The progression is: (Musical chords)

vi – IV – I – V

For instance, in C major it would be:

A minor, F major, C major, G major.

In F major it would be:

D minor, Bb Major, F major, C Major.

I discovered this progression a couple of years ago. I used to use it in some of my compositions, and then I listened to Craig Armstrong’s Plunkett and Macleane main theme. The track “Escape” explicitly contains that thematic progression. So I realized that I must had listened to that chord’s sequence before using it in my compositions, although I had not noticed that I had listened to that sequence before.

This beautiful thematic progression really causes a terrific emotional effect on me. I’ve discovered that it’s widely used on film music nowadays; I think that’s because of the emotional effect it causes.

First I thought that it was only used by film composers but later on I found that other classical music composers used it. Beethoven used it. In the second movement of his pathetic sonata, he marvelously integrated the chords with that beautiful progression (vi, IV, I, V) and an outstanding melody that really makes me feel his aspiration of reaching perfection and absolute truth.

And even before Beethoven, Morales (c. 1500 – 1553) used it on his Requiem, but since the requiem is quite chorally polyphonic it is a little bit hard to distinguish the progression. The produced emotional effect is very intense; it really makes you feel the ethereal magical feeling of life, of “we exist”, a Platonic Noesis transformed into music.

(I recently heard that Strauss used it too)

Many film composers have used that progression in their scores; some of them might have discovered the progression on their own and some others might have copied it from someone else. (On my particular case I don’t even know if I discovered it on my own or if I took it after listening to some other composer. I’ve found that my compositions are constantly influenced by the pieces I’ve listened to; it is a challenge to compose something absolutely independent to anything listened before.)
These are some cases that I remember.

The Media Ventures team loves this progression, and they’ve used it creating important emotions on the audience.
Trevor Rabin is the composer among the Media Ventures team, who uses that progression the most. He has used it on Armageedon, Deep Blue Sea, Remember the Titans, The sixth day and maybe in some others. (And curiously the main theme in almost all those movies contains that progression)
Nick Glennie-Smith used it in “The Rock”, Hans Zimmer in “Gladiator” and “Backdraft” (?), Klaus Badelt in “K-19 the Widow maker” and in the time machine (?), Lissa Gerard in “Black Hawk down”, Harry Gregson Williams and John Powell in “Chicken Run”. Even Mark Mancina might have used it.

Other composers who are not part of the Media Ventures team have used that thematic progression as well. I mean, Herrmann and Korngold used it for sure, and I recently heard that Steiner used it too! (I’d like to know in which movie)

Craig Armstrong – Plunkett and Macleane, and he kind of used it in “Romeo and Juliet”
Howard Shore – LOTR The Fellowship of the ring, and he expanded the usage of the progression in The two towers.
Now Brian Tyler used it very well in “Children of Dune” Congratulations Tyler! I like when the progression is used properly, with all the respect it deserves, and Tyler did a great job.

Any other score you would like to add?

Well, I agree that in the current film music, a lot of originality is needed; however, there are some progressions that cause a particular emotional effect, so they can be used in order to achieve that. The typical classical I, IV, V, I progression has been used since the occidental classical music's birth with Hindemith, then Vivaldi, Albinoni, Teleman, Offenbach, J.S. Bach and sons, Clementi, Handel, Hayden, then Mozart, I mean, every classical composer has used it. Hindemith discovered that just as the human being has a “pure intuition” that being good is “good” and we have a natural passion for truth, there are some musical elements that are inherently attached to our essence, that reveal the harmony and the equilibrium that all the universe is trying to reach, including ourselves.

There are different ways to reach perfection, and just as there are different activities to improve ourselves, such as music, painting, science, philosophy, etc. there are different ways to do it with music, but the essential element that remains constant is the attempt of being better and reaching perfection. Some eastern melodies and harmonies don’t follow the I, IV, V, I progression, but they try to reach harmony through other musical elements they’ve discovered. Hindemith discovered some very important elements, and those elements still ruling to some point, the classical western music, and hence film music. (Actually the “real” classical contemporary music is tending to find new elements, and it is falling into atonalism and other weird things. Most Film music however, is still founded on the “oldies” classical elements.)
Using the “typical” progression doesn’t necessarily mean the composer is not being original as long as they add originality to those progressions. Bach used the “I, IV, V, I” progression with an elegant baroque style, Mozart brought it majestically; Mahler and Prokofiev gave it a whole new dimension using the orchestra on a different way.

Similarly, Trevor Rabin has given an electronic and urban style to the “vi, IV, I, V” progression, while Armstrong gave it a bombastic choral atmosphere, and Shore used it more epically, with an eerie combination of voice and instruments.

More than how original the progression is, I believe that it is more important how originally the composer used it to create the emotions and feelings the movie is trying to create. And when it gets even more important, is when the composer achieves to produce that “magical” emotion that makes you feel that inexpressible feeling; that amazing atmosphere that makes you feel something else, something transcendental, the “I know that I exist” feeling.

… I hope this long text had not being boring for you. If you have any comments, go ahead!

Rach.

NP: The secret garden – Zbigniew Preinser (What a delightful, ethereal score. This one is among those that make me feel the magic)

PS: (Excuse my English, as you know it’s not my mother tongue)

Oh, I was listening to his score for “somewhere in time” and I loved how he adapted Rachmaninoff’s bizarre and fogy elements into a modern film music style.

But anyhow, it's a really nice progression, but I dunno, it's just been done to death.
I like my harmony non-functional.
Do not resolve your 7th. Do not raise your leading note. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

The unusual chordal progressions which Gae mentions in relation to John Barry's scores are lovely to listen to indeed. John Barry did that kind of stuff so well, and it sounds just so right when it could have sounded oh so wrong. This got me to thinking about "wrong notes." I'll give two examples of unusual melodic progressions which simply don't work for me, and just sound clumsy and amateurish -

In the song "As Time Goes By", made famous in CASABLANCA. That jump up, about five seconds in, grates on me every time. What's the left hand doing on the piano there?

Some of Maurice Jarre in general. For example, in "Tara's Theme" the melodic line sounds attractive enough, it's unusual but it works, until you pay attention to what the rest of the orchestra is doing at the same time. Is this called counterpoint? Whatever, it sounds pretty random to me.

You can see I'm no musician, but my ear is offended by such ugliness. Or is there no such thing as "wrong notes"?

Graham: I have also listened to that random music you say. It is so used in contemporary classical music, that I can’t believe people still composing that way. The orchestra could easily commit mistakes and nobody would notice them, or sometimes the melody seems to have been composed by a computer or by a calculator, or even by a washing machine and I ask to myself. Where is the musical sensitiveness?
John Barry and Jerry Goldsmith (and some others) are so skilled that they can make unusual progressions and they work out beautifully, and the most important thing is that the musical sensitiveness is not killed and the music can cause a deep mystical feeling on you.
I will make a sample of the parts of the score that contain the progression I mentioned so you can listen to it.

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I have also listened to that random music you say. It is so used in contemporary classical music, that I can’t believe people still composing that way. The orchestra could easily commit mistakes and nobody would notice them, or sometimes the melody seems to have been composed by a computer or by a calculator, or even by a washing machine and I ask to myself. Where is the musical sensitiveness?

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Isn't that a little naive?
Isn't this like saying that unless it's 'pretty' then what is the point? (by all means please correct me if I'm wrong)

Music, whether it be music for film or music for music's sake, is an art. So, let's say I'm looking at a painting of a tree and next to this painting of a tree is another painting, only not of a tree, just of a few 'random' lines. If I can't immediately say "this painting is of a tree" then does it mean that it's devoid of any meaning, context or that no value (emotional, mental or other) may be gained from it?

