I don't understand why he is so morose. I could understand if it had been revealed that Chopin was actually a computer. Being upset about this seems akin to being upset that the world's fastest sprinter can be equaled or bettered by a motor car. Surely what makes the music so great is that it is a product of human ability.
That's what makes the musician great, but it doesn't make the music any better. Usain Bolt is very impressive but I'm not going to rely on him to carry me to the supermarket.
I agree but personally I view art in the sense that it is an intermediary between the artist and the audience, a symbolic representation of the true value of it: the semantics of the piece and how the artist chose to express themselves and not the physical manifestation itself. In a vacuum I don't think artworks are special. They are after all just noise or shapes and colors.
(Apologies if this sounds very pretentious but I couldn't figure out how to say it any other way :) )
Edit: This view was cemented for me when I read the book 'The Power of Art' by Simon Schama. After I read the book I realised that what made most of the great paintings great was the context in which they were created. The fact that some of them are aesthetically attractive or required consummate skill to create is besides the point. Their value comes from the messages in the paintings. For example there was a time painting divine biblical characters with dirty feet was seen as humanizing them, blasphemy. Something which I would never have noticed about the painting if it hadn't been pointed out. And even then I would not have deduced its significance which was that it supported a deeply subversive movement of religious reform.
That being said, traveling forward 400 years or so. The music of Gordon Sumner, AKA Sting is self professed 'doodling' yet it can probably evoke a stronger emotional response than arguably more significant works.
So I retract my previous position and now I don't know where I am :/
