Objective

February 2010 The great attraction of blogging for many people is that lack of knowledge, experience or the ability to write interesting or grammatical sentences no longer hinders the public expression of private, unbidden opinion.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, American cybermusers in particular have a burly belief that the world is curious about what they have to say about anything or everything, as a cursory browse of that bastion of liberal cultural pomposity and browbeating, Arts Journal, will confirm.

The fact that Arts Journal and similar anti-radical columns like Classical Beat and Tom Service's Blog (two of musoc.org's earliest assailants) are very widely syndicated and mutually backslapping explains in part the apparent universality of their postmodern worldview.

In this light, the widespread criticism arising from musoc.org's attempt to define art music (in Definitions) was highly predictable. The Definition is a very rare attempt at the impossible, to encode in words what countless lovers of art music feel, and what the overriding subjectivity of cultural pluralism cannot and will not under any circumstances concede: that art music is on a higher technical, emotional and intellectual plane than any other kind of music - especially the ubiquitous strains of pop.

People - bloggers - living in a neoliberal world spewing postmodernist mantras and dogmas from every business orifice tend to find themselves appalled by the mere concept of objectivity (even though they frequently, and obliviously, depend on objective assertions to attack it), because its implications draw them into sinister realms where all things are not equal and where their cultural credentials cannot glitter in the permanent sunshine and blue skies of relativism.

At first glance - which is, sadly, as much attention as many internet surfers can muster - musoc.org's objective criteria disappoint those who feel that jazz (at least in some of its incarnations, such as bebop) or 'prog rock' ought to be considered on a par with 'classical'. They can anger those who feel that John Cage's so-called conceptual art or Karlheinz Stockhausen's electronic experimentalism are just as musical or 'worthy' as a Monteverdi madrigal. (Ironically, it was the pioneer heroes of postmodernist 'music', the 'Darmstadt school' in the 1950s, whose musical reductionism made pseudo-scientific objectivity into a fine 'art'.) And they even catch in the throat of the countless music lovers whose taste begins with Bach and ends with Elgar; or indeed begins with Beethoven and ends with Brahms.

Above all, such a set of standards raises the hackles of all those of a mainstream orthodoxy whose minds have been dulled by the machinery and machinations of neoliberalism into believing that anything that excludes on any level is politically incorrect at best, and quite possibly evil. (Except where it may suit them, as with, say, air travel, second homes, private clubs, expensive wines etc.)

Musoc.org makes it clear in the FAQ that people are, naturally, free to decide what they will and won't listen to, and what, in their opinion, is great, average or bad music. There seems little point taking a different stance on this: many scientific studies have shown that most people respond to music with the right side of their brain, where emotions and intuitions chiefly originate. And of course, a non-subjective discussion of music between friends would be dry to say the least.

Self-appointed guru-bloggers clamoured last summer to deride musoc.org's Definition, insistent that this site was claiming that the magnificent music of Beethoven et al was better than pop because it is, quote, "written for acoustic instruments and/or unamplified voices" or "musically and intellectually complex, coherent and sophisticated". Through the red mist that descends on relativists when they come across a dissenting voice like musoc.org's, it becomes virtually impossible for them to read exactly what is written: that the criteria are a definition of art music, not great music. None of the many subscribers to musoc.org's Anti-pop would deny that the two are the same, but such a view is undeniably subjective.

A definition of art music serves more than anything to clarify the terms of the debate. The internet is awash with blogs and so-called 'discussion' forums hosting acrimonious and sanctimonious arguments and rants about this aspect or that of 'classical' music (or any other subject under the sun), for or against - without any prior agreement over exactly what is being debated. Yet for most people this is ideal, given that they belong to the gigantic "my music is better than your music" (or, with particular regard to art music: "yours is no way better than mine") camp. 'Classical' music stops and starts where they say so; as inevitably do good music and bad.

The music of Shostakovich, Carl Stamitz and Thomas Tallis may or may not be all great, or even at all great (opinions vary with taste, as usual), but it is all (with minor exceptions) art music. And there is a distinct line between it and everything else, which musoc.org has labelled (admittedly teasingly) pop 'music'. Musoc.org can - and eventually will - list all members of the set of composers who have written art music defined thus - and can be absolutely clear what it is arguing for and against. Few if any other sites can achieve such clarity; certainly no bloggers or music critics can.

The absurdity and banality of subjective definitions of music are self-evident, at least to any rational mind. The cusp of the slippery slope was passed in the early 1960s, when hitherto widely respected critic of The Times (UK), William Mann, ludicrously voted teeny-bop popsters John Lennon & Paul McCartney the year's best 'composers' (not his quotes), farcically likening their platitudinous banalities to Gustav Mahler. From there things went downhill quickly, and in the 21st century, where music has almost universally come to mean only pop 'music', epithets from 'genius', 'sublime', 'superb voice', 'brilliant songwriter' etc are slapped on every Tom, Dick and Harriet who happens to get the right kind of prominence or placement from the media (especially the internet).

Ultimately, subjectivity leads to anything goes: all music is created equal, musically speaking, and there is, to repeat the platitude ascribed to jazz musician Duke Ellington but a pivotal part of postmodernist parlance, "only good music and bad music". Yet such a stance makes it impossible to deny the validity as music of advertising jingles, the barking of dogs or the obscene chants of football fans; not only the validity, but their parity with a Bach mass or a Beatles no.1.

There has never been a reasonable way to refute the statement that Bach is more enjoyable than The Beatles, Mozart than Madonna - or vice versa. Even using 'better' in place of 'more enjoyable' makes no difference - what anyone means by 'better' will vary with or even within the argument, and differ from other people's conceptions.

But thanks to musoc.org's objective criteria, there is now a way to defend the statement that Mozart and Bach wrote art music, but Madonna and The Beatles didn't. And from that starting point, lay out the compelling case for the protection and propagation of art music.

You can respond to this article at any time by emailing gro.cosum@srettel. Musoc.org may publish your comments on this site; if you want to keep them private, please mark your email 'Not for Publication' or use the gro.cosum@ofni address.