A Brief Note On taste
However Sublime, comprehension of the musical “organism” would be impossible if we had no tool with which to observe it. We can perceive the sounds with mechanisms of our body, yet without Taste the Idea would go unnoticed.
Often ill-defined and used for political and personal slander, at its best Taste is a singular mechanism for discovering the Sublime in music. Montesquieu defines Taste masterfully as, “not a theoretical science; it is the quick and exquisite application of rules that one never knows.”[1] This definition draws some very clear distinctions from what we generally regard as Taste in our colloquial definitions. First, that it is not objective. A seemingly obvious statement, but so often our lack of respect for the subjectivity of taste allows us to believe that it can be codified into schools of aesthetic thought. The existence of Linear, and Historical Performance practices shows us this acutely. The second distinction relates to the first; that we, even within ourselves, do not know the rules by which we are creating our subjective judgement. Therefore, not only is Taste non-objective, it is also incommunicable to others because we ourselves do not know why we are making the judgements we make. Taste is therefore intensely personal, and as a tool it is only applicable to ourselves. Any agreement with others that may occur is therefore coincidental[2] and not indicative of any sort of greater Truth.
What then is the objective of such a subjective aesthetic judgement? Montesquieu later elaborates on his definition. “Taste is nothing else but the prerogative to discover, with finesse and alacrity, the magnitude of the pleasure that everything should give to man[3]”. Taste is then a tool for measurement of choice. It allows us to assess and rank subjective experiences and then subsequently choose those which provide for us the greatest pleasure, which is the most Beautiful or the most Sublime, absent of the dictums of authenticity.
[1] Montesquieu, “Gusto” in Enciclopedia o dizionario ragionato della scienze, delle arti e dei mestieri [Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts], ed. Paolo Casini (Bari: Laterza, 1968), p. 735.
[2] This is not, however, to deny the existence of culturally inspired Taste, or that which is nurtured into us by a localized familiarity. Certainly this exists and is the cause of many a preference or prejudice for or against all forms of art. The degree to which those sub-conscious predilections inform our conscious, reasoned judgements and the way they inform our perception of the Beautiful is deserving of a great deal of thought. However, the ability of the human mind to assess this proportion indicates that there is something else at play beyond pure inherited bias.
[3] Montesquieu, “Gusto”. 735
