Originally posted by snap_apple:
I have a question for you though...do you really think music has to be beautiful to be good. That is what I am infering from your statement

"I rate good music based on it's beauty"

That tells me that if a piece is ugly in anyway or unbeautiful that it isn't as good or inspirational in your book.

But is that what music is about. I sometimes need ugly music...that's why I like Prokofiev or Ligeti or heavy metal. Cause it's dirty, it's raw it's harsh it's angry...and thats life. I like some music that is sad, quirky, reptitive, funny, relaxed...cause that's life.

Imperfections is life...imperfections can be the best things in the world. Uglieness is a part of life. To me much of great art deals with the agitation of life and it's biting imperfections.

So why must it be beautiful to be good? [/b]

Originally posted by Siddhartha:
Very interesting points. I once heard a modeling professional say that one of the special qualities of a supermodel is to be almost ugly. A perfect face is uninteresting, but some quirk or idiosyncracy that borders on ugly can transform a woman into an exotic beauty. Cindy Crawford's mole I believe was offered as an example. Without her mole, she would be nobody.

I battled with this issue of beauty in music extensively when i was in music school, at a school where "new music" was highly celebrated. All these hideous concoctions of theory tricks and self proclaimed clever novelties in composition that just sound like cr@p. It always seemed to me that people respond to music at the gut level, and these pieces try to appeal to the intellect. Maybe very interesting amongst the composers themselves, but to a general audience, PEW!! Maybe 'beauty' isnt the requisite quality I'm looking for, but how about "aesthetic appeal"? Prokofiev certainly has that. [/QB]