I'm glad to be on the other side of this, I agree with you and can totally relate with you.
I like to view artists as mediums that can channel and manifest art, but that art stands on its own. Bach just happened to be the one in our lifetime to do that with what he discovered. — The strongest evidence to me for this is that art can outlast the artist every single time.
I like to think music exists beyond humans and humanity. Maybe far out there in the galaxy or in some other dimension not yet seen. Not exclusive to us, not an anthropological view, maybe spiritual.
The fact we channel it to express our emotions is incredible, and I love it, I am myself a musician and I rely on it a lot for this matter. — That said though, emotions are deep and complex and there is too much loss when attempting to convert them into a message. — _Maybe this is why there's a lot of copyright out there when artists channel similar sounds trying to express their feelings despite never hearing of those others who came first? Think the language being both extremely rich and poor in terms of what it can offer for this_
It may be that I am being too philosophical about it and like to look at it outside of the human realm. — Similar to the classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest_an...
> I like to think music exists beyond humans and humanity. Maybe far out there in the galaxy or in some other dimension not yet seen. Not exclusive to us, not an anthropological view, maybe spiritual.
I write about this very frequently. I have a strong interest in Art and aesthetics, and play guitar, and write poetry. I'm going to try to not post an essay, which is hard, but I could talk about this for days and am open to any others that want to talk about music and art.
I think I mostly agree with these quotes.
I specifically think that Art is so transcended from humanity it escapes it, it escapes the emotions, it escapes the day to day. One might be emotional about it, but emotional intent isn't a part of it since Art is beyond emotion, and thus also the communication of emotion.
If you want a good definition for what I think of as Art, read Zarathustra. My thoughts on overcoming are similar as to do with Art. Which is, is it something we can really achieve? Or is the intention enough to make it? And if so, how much intention is needed?
However I will leave you with something else about Art, something that I think is more closely to how we most of the time experience music.
John Dewey describes Art as the relationship between the artist, the medium, and the audience. All three are needed for it to be Art.
When you go see a live show, one with skilled musicians which are able to improv (playing with modal changes, and knowing how to build and release tension without thought), you get something new, an experience, that only exists in that moment. That experience cannot be captured, the audio can, even video of the audience and performers can, but that experience only exists during that improv, it will never happen again. And in my opinion that is the closest thing to Art, not only for music, but for other traditional art forms as well.
> The fact we channel it to express our emotions is incredible...
This conflicts with my first definition of Art (Platonic) but sits nicely with the second definition (John Dewey). There is something inescapable communicated listening to Pavarotti, but there's also something inescapable being communicated listening to Grant Green. Two completely different forms of music, communicating different things, but it's still very human and powerful.
So I don't see why you even need that recording, in the end there is no communication happening there in either case. When you go to a live concert sure, which is why people care so much about those and why they wont go away, since then you get the real communication, everything else is just fake, so why not generated communication instead of recorded?
Also the person singing is often just replaying a message written by other people, they aren't communicating anything of their own they are just relaying and repeating the same message someone showed them over and over and over. That isn't communicating any more than what computers do.
On commissions, when you are charging $500/minute of symphonic music (a mid-market rate), you just can't write a minute of a Bach cantata and have it make financial sense. It takes a long time to develop the material for a big work of counterpoint like that, and even Bach didn't write his cantatas off of nothing - he was a working church organist, so he had plenty of time to try his new material (improvising at the organ during services) that was paid for.
Music has always been a business and there's no money in neo-Bach.
I think you are using great differently here, I assume he meant "one per generation" great or similar, you wont have many such people.
Maybe Bach style music isn’t really a good as modern music.
Bach was writing pieces that were commissioned. Commissioned artwork always has a different character than artwork created for mass consumption.
The money has always been in commissioned music,* it's just about what is getting commissioned. Counterpoint rarely gets commissioned, let alone enough counterpoint to become Bach.
* Mozart's catalog is a great example: Salzburg Mozart wrote masses and organ fugues, while Vienna Mozart wrote operas and secular pieces. It's what he was paid to write.
1. Really good composers don't want to compose more old music. They want to do something else. Merely good composers can't compete with Bach.
2. It's not about the 'objective' value of the music that matters. It matters who did the music. The music itself is not enough. It must be composed by Bach, music like Bach is not enough.
I made the counterargument for 2 "Only the music matters, not who or how it is made. Anything else is just posturing." and just as I thought, almost everyone disagrees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40670072#40670172