The essay Taste, Bad Taste, and Franz Liszt by Richard Taruskin address the issue of music and art in the context of whether it is innate in the person or is obtained. Similar to a person with a natural aptitude to play a sport and a person without that natural skill, the person with the skill has the edge over the other. But this does not exclude the person without, as practice can make perfect. Not sharpening that natural skill can allow the other to surpass the other. The essay, Surrealism’s Children, by Mark Polizzotti, also covers that with a twist on the banning or cancelation of art that is not vogue or accepted. As put in the essay a primitive form of cancel culture, just as the example of the king bringing a mediocre performer and calling it good music, and the rest all agree. Now, is it “good music” because of the skill or aptitude of the performer or the taste of the king? Both address the issue of not being within the bounds of acceptable forms of art. 

Taste, Bad Taste, and Frank Liszt address the issue of the aspirational part of music and the conformity or lack thereof. If the fact people tend to follow the trend stifles creativity, or allowing creativity or going out of the norm ruins the art of music. Indicating the fact that taste itself is a realm of its own.

Bringing into question if taste itself is innate; for example, a nail on a chalkboard causes one to shiver, or the sound of a drill can trigger one’s fear of a dentist, and in others has no effect one way or the other. Revealing the innate property that taste has, one can acquire the taste and fall out of favor of a formerly preferred taste. Applying a liberal position or conservative position, one can see the advent or preservation of music revealed by these two sections:

A quote from Wye J. Allanbrook

“the agreement of cultivated people about what is good and beautiful was a force for the political cohesion of the community.”

Falling into the situation of the king favoring his preferences, and others agree, based on the office the king occupies and the political power he commands. Contrasted with this passage:

Schiller – On the Aesthetics Education of Man, 1974

“No privilege, no autocracy of any kind, is tolerated where taste rules.”

This indicates that one’s station or power in society should not play a part in what qualifies as good taste or good music, as in the example with the king favoring his over others’ taste, and the rest agree simply out of fear or respect of the king’s power. Replacing the praise with coercion of force and limiting innovation, restricting growth. Schiller, later on, threw his hat into the fray:

“the function of criticism” as “roughly speaking, . . . the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste.”

Showing that criticism is a way of filtering out the bad from the good concerning the music. Schiller’s bias being that he was a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion. This can be attributed to elitism, as noted in the essay. Leading to Stravinsky to indicate in a speech he gave that:

“Whereas all social activities are regulated by rules of etiquette and good breeding, performers are still in most cases entirely unaware of the elementary  precepts of musical civility, that is to say of musical good breeding — a matter of  common decency that a child may learn.”

Gatekeeping the possibility of one becoming good, leaving all to the aristocrats, and believing innate abilities are superior to acquiring the skill. The elite class truly knows what is best and therefore is worthy of being taught to the masses, which is what it seems to imply.

That was challenged by George j. Stigler and Gary S. Becker broke tradition and trod new paths leading one to win a Nobel Prize. Showing that the thought process of conserving tradition to the exclusion of innovation is folly and that there is more than just the status quo to be obtained. Showing that taste is not an objective fact and is, in fact, subjective to each person, even if that subjective taste is ingrained in society:

As Liszt indicated:

“It is a matter of taste whether the old or the new is more charming. Taste is quite certainly a personal thing.”

Supported by Johann David Heinichen’s through bass treatise 1725 that one needs experience in music. Boiling it to three elements, Talent, Knowledge, and Experience, all play a part in one’s ability to create good music.: Applying talent and experience, the composer needs to acquire an exceptional sense of taste in music. Boiling down, the ability to make good music is simple, the ability to make music pleasing to our sensibilities. Through good instructions, one acquires the ability to play good music and is not limited to the aristocrats in the towers of power. 

All of this dialog making good taste a category or technical term. Indicating a refined and cultured attitude in music, the ability to innovate new music but still requiring the skill to perform the music nonetheless. Bringing Geminiani’s good taste of impromptu passage work and Liszt’s bad taste up to the present day. Though, Geminiani’s standard still required submitting to a preferred standard. The submission to the universal taste that is accepted by the whole, and not so the individual performers or audience member’s subjective taste. 

Voltaire, injecting that is pointless to contest taste:

“and this is right enough when it is only a matter of sensory taste, . . . because one cannot correct defective organs. It is different with the arts; as their beauties are real, there is a good taste that discerns them and a bad taste that does not; and the mental defect that gives rise to a wayward taste can often be corrected.”