Often a work created by a composer seeking the more 'random' sound can be bursting with emotional or mental subtext, and even if it's not created with either of these reactions in mind, it frequently has the ability to stimulate them out of the listener. What the composer saught to do may not be to make you think "gee, that piece of music sure was nice." so does this mean that there was no reason for him/her to compose it or that it was a 'bad' piece. For example, a few weeks ago I was doing some work on the piece Ramifications by Gyorgy Ligeti. I'm quite certain that the work had no ideas behind it beyond that of technical experimentation (for those unfamiliar with the work, it's composed for 12 string players, separated into two groups with one of them tuned approx. 1/4 tone higher than the usual tuning of a string instrument). Anyhow, the physical and emotional effect it had over me was really quite extraordinary.
Another thing that I find interesting is the social context we give a work. Is there any point in a composer today basing his whole output on say, the principles of Mozart's music? I personally don't feel there is, at least, not an entire body of work because it's not really music of our time.
To quote Nicholas Cage in Adaptation, "...writing should be a journey into the unknown."

In a way (and now I'm getting back onto the subject of film music ), I'm reminded of the filmtracks.com chap who has fobbed off scores such as In the Bedroom (T.Newman), Alien3 (Goldenthal) and Sphere (Goldenthal) as just 'noise'. All three are highly effective in their respective films, and in my opinion, offer a glimpse of composers working in film who aren't afraid to experiment and be creative. I think, in fact I know, some people have preconceived notions and predjudices about what film music and it's boundaries should or should not be, and so when film composers break out of these boundaries, I get excited.

Before I log off, here's a quote by Bernard Herrmann...

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I feel that is the responsiblity of any gifted composer of our time to to a certain amount of creative work in these media. I believe that all composers at all times have to do music of their time and meet the music that was needed. After all, Mozart and Haydn were not above writing dinner music while their patrons ate and they were not above writing music for special singers or instrumentalists, and on the other hand, Bach certainly thought nothing of writing his weekly cantata for a church service, it's only a question of the time one lives in. [In] the present time we live in, it's cinema and television as the rgeat vehicle for contemporary music, and by contemporary music I mean you have experimentation in the most avant-garde musical techniques and an audience will accept it providing it is compatible with the dramatic situation of the film.

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Originally posted by Richard:
Isn't this like saying that unless it's 'pretty' then what is the point? (by all means please correct me if I'm wrong)

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Well, yes. I’d change the word “pretty” for “beautiful” and it would apply.
I believe that composing something without trying to reach beauty doesn’t make any sense and it is not artistic. But as you indirectly mentioned, there are different beauty standards, prejudices about what film music and its boundaries should or should not be. I also like when composers break those stereotyped boundaries (as long as their breakings provide a good emotional effect, and beauty). The search of something beautiful on its widest and purest sense is fundamental. There are innumerable ways to search beauty and seek perfection, but the nature of the human being is such, that they have a preference for good things, for the truth and, beauty. Regardless of the beauty concept that people have, we all have a preference (well, there are some rare exceptions. Nihilism and nihilists deny that things are on a certain way. There are not good things nor bad things, nor beautiful nor ugly things, our life lacks of any sense and sense doesn’t really exist. If this was true we wouldn’t be motivated to be better, and it wouldn’t make any sense for me to be writing this. However, I’m writing this, because I have felt myself, that I am happier doing some things than doing others.)
So, just as I have a pure intuition that I like some things more than others, I have a pure intuition that makes me like beautiful music. The beauty standard must be universal, and we humans “dress” it differently (and commercialism tries to create a general stereotype of which things are beautiful) I think that we can’t completely know how the universal beauty is, but we can try to find it getting rid of any created stereotype, without cheating ourselves. If rather than listening to the socially accepted standards we “listen” to our deepest feelings, I think we have more chance to get closer to the real beauty.
A composer may go “random” and do musical experiments to discover what music causes which feelings. That’s great; the problem is when the final objective of the composer is to come up with “new” music trying to be “original” and “innovative” (Precisely because one of the accepted standards of the contemporary musical society is to be innovative) and they forget that innovation is just a “tool” for achieving the final purpose: beauty. When I say beautiful music, I don’t mean that scary music can’t be beautiful, or dissonances can’t be beautiful. What I mean is that if that scary music, and those dissonances create an effect on you that will make you feel and live more intensely and passionately, helping you to discover your self and to want to be better, then it will be beautiful.

