Robert Peters <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>Jocelyn Wang wrote:
>
>>Great music is great music, regardless of when it was written.
>
>No, this is not true.  Mozart's music would be good music regardless of
>its date of composition.  But great music is music that convincingly sums
>up an epoch's feelings and convictions, psychological truths and emotional
>values.  Mozart's music did this in a breathtaking way.  But it can't do
>this for the totally different times we live in.  It would be like a
>strange UFO from another galaxy, alien and weird.  (And I still love the
>guy!)

I'll disagree with you forever on this one.  What truth related to his era
did Mