Satoshi Akima writes in reply to me:

>>Mercifully, we are at length moving beyond the worn-out,
>>romantic concept of The Spiritual in music.
>
>So we clever moderns are to replace this with the Soulless, the Mechanical
>- or worse still the superficially Delightful.

You misunderstand me.  We clever moderns have not moved beyond the
spiritual - how could we? - merely beyond the 19th century German Romantic
concept of it that you praise so fervently in your reply.  If you can't
grasp the spirituality in the operas and semi-operas of Handel, Purcell
(or even Philip Glass) that, I fear, is your loss.

And if the "superficially delightful" Rameau and Purcell are to be pushed
into the side aisles of your peculiarly dis-spiriting Spiritual Church,
I'm afraid that church itself is too confined.

By the way, you misrepresent the great arch-pragmatist Wagner, who after
long and largely academic toils with the serpentine concept of the Total
Art Work ended up writing proper operas - call them what you will - such as
'The Twilight of the Gods' and 'Parsifal', filled with "delightful" duets,
trios, ensembles, choruses and arias quite within spitting distance of the
equally "delightful" stuff Signor Verdi put into his 'Falstaff' and
'Otello'.

When it comes to these wonderful, late masterworks, something tells me you
may prefer the Sacred Music Drama of the Holy Fool to the Secular Opera of
the Fat Knight, but that's no reason to denigrate the wisdom, humanity and
musical beauty of the Italian's radiant, sunset vision.

The one truly complements the other, and it is folly of Falstaffian
proportions to lightly dismiss the spirituality of either.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"