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Often a work created by a composer seeking the more 'random' sound can be bursting with emotional or mental subtext, and even if it's not created with either of these reactions in mind, it frequently has the ability to stimulate them out of the listener.

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However, if the composer brings out that random music he is not sure about its effectiveness or the emotional effect produced, there can’t be a stable music production and composers could easily become mediocre justifying themselves saying that their music could cause an important emotional effect in someone else. Therefore composers have to be extremely sensitive (and that’s the musical sensitiveness that I was talking about on my previous message) in order to make sure that all their effective and beautiful creations are brought out. Film composers would be lost if there was not an specific music that created an specific effect on the audience, although every person experiences it differently, they diversely experience the same thing. So, I agree that experimentation is great and actually necessary, so composers can find new beautiful (on the strict sense of the word) elements. Nevertheless, they should try to find something beautiful, something that creates an emotional effect, and if their random music and experiments don’t work out, they shouldn’t “publish” them (or if they do, it should be for the musical study of the “ineffective” music)

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...a few weeks ago I was doing some work on the piece Ramifications by Gyorgy Ligeti. I'm quite certain that the work had no ideas behind it beyond that of technical experimentation (for those unfamiliar with the work, it's composed for 12 string players, separated into two groups with one of them tuned approx. 1/4 tone higher than the usual tuning of a string instrument). Anyhow, the physical and emotional effect it had over me was really quite extraordinary.

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There you go, so you enjoyed it, you felt something. Say a fogy atmosphere that made you feel exited. I’d tend to think that you really liked it, and you didn’t partially like it just following a stereotyped standard. So, Ligeti could be very happy now because he’s work achieved its purpose: it produced an extraordinary effect on someone. Richard experienced the beauty through Ligeti’s composition.
I haven’t had many extraordinary experiences with microtonal music, but the few extraordinary remarkable microtonal music I’ve heard, has made a terrific effect on me. Jerry Goldsmith has composed microtonal music that I’ve deeply enjoyed. I found Cliff Martinez’ score for Solaris quite exiting, and it is mostly microtonal.
However, listening to Lavista has been a boring and senseless experience.

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I'm reminded of the filmtracks.com chap who has fobbed off scores such as In the Bedroom (T.Newman), Alien3 (Goldenthal) and Sphere (Goldenthal) as just 'noise'. All three are highly effective in their respective films, and in my opinion, offer a glimpse of composers working in film who aren't afraid to experiment and be creative.

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Yes, I’ve found those scores quite original, and although they are not very melodic, they are very effective, precisely because the movie needed something less melodic. I see in a general context, two types of film music: Atmospheric music, and cantabile music. Cantabile music usually appears in the in-your-face scores, you like to sing it, it is usually tonal and thematic, and it is nice to specifically listen to this music with out doing anything else. Atmospheric music is the self-effacing scores’ type. You don’t notice it, but it drives you somewhere unseen, it secretly deepens within your feelings, and it is great for accompanying you on some activities like reading, meditation, living the magic.
When I do my bed, I like to listen to “In the bedroom”. I feel that those powerful strings dance with my sheets when I shake them, and the atmosphere is just great, the light coming trough my window, the dynamism, me breathing, and everything gets mixed with the music. However, if this sort of scores were used for a movie like Chicken run, I’m not sure if the effect produced would be the proper one, and still, the music wouldn’t stop being good, and what it’d be perhaps inappropriate would be the usage of the music.

I liked the Herrmann quote you provided. Well, as part of the dynamism of the nature, the human being changes although we keep being essentially the same. Along with the cultural perfectionist attempt, the human society develops new ways for achieving the necessities of its time. From my point of view, the current biggest necessity is authenticity and conviction. Cheatings are threatening our society, the final purpose is now confused with just a part of the vehicle that gets you there, and this fact benefits (although not authentically) the current system. Music can tremendously help to the awakening of the society

Rach.

