Denis Fodor:

>Yeah, so it goes.  If the restaurant trope won't work for you, then let's
>substitute for it that of nuclear physics.  In order to get to know it, one
>must first absolve the canon--unlike in music (?).

Absolve? Do you mean absorb?

>But like music, and we have the testimony of several postings to
>substantiate this, there are persons who get great pleasure out of
>living at the cutting edge of a discipline that otherwise only appalls
>or bewilders folks.

I have no problems with the pleasures of the cutting edge of (academic)
disciplines, but I am not at all clear about what you are claiming here.
As I said in a private post to you at the beginning of this discussion,
musicology is a discipline; musicianship requires discipline; but the
appreciation of classical music is not a discipline.  Your original claim,
if I have it right, is that someone who knows only the sorts of non-canonic
works I've mentioned is into their own thing but not into classical music.
What I would like is for you to give up that untenable claim.  In exchange
I will be glad to acknowledge the greatness--and pleasures--of most of what
you consider a musical canon.  How is that for a deal?

Jim Tobin