Is music superior to literature in terms of artistic merit?

Is music superior to literature in terms of artistic merit?

Potentially, maybe. In practice, almost never.

define "artistic merit"

Music isn't usually as self-aware of its complexity as literature, so in this case, yes.

Not usually, excluding the best jazz and classical. Popular music is too focused on artifice and sensationalism to make anything truly transcendent. Popular musicians (I'm using popular in a general context here) are usually pretentious and are rarely truly have much aesthetic merit and ability, though the same can be said about contemporary writers. "Experimental" music that hipsters peddle now is the epitome of pomo garbage. Rap is even worse.

The best music is better than any literature, but on average I'd say lit is more artistically meritorious.

No. All mediums have their own domains.

Literature would have a difficult time replicating the intricacies of structure which are easy for a composer, or would have to labor to create the emotional impact which is again, easy, for a musician. However, musicians must resort the use of verse and lyric like a poet if they wish to try and impart the veiled and layered wisdom which comes naturally for a good writer.

Although both mediums can be a very clear record of an entire thought, or emotional, process the means of transmitting that information to the audience is so vastly different they cannot be accurately compared.

Imagine trying to teach the lessons of literature via symphony? Hybridization of the two mediums is the only possible way to attempt to do so, and that is not, then, a true comparison of music to literature - it is their marriage.

pseuds
>No. All mediums have their own domains.
/thread

/thread

What the fuck is artistic merit?
When it comes to intellectual/philosophical content, literature obviously crushes music. When it comes to emotion, I'm too autismal to give a shit

dylan just won the nobel in literature

that should tell you all you need to know

Yes - that awards mean nothing anymore.

that music isn't considered worthy of a Nobel unless it's labelled 'literature?'

No. Some classical comes close but music is mostly a meme medium

>awards mean nothing anymore

Like awards meant anything ever.

Pop = YA
Indie = PoMo
Classical = Classics
Jazz = 20th century literature

Two different artistic practices, but I would by far say that literature is on a different plane. I'm too stupid to convey it, but there is something about words that manifest into beauty I cannot imagine music having. Music is beauty too, but, at least the way I experience it, is not as profound.

Wrong.

Contemporary art music & No-Wave & Post-Rock = PoMo

Baroque - Romantic period art music = Classics

Pop + Indie = YA

Jazz I can agree with though to some extent.

They most certainly did. Even if you argue that they don't and never did, it is impossible to rationally argue that they should not mean anything.

When Nelson Mandela got the Nobel Peace Prize, that meant something. When Obama, the UN, and the EU got it - that meant less than nothing, because it was eradicating the meaning which previously existed, or which could have existed, had the award been given to someone deserving or simply not given at all - until a deserving candidate emerged.

The same should be done with the literary prize. Find a deserving candidate, or don't give it out at all.

>And don't even get me started on Ellen Degeneres winning the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

St. Vincent strikes me as one of those women who moonlights as a lesbian, but in the end comes crawling back thirsty for dick and gets a baby put in her.

Kissinger got it before Mandela.

.

she's gonna have someone's eye out with those untrimmed strings

No? It does what it does, and literature does what it does. There's not a point in comparing them because they are very different.

>You can't compare them, they're different!

one of my least favourite memes

I just wonder what kind of shit you eat

>artistic merit
Doesn't mean much, but somebody who writes a great book will nearly always be a genius, while great albums have been made by otherwise unintelligent people

Irrelevant question as you cannot objectively define and validate 'merit' alone much less if you take into an account both mediums importance cross culture and cross time period

By asking the question you answer it, literature is superior.

Music is a powerful force that can amplify emotions. You have to have something honest and true to say for it to truly resonate with people though.

Music is better at making you feel, literature is better at making you think.

t. pseud

Music is a more visceral art than literature. It is more visceral than cerebral, and literature is the opposite. Cerebral art is arguably of greater merit because cerebral stuff is arguably greater than visceral stuff. It's interesting, funny, and ironic that even within music, particularly Western classical music, people tend to focus on and celebrate the cerebral qualities rather than the visceral ones.

I'll say that some music is more cerebral than visceral and can be appreciated intensely on a cerebral level while simultaneously sounding incredibly boring and non-visceral though.

It's a weird kind of music, and actually the vast majority of Western classical music falls into this.

"Hipsters" have peddled experimental music for all of recorded Western music history. You cannot know anything about any medium nowadays unless you're actually consuming contemporary content, even if no one is talking about it in popular criticism or academia. So many of you assume that there is no good writing anymore and I wonder how much 2016 literature you've actually read. I wonder how much your appreciation of a work of art has to do with its' canon status.