NLt: The mysterious silence.

(The audio file contains copyrighted material and it is used only with a non-lucrative promotional purpose for all the members of the movie music community)

0:00 – 0:18 / From Remember the titans (Trevor Rabin)
0:18 – 1:12 / From Armageddon (Trevor Rabin)
1:12 – 1:36 / From Children of Dune (Brian Tyler)
1:36 – 1:51 / From Gladiator (Hans Zimmer)
1:51 – 2:06 / From LOTR The Two Towers (Howard Shore)
2:06 – 3:10 / From Black Hawk Down (Lissa Gerrad)
3:10 – 3:38 / From Plunkett and MacLeane (Craig Armstrong)
3:38 – 4:44 / From LOTR The Fellowship of the Ring (Howard Shore)

Rach

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...if the composer brings out that random music he is not sure about its effectiveness or the emotional effect produced, there can’t be a stable music production and composers could easily become mediocre justifying themselves saying that their music could cause an important emotional effect in someone else.

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Is the important word in there could?
Is this not like the composer saying "well, what does it mean to you?". A kind of 'open interpretation' if you will. I for one, rather like this idea. A composer may not write a piece thinking that they want to make the audience cry (and cry because they've been moved, not because the piece is crapanoly ), but instead, write it because they want to fool about with microtones, however, maybe outside of technical aspects of the work, they're unsure about the reaction they want to generate from the listener or maybe they're curious about the reaction that they'll generate from the listener. I'm not entirely certain about the point you were making regarding Ligeti, but what I meant was that a piece that isn't composed about or regarding something in particular that would be likely to make you feel a certain way, can affect a listener in ways beyond those intended (or not intended) by the composer.
The only problem that I think can arise from doing the opposite of this, that is the composer via program notes, etc, saying that "this piece is about______" or "I wanted to instill a sense of _______ on to the listner" is that if the listener doesn't associate those things with the piece, it may cause them to say that "this piece is not a successful" piece.

One thing I find slightly bizarre is that with serialism for instance, for me, it's hard to appreciate it on an artistic level to some degree, because so much of it is based around formulae and numbers and seems like more of a science, yet I absolutely love Schoenberg and find that his serialist music effects me strongly on a gut level, not just a cerebral one. I love the 'sound' of his work, just not the principles behind it I suppose.

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...they should try to find something beautiful, something that creates an emotional effect, and if their random music and experiments don’t work out, they shouldn’t “publish” them...

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I wouldn't even restrict this to avant-garde/experimental music. A lot of composers who are trying to acheive 'beautiful' music in the stereotypical sense are creating absolutely banal trite. If a piece doesn't work out, whatever genre it might happen to be, it shouldn't be published.

Pop over to www.sibeliusmusic.com and you'll get an idea of what I mean (even though mostly on this website, they aren't published, not beyond being self-published anyhow).

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Film composers would be lost if there was not an specific music that created an specific effect on the audience...

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Well, that might be true, but I'm of the state of mind that while they are composers working in film and there are certain 'techniques' (ie. vi - IV - I - V) that work when used well, they are still composers, and shouldn't just rely on 'tried and trusted' methods. Like I said earlier, I think most composers that use progressions such as vi - IV - V - I abuse it.

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...although they are not very melodic, they are very effective...

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Sorry for the long winded reply.

The beauty I talk about is the ultimate beauty, completely “naked”, lacking of any stereotyped influence, like a moral value. Even though someone told you that murdering is cool, you would reject such asseveration because you feel very deep inside of you that murdering is not cool, and that’s an innate value that the society didn’t have to teach you.
The only things we can blindly trust are the innate values and principles. Beauty is an innate principle, we like beauty more than ugliness. I insist, there are many different ways to see beauty, but the real beauty is always the same. (Maybe all this I’m saying is too confusing, my English has to improve) A supermodel could be less beautiful than an apparently ugly woman if different standards were used. So, we can’t be very tough with beauty standards, because when the universal is taken to the particular, it gets very ambiguous as you said. However, we have to be very careful to avoid cheatings and fake standards, and listen to our genuine taste.

