One definition of art is: “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.”

A narrative video game (or dare I say an iPhone app) that engages a sixteen year old around the clock: it is both aesthetically appealing and of extreme significance. Is that art for art’s sake?

From here difficulties compound along with explanations as they try to cope with interpretation, performance variation, omissions,etc.

The idea of a “cultural agreement” is however a very clear way of describing the means by which music in the form of a score may be interpreted. But music, in all its many forms, is too is in itself a “thing in the world.” Where Jazz departs in form from the use of a score it never the less retains a form within rhythm, keys etc, even if it used a score for departure!

While Jazz offers a unique contemporaneous means to make music and illustrate skills of co operation and improvisation etc in other areas of life, the distinctions Michael makes with other art forms are shaky. Jazz is not “an unprecedented step forward in the world of art” or for that matter in the artist “creating authenticity in the present.”For example visual art followed an historical path of pursuing rules and techniques for representation but also has turned to interpretation and abstraction of and in the present through things like performance art and installations.

More pertinent are the varying relationships the human being takes to the different forms of music from the position of making, or creating in the moment. In this the ways differentiate between a musician who is composing, interpreting, or audience listening or observing. Each of these positions involves different levels of embodiment (engagement) within relationship to forms of what we call music and which remains as a thing in the world regardless of its form.

Not only in Jazz but being open to the idea that all levels and forms of art practice bring with them varying and unique possibilities of the immediacy and intensity of Dasein (being there) lies closer to Heidegger’s intent which he also carefully grounded within extended ideas of mit-sein (being with). Both these concepts present a far cry even plea against any idea of the existence of a Platonic ideal and make better sense of the reality of music.

Let’s discuss.

Michael