Steven Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> writes of Herrmann's music:

>You ought to hear the Sinfonietta, on which the Psycho music was based.
>That's a wonderful concert piece, according to me.

I have done.  I quite agree, it does work - on record.  So does the
"Psycho" music, because Herrmann was a fine professional.  My point was
that it clearly didn't work in the concert hall the other night, and I
don't think the performance was to blame.

On the Star Wars March:

>Oh, come now.  No technical competence? John Williams knows more about
>the craft of composing than just about anyone.  I'm convinced *that's*
>his trouble.

No argument, he does know plenty about the craft of composing for film
soundtracks.  But if you're feeling strong, do listen to the 'B' section of
the Star Wars March again (which is what I was specifically talking about)
and then defend the indefensible if you will.

>To paraphrase Eliot: minor composers borrow; major composers steal.

And bad composers paraphrase.

>It ultimately doesn't matter where a composer got his materials.  If it
>did, surely Handel could be written off as easily as Williams.

Hardly.  Thanks to the hard work of many composers and writers down the
years, we now live in an age where legal constraints mean that it does
matter where he got them from.

In any case, time and again Handel imaginatively transforms his 'stolen'
material, much of which was Common Parlance to begin with.  Where is the
imaginative transformation in the Phantom Menace music, and where the
Common Parlance?

>...this criticism is irrelevant and so dismissive that I doubt many
>who carp like this could listen to a Williams score as anything but a
>compendium - that is, could never hear it for itself.

As I said, I thoroughly enjoyed it, so your criticism of what I said
is beside the point.  My 'carping' concerns the morality in earning
vast amounts of money through wholesale degradation of other people's
imaginative work - Holst's "Neptune" and VW's "Sinfonia Antartica", say,
in the scoring, harmonies and rhythm of the underwater sections of the
film.

You don't have to be Beckmesser to hold that being dismissive of bad art
is sometimes a pleasant duty.  I don't listen slate in hand, anyway.

>What has conscience to do with the enjoyment of music?

Nothing. It does have something to do with composing it.

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