For me beautiful music doesn’t have to be melodic; beautiful music has to be beautiful. Beauty can only be defined on itself, and it has to be experienced. Composers can come up with beautiful music without trying to do so, but then it would be a coincidence to find beautiful music. If composers really tried to do compose beautifully, they would have more probability to do it. Imagine how disastrous it would be if nobody in the world had an objective.

Composers can avoid the “tried and trusted” methods, and be very innovative, and come up with more beautiful music than the very “tried and trusted”. But the thing about being innovative is that you want something better, and not something worse than what you had before. Being innovative has a purpose. And when composers search innovation just because they want to satisfy a partial and deceitful “instinct” that is the acceptance of their work because it is innovative (that is the current tendency) and they forget about the genuine quality needed.
So, I say, innovation, non-melodic, melodic, tonal, microtonal, atonal, modal, adaptation of the “tried and trusted”; are just vehicles for getting to a place called perfection, beauty. (The maximum and ultimate beauty is perfect)

Well, I think that I agree with you in almost everything, the only point that varies is that you say (from what I’ve understood) that composers don’t necessarily have to compose trying to create a particular effect or that they don’t need to search beauty in order to compose beautifully. I agree they can come up with something beautiful by chance, but it is my opinion that they should search beauty and they should be perfectionists (even though they weren’t rationally aware of that) rather than searching the contemporary stereotyped acceptance. (And with this, I don’t mean that you say that they should search the contemporary stereotyped acceptance, but that you consider that it’s okay if they start composing without any goal or intention… am I right?) I think that if the movie requires romantic music, they don’t necessarily have to use the “tried and trusted” techniques, and they may experiment with many different techniques, however, they have to remember that they have to achieve romantic music, and in any case, talented composers can use the “tried and trusted” progressions, adding their “condiments”, orchestrations and style, achieving something quite original despite of the pre-used elements, as long as they don’t abuse them.

Rach.

P.S. Do you mean Solaris isn’t microtonal in parts? I don’t have the solaris soundtrack CD, but I remember when I watched the movie and listened to the soundtrack, I said to myself: this is microtonal, but probably it was just a bit of harmonic dissonances. I’ll check that out.
Interesting comments you’ve made… have got me thinking

Regarding 'Solaris', I think it is microtonal, I just never noticed before. Now that you've mentioned it, I'm pretty sure I can hear it. If it's not then the string players have really poor intonation.

NP: 100%ScoreHitMachineVolume1 (Various)

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Originally posted by Richard:
If it's not (microtonal) then the string players have really poor intonation.

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Originally posted by rachmaninov:
The beauty I talk about is the ultimate beauty, completely “naked”, lacking of any stereotyped influence, like a moral value. Even though someone told you that murdering is cool, you would reject such asseveration because you feel very deep inside of you that murdering is not cool, and that’s an innate value that the society didn’t have to teach you.

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That's not true, actually. There are some cultures in existence on this planet that find murder acceptable. Most sociologists would tend to tell you that there are no innate values, that all values and ideas come through either social conditioning or genetic evolution.

While I would like to believe in the existence of an "ultimate beauty," I do not think it can exist.

A teacher of mine last year told us about a friend of hers studying a "primitive" culture in Africa. The people of the tribe she was with were curious about her life back home, so she had a relative send some home movies down to her to show them. But after they watched the movies, she was surprised to find that they couldn't see anything on the screen. They had never been exposed to anything remotely like a movie, and couldn't figure out how to see what we would see as plain as day. So she began taking photographs of different members of the tribe and had to actually teach them to see people in the two-dimensional flat images.

Similar things have happened with music. It has apparently been found that people from other pre-industrial societies who have lived with only simple drum beats as music for generations upon generations have difficulty hearing orchestral music as anything except noise, no matter how simple and straight-froward the melody is. They simply aren't used to hearing anything like it.

