And here was I thinking the thread might go in the direction of Alkan's shelving scheme, Mozart's pork cutlet, Gesualdo's failure to take care of the needs of his good lady wife or Chausson's failure to ascertain the safe stopping distance of his velocipede. 

We note these comments with intense interest, and as usual cannot help feeling that - and we say this "with all due respect" (to recall a phrase much employed by our German teacher, of whom we were particularly fond) - that the Member while most definitely on to something has somehow got his conclusions not quite right.

We feel nonetheless reluctant to endorse the "paradigms of thought" evidenced by the alacritous response of the Member Hinlton, despite his no-doubt-admirable vim and vigour in leaping to the defence of a cause which we gather is dear to his heart, namely the intentions and motivations of the composer, and the unsullied purity which in his view distinguishes them from the correspondingly neglectful when not downright dishonourable intentions and motivations of those who "put on" concerts of new compositions. Does this way of thinking not in the end subscribe to and reinforce the notion that behaviour in respect of works of art is primarily a matter of the concrete and even conscious in human action? After all, to blame the "organisers" requires no greater insight into the complex interrelations between the human mind and its "products" out there in the world than to blame the artist.

By a curious and happy coincidence, we have only in the last week prepared for a forthcoming journal publication an article attempting to give expression to our deep interest in what the good Mr Freud might have called "the unconscious". It all hangs on a fact which seems to us terribly important, namely that the "artwork" while "put out there in the world" by a human creator is "received" by other human beings in a way which makes it sometimes appear even to have a mind of its own.

We will "come clean" and admit that we probably should never have come to set down such thoughts were it not for the thought-provoking example of Mr Harold Bloom, himself no mean defender of aesthetic standards (although we doubt somehow subtle thinker that he is that he would ever employ such a term). We recall briefly something which struck us most deeply in his book Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate (Mr Bloom we should explain like his hero Mr Stevens is an American, albeit a most unusually percipient one). Mr Bloom does rather like "sparring" with critics who have got to his subject before him (funny that: does not such agonistic struggle correspond exactly to his view of how strong poets relate to those who "got there" before them?). Here is what he has to say about Mr Stevens' early poem 'Blanche McCarthy':
Now, what on earth could that mean? Why should we expect Blanche to know anything, being merely a figment on a page? Whose capacity to know is Mr Bloom talking about here? Not Mr Stevens', as he makes it very clear elsewhere in his book that he considers Mr Stevens' debt to his American precursors to have been suppressed by Mr Stevens' unconscious, not merely hidden by a wily Mr Stevens from his readers. It seems to us that Mr Bloom must be fancying Blanche to be alive and real, if only inasmuch as other real people have thoughts about her which they imagine to have been provoked by her. That's a sort of life, isn't it, even if she's not made of carbon? Couldn't a piece of music have the same sort of lifelikeness? Couldn't the reactions it provokes in its hearers be down to the work, rather than to its composer? And if there are things about herself that Blanche "does not know yet" (and by implication might come to know), are we to conclude that this too could be said for a work of music? Might we be impelled to conclude that not only Freud's patients on the couch but also the artworks we meet in museums, concert halls, and on compact disc or on the wireless also have both a conscious and an unconscious?

Certainly, but on a large number of occasions this judgement reflects judgements on the quality of the piece itself and thus the composer's efforts.

Upon hearing the Finlandia piece by Sibelius on the radio this morning, I was most forcibly struck by his disturbing failure of judgement in quoting directly from Mr Andrew LLoyd Webber's light opera Evita, the ditty 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina'; a most inapt application to a northern scene.

Perhaps it's a failure of judgement (which would be a mistake) ...

Yes, but (to drop the "we" for a moment ) that's exactly my point: I don't think those views are a fixed stance or that they vary. I don't, or at least don't always, find myself thinking about anyone else's good or bad judgment as being responsible for what I get out of a piece, and I'm much more persuaded by a theory like Bloom's which, however eccentric it might look, seems to me intelligent in how it manages to take account of the various illusions involved in our experiences of interacting with works of art ('interaction' being, indeed, one of those illusions: it's what Walter Benjamin would have called 'aura', when the artwork seems to "look back at you", to "return the gaze").

I might be able to be persuaded that when a piece of music or other artwork is just banally, uninterestingly bad - flat, lifeless, unengaging - then one does start to experience it as a mere 'utterance', i.e. to take it as evidence of its creator's mental processes in a straightforwardly 'intentional' reading, but this seems to me to be the exception rather than the rule.

And when things are embarrassingly, cringingly bad (rather than just banally, lifelessly bad) I think the more complex mode of perception returns. To me this is very strongly corroborated by the number of examples given in this thread where a work seems to quote another work that doesn't yet exist: this is exactly the sort of illusion I'm talking about that so often characterises our experience of works of art.

Benjamin's essay on mechanical reproduction is characterised by his positive valorisation of that contemporary work that is free of aura, defined in the following sense (the whole text can be read here):

One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements. Their most powerful agent is the film. Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage. This phenomenon is most palpable in the great historical films.

and

During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well. The fifth century, with its great shifts of population, saw the birth of the late Roman art industry and the Vienna Genesis, and there developed not only an art different from that of antiquity but also a new kind of perception. The scholars of the Viennese school, Riegl and Wickhoff, who resisted the weight of classical tradition under which these later art forms had been buried, were the first to draw conclusions from them concerning the organization of perception at the time. However far-reaching their insight, these scholars limited themselves to showing the significant, formal hallmark which characterized perception in late Roman times. They did not attempt – and, perhaps, saw no way – to show the social transformations expressed by these changes of perception. The conditions for an analogous insight are more favorable in the present. And if changes in the medium of contemporary perception can be comprehended as decay of the aura, it is possible to show its social causes.

The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things “closer” spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. Unmistakably, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and reproducibility in the former. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose “sense of the universal equality of things” has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics. The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

In an earlier version of the essay, Benjamin wrote 'What, then is the aura? A strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be. To follow with the eye - while resting on a summer afternoon - a mountain range on the horizon or a branch that casts its shadow on the beholder is to breathe the aura of those mountains, of that branch. in the light of this descripton, we can readily grasp the social basis of the aura's present decay.'

But Benjamin's investigation of the aura is hampered, and far from truly dialectical, by his clear fascination with the phenomenon. Perversely, this enables his work to become amenable both to those looking to celebrate the traditional aura of the commodity (as his critique lacks incision) and on the other hand those who wish to celebrate the de-individualisation of art as the result of capitalist mass production. Benjamin's 'artiness' too often gets the better of his potential for social and economic critique (but a different view can be found in some of the essays here and in this book). We would recommend to the good members to also try the much less known work of Siegfried Kracauer, which overlaps with that of Benjamin in various respects.

What do you imagine (rightly or wröngly) that Scötländers call it; tossing the cäber?

Best,

Alistair