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The Metaphysics of Thelonious Monk

by Edward Feser

Some half-baked thoughts on aesthetics, jazz, and popular culture.

Posted by Edward Feser on September 1, 2010 11:44 AM | Del.icio.us |

Comments (6)

~~It explains why Christopher Nolan movies deserve the hype they get, while David Lynch movies are tiresome crap. And it explains why Monk’s music is beautiful while the “free jazz” of Coleman is often downright ugly.~~

Not a jazz fan at all, so I don't like either Monk or Coleman (though I dislike Monk far less, for what it's worth), but I don't get the Nolan/Lynch comparison. Nolan's good, but Lynch, when he's on (which isn't all the time), is a master. I'd take Mulholland Dr. over Memento any day of the week. And I can't believe you think that Straight Story is "tiresome crap"!

Posted by Rob G | September 1, 2010 3:40 PM

It's a matter of accomodation. Listen to two hours of aleotoric music and Coleman will seem the soul of order. I don't have the focus necessary to ride the train of Free Jazz, but then, it is more for performers while Monk's jazz is more for listeners.

Yes, I can play sax (although, more legit) and I am a former member of NAJE - the National Association of Jazz Educators.

The Chicken

Posted by The Masked Chicken | September 1, 2010 4:46 PM

I've kept trying, year in, year out, with jazz, and kept failing. I think maybe the only jazz performer I've ever actually enjoyed listening to was the somewhat obscure Michael Mantler.

At first hearing, I actually find the Ornette Coleman piece to which EF links more interesting than the Thelonious Monk stuff. But not that much more interesting. In the end, EF's commenter Tony nails it for me: "some modern music forms, such as jazz, participate so strenuously in a specific cultural milieu that nobody not inculturated with that milieu can quite appreciate that form of music..."

Posted by steve burton | September 1, 2010 6:23 PM

How timely. Just got this from a friend, a piece by Roger Scruton:

http://axess.se/magasin/english.aspx?article=713

I think he's wrong about Glass and Reich, at least in their later compositions (Reich: '18 Musicians' and after. Glass: late 80's works and after).

As far as jazz goes, I'm with Richard Weaver in seeing it as an overall negative influence on modern music. I like dixieland jazz and some of the big band stuff, but most modern jazz just turns me off. The only contemporary jazz artist I really pay much attention to is Pat Metheny, and even then, I don't like all his stuff (I have the first 4 or 5 Pat Metheny Group discs, a couple of his solo things, and the Metheny/Mays 'Wichita Falls' album, which is a masterpiece.)

Posted by Rob G | September 1, 2010 7:58 PM

This isn't the kind of monk I expect the Catholic professor to write about. Nice change of pace.

For what my opinion is worth -- not much, since I'm neither philosopher nor musician -- I think no discussion of the objective value of music can have much meaning without considering the context in which it was made, and in which it gets played. A world that perfectly balances plenitude and economy could still have diamonds and parkas, but that doesn't tell the whole story: A diamond is good, but not in jello, and a parka is good, but not in the summer, and Monk is good, but not at Mass.

This context-dependency extends to specific people, too, I think. By taking us away from the Western musical context, maybe I can show what I mean.

When I was in college I took a course in Native American Music. I could appreciate some aspects of the music, but I'm sure it didn't affect me the way it would affect Native Americans for whom it had some additional resonance: memories of childhood, say, or cultural significance. That's not a defect in me or the music, or some superior Native American trait. It just is what it is, part of what makes us different.

Monk is brilliant. He was fresh, and broke down barriers. I still don't know how anyone can consistently hit the wrong notes at the wrong time and still sound good. Some of the original freshness comes through even though the context has changed. But that doesn't mean that those Native Americans would have been able to appreciate the goodness in it, and thus, in their context, their repetitive chants are probably objectively better.

The same is true of (say) Beethoven. He's still fresh -- you can feel the discontinuity with Hayden and Mozart -- two hundred years later. People who don't know Hayden or Mozart have a hard time hearing anything fresh in Beethoven's Third, or anything else he's done, but for people who can hear it, there's beauty there.

The same is probably true even of Schoenberg. I think there's some beauty in his twelve-tone piano pieces, but I had to learn to like it. (On the other hand, I find his twelve-tone opera Moses und Aron to be unlistenable. Either it is truly awful, or I am unable to learn to see the beauty in it.)

None of this is to say that there isn't objectively bad music, but it makes me cautious about saying what "objectively bad music" means. I think it might mean something like this: Music to which silence would be preferable in all circumstances.

Posted by Jake Freivald | September 1, 2010 10:16 PM

I think no discussion of the objective value of music can have much meaning without considering the context in which it was made, and in which it gets played. A world that perfectly balances plenitude and economy could still have diamonds and parkas, but that doesn't tell the whole story: A diamond is good, but not in jello, and a parka is good, but not in the summer, and Monk is good, but not at Mass.

This context-dependency extends to specific people, too, I think. By taking us away from the Western musical context, maybe I can show what I mean.

Jake, I agree completely, but even so I think that it is possible to say that some music is poor, or some piece of music is better than another piece. For example, If a given style or piece finds that many, many peoples from all parts of the world enjoy it in spite of very different cultural backgrounds, while another piece finds enjoyment only within a very limited narrow niche of listeners, then I would suggest that the first probably conforms to our capacity for music better than the second, and is therefore better.

If our receptivity to music happened to lie primarily in the intellect, then I would not make that argument: those who see the philosophical argument for the existence of God are few but that truth is still highly rewarding to the intellect of man. But I think that music lies primarily not in the intellect but in another power, which some call the vis cogitativa. This power rests on the primary senses more immediately than the intellect does, and so, while it may be formed and conformed within a culture by repeated experience (as can the senses), it is not utterly formable, not wholly and absolutely pliable - it has inherent limits, tendencies, and dispositions. Music that attempts to speak to the intellect alone without satisfying the vis cogitativa would seem, to me, like a "painting" that lists the wavelengths of light desired at stated coordinates on a plane. Less obnoxiously, music that stretches towards the boundary of the power's limits without offsetting benefits is not better merely by pushing toward the limits.

Thanks, Steve.

Posted by Tony | September 3, 2010 9:03 PM

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