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For whatever reason I am having issues with PayPal in trying to get CDs, t-shirts and tickets. …

Like many of you I’m sure, I find myself infinitely interested in the question “why do I like what I like?” or “To what point is taste subjective?” Let’s think about these questions in terms of music. Why is the music I like better than the music other people like? Can a barometer exist to measure the quality of one’s taste in music?

We could say that music with certain qualities (complex rhythm, dynamics etc.) requires a more in-depth investigation than others and is thus of greater quality. For example, Bobby very eloquently made a case for the elevation of Mozart’s Allegro movement from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The dynamics and wealth of key changes make Allegro more worthy of study than, say, Sean Paul’s epic “Just Gimme the Light.” I resonate with this view to a degree. When I listen to music, I often get sucked into the world of technical bliss. I nerd-out and say things to myself like “Gee-wiz, that was a cool chord voicing!” or “Holy shit! Did the meter just change again?!” Admittedly, I am new to classical music (Barber 1 was the first time I’d ever looked at a musical score) and will likely not be penning my own symphony anytime soon. And because of this, I’m often relegated to judging a piece of music not on its technical merit, but on the feeling it elicits (Well… hopefully “More Than a Feeling”). I ask myself, how does this piece make me feel?

This is the other side of the argument, the side that says that simply because a piece of music is complex- albeit to an inexhaustible level- it does not follow that it is necessarily better. This view, I think, hinges on a certain, more abstract evaluation of the purpose of music as a whole. In his treatise Either/Or, Kierkegaard argues that Mozart’s Don Giovanni is the apex of artistic expression in terms of understanding human eroticism. Kierkegaard thought that music, the most abstract of art forms, was the only medium that could properly communicate with the most abstract and unintelligible facet of humanity: raw emotion. He thought that words and images do not communicate with our feelings the way music does. And I agree. For me, the purpose of music is to understand that which cannot be articulated. Music is empathetic; it understands us in ways that we can’t put our collective finger on. Some pieces of music, like the adagietto movement of Mahler’s 5th or Radiohead’s “You and Whose Army?” have moved into carpool lane to my soul. This sounds very cheesy and artsy, but it’s the truth. Certain pieces, from virtually all genres, inspire deep feeling. If art seeks to understand what it’s like to be human, then both skill (technical and academic aspects) and emotion (FEELINGS!) should be brought into the picture. Picasso had to know something about painting to communicate his ideas. Music is the same. In my view, the best artists are those who know enough about music to use it to their artistic advantage. ROCK ON!