"If I think something is beautiful, there must be somebody out there who will agree with me"
About this Quote
A composer facing a skeptical audience needs a reason to keep writing. William Kraft, the American percussionist, timpanist, and composer who helped shape Los Angeles new music across the late 20th century, found his reason in a simple wager: trust that a sincere perception of beauty will resonate with someone. The claim sidesteps grand pronouncements about universal taste and instead affirms a modest, human-scale hope. Beauty does not require consensus; it requires encounter.
That stance fits the world Kraft inhabited. He championed unconventional timbres and forms, elevating percussion from the back row to the foreground, and led ensembles that introduced adventurous works to listeners who were not always ready for them. Amid the polemics of postwar modernism, when the very idea of beauty was contested, he leaned on an ethic of authenticity. If a sound moved him, he would craft it with care and put it before the public, confident that somewhere a listener would feel the same pulse.
Philosophically, the line nudges Kant’s idea of aesthetic judgment toward a pragmatic pluralism. Instead of saying everyone should agree, it says somebody might. That small shift carries large consequences for creative practice. It frees artists from pandering to imagined majorities and from the paralysis of perfectionism. It recasts audience-building as the gradual work of finding affinities rather than conquering markets. And it offers listeners permission to trust their ears, even when their taste diverges from prevailing fashions.
The remark also acknowledges risk. To claim beauty is to risk solitude. Kraft’s answer is courage scaled to one person at a time: make the work, send it out, and let recognition accumulate. In that process, art does more than express a private feeling; it creates communities of attention. The first person to agree becomes proof that the perception was not merely idiosyncratic. From there, the circle can widen, but it only begins when a creator dares to say, I think this is beautiful.
That stance fits the world Kraft inhabited. He championed unconventional timbres and forms, elevating percussion from the back row to the foreground, and led ensembles that introduced adventurous works to listeners who were not always ready for them. Amid the polemics of postwar modernism, when the very idea of beauty was contested, he leaned on an ethic of authenticity. If a sound moved him, he would craft it with care and put it before the public, confident that somewhere a listener would feel the same pulse.
Philosophically, the line nudges Kant’s idea of aesthetic judgment toward a pragmatic pluralism. Instead of saying everyone should agree, it says somebody might. That small shift carries large consequences for creative practice. It frees artists from pandering to imagined majorities and from the paralysis of perfectionism. It recasts audience-building as the gradual work of finding affinities rather than conquering markets. And it offers listeners permission to trust their ears, even when their taste diverges from prevailing fashions.
The remark also acknowledges risk. To claim beauty is to risk solitude. Kraft’s answer is courage scaled to one person at a time: make the work, send it out, and let recognition accumulate. In that process, art does more than express a private feeling; it creates communities of attention. The first person to agree becomes proof that the perception was not merely idiosyncratic. From there, the circle can widen, but it only begins when a creator dares to say, I think this is beautiful.
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| Topic | Art |
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