It's an interesting question as to whether it is worth having the mass of average stuff (not to mention bad stuff) in the arts - or whether we only really-need the really-good stuff?
Of course, it may be argued that the really-good stuff could not be produced without the average (and bad) stuff - because people need to learn. And it could also be said that we need to have the bad stuff in order that we learn what makes the really-good really good.
Well, maybe. But once the really-good stuff has been produced, and once people know it for what it is - what then? Does the average stuff need to hang-around - does it demand attention - is it worthwhile?
It seems to me that there is a strong argument that we don't need anything but the very-good, and that we only really-need the really-good stuff.
Indeed; it is possible that having so much average-to-poor stuff hanging around is a Bad Thing; it wastes people time, and wasted time is an evil - leaving aside the considerable quantities of the actively bad.
Consider opera. There are maybe a score of really-good operas - and the rest seem to serve no essential value. They hang around because some people want to listen to (and perform) operas more often than we could tolerate the really-good stuff - so we get a great mass of pretty worthless opera being performed, recorded and watched.
Yet we could just watch (and perform) the really-good stuff, and simply not go to the opera (or listen to recordings) very often. We could just do other things in the meanwhile.
In other words, the problem is a kind of addiction. Opera people get addicted to opera, so they end up overdosing on the mediocre stuff, because the alternative is to get habituated to the really-good stuff by taking it too often.
They consume (and perform) mediocre stuff , because there isn't enough good stuff; and they cannot stop taking the stuff: they cannot stay off the stuff long enough to refresh their palates.
Classical music in general is the same - only a few really-good composers; although there are quite a lot of very-good pieces individual pieces. Still, so insatiable is the desire for music, that most of what gets recorded, played, listened-to is a kind of filler (and often actively unpleasant, at that !)
Plays are even more extremely thus. There are (in English) very few good plays; and the vast bulk of plays are just ephemeral ways of passing an evening - keyed into current fashion rather than "the human condition". And the demand for bulk mediocrity is again because there just aren't enough really good things to supply the addiction.
And poetry! There are very few worthwhile poems (even from the best poets, and there aren't many of them); and the really-good poems are all-but lost in an ocean of average-to-bad poetry - such that most people never seem to find them; and spend their lives paddling in the shallows and swamps.
Blaise Pascal commented that all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Well, not all of the problems; but the arts confirm what is seen in other domains of life; that much of what is mediocre, time-wasting, and corrupting; is due to our craving for diversion.
And most diversion comes via novelty - not just the arts, but gossip, "news", critique - is the prime attribute of that which diverts us in the mass and social media - and everyday life.
Hence the preponderance of so much that is average and bad in the arts and elsewhere.
16 comments:
>There are (in English) very few good plays; and the vast bulk of plays are just ephemeral ways of passing an evening
I was shocked to learn that London had 61 theatres by 1899, more than any other city in the world (more than most combined!) So there must have been thousands of plays. Yet the only one we see regularly performed on stage now is The Importance of Being Earnest.
@Ron - And that was Wilde's only really good play.
But you picked a wrong year for your point, because several of Bernard Shaw's plays from that era have survived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw#Early_works
As a general point - there have been very few plays that survived outside of Shakespeare and Shaw; and yet drama is supposed to be a speciality of Eng Lit.
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/11/drama-is-nearly-all-ephemeral.html
I see what you’re saying, Bruce, but would like raise a few points.
1. This seems to assume that the point of opera (and the other art forms) is the consumption of it. What if the point is also the doing of it: the writing, the rehearing, the producing, the acting, the singing?
Given that most people have mediocre abilities in these areas, the output will indeed be mediocre. But it could be that what we gain (learning, character growth, skills, catharsis) from producing an opera, no matter how mediocre, is necessary and in fact good.
2. How do we know a work of art is one of the good ones? If “opera” is a living (?) body of work, at what point can we look back and cull the mediocre works?
3. Should I stop eating because half of my meals are below average?
I agree; demand for novelty for the sake of novelty is a fault. There's definitely a different attitude between paying attention to something because it is new and because it is good.
