I have to come at this from more of a literature perspective, because music isn't my passion.
Take H.P. Lovecraft.
Lots of people write him off because he was published in pulp magazines, because of the content he wrote, because of his florid language, etc. But the man is a nexus. He distilled all of the creepy, horrific, and cosmically stunning things that came before him (he was incredibly intelligent and deeply self-educated) in science and literature into stories that continue to influence sci-fi and horror authors today. "The Rats in the Walls" is, at its heart, nearly a rip-off of "The House of Usher", yet completely transcends it in creep value. "The Dunwhich Horror" is practically a rip-off of Machen's "The Great God Pan," but manages to take the elements one step further. The man affected our perceptions of ghouls and cosmic horror for generations to come, yet often gets dumbed down to "that guy with the tentacle stories" because of Cthulhu, and only treated by followers as a pioneer in the burgeoning field of science fiction, and a linchpin for horror. "The Call of Cthulhu" is a well-crafted Russian nesting doll of individual stories leading from personal terror to ultimate horror at the insignificance of humanity against an alien being so incomprehensible it turns men mad. There are people who would say he couldn't possibly compare to Poe, yet even though he copies him to an extent, he makes it his own and made it accessible to other people, spawning stories and movies and music that Poe never did. I'm sure people could argue that he 'cheapened' the themes he borrowed from Dunsany and Poe, but I don't think so. I think he just reframed them for the modern world, which was all of a sudden larger and at once more disenfranchised after WWI. To me this makes him infinitely more valuable than most other horror writers.
So what then makes high art? Stuff that's been around for centuries? Stuff that's been imitated by others? Stuff that builds on certain principles and speaks to the human condition? Stuff that follows a strict set of rules?
Take H.P. Lovecraft.
Lots of people write him off because he was published in pulp magazines, because of the content he wrote, because of his florid language, etc. But the man is a nexus. He distilled all of the creepy, horrific, and cosmically stunning things that came before him (he was incredibly intelligent and deeply self-educated) in science and literature into stories that continue to influence sci-fi and horror authors today. "The Rats in the Walls" is, at its heart, nearly a rip-off of "The House of Usher", yet completely transcends it in creep value. "The Dunwhich Horror" is practically a rip-off of Machen's "The Great God Pan," but manages to take the elements one step further. The man affected our perceptions of ghouls and cosmic horror for generations to come, yet often gets dumbed down to "that guy with the tentacle stories" because of Cthulhu, and only treated by followers as a pioneer in the burgeoning field of science fiction, and a linchpin for horror. "The Call of Cthulhu" is a well-crafted Russian nesting doll of individual stories leading from personal terror to ultimate horror at the insignificance of humanity against an alien being so incomprehensible it turns men mad. There are people who would say he couldn't possibly compare to Poe, yet even though he copies him to an extent, he makes it his own and made it accessible to other people, spawning stories and movies and music that Poe never did. I'm sure people could argue that he 'cheapened' the themes he borrowed from Dunsany and Poe, but I don't think so. I think he just reframed them for the modern world, which was all of a sudden larger and at once more disenfranchised after WWI. To me this makes him infinitely more valuable than most other horror writers.
So what then makes high art? Stuff that's been around for centuries? Stuff that's been imitated by others? Stuff that builds on certain principles and speaks to the human condition? Stuff that follows a strict set of rules?
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