I heard Roger Scruton on the radio last week saying that The Beatles were better than Led Zeppelin, not in his opinion but as an objective fact. He didn’t offer any evidence or argument in support of his contention although I’m sure he would have tried if given the chance.
I would normally take the opposite view to Prof. Scruton, even to the extent of altering my own view to avoid the match up if necessary. On this occasion, I daresay he was right. My opinion is probably the same as his except his didn’t appear to be an opinion.
Then I read in my Opera Handbook that the aria Stizzoso, mio stizzoso in Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, is ‘irresistible’, another judgement that I concur with as I recently discovered it and found to be so for me. But I have my doubts if it is ‘irresistible’ to everyone. All of opera is readily resistible to many.
And so in a short space of time I found two authorities, somewhat self-appointed though they may be, apparently so secure in their aesthetic judgements as to make them objectively true. Taste or personal preference doesn’t come into it for them.
This would be of interest at all times when evaluation and comparison is the desired ultimate stage of criticism. Although it is perfectly satisfactory to enjoy a work on its own terms and conclude that is was worthwhile, it is often not long before we start comparing it with other similar things. However, it is of increased interest to me as I compile my Top 100 pop songs, trying to think as long and hard as possible about them to finally get it right, and the shortlist approaches number 80, and I’m well aware than none of my 100 would appear on many other people’s list and of the 7 billion people in the world it is unlikely that any of them would concur with more than half of them as Top 100 choices.
There is the premise that surely Donne is a finer poet than, say, Colley Cibber or Nahum Tate and so if we can make an obvious judgement like that then it is theoretically possible to ultimately decide if Larkin is better than Auden or Tennyson than Browning and eventually put everyone in their correct position.
Of course we know that this isn’t going to happen.
Sometimes it depends on context and on some occasions The Birdy Song is more appropriate than a symphony by Tchaikovsky although in most analyses, the Tchaikovsky is likely to be considered the finer piece of music. Seriousness would appear to be a positive quality in attributing greatness but already we are in danger of setting up rules that we are going to need to break because if Ulysses is to be given its usual high place among novels it won’t be long before someone points out that it is essentially a comic work.
And so, although some of us at least would like to think that there is a hidden secret, too well hidden to know in the last analysis, about what is better than what else, perhaps we remain interested because we can’t know and our enquiry is never going to be answered. And it comes as a relief to me that I don’t have to adjust my relative opinion of The Beatles and Led Zeppelin in order to dissociate myself from Roger Scruton because I can refute his premise – or indeed his lack of premise- rather than reject his conclusion.