Mando apparently feared forum listers were bullying Derek -- "Why don't you
all leave him alone? -- but I think Derek enjoyed the debate. In the bout
between Derek and Allan Sutherland, I'd say Derek won on points by a goodly
margin.
Derek wrote, among other pejoratives: "Jazz is tedious,
unexpressive, flat, and wearisome. For me an evening of jazz is sheer musical
torment. In my opinion it is vastly inferior to Mozart et al."
Allan believes he has a two-pronged rebuttal. First:
"You did not provide the criteris by which you consider all jazz music
inferior. There must be substantial reason underpinning that judgement.
[Without]
adequate criteria we cannot conclude that the music of Johannes Ockeghem is
without doubts vastly superior." Allan takes Derek to task for not
"explicating"
some works of Mozart to justify considering them -- the Mozart pieces --
superior.
Michael Brady's citation of Mark Twain's remark puts its finger on the
silliness of Allan's first prong: "Wagner's music is much better than it
sounds."
Allan's suppressed premise is that a music piece is in some vague absolute
way either "good" or not. He believes there are absolute criteria that can be
appealed to. This is absurd. Other than some fatuous truism like, "The music
must be audible," Allan can't name any such criteria -- absolute standards that
can "prove" a given work -- or an entire sub-genre -- is "good" or "not good".
Derek takes a few more words to make the point: "As for not providing an
'explication' of Mozart etc, do I need to 'explicate' a composer to admire his
work? At that rate I would admire no-one. Particularly since I've never seen
an
explication of any artist by anyone, no matter how
expert, that amounted to a proof of why their work should be admired. The
work convinces you - or doesn't. The critic can never do that."
Personally, I actively recoil with something very like pain from the works of
Samuel Beckett, and no laudatory commentaries on his work have diminished my
loathing one bit.
But Derek did make a tactical mistake in saying that "jazz is inferior". By
saying 'jazz' -- and thereby conveying ALL jazz -- he left Allan an opening.
But Allan was not up to taking advantage of that opening -- though he tried to
with his second prong.
Allan seized on Derek's dismissal of the entire genre. He says in curiously
hobbled English, "Curiously you did not mention who the musicians were who you
listened too? Curiously too you did not say why you thought these musicians,
on the performance occasion, were capable of typifying in a single instance
all the possible instances of jazz performance. Surely, it is essential that
these musicians must do so represent all jazz and lack aesthetic adequacy to
conclude that all jazz is aesthetically worthless."
Allan's insistence that Derek must consider "all the possible instances of
jazz performance" before pronouncing on jazz as a whole comes across as
ludicrous.
Peace be to William, but Derek's biggest verbal mistake in saying "Jazz is
inferior" is not the word 'jazz'. It's the word 'is'. Derek is entitled -- even
though he has not heard every piece of jazz ever played or to be played -- to
conclude reasonably that he that he will never never enjoy any jazz.
In all walks of life we are justified in rejecting entire genres without
exposing ourselves to every possible instances of them. My wife will not watch
any
prize fight; she hates the genre. I wouldn't require her to watch an
interminable number of bouts before she would be entitled to say she hates the
genre.
I know someone who would pay money not to have to sit through another recital
of German lieder. How many dog shows, golf matches, flower shows, wrestling
matches, Kabuki shows does one have to watch before he's justified in saying he
finds it a consistent occasion for boredom or misery?
Sure, if someone, say, dismisses all of opera after hearing just one work, we
disapprove. But in fact Derek conveys he has been exposed to a great deal of
jazz in his lifetime. "My judgements were not based on this group alone. Who
has not heard huge dollops of jazz one way or another at various points in
their life? On the radio, on film, on the telly. One would need to live in a
cave to avoid it. Only the music can do the persuasion. Jazz has persuaded me -
not to like it."
If only he had stayed at that: "I don't like jazz," Derek would have been
okay despite its being a dismissal of the entire genre. But he goes beyond
saying
he doesn't like it to saying it IS inferior. No genre -- jazz, ballet, opera,
prize fights, dog shows -- is inferior or superior in any absolute way.
This is not a rogue inadvertency on Derek's part. Derek believes in "real"
quasi-Platonic ontic categories in this area. He has conveyed that Mozart is
"real music" and jazz is not. Indeed, he has written: "There is a difference in
*kind* between jazz (rock or pop) and Mozart. One is art the other is not."
At this point Derek was standing with his entire flank undefended, but Allan
wasn't seeing it, he was reduced to a blinded non-sequitur:
"If you are dismissing it simply on the basis of putting into the box for
contempt because the word jazz is associated with it, then this discussion is
going nowhere..."
That's enough for this posting. We'll examine Derek's exposed flank in a
later message.
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