Steve Schwartz wrote:

>... intention is pretty much beside the real point of how we listen
>and evaluate.

I really have no business butting in here since I haven't followed this (or
any other) thread lately, but I did post once or twice in the early stages
of it.  Who'd have thought it would go on this long? Anyway...I agree with
the above statement (as would Monroe Beardsley, from whose book I learnt
how to think about aesthetics).  The pianist Bill Doppman, when he was a
professor at Iowa in the 60s, once was going to play the Schubert B-flat
(Op. Post.) sonata, which as you know has a rather long first movement.
He previewed it for Eldon Obrecht's music appreciation class (I was
Obrecht's graduate assistant then), and Eldon asked him if he were going
to take the repeat of the exposition.  His answer was instructive: He
didn't know whether he would or not until he had played the exposition,
and then he would decide based on his experience of his own playing at
that performance!  He wasn't talking about having the opportunity to right
old wrongs, or to get a second chance, of course.  The internals of his
exposition would be the determining factor.  If he thought he could the
piece across better by taking the repeat, he would do so.  The instructive
thing about it is that he DID NOT KNOW IN ADVANCE and hence there was no a
priori reason to repeat or not.  He treated the music as a living organism
not as a museum artifact.

Chris Bonds