Implying that the taste of music that is acceptable is just that, a taste imparted onto the people by a census of what is good taste. Linking good taste to the perfect style and delivery of the music. Instilling a sense of tradition, and what presently we refer to as a genre or category, a subset of music like rap, which can be broken down to mumble rap or a lyricist. Both are rap, both have their supporters and detractors, and both have people claiming this is good music decrying the other as useless, and wishing the trend will be discontinued. Or a fusion of rock and rap as Linkin Park and many more after Linkin Park delivered and performed. Applying this to Lindsey Sterling, when America’s Got Talent show went on to say no one wants to see a dancing violinist, but years later, she is doing tours and making records doing such as she was told was not a viable avenue for her to pursue. She locks down the song on the violin, then establishes how and when she can dance while performing the song. Voltaire landed on placing the good and bad taste in the category of classicism by historians. As he indicates, the stagnation of music causes the fear of being called an imitation of the former, and giving way to new forms of music, giving way to newer forms of music. Locating the sources in nature, Voltaire allows for human agency, making an insult to philosophy that it is right to exclude and/or harm. And that every art has its own innate nature, and naturally, people aim for the mean or natural state of that art. 

The universality or natural state of the art being referred to the common sense or a sense shared by all by Emmanuel Kant. Kant points out the subjectivity of taste and the impossibility of attributing the universality of such a thing. As humans are the ones applying the good taste and bad taste tags to music, creating a subjective universality or intersubjectivity. Akin to the notion that we as a society apply value to things and the value is prone to change by the social tides and times or advent of new technology or want for innovation. 

Leading Hume to seek a common universal that can be agreed upon by the masses, looking for what is in common favor. Ending up with the acceptance of one and rejection of the other, allowing for the wrong taste to be aptly applied along with good taste. But as the author of the essay put it, “the judgment of taste is not a judgment of cognition,” being that we humans have flawed subjective senses and are in the position of “I” operating in a society of “we” the very definition of living within a society, like atheists or agnostics in a Christian nation celebrating Christian holidays but not being of faith. So an atheist can be culturally Christian but not religiously. 

Hume defines taste as: 

“That faculty or those faculties of the mind, which are affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagination and the elegant arts.”

Burke invoked John Locke’s position of differing wit and judgment, revealing that judgment is the act of finding differences. Burke argues that taste is a judgment, an exercise more or less relying not on the superior principle in men but on the superior knowledge. If the cause of bad taste is a defect of judgment, the misunderstanding can arise from a weakness of understanding, ignorance, inattention, prejudice, rashness, obstinacy, and the many vices humans have within the flawed senses. Leading to a potential for abuse, but indicates discrimination diminishes rather than enhancing pleasure. Lessening the options from which people can be pleased by. 

Linkage of snobbery and good taste, or elitism and classism. It is not taste but good taste that implies aesthetic and moral values sitting in judgment conjointly over them. Kantian position of the taste being not a property of the objects but contemplating subjects. Good taste gives way to constructs spurious categories like “kitsch.” 

Joseph Wood Krutch, 1956 obtained the book and reviewed Mary McCarthy, remarking that her method was one of the safest. Indicating that the differences in people lead to differing tastes, and those taste lead to different flavors of music, and therefore constraining them causes stifling of innovation within the art of music.

This constraint or fear affecting performers and critics alike, reducing the delivery of art to a formulaic standard, leading to the fear of being just a cheap imitation of the other. But this fear keeps the cycle repeating, so long as conformity breeds success and success breeds complacency. 

If art is not from the heart, it becomes part of the machine and cycle. As Burke put it, improving taste is correlated with improving our judgment by extending our knowledge, with steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise.

• taste=judgement=knowledge

In comes the topic of the essay, Liszt and the newly professionalized tastemakers, or the “the aristocracy of mediocrity.” with the rise of the prejudice against theatrical performances, theatrics were seen as an act of dissembling transgresses against ideals of sincerity and virtuous are often accused of the same, the terrific effect of their performances being underrated, not necessarily related and lacking a genuine feeling – presently known as virtue signaling.

Werktreue goes on to later distinguish between the difference of being theatrical, linking the art to the artist, and letting the art speak for itself separate from the artist who composed, directed, and performed it. 

Nietzsche had asked where Wagner belonged. Placing Wagner outside the history of music and highlighting the emergence of an actor in music indicating fear and thought-provoking at the same time. Wagner, who did the act in the theater, and Liszt, who turned instrumental musical performances into a branch of the theater. Nietzsche indicated three demands:

• Theater should not lord over the arts
• The actor should not seduce those who are authentic
• Music should not become an art of lying

Referring to Marquis de Venosta and the distinction between family and good family. To be family is unearned and is assumed as a birthright; you can’t choose who your sibling is, after all. To be good family is earned through virtue and one’s actions. As they emphasize in many shows, but particularly Supernatural, “Family don’t end with blood.” 