Though I would say that in addition to mediocre, good, or bad, decent, or good enough is another category. That's not quite the right word, but what I mean is something that does what it does, occupies its own niche and contributes something of value in that, even if it isn't strictly among the best. I can't say what operas, dramas, or music would fit that category, but there are definitely paintings where it's a contribution to paint a particular location at a particular time. Or there are stories where someone has something worthwhile to tell and does so. Or essays or poems for that matter.
The other thing about decent is that it may not necessarily have a significant flaw, but just may not be as well executed as the best. But since there never are many of the very best, doing something the best doesn't do is worthwhile.
What's the list of good opera?
I want to listen to it and will be thankful if you take the time to give it to me
@Anne
Some guy training on his guitar has value, but him recording himself and flooding the market with his work does not (if he isn't any good)
Hagel - Well, everybody has different preferences - I don't really believe in a standard canon.
I am not longer an opera fan; and would probably only want to listen to a few right-through: Mozart's Figaro and Magic Flute; Rossini's Barbara of Seville and Cenerentola, Wagner's Rheingold.
There are a lot of individual arias I love, including by Handel, Verdi, Bellini, Donizetti - but I probably couldn't take the whole operas nowadays.
I am still very keen on Gilbert and Sullivan.
I wish you would make lists more often, Bruce. I collect and treasure the few that you drop for us to pick up. A few of your most useful quotations ever:
"In other words, people like [flautist James] Galway for the same reason they like a great singer such as Wunderlich, Sutherland or Pavarotti - because they make the loveliest sound and also 'phrase' the music in a way that brings-out its beauty above all else. So by 'great' I mean 'middlebrow great' in the same way that Austen, Dickens and Frost are regarded as great, and not in the way that Joseph Conrad, Henry James or TS Eliot are regarded as great."
I don't have a quotation for it, but you also mentioned Neville Marriner, so I bought a boxed set of 20 of his albums, and that was one of my best buys ever.
"I realise that very little of modern spirituality is relevant, because very little is worthwhile. Those authors who are worthwhile are those for whom politics is a very secondary concern - the likes of William Blake, ST Coleridge, Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield; and more recently William Arkle, Colin Wilson, Jeremy Naydler, and William Wildblood himself."
Elsewhere, I think you mentioned William Wordsworth in addition to Blake and Coleridge as the great Romantic Christian poets.
Please consider writing a post with lists of your favorite plays and poems. Perhaps it's not a primary focus for you anymore, but I'm sure it would be in the top 5% of your posts for benefitting your readers.
@Jonathan - You must be on a similar wavelength to me (i.e. me, nowadays) when it comes to "the arts"; but I personally have not found other people to be a very useful guide to the things that I personally like most - I've had to find them for myself. I try to encourage this in others.
Until one can evaluate from-oneself, then one has not really Got It.
This applies, even when they are extremely well known - like Mozart - because most of (even) Mozart is not particularly good; and the works that get the most critical praise aren't always or usually the ones that I regard most highly. I am currently finding Mozarts two Piano Quartets to be especially delightful - not especially emotionally powerful, but more a kind of high spirited joy.
But there is also the matter of performers. Some of the most highly regarded I find very aversive eg the conductor SIR Trevor Pinnock (or "pillock" as I think of him) who cannot "phrase" a musical phrase to save his life (for many years he was the darling of BBC radio 3, which just goes to show).
In general, I think there has been a serious and qualitative decline in classical music performance (and pop music) since the 1980s. This I regard as an objective fact, not just me getting older and the transition from analogue to digital recorded sound (although that is a factor).
My current favourite plays (and indeed for about fifty years) are probably Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet from The Bard; and Shaw's Man and Superman. As a young man I was very keen on Stoppard, but not any more.
Poems - I like lyrical poetry - the kind of thing in Palgrave's Golden Treasury - mostly I like individual poems rather than poets - e.g. I *love* Shelley's Ozymandias, but I don't think anything else of his has made much impression. I don't really respond to Coleridge's poems at the highest level.
Robert Frost (in his earlier half dozen books) is probably my favourite - certainly I think he wrote more of my favourite poems than anyone else; and Hugh MacDiarmid's first three books (almost nothing good after that) - his "Drunk man" is the only long poem I really like.
