Music is subjective

Indeed, OP.

i agree

I believe that appreciation of a work of art depends on knowledge. Two people whose knowledge is wildly different will have wildly different opinions on a piece of music. For example, a person who has listened to a lot of music has a different opinion from a person who has listened to very little music (but it doesn't have to be "quantity", it could just be different kinds of music). Therefore, knowledge determines what you like and what you don't like. To a large extent, the "emotion" that music makes you feel depend on what you know (not on the music itself, which is simply a vibration that resonates with your brain's circuits). My experience is that people who have similar knowledge have remarkably similar opinions.

Very often, the "opinion" of a person is simply a reflection of what that person has listened to. The more a person knows, the more likely that her "opinion" is truly "her" opinion. The less a person knows, the more likely that her "opinion" is simply a reflection of whatever marketing/publicity she has been exposed to as she grew up.

If I had to come up with a "theory of musical appreciation", I would probably quote one of the philosophers who influenced me: Abhinavagupta. This Indian thinker (who lived around the year 1000) first formulated a theory that in my opinion is simple and elegant: experiencing the flavor of a work of art requires not only that the work evoke an emotional response, but also that the "experiencer" possess the aesthetic skills required to respond in an appropriate way. The experience of appreciating a work of art is a process of exchange: the artist provides the work of art to be experienced and the "experiencer" provides his aesthetic skills. The appreciation (i.e., the emotional response generated in the experiencer) is not an absolute value: it depends on the aesthetic skills of the experiencer. Those "aesthetic skills" are mostly derived from "knowledge".

>>74150067
Scaruffi?

>>74150067
>wow_read_all_that_shit_book.png
Also, meaby

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>>74150067
Again, in my case it goes back to my passion for history and for knowledge. Pythagora, who had a mystic attitude towards things, thought that the audience was more important than the athletes: the athletes were entertaining the audience but the audience was "contemplating" the athletes, and to Pythagora that was more important. Understanding nature was more important than being a part of it. In a sense, when you "contemplate" nature you manage not to be part of it, to be something else, above and beyond it, almost divine. Pythagora thought that this "contemplation" of nature led to logic. To Pythagora religion and mathematics were the same: the pure mathematician was a religious prophet, and viceversa. Contemplation was the key to understanding the universe, and it led to logical explanation of what the universe is. Logic was so ubiquitous in the universe that Pythagora thought that numbers were the ultimate reality. In particular, he discovered the relationship between numbers and music. Music is logic. All of this was evident to him as the "listener", not as the "maker" of music.

Socrates is the most difficult to discuss, but he has always been one of my role models. Socrates had no trust in the people. In fact, he seriously opposed democracy (in a sense, he was jailed for opposing democracy). I think that Socrates had understood a simple statistical fact: very few people "know" enough to have a "wise" opinion, and therefore the majority of people would never make a "wise" decision. People deserved to have an opinion (and be leaders) only if they had undergone an extensive and intensive education. It was clear to him the kind of catastrophes that can be caused by the "masses". He was more afraid of the masses than of the dictators, and I believe that history proved him right to a large extent (the worst massacres have been carried out when entire nations, such as the Germans or the Hutus, believed in carrying them out).

>>74150067
>I believe that appreciation of a work
Stopped reading there

>>74150067
>>74150138
P...please go out of my t...thread

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>>74150138