Wes Crone wrote:

>On the other side you have composers like Mr.X, (unnamed) who write lovely
>melodies and cute, childish piano pieces......fun for the whole family.
>Blah!  I am probably creating the wrong impression here but that's ok.  Mr.
>X writes music that appeals instantly to the ear and displays a certain
>knack for "broken-record" V7-I, V7-I etc.  I have nothing against excessive
>dominant to tonic chord progressions but sometimes they're used with rotten
>taste......

CUTE CHILDISH PIANO PIECES????? Wes, I'm amazed.  First of all, I thought
you were the one who was going to get famous because you write music that
people like.  (Fun for the whole family).  Then you wrote some intelligent
posts, and best of all, eliminated those damn ellipses.  But this
gratuitous insult of Mozart, well, I'm amazed.  Haven't you ever listened
to his string quartets, the clarinet concerto, did you know Mozart wrote
opera?

Pretty melodies...I am truly amazed that anyone who likes CM could put
down Mozart like that.  They weren't pretty melodies, Wes, they are the
most beautiful and perfect melodies ever written by anybody.  As much
as I like Bach, let's face it, melody is not his big point.  Harmony and
texture, yes, counterpoint, great, the greatest, but melody? And what is
melody, anyway, but the most basic of musical beauty, song, voice, shape,
phrase, what we sing.  As much as I am impressed by Bach's ability to write
fugues and complex counterpoint, it doesn't move me like a simple melody,
like some of the haunting, perfect melodies of some of Mozart's "childish"
piano concertos, the heavenly delicacy of the flute/harp concerto, the
robustness of the Hunt quartet, just to name a few.

We disagree on this one, Wes.  I like Bach a lot, and I admire his output,
but for me Mozart *is* classical music and is the greatest composer in
history and his music is as close to absolute perfection as humankind has
ever approached.

Dave Runnion
www.serafinotrio.com