?

It’s no longer possible. I am now aware of the objective properties of her music
that make it dull, uncreative, inarticulate, and superficial. But even before I was
aware of those things I could still perceive a difference between that music, and
better music. Now, I understand what those differences are, and thus can see
them (and thus enjoy them) even better than once I did.

To use a baser analogy: just as bad sex was never all that great, even when I
thought it was the best there was (a state in which many people still reside), I now
know what great sex is like, and how much more pleasurable it is (and thus
always was and would have been). Though that difference is an objective fact and
was objectively true even when I didn’t know it, now that I know it, bad sex is not
even interesting to me any more. I could never reprogram myself to like it as much
as great sex; that was impossible even when I thought bad sex was the best there
was. I was then simply blind to how much better sex could be.

As for sex, so for music.

“
If one can learn to like things that one previously didn’t appreciate then
this implies that we cannot use the response of our pleasure centers to
measure the objective quality of a piece of music or a work of art.

That’s not true. See the sex analogy again for why.

In two respects, in fact: that good music has objective properties that distinguish it
from bad music; and it is an objective fact that those properties can produce
greater and more profound pleasure, which bad music never will have and never
could have produced, even when we are unaware of that and think bad music is
the most pleasurable music possible: we are simply, as a matter of objective fact,
wrong. As we will know once we have the experience confuting it (as you acquired
in your discovery of great classical music).

“
How the hell do you know that [Van Gogh sucks]? Did you measure the
brain activity of all the visitors to the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam?

We could. But we don’t have to, any more than we have to drop an apple on every
square inch of the earth to know how fast it will fall there if we do.

We know a great deal about the neuroaesthetics of visual processing, and thus
can make accurate general predictions about how much pleasure certain visual
art works will produce or are capable of producing (though visual stimulus won’t
be the sole trigger, as cognitive triggers will also play a role, i.e. our cognitive
appreciation of the art, such as regarding its context and knowledge of what it
took to produce it and so on, but again we can map and predict those elements,
too).

“
Are you claiming that people who profess to love the work of Van Gogh
are (like biologist Jerry Coyne here) just pretending? Is the
appreciation of Van Gogh by a large section of the public all the result
of a giant conspiracy?

Not at all. They are like people who think (sincerely and actually think) that bad sex
is the best thing ever. Knowledge would change their opinions. As in sex, so in
art.

R E P LY

A N DR ESC H U I TEMA N • AUGUS T 10, 2012, 6 :41 AM

“
I am now aware of the objective properties of her music that make it
dull, uncreative, inarticulate, and superficial. But even before I was
aware of those things I could still perceive a difference between that
music, and better music. Now, I understand what those differences are,
and thus can see them (and thus enjoy them) even better than once I
did.

This is exactly how I feel nowadays regarding pop music. When I was ten, twelve
years old I loved to listen to bands like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led
Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, etc. Their music thrilled me. I’m sure I would have enjoyed
the Black Angels too had they existed then (early seventies). But at the same time
I was learning to play music by Bach on my guitar and listened to records of
people like Julian Bream who could actually play it. I felt instinctively that this
music was on a different plane altogether. In hindsight I would say it was like the
difference between the children’s books I was reading and the works of Kafka or
Flaubert that I discovered later. Over the years I have simply intellectually grown
out of pop music. This music, as music, is too limited for me. And I fear it is
doomed to stay as it is in this respect because the dancing and head banging
audience wouldn’t tolerate otherwise. You constantly talk about the freedom of
modern pop music, but this freedom is very restricted. How many fans would
desert their favorite band instantly if it started playing more tonally adventurous
 music and produced rhythms that did not lend themselves to dancing and head
banging?

Modern pop artists are limited by the conventions of the genre and by the
demands and expectations of their audience as much as any 18th century court
composer. Yes, the sounds they can produce are more diverse today because of
technical advances in electronic instruments. But that is really something
superficial. If you are hung up too much on the sound, you can proclaim that the
piano works of Beethoven, Chopin and Ravel all sound very much alike. That
would only show that you never learned to listen to music properly.