The invention of “good taste” being of the 19th century was in the aims of the bourgeois who desired to be in a state of royalty, giving credence to this quote “if it is art it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art” drawing a clear line between culture and art as if it is for the masses it isn’t exclusive and therefore not art but culture. If it is culture, it is not art. This is the definition of the snobbery attitude the elite had. 

https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/taste-bad-taste-and-franz-liszt/

Moving on to the essay Surrealism, Child brings into question separating the art from the artist or viewing it in a greater context of its time and period. Mark Polizzotti was attending his Ph.D. program in French and Comparative Literature. In he was instructed to take from the piece of work the lessons in isolation of the greater context. He asked himself:

• What was the point of it?
• Wasn’t it all a bit too removed from life? (in a vacuum)
• Wasn’t literature supposed to tell us about more than just its own internal machinery?

He ultimately walked away, unable to resolve the nagging questions in his head. Seeing that the humanities were meant to question.

• Is literature meant to reinforce our convictions or to destabilize them?
• Should art be a safe space or a dangerous space, and what does that mean?
• What is the role of the off-putting, the upsetting, the offensive, and the shocking in our study and consumption of the humanities?
• Can art still be shocking in this day and age?
• Who, exactly, is being shocked?

The fact that modern-day conservatives are banning teaching about gender queer blacks in a Black History AP class, as it is teaching on the issue of what is nicknamed Critical Race Theory, which is a higher-level college course and is rooted in legal theory. How and when will the students have their cognitive biases challenged? Hearkening back to the questions above, is literature meant to challenge us, allow us to be introspective, and grow? The humanities are exactly that; they are meant to challenge those presumed and assumed positions. 

Stagnation is the risk of avoiding the task of being introspective. From the age-old act of throwing food at a bad performance and from modern art being offensive and the banning of curriculum and books from schools and libraries, leading to the thing known as cancel culture. A false accusation, a clip out of context, or even just people not liking the personality or industry one is in leads to a cancelation of people who are offensive to one’s sensibilities. Creating a chilling effect on one’s speech and actions, similar to the act of locking people into a path in the art of music and using societal wide consensus, ostracizing the people who would try new things and styles of art. Shunning what is unknown or offensive to the status quo while propping up the known and established. 

As Mark Polizzotti notes, trying not to walk on cracks of the pavement or step on eggs, not to offend people’s sensibilities as no one can please everyone. And falling back on the previous essay Taste, Bad Taste, and Franz Liszt to play into theatrics, it to be false and is there for not within the nature being authentic. While holding back insights that can be of an impact even if unpopular and impeding the free expression of ideas, and stifling speech. 

In comes the Surrealist movement with the explicit intent to shock. Aiming at the novelist Anatole who had massive cultural support, well known, attempting to rub elbows with the Communist Party all to spite the bourgeois and their proprieties. While much of their literature and cult of personalities would not be welcomed or tolerated in today’s climate, many did the unthinkable, violating a woman’s bodily autonomy. Citing Sage, a man who was known to write about rape and carry out the act, criticized by Simone de Beauvoir, who was no fan of him, defended his works as it was put: 

“The supreme value of his testimony is the fact that it disturbs us. It forces us to reexamine thoroughly the basic problem which haunts our age in different forms: the true relation between man and man.” 

Then Paul Eluard in his 1937 book L’Evidence poetique 

“Sade wanted to restore to civilized man the “power of his primitive instincts . . . He believed that out of this, and this alone, true equality would come. Since virtue is its own reward, he labored, in the name of everything that suffers, to drag it down and humiliate it… with no illusions and no lies, so that those it normally condemns might build here on earth a world on the immense scale of mankind.”

Either if it’s De Beauvoir defending Sade as a realist or Andrea Dworkin and the portrayal of violence in his writings. The quality of Sade’s works offers the questions they pose over the certainties they present. The lessons learned from Sade, not in the crimes he described or committed, but in the ethical challenges and lessons learned from him as he presented them. Asking again to separate the art from the artist. This is similar to the current controversy around the Harry Potter game and the creator of the universe J.K. Rowling and the proposed boycott. The boycott is meant to punish Rowling, but the boycott will just hurt the devs and production crew of the video game. Failing to separate the art from the artist is being played out in real time as we watch. 

The founder of Surrealism, Andrea Breton’s philosophy was more about the actions we do from day to day and less about the words that consisted of the poem, and as noted, it is the basis of “the personal is the political” So he sought to more than write he wanted the actions to proceed from the words. Similar to the discourse around letting the art speak for itself or the theatrical performance put on by some composers. 

Along with the Surrealist movement siding with the Communist Party, they exiled members who did not abide by that wish in the form of purity testing and cancel culture before the advent of modern-day social media. The movement promised freedom but not the freedom of dissent. The act of this and the simple fact people are so willing to exile all the things they disagree with and unwilling to accept change or challenge the status quo to separate the art from the artist. Learn to live with unconformability; growth will be stunted.  

https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/surrealisms-children/