And I am finding some of Tolkien's poetry more and more powerful and significant as the decades roll by (although I did not like it as a teen and young adult)! His complete poems are being published later this year - it's an expensive production, so I am hoping for a review copy.
"You must be on a similar wavelength to me (i.e. me, nowadays) when it comes to "the arts"; but I personally have not found other people to be a very useful guide to the things that I personally like most - I've had to find them for myself. I try to encourage this in others.
Until one can evaluate from-oneself, then one has not really Got It."
There's way too much music to find the good stuff oneself. It is however possible to find individuals who are similar enough for their recommendations to be useful.
I realise that I am asking others to do all of the work for me, to do what I say that I will not do, which is to sift through tons of music. None the less I ask for it, have gotten it, have benefited massively from it and gratefully appreciated it.
@Hagel - In general, I have found "middlebrow" taste in the arts to be the best guide - in other words keen amateurs (not the ignorant, not the professionals who make a living from it)- but I would add, that you need to go back to sources from the middle twentieth century (pre-TV) for this to work; since amateurs have been corrupted and propagandized over the past couple of generations.
So, you may find help lists, guides, encyclopaedias, introductions to The Great/ Best of musicians/ artists/ novelists/ poets or whatever - written for the general public.
I had access (in my home, because my father salvaged them from an army library that was being disposed-of, or from his school or college) to a book of stories from the great operas, Palgrave's Golden Treasury of Verse, a selection of the best essays... in books published from 1940 and earlier.
These gave me a start; and when I found something I especially liked, and could work out from it. In classical music I began with various LP collections of popular classical tunes or opera arias, that were owned by friends and neighbours.
Incidentally Hagel - you may be misinterpreting the situation if you regard the issue as being about "others do all the work for me". It's not about "work"; it's not like cheating for an exam.
We are talking about seeking a profound engagement with the best (and most relevant to our condition) of human creativity - that demands as much from the consumer as the creator. Cheating isn't possible - except cheating oneself!
Also - this kind of thing isn't a matter of sifting through thousands of works like seeking a needle randomly disposed within a haystack.
Because God is real, and active in his creation; you will have guidance from intuition, and by "synchronicities" (as well as being misled by the ignorant and evil tempters and exploiters). You will already know some, or at least one, work that speaks to your soul - and can provide a way-in.
Again, it is an active and inner evaluation that is required.
And there is always trial and error - you can be fooled, and you can fool yourself. But life is not about getting things right first time but about learning, or else it would not be useful to live.
One might as well ask, what is the point of having the great mass of mediocre men, as opposed to the few great Saints? Or just the one great Saint, the Theotokos?
Love.
One may hope that the songs and stories, as well as the men, may be perfected in Heaven.
@Uriel - But that would be completely to misunderstand life.
If this mortal life is really about men attaining perfection 1. Jesus would not have come to save *sinners* and 2. God must have made a real mess of creating this world since (according to your comment) he only succeeded with one human being in all of history.
As I said above " But life is not about getting things right first time but about learning, or else it would not be useful to live."
I am not saying that your errors are unusual - they are indeed ancient - but the fact they have remained denied hence uncorrected in all the mainstream churches is a reason for the utter corruption of Christianity all across the West today...
So that churches are now not merely ineffectual, but actively recruit their members to the agenda of evil via their concentrated support for the core strategies of value inversion.
The Importance of Being Earnest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h4pISoNwyg
Man and Superman:
https://archive.org/details/shaw-man-and-superman-1996-fiennes-stevenson
A Midsummer Night's Dream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i285XE8gYVg
Though this other version does look intriguing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Ry0lUghcw
Hamlet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnhRhiijFa4&list=OLAK5uy_lNKgeUmhBjPNfOxBTFApzSS2byLdku5AY
Caesar and Cleopatra:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfPpcvelQZA&list=PLLEMpXvr0s1RivoxwDiprnyKA-geRHCWq
Ozymandias:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts
The Magic Flute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpz2I0EZ30E
@Ron - Thanks for that link to the complete Man and Superman done on radio! That's just what I would like to listen to, at present.
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