I had more in mind the idea that, if it's the case the composer of such a piece has a quasi-performative role in mixing/ editing/ producing it, then that seems a reasonable equivalent to live 'performing', albeit one which sets a definitve and utterly un-'mediated' standard for (the impossibility of) future 'performances'! But that's all rather by the by I reckon.

Well...!!! You set a thread in motion, go off and do a gig, get home, crack open a beer and what do you find? 63 responses (and just the range of opinion I was hoping to generate!) 

Seriously: I ask the question - apologies for the loose wording, by the way, I was in a bit of a hurry when I set it up; but, on the plus side, I do think it is the sort of wording that the "average intelligent listener" can get a handle on, and let's hear it for the "a i l"... - I ask the question because, like Ian (I think), I have a strong intuitive sense that Bach is "better" <ducks> than the Spice Girls, but, apart from being honest about my own cultural conditioning, prejudices, etc etc, I would find it hard to put up an argument for why objectivelythat is the case. So, I find I am floundering around looking for what Bach has that the Spice Girls didn't (hmm, use of tenses there is suggestive...) and trying to extrapolate from that (possibly) pseudo-objectivity a set of criteria.

I suppose when I set this up I was interested in seeing who would suggest certain qualities - clarity, memorability, comprehensibility etc etc; so far (and I have only skimmed through, I felt guilty about the thread having reached page 5 without me having contributed anything! ) I have responded most strongly (positively) to t_i_n and martle 's "deep breath, ok, here's my attempt at a definition", and various comments of George and Ian.

It's a question I do think is of huge importance (for a whole range of financial, social and other cited reasons) but I do think I am often in the position where I feel I have an intuition about when I feel I have encountered a "good" piece of music (and sometimes the opposite - the Lindberg example, or listening experience, that t_i_n gave is particularly apposite, I think; but again, I'm not sure whether that has more to do with the listener and the stage of musical development/education that they have reached than the composer) but trying to assemble the criteria is beyond me. Sorry, that is probably a tortuously incomprehensible sentence (NOT a good one!)...

I'll be back after I've given this more meditation...

To touch on the public money issue from an outsider/layman's point of view...

I understand why "minority" music needs public finding. Musicians have to be paid, [living] composers have to eat, and so forth. And in order to allow the continued production of an art (let's use the term "art" loosely and not make any value judgements just yet) which can't make enough money to support itself, let's give it some public money.

The problem is, once you make that decision, what right do the powers-that-be have to determine which "minority" music needs to be supported?

I suspect that a lot of classical music fans assume that "their" music is the only sort of minority music. After all, Robbie Williams, Madonna, et al are millionaires with millions of fans.

The truth is that the country is full of rock bands who play to 20 people in a pub, sell a couple of CDRs, and go to work stacking shelves in Tescos the next day in order to support their art. Not all "pop" music is "popular".

Are those people less worthy of public support than the "serious" modern composer who's work is performed to 20 people in  a concert hall and gets a grant to do the same thing the next night?

And as soon as you hit that question, you *have* to put some sort of absolute value on the quality of the music each person writes and plays, otherwise the whole elitist system becomes indefensible.

(Elitist??? Classical music fans??? Nooo!!!)

Look at the funding situation in France. (This is second-hand knowledge, and I'm sure some of you will be able to correct me if wrong.) The cousin of a frind of mine is a singer in Paris. I saw her in concert a few years ago and I have her demo CD. I think she's very good... but she's not a "classical" singer. You would call her a pop singer (perhaps a jazz singer if you were feeling generous). She's not famous, she doesn't have a recording deal, and she can't earn enough from her occasional performances to support herself, let alone cover the costs of recording her music.

But the French government supports her. She gets a grant so she can concentrate on her music rather than shelf stacking in Le Tesco. Apparently this is quite common in France and you don;t have to write "serious" music to get it. You just have to be serious about your music...

Imagine that in England. All the rock bands who play for beer money in pubs would suddenly be competing with our "serious" composers for Arts Council handouts.

Then what do you do? How do you pick which form of "minority" music is more worthy than the other?

As to what this means for the future of music criticism, I'm sure we'll continue to bicker about the precise definitions of the criteria, the extent to which various social factors influence/ become sedimented in music, and to attempt post-hoc rationalisations to explain why particular pieces move us or not 
And I shall thoroughly enjoy continuing to read threads such as this one...

I should have guessed one would be co-opted into the 'societe de la spectacle' to benefit...

Well, as IRF put it (with perhaps the slightest tweaking of the emphasis): you don't need to do 'serious' music, but you do need to be serious about your music.

Speaking of IRF:


There are a few distinctions that often get blurred in all this. One is that between 'popular' and 'commercial'; as the Americans might put it, music 'by the people' and 'for the people', which aren't really the same thing.

Another is that between 'worthy of support' (or even 'possible to support with the funds that are around') and 'good'. This word 'good' I find extremely unhelpful; unlike some/many/most here I don't believe there's anything about particular genres or pieces which makes them 'better' (or 'more possessing goodness') than others. You can certainly identify musical activities that produce a kind of work that wouldn't happen otherwise as opposed to replicating what's largely already out there. Neither is confined to a certain genre - I don't think a string quartet playing standard repertoire would necessarily have any more luck getting government support than a rock band playing covers and that's not a quality judgement.

Another is that between 'classical' and 'elitist'. Every corner of the music industry has its elites; Maxim Vengerov can get five-figure sums to play a concerto lasting half an hour but I don't suspect Robbie Williams looks at his bank balance and regrets not having stuck with the violin. There are plenty of classical ensembles as well who basically pay to play concerts, even when there's a crumb of government funding there somewhere; that certainly includes ensembles playing 'serious modern' music.

Another (not so far from the second) is that between value and price!

I don't know about potential membership numbers but I hope we can have have a small club for those of us who would agree in relation to 'genres' but when it comes to 'pieces' think it is almost perverse to deny that some pieces are better than others

An extra complication, which actually looms very large if you happen to be the funder, is that the judgement you are required to make is hardly ever 'Is piece x good?' but 'Is currently non-existent unwritten piece x likely to be good?'

And there's even a nice extra twist: "If I can already see from this two page proposal that the piece described here is likely to be good, then maybe it doesn't actually need to be written anyway".

In my limited experience of seeing how these things are done the pitfalls are not so much to do with 'elitism' as with the more familiar perils of pin the tail on the donkey.   

But the point was what makes them that way. I maintain you can't reduce that to concrete factors in such a way that you can arrive at a linear measurement of 'goodness'. If such and such a piece is supposed to be 'better' than another then the question must always be 'better at what'?


Which is indeed where the assessment has to be based around the process rather than the product. The point is not to pay for a piece but to support its creator to continue contributing to musical life.