Let the music make my point. Here is Prokofiev writing heavy metal back in 1942:

Piano Sonata nr. 7, third movement.

This was composed in the Soviet Union during WW II under the reign of Stalin.
This music, created under the most oppressive conditions imaginable, is more
radical and more free than almost any pop music I know. And that says more
about pop music than about this sonata, which is not particularly advanced for its
time. I offer it as an example of what truly progressive rock music could sound like
but never does.

R E P LY

J T • J U LY 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 , 2 : 5 3 P M

I think that anyone who’s familiar with the music of the past forty years or so can easily come to the
conclusion that modern music is not really worth listening to because it is simply a rehashing of
things that have already been done. Why bother with imitation when you can go back and listen to
the real thing? The fact remains that there are only 12 notes and while they can be arranged in
nearly endless ways, the truth is that harmony and melody and rhythm are typically bland and
predictable in most modern music. The reason for this is that the vast majority of listeners, and thus
radio stations, etc, cannot tolerate much inventiveness in any of the three areas of music. For
example, nobody but prog bands and metal bands really do much in terms of rhythmic diversity
(prog and metal tend to have a lot of time changes and odd meters). Some popular styles of music
like rap and hip hop contain almost no harmony and melody at all, and if they do, it is typically very
generic.

For me, modern music is simply imitation and pretty much unlistenable. In terms of modern bands,
there is still a lot of innovation in metal. It always amazes me how much this genre of music is
overlooked by people who claim to be aficionados of music. Metal features the very best
musicians and remains one of the last bastions of creativity in music. It seems that Metal as a
genre allows itself one of the largest canvases on which to paint, and avails themselves of the
largest pallette of colors. Metal bands can still get away with long songs, complex rhythms and
harmonies, odd meters, bizarre turnings, seven and even eight string guitars, finger tapping, hybrid
picking, eight finger tapping, and a whole lot more. Heavy metal has always been at the vanguard
in technical innovation on guitar, bass, and drums, and the musicianship of most metal bands is
unmatched by any other style except jazz and classical. If you’re interested in exploring modern
heavy metal, a good place to start is with Mastodon’s magnificent Crack the Skye album. What a
breath of fresh air!

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 3 0 , 2 0 1 2 , 3 : 3 2 P M

I don’t regard complexity and innovation and experimentation in themselves as

attributes of aesthetic quality. I recognize some brilliance in metal, for example,
but just saying they use a “larger palette of colors” doesn’t make them better, or
even good. Thus “complex rhythms and harmonies, odd meters, bizarre turnings,
seven and even eight string guitars” is not in itself a commendation. If they do
beautiful music with it, then yes. But what makes it beautiful is neither its
complexity nor its inventiveness nor its oddity nor how many strings are on their
guitars.

I do tend to see this a lot, people equating “out of the box” with “good.” That’s to
miss the point of everything we’ve learned in the neuroaesthetics of music–and
the higher virtues of art (communication, such as of mood or impression;
education, such as by emulating nature or evoking a culture or idea; and display
of skill, which is only evident to a listener when recognizable). Artists should be
liberated from cultural or period expectations. But once liberated, they still have to
do great work. Merely being free does not make them great.

R E P LY

M O J O . R H Y T H M • J U LY 2 9 , 2 0 1 2 , 1 : 0 4 A M

I’m glad you enjoyed the soundtrack to Tattoo and Inception. “Time” by Hans Zimmer is one of the
most hauntingly beautiful, epic compositions I have ever heard.

What did you think of the Tattoo movie?

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 3 0 , 2 0 1 2 , 3 : 4 3 P M

As I did not read the book, I can only evaluate the movie as what it was (which is
how I think movies should usually be evaluated, since the medium often requires
transforming the work rather than trying to accurately reproduce it). But that caveat
aside, I found the film rather excellent, on all measures of cinematic art.

