There are some aspects of musical beauty that are objective, but I’ll be damned if I could ever point to them and say what they are precisely, without bias. However, I definitely don’t believe that musical beauty has anything to do with certain intervals within music. It primarily has to do with an intelligent being communicating with another intelligent being, though I’m not entirely sure ‘beautiful’ is the appropriate word……..maybe ‘eloquent’ would be better.

Recently some kids told me how much they were into Cream, even though I haven’t listened to those guys in at least 10 years. Nonetheless, when I listened to the CD I was really struck by the significance of it. You can’t help but be drawn into it.

Good music seems to have this great equilibrium for being engaging, pleasing (not in the sense of perfect intervals but more in the sense of interrelatedness to what you like or need at the moment), with a type of unexpectedness that causes the music to seem larger than it appears or makes you believe in a manner that you hadn’t before, as well as taking you (and/or your thinking) in a direction that didn’t exist before.

(Often, I feel like contemporary composers try much too hard, like they feel as if they have to reinvent the wheel or something. It’s quite the lackluster event when I watch artists burden themselves so unnecessarily with such HIGH ideals, only then to endeavor on making other people think IT’S important.)

Taking people in a whole different direction doesn’t have to be donE in a big way, it can easily be accomplished in some small intricate, but subtle ways.