RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

transposed sense of the popular adage ”like musical Ufe - like public taste”, T o avoid falling into a perpetuim mobile circle in the search for cause and effect, and crushing further dehberation against the millstone of its unceasing turnings, we may accept with ease (and without going into апу specific demonstration) that the musical Ufe of a milieu is the cause, and the public taste of that milieu the effect, which also automatically affirms the existence of a dialectical relationship in their interaction. Ву its very nature public taste is a process and as such it can never be in a state of quiescence. I ts natural state is evinced in unceasing change and formation of its quaUty. The quaUty of public taste is shaped by events in musical Ufe and is marked by the state in musical life, which inexorably provokes constant restiveness in musical life. This is convincing evidence that the quaUty of public taste is unstable, labile. Accordingly, public taste can never have an ossified, unchanging, enduring quality. This leads us further to the conclusion that public taste of a given quality can never be used as an epithetical concept to designate the typical features of say a social system, social milieu or some sector, as its enduring qualification, but only as a qualification typically expressed at a particular moment Put more simply: what was typical of yesterday, is not typical of today, and what is typical of today is not typical of tomorrow. With a little effortwe could easily reach the conclusion in our thinking that there is no typical public taste, for if there were musicaT life would eternally be atoning for the sins of the forefathers. There is only public taste typical of a given moment If all that has been said is accepted, the next step in our deliberations may be relieved of the need for апу specific demonstration of facts, for it involves reiteration by analogy of what has already been said. Consequently withoutfear of еггог, we шау develop our subsequent premises from the following observations: 1. The typical features of public taste define the entity of the public taste of a given milieu at a given time;