I get what you're saying and don't disagree, but I think there's just a semantic issue here; I don't need to use the terms "form and function", it's just how I tend to think about the thing I'm trying to describe. I can make another attempt with different language.

There is an inner content to an artwork and an outer content. What I'm calling "function" (the inner content) could be compared to the engine or the transmission of a car; it's the bones of the whole thing. But what I'm describing as "form" (the outer content) would be the type of car; are you into souped up sports cars, or are you more utilitarian? Do you need the space of a van? I'm sorry if this is an overly simple or kind of dumb analogy, but it's what comes to mind, and I'm at work at the moment.

novelty has not generally been a criterion of value. — Tom Storm

I would say that novelty is the only criterion of value, if one understands novelty in a certain way. The value of something, how meaningful and relevant it is to us , how richly it affects us, is a dance between familiarity and alterity. If a thing is too alien, it will be invisible to us. If it is just alien enough to be seen but not effectively assimilated, we will react to it with confusion. Paradoxically, boring experience falls within this category of the confused and chaotic. Needless to say , this is not the kind of experience we embrace as meaningful and valuable, but instead as a waste of our time or something actively aversive to us. That leaves the delicate dance between familiarity and difference that is involved in experiencing something just different enough to escape boredom or confusion. This is the zone where creativity and rich sources of valuable experience reside.
In sum, just the right balance of novelty is vital
to the perception of value. Whether we are engaging with chronologically ‘new’ music or enjoying an art form fromcenturies ago, it will be valuable to us to the extent that we interpret it freshly , but not too freshly.

I haven't seen it, no; I'll check it out later tonight when I'm off work. Looks and sounds interesting.

I would say that novelty is the only criterion of value, if one understands novelty in a certain way — Joshs

I understand your point - I was referring to the energetic pursuit of novelty or 'the new' for its own sake. Whatever novelty I appreciate is generally, although not always, eclipsed by my desire not to experience something too different unless I have to. :wink:

Thank you. But I didn’t intend the thread to specifically be about music; my threads just tend to go there because it’s what I know the best and I use music to try to illustrate my points. If you have any thoughts about these ideas in relation to another art form (or even something not specifically art) please feel free to bring it up.

But I didn’t intend the thread to specifically be about music; my threads just tend to go there because it’s what I know the best and I use music to try to illustrate my points. If you have any thoughts about these ideas in relation to another art form (or even something not specifically art) please feel free to bring it up. — Noble Dust

I understood that, but I don't think I understand your distinction between function and form in music enough to compare it to something I'm more familiar with, e.g. poetry or fiction. Besides, I'm enjoying hearing you, @Dawnstorm, and the others talking shop.

I get what you're saying and don't disagree, but I think there's just a semantic issue here; I don't need to use the terms "form and function", it's just how I tend to think about the thing I'm trying to describe. I can make another attempt with different language. — Noble Dust

Oh, it's definitely just a semantic issue. And there's no need to put it differently. I just wanted to put my bias out there, so if I misunderstand you on you something it's not totally out of nowhere.

There's something I wanted to address in your first reply to me, but I didn't have time:

I worry this is a classic case of "these kids don't know what art is", which is a perennial perspective passed down from generation to generation, all while art manages to evolve despite the old codgers complaining about the kids. — Noble Dust

I've been active on various creative writing boards, and, well, it has always felt more self-inflicted by the kids themselves. Creative writing is all about language, but here you have the difficulty to figure out in what way literary language differs from everyday language, and how to get good at it, with being good at it being conflated with recognition by the publishing industry. There are creative writing courses to address that need, both academic and otherwise. And there are a lot of theories out there on how to get good.

Now what I've seen is writers offering up a text to critique amongst peers, getting a couple of the same few old canards (like beware adverbs and the passive voice, show don't tell, etc.). Then there's an edit, and a rough text is both more polished and less interesting as a result, but the author sees the more polished part and is pleased. It's not passed down from above. There's no judgement from above. Just a couple of guidelines you deviate from at your own peril. I've seen them pushed on blogs by editors. Some of them have made it into books by writers (such as Stephen King's On Wiriting). It's easy enough to demonstrate that no writer ever fully uses these rules, but then you're told, well, they're the basics you need to know before you develop your own style, and anyway, nobody says they're rules, just guidelines. In some cases, what has once been a well-defined term in one discipline (e.g. passive voice) has acquired a new nebulous meaning, as people who don't what "passive voice" means try to figure out how to avoid it (and if you avoid it it must be something bad, so it can sometimes be okay, too). In the end, you get a bundle of "don't be wordy," and "don't be vague about agency", and such. It's like you're trying to solve a puzzle.

Sometimes you get a few techniques: replace "verb + adverb" with a stronger word. So people go ctrl+f their way through their document and find instances of "ly " to see if they can replace a verb/adverb combo with a stronger verb. But that's a different mindset from reading the text and seeing if it works. It's entirely possible that a text might improve by that technique, but just by using it you drive a text towards a particular style. And if many people are doing it...

I think a lot of this push for regularity comes from the increasedly common place use of software, too. If you read through your text with your own eyes for verb/adverb, you go through it all. You have more context, just by doing it. You're also likely to miss perfectly fine usage that doesn't stand out. Ctrl+f through your document for "ly ", and you hop through your text from word-final -ly, some of which won't be adverbs, and the rest of which will be scrutinised. It's a different mindset of editing: regularisation is much more likely and much more thorough with software. I think that's true whether you use text editors or music editors. If it's easy to regularise something with a few clicks, you're much less likely to wonder if you should.

So basically I think it's a combination of unreflected prejudice and technological ease. Come to think of it, of the two only technological ease is new. I suppose we still need to adjust to technology, and I'm not even talking about AI at that point. And it's not just art. I remember, when I studied sociology in the early 2000s, I was once told that statistical software has changed the way social science has been conducted: since calculating has become a lot easier, there's been a growing trend from think first and calculate to calculate first and see whether there are any surprising results and then interpret them. (It's neither better nor worse; you have to think anyway.)

How so? What's an example? — Noble Dust

The harpsichord.

The OP's format is quite clever. Kudos! Sometimes we need to go back to the basics to make any headway in understanding what it's all about and the OP has done precisely that. Rather depressing in a way, but still insightful enough to get our juices flowing.