How Should We Judge Music?
Here’s a question that has perplexed me my entire life: What standards can we use for judging the morality and quality of music? (It's important to me, because I love to listen to music, and I want to be sure that it's good music.) Many people consider music (minus lyrics) to be amoral, but I’m an absolutist and believe that there is only black
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Dave...started a discussion about this not too long ago.
Ah, so maybe that's why several people haven't commented on this topic. I'll have to go find Dave's entry...
...I wouldn't condemn any kind of music for it's structure.
Hmm. Let's start with something that we agree on. There is tasteful music and distasteful music, right? Anyone could compose very poor quality music. We could call it poor quality due to lack of harmony or progression, etc. If I played random notes on the piano, almost everyone would agree it was worthless in a "structural" sense--IOW bad music, because it lacks creativity and musicality. From there it's not a huge stretch to say there could be a type/kind of music that was uncreative or mostly unmusical in nature... or that affects a majority of people negatively (e.g. eliciting anger or fear).
It is true that some people are affected differently (or at least a different amount) by the same music. So, right, there does seem to be some subjectivity to music. However, that subjectivity may be quite small.
...the majority of our listening music should be uplifting...
Amen.
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