How do we evaluate music and appreciate music?

Judging the quality of music appreciation is an unavoidable but confusing central issue in musical experience and even in all artistic experiences. It cannot be avoided because artistic experience is fundamentally adjudicative - being unable to distinguish between good and bad is actually equivalent to not understanding art, such as not being able to distinguish between a Brahms symphony and a Saint-Sa?ns symphony. If it is high or low, then we have not really got a glimpse of the secrets of the symphony; it is confusing because there is never a unified standard for this distinction or distinction - the so-called "taste is indisputable", the so-called "public opinion is reasonable, mother-in-law said mother-in-law is reasonable" , the so-called "radish and green vegetables, everyone has their own preferences." Chopin's contempt for Beethoven and Tchaikovsky's hatred of Brahms are well-known "public cases" in music history, which add to the mystery and ambiguity of aesthetic judgment.

When Beethoven said that "music is a higher revelation than philosophy", he did not say this in a metaphorical sense, but in the sense of "being-there". Music is the direct passage into "truth". Music is therefore on equal footing with philosophy, if not more. If music were merely sensual "beauty," it would not be able to reach such spiritual heights. In his aesthetics, Kant used the category of "sublime" to further expand the concept of aesthetics, giving aesthetics a deep and broad spiritual dimension. However, later generations stuck to his formalist concept, thus losing the most important ideological possibility in Kant's aesthetics. As Dalhousie summed up (Chapter 4 of "Introduction to the History of Musical Aesthetic Concepts"), "(Kant's) decisive testimony is that art does not need to be beautiful to be art."

As a result, various specious statements have emerged. At the extremes are "relativism" and "absolutism". "Relativism" believes that aesthetic scales are constantly changing, because aesthetic subjects vary from person to person, and there is no possibility of independent consciousness. Moreover, scales in art arise from various environments, conditions, nationalities, traditions, Conventions, styles, conventions, and times, therefore there cannot be a constant value criterion. On the contrary, "absolutism" advocates that there are certain objective aesthetic laws and laws in art that are not subject to human subjective will, such as big ones such as the law of change and unity, and small ones such as the "law of symmetry" and the "golden section". "Laws", etc. Following these aesthetic laws and artistic laws is the only way to ensure the quality of art.

Obviously, relativism and absolutism each have their own problems. It is easy to find counterexamples that violate their respective principles. For example, although everyone has different tastes, we are all willing to admit that Beethoven is a greater composer than his contemporary Clementi; another example is that the Chinese Fu Cong can authentically play Western piano works , American Stephen Owen can expertly judge Chinese Tang poetry, which shows that extreme "relativism" is untenable. On the other hand, the structural layout of some music, such as Bartok's excellent works, deliberately follows the ratio of the "golden section", but many other composers' works do not abide by these rules and regulations, and they also have a high degree of artistic appeal and The overwhelming artistic quality shows that it is futile to seek a once-and-for-all quality criterion in art.

So, judging quality in art becomes very tricky. Of course, one can carefully avoid judgment—but that would be tantamount to turning one's back on art. Or, leaving it to one's own discretion - that would be tantamount to giving up responsibility. It is undesirable to have no standards, but standards are elusive. Where is the way out? A familiar saying is, “Time is the final judge.” Let us leave the decision to the future. Unfortunately, this is more of a cunning excuse than a serious answer.

I am reminded of the profound statement made by the great British poet and critic T. S. Eliot in his famous essay "Tradition and Individual Talent": "No poet, nor any artist, can alone It has complete meaning. His importance, and our appreciation of him, is to appreciate his relationship with previous poets and artists. You cannot just evaluate him alone, you have to compare him with his predecessors. , comparison. I think this is not only a principle of historical criticism, but also a principle of aesthetic criticism. It must be adapted and conformed to, and it is not one-sided; once a new work of art is produced, all previous works of art will encounter a problem at the same time. Something new.

The existing canon of art itself constitutes an ideal order that is transformed by the introduction of new (truly new) works. This previous order was complete before the new work appeared. To continue to be complete after adding new things, the entire order must change, even if it is very small; in this way, the relationship and proportion of each work of art to the whole and values ??are readjusted; this is the adaptation of the old and the new. ”

The profound meaning here is that the collection of works of art forms a “field” that exists and influences each other, and the elusive standards of art arise from the interaction in this field. . For this reason, in art, the past affects the present, and the future will also modify the past, thus forming an imaginary order that exists at the moment. Fundamentally speaking, "the objective judgment standard in art is not based on metaphysical principles." It is not determined by the elusive public taste, but it is precisely suggested and provided by the masterpieces of musical classics from ancient times to the present. All new musical works must be tested in the face of the standards marked by the great classics of the past, and the masterpieces that emerge from them adjust and correct the original standards. " (Quoted from my article "Why do we listen to new music?", published in "Dushu" Issue 8, 2005)

Therefore, the classic masterpieces of the past are examples of artistic rulers (for example, Beethoven's late quartets are The recognized benchmark for musical profundity), but subsequent classic masterpieces will continue to mark these dimensions (for example, the wonderful combination of improvisation and rigor in Chopin's music points to musical possibilities unknown to Beethoven). Therefore, objective standards of art must exist, but they cannot be subject to clear laws and regulations, and they cannot be static.

In order to reveal the profound content of human nature, art can be unpleasant. (Thus sublime). All Beethoven's late works have this texture, the extreme of which is of course the "extremely ugly" "Grand Fugue", which directly foreshadows Kant's aesthetic thought of "ugliness" as "beauty" in the twentieth century. " modern art. And Heidegger stated bluntly in his famous essay "The Origin of Works of Art" that "art is the generation and occurrence of truth." Art has thus become the most fundamental way for humans to grasp the world and understand themselves. One of the ways. Therefore, only art (including music) has the qualifications of culture and can be compared with literature, philosophy, and history to become a "humanistic" phenomenon worthy of our efforts.