musicianiship--when is it bad or good ?

I believe Duke Ellington said there are two types of music good and bad. I dont believe music,art or literatrue is suggestive at all. There is bad and good we just have to wean it out, their are those with bad taste in music and art.

Mrtennis,

What difference does it make tu for JC sake?

There is a performance of Bach's Musical Offering that was put together with famous names,and it sounds like they rehearsed it once and then recorded it.

For me,musicianship improves the more the ensemble is together.

Sure!

Good musicianship is not a matter of opinion, nor is great performance. Musicians will generally agree when a piece is well or badly played.

perhaps, what i was really asking about was artistry not musicianship. but the context was for solo performances, or for a conductor.

if an artist deliberately takes liberties, including wrong notes, tempos, plays sharp or flat, some professional musicians might consider such a performance an example of poor musicianship. yet, the performing artist may disagree.

the standards alluded to above, proably accepted by "professional" musicians are just that. there may be some musicians who disagree with what are commonly accepted standards.

i am trying to get to a more universal, philosophical question, namely, the idea of quality. i believe that all instances of judgements of quality are purely subjective and therefore opinion. even if standards can be established and are accepted by experts, another set of standards could also be established by a minority, which, are just as valid.

why am i harping on this subject ??

it seems that many of the threads and posts on audiogon are directly or indirectly related to the idea of excellence of sound, music, etc. .

people have very strong convictions about sound quality and music. i feel that one should be more open minded about quality and not be critical of others or dismissive of products which are considered to be of poor quality because they are not up to someone's standards of what quality is.

in the world of the quantitative, it is logical to deduce quality, but in a world in which value judgements are made without any logic, but rather based upon standards which are determined by consensus, notions of quality are basically opinions, albeit, intelligent and eductaed opinions.

in the interests of communication it might be advised to describe a performance, sound etc., and let the reader decide whether it is "bad" or "good".