Judging the quality of music appreciation is an unavoidable and confusing central topic in music experience and even all artistic experiences. Inevitably, artistic experience is fundamentally decisive-not knowing good or bad is actually equal to ignorance of art. If you can't tell the difference between Brahms symphony and Saint-Sang symphony, you won't really get a glimpse of symphony; What is puzzling is that there has never been a unified standard for this distinction or distinction-the so-called "indisputable interests", the so-called "being fair and reasonable, the old woman is reasonable" and the so-called "carrots and vegetables have their own loves". Chopin despised Beethoven, and Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky hated Brahms and other famous "legal cases" in music history, which added mystery and ambiguity to aesthetics.

Beethoven said that "music is a higher revelation than philosophy", not figuratively, but "here". Music is the direct way to "truth". Therefore, music is on an equal footing with philosophy, even higher. If music is only perceptual "beauty", it can't reach such a spiritual height. Kant further expanded the concept of aesthetics with the category of "sublime" in Aesthetics, which made aesthetics have a profound spiritual dimension. However, later generations clung to his formalism concept, thus losing the most important ideological possibility in Kant's aesthetics. As Dahlhaus summed up (Chapter 4 of Introduction to the Conceptual History of Music Aesthetics), "The decisive proof (of Kant's) is that art does not need beauty to become art".

So there are all kinds of specious statements. The extremes are "relativism" and "absolutism" "Relativism" holds that the aesthetic standard is unchanged, because the aesthetic subject varies from person to person, and it is impossible to form * * * knowledge. Moreover, the scale in art comes from various environments, conditions, nationalities, traditions, customs, styles, conventions and times, and there can be no fixed value criterion. On the contrary, "absolutism" holds that there are some objective aesthetic laws and rules in art that are independent of people's subjective will, such as the law of unity of change, the law of symmetry and the law of golden section. Following these aesthetic laws and artistic laws is the only way to ensure artistic quality.

Obviously, relativism and absolutism have their own problems. It is easy to find counterexamples that violate their respective principles. For example, although everyone has different tastes, we are all willing to admit that Beethoven is a greater composer than clementi in his time; Another example is that China's Fu Cong can play western piano works perfectly, and American Yuwen Suoan can judge China's Tang poems as experts, which shows that extreme relativism is untenable. On the other hand, some music, such as Bartok's excellent works, deliberately follow the proportion of "golden section law", but more other composers' works do not follow these laws and rules, and also have high artistic appeal and artistic quality of hitting the floor, which shows that it is futile to seek a quality criterion once and for all in art.

Therefore, it is very difficult to judge the quality of art. Of course, you can be careful to avoid judgment-but that would be tantamount to turning your back on art. Or, let the individual decide at will-that is tantamount to giving up responsibility. It is not desirable to have no standards, but standards are elusive. Where is the way out? A well-known saying is, "Time is the final judge". Let's leave the decision to the future. Unfortunately, this is not so much a serious answer as a flashy excuse.

I think T.S. Eliot, a great English poet and critic, has a profound exposition in his famous paper Tradition and Personal Talent: "No poet or artist can have a complete meaning alone. His importance, and our appreciation of him, is to appreciate his relationship with poets and artists in the past. You can't just look at him, you should compare him among your predecessors. I think this is not only a historical criticism principle, but also an aesthetic criticism principle. He must adapt and conform, not unilaterally; Once a new work of art is produced, all previous works of art will encounter a new thing at the same time. The existing art classics themselves constitute an ideal order, which has changed due to the introduction of new (really new) works. This former order was complete before the appearance of new works, but to remain complete after adding new things, the whole order must be changed, even if it is a small change; In this way, the relationship, proportion and value of each work of art relative to the whole have been readjusted; This is an adaptation between the old and the new. "

The profound meaning here is that the collection of works of art forms a "field" that exists and influences each other, and unpredictable artistic standards are produced in the interaction of this field. Therefore, in art, the past affects the present, and the future will also modify the past, thus forming an imaginary order that exists when * * *. Fundamentally speaking, "the objective judgment standard in art is not determined by metaphysical' rationality' or external' authority', nor is it arbitrarily determined by elusive public interests, but it is precisely implied and provided by classical music masterpieces throughout the ages. All new music works must be tested before the scales marked by the great classics of predecessors, and the masterpieces that emerge from them adjust and correct the original scales. " (Quoted from the essay "Why should we listen to new music? , published in Reading, No.8, 2005)

Therefore, the classic masterpieces in the past are all examples of artistic scales (for example, Beethoven's late quartets are recognized as the benchmark of musical depth), but later classic masterpieces will constantly mark these scales (for example, the wonderful combination of improvisation and rigor in Chopin's music points out the musical possibilities that Beethoven did not know). Therefore, the objective standards of art must exist, but they can't conform to the laws and regulations that can be clarified, and they can't be static.

In order to reveal the profound content of human nature, art can be unpleasant (and therefore sublime). Beethoven's late works all have such a texture, and the extreme is of course "great fugue" and "extremely ugly". Kant's aesthetic thought directly predicted the modern art with ugliness as beauty in the twentieth century. Heidegger bluntly pointed out in his famous paper The Origin of Works of Art that "art is the generation and occurrence of truth". Art has therefore become one of the most fundamental ways for human beings to grasp the world and know themselves. Therefore, art (including music) can only be compared with literature, philosophy and history if it has the qualification of culture, and become a "humanistic" phenomenon, which deserves our painstaking efforts.