Thread: Someone saves us from music

I was responding to you mainly going on a tyrade without him even responding. I was asking in response to...

Originally Posted by shawnt

I disagree. Intellectual capacity is a precursor to better taste. Here's why. Better taste = appreciation of higher 'quality' music (unless you believe quality is wholly subjective). Appreciation of higher quality music requires at least a subconscious comprehension of musical elements and characteristics. At the risk of gross oversimplification, many animals may react positively to natural sounds (such as rainfall, bird songs etc), but will interpret Norweigen Wood as noise.

He goes on to link taste with intellectual capacity to base senses as the hearing of animals.

First off, I don't believe taste has anything to do with intellectual capacity, nor do I totally buy someone claiming they have "better taste" than another. I think the quality of the music doesn't necessarily have to be linked with what a person likes. I love jazz, but sometimes I hear a solo by a famous musician or a song in general and generally don't like it, not because it's a bad song, but because I don't like what the song is composed of. SO from that I believe that a person's musical palate is related more to his statement of the basic instinct of liking the way something sounds than their overall intelligence. A lot of musicians probably couldn't read, write, or were trained in the liberal arts which some may relate to being intellectual, yet they had talent for music and could process music naturally than many people could from reading music.

Basically, which comes first, a person liking a particular song because they are intellectual, or because liking a song which puts them in the intellectual box.