R E P LY
 M O J O . R H Y T H M • J U LY 2 9 , 2 0 1 2 , 1 : 0 7 A M

BTW Richard, speaking of movie OSTs, what do you think of the song “Lux Aeterna” by Clint
Mansell? It is the title track from Requiem for a Dream (2000).

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 3 0 , 2 0 1 2 , 3 : 5 1 P M

I actually prefer its redaction, “Requiem for a Tower” (composed for the Lord of
the Rings films, but I just listen to it as standalone music). But the original itself is
an excellent piece.

R E P LY

D U C E 7 9 9 9 • J U LY 3 0 , 2 0 1 2 , 1 0 : 0 2 A M

I am unsure about this postmusical concept, it seems to insist upon itself. I would be willing to
reconsider if you will concede that Q Lazzarus was the first postmusical example.

R E P LY

R I C H A R D C A R R I E R • J U LY 3 0 , 2 0 1 2 , 4 : 2 8 P M

Just like The Godfather.

R E P LY

H O O S I E R P O L I • A U G U S T 7, 2 0 1 2 , 5 : 2 7 P M

I think you’re going out on a dangerous limb with your “Post-Musical” hypothesis. My main concern
is your analysis smacks stereotyping. You claim that musical/aesthetic eras have had a common
denominator or recognizable signature, up until very close to the present. I see two major things
wrong with this conclusion:

1. It’s pure post-hoc rationalization. Of course we see the 60s as having a “sound”; this narrative
has had time to be constructed and reinforced, and counterexamples have had enough time to
decompose and fall from memory. There is far more diversity in the music of the 60s than is
thought of readily, because this diversity doesn’t fit our stereotype of what the 60s was supposed
to sound like. I think your glib comments about 90s music show this most clearly. I defy you to draw
any aesthetic link between Bjork, Kriss Kross, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones that doesn’t utterly
strain credulity.
2. You’re essentially dealing with mainstream, radio-friendly hits. There is an exogenous variable
you’re not even bothering to try to consider: the main pipeline through which popular music passed
was DELIBERATELY homogenized by record companies attempting to copy proven hits. This
was not some sort of obscure sociological phenomenon. It was a deliberate move driven by the
necessities of marketing music on a large scale. As the record company/radio/retail iron triangle
has begun to decay, so has this homogenization. But it’s nothing to do with aesthetics or
philosophy; it’s econ 101.

In short, I feel that you’re throwing around easy stereotypes instead of making a real historical
argument. I think you should aspire to be better than this, no matter how trivial the subject.

R E P LY

R IC H AR D C AR R IER • AUGUS T 8, 2012, 10:22 AM

Hardly. Most of the music I discuss in my posts has not been radio chart material.
And only recently (last five years) has this diversity of music broken into that
market, so that several of my artist pics are now becoming popular and radio is
no longer dictating what people want to hear (but still many aren’t getting there–
not The Black Angels or Naam, for example), while a few of course always were.
Yet still most of what makes the charts is crap. That’s always been true, though.

As to the possibility of a retrospective fallacy, there is no danger of that. The

lesser music of other decades was largely copy-cat and even more similar-
sounding than the popular stuff. Thus the “sounds” of each decade are definitely
real. This is especially so considering my musical interests in the 80s were wide
enough that I heard pretty much everything being done then, so I know what was
typical and how limited the atypical was then. And I have spoken to similarly
informed people who knew 70s and 60s music and report the same. I very much
doubt there was greater diversity in previous decades (yet still in each a
distinctive sound). Nothing even remotely like now.

As to economics constraining artists, that’s an argument I myself made. In my

posts on this I specifically mention the ability to bypass studios due to cheaper
production and distribution technology is a key factor in creating the postmusical
era. Economics has liberated the art.

R E P LY

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Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong
Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism
and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient
philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical
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