This is an extremely long-winded way of saying this, but my point is that I think beauty is very subjective to sociological conditioning, so subjective that no "ultimate" beauty is possible in art.

Ultimate beauty, then, could exist only as a purely emotional experience. An artist could not create an artwork---be it music, painting, sculpture, whatever---that would be considered universally beautiful. The artist would have to find someway to create an actual emotion that could be experienced completely independently of any physical stimulus whatsoever. This, of course, is not possible (not yet, anyway).

And Rach, I also believe that there are many artists who create art purely out of intuition. In this way, they can indeed set about creating a piece of music without any specific (or even vague) goal in mind. No work of art is complete until it is experienced by an audience, and since it is the individual viewer/listerner/etc who finally interprets the piece when they experience it, no artist can ever really be aware of the final effect or purpose of their art. (And by the same token, most pieces of art will have many, many different effects and purposes.)

Thanks for your comments James. I completely agree that there are some cultures that find murdering acceptable, and western cultures are somehow (from my point of view) among those cultures. The western “law” prohibits murdering, however in a social context, people give more importance to their comfort zone than to the endurance of life and love (Don’t you think that we are born with the capacity to love, so we just have to enhance that capacity?). There are many people who actually enjoy harming other people. There are people who use war as an economical helper without really considering the effects caused by war. There are people who hate. But all this doesn’t mean that those things are just the way they should be. (If what you say is that there’s not a way things should be, then everything gets tougher, I think that if there wasn’t a way things should be, we would not be able to try to understand each other, universal principles wouldn’t exist, and nothing would actually exist. As I said before, the nihilist doctrine, has existed for many years, and it is just impossible to improve within such a doctrine that says that improvement doesn’t exist; and people generally rather improvement than mediocrity)
If we have integrated those values that come with genetic evolution, is because there’s an innate architecture in ourselves that allows us to successfully integrate those values. That 5=5 is true everywhere, there are universal principles that rule the universe through more particular principles as the gravitational principles. The way to see those principles varies a lot, and human beings usually cheat themselves when seeing those principles because we many times do things without conviction, just following misleading instincts and stereotypes. So, I firmly believe we are born with innate values, and that what the society does is modify those values.

I think that the same happens with beauty. There’s an ultimate beauty and circumstantial factors modify it, hence the way people find beauty is very different from one culture to another. There’s an experiment where psychologists put speakers close to some plants, and then they play heavy metal. Plants move their stems away from the speakers. When they played an oboe concerto by J.S. Bach, plants got closer to the speakers. With this, I’m not saying that heavy metal is inherently unbeautiful (although I don’t personally like it) but it’s interesting to see “what the plants say” because their taste is natural and authentic, they don’t want to follow social stereotypes as mankind. I think tat it’s impossible to say how to compose beautiful music, but at least composers should really try to find beauty without cheating themselves, because if you cheat your self and say “many people like music with drums, so that has to be beautiful, and that’s the way I’m going to compose) you’re being commercial and cheating yourself, instead of trying to really achieve Beautiful music that reaches the deepest part of the listener, and makes him experience the beauty. Or perhaps you compose something that it’s similar to what someone else has composed before, and maybe you don’t bring it out because you want to show that you are original, you would be following to an stereotype instead of really getting closer to beauty.
I fully agree that:

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Posted by: James Ultimate beauty, then, could exist only as a purely emotional experience. An artist could not create an artwork---be it music, painting, sculpture, whatever---that would be considered universally beautiful. The artist would have to find someway to create an actual emotion that could be experienced completely independently of any physical stimulus whatsoever. This, of course, is not possible (not yet, anyway).

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Rach

I'm not saying that there's not a way things should be, but that perhaps (I wouldn't stake my life on this idea, by the way) that there is no intrinsic way things should be. Those values are social constructs. They may have been firmly engrained into society eons ago, but they are social constructs nonetheless.

I don't think this is necessarily a nihilist doctrine. (I don't think nihilism holds any water. It's quite literally a dead end, and you might as well kill yourself.) This is a point I neglected to make in my first post, and perhaps I should make it clear here. I don't think that a value being social rather than innate necessarily makes it less valuable. Indeed, even if values are socially constructed, it is still natural (perhaps even "innate") for human beings to construct those values, and if those values are legitimate within your society, then you should hold them dear by all means.

It also seems to me (I don't know what "professionals" say about this point) that evolutionist principles would dictate that seeking improvement is indeed innate. The entire concept of evolution, as I see it, rests on the idea that lifeforms have an innate need (though in plants and animals not a conscious desire) to better themselves according to their surroundings. Perhaps (and this idea is just coming to me as I write it, so I haven't given it much thought) because humans now have the ability to alter their surroundings to suit themselves, we are looking for other outlets to fulfill that need for self-improvement. That certainly leaves room for your search for ultimate beauty, doesn't it? Although I still think ultimate beauty is as unattainable as the answers to all our questions here.

Interesting discussion. The deeper we dig, the more questions we have. That's how it always goes, I guess.

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Originally posted by rachmaninov:
(Don’t you think that we are born with the capacity to love, so we just have to enhance that capacity?).

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I wanted to address this question specifically, but I forgot to in my previous post.

I do think that we are born with the capacity to feel love (the noun) but not with the capacity to love (the verb). This is getting into sociological research that I've only recently begun to get into (i.e., I probably don't know what I'm talking about) but the ability to express love is a learned behavior. It's something most people learn very, very early in life through the love that others express towards us. This is where the "I wasn't held enough as a child" concept comes in. A person who wasn't loved enough as a child has trouble knowing how to love as an adult, because they don't have an adequate concept of what love is.

(These are only theories, of course, and not everyone subscribes to them.)

So, to go back to your original question.... I think we are born with a capacity to feel love (the noun), and a capacity to learn to love (the verb).

I think of values as universal principles that determine the way things are, that’s why I believe that there are intrinsic values that maybe can’t be understood and can only be felt.
The other values we are used to hear like “bravery” or “honesty” are the values you say that can’t be intrinsic, and I agree, they have been socially built since the beginnings of humanity, but they’ve been built because human beings follow the innate authentic value that motivates them to be better, and to be good. So, I believe that bravery and honesty and those values do exist intrinsically, but not the way we know them. The way we think of them is very influenced by the cultural elements that surround us. And although the way we think of them differently than how they really are, we can think of them because they intrinsically exist, and the way we see them is what isn’t intrinsic. It is like reality. Right now you are looking at the screen, and you are having a perception of something that exists intrinsically, but the perception of the screen is not necessarily the very image of the screen. If I looked at your screen, I would maybe look at it differently than you, and if my dog saw it, it would even be more differently perceived. If we all had been taught that James’ screen is flat, nice, stylish, and fancy then we would tend to perceive it on that way. That’s why it is important to think about the “values” that society has taught us, not trying to violate them or fight against them, but trying to improve them, to be more convinced about them, and to make them better, just as we want to be better, and we want everything else to be better. And we have to be very careful when analyzing those values, because if were too tempted to see things on a certain way, then we wouldn’t be getting closer to perfection and we’d be cheating ourselves. Oh, and it seems like an overwhelming task, how tough it is to define beauty! However, searching to be more genuinely convinced about something gives us a fulfilled life with sense and conviction, which turns out to be authentic happiness after all.
All this is my point of view of chores.

About love, I agree with you. We are born with the capacity to feel love, and we have to learn to love. (This will sound too affected *in the society where I leave at least* but I’ll say it anyways…) I think that it is a responsibility for all people who “know” how to love (genuinely of chores) to love the others, so they can “teach” others with their example. When you try to extinguish a fire, you don’t add more fire, and you add water or something else instead. Likewise, the best way to “extinguish” violence is with non-violence. The best way to “extinguish” hate is with love.

You guys have made of this thread something quite interesting.
Interesting how I started talking about a thematic progression and the topic has now turned into something ethical/moral/aesthetical/philosophical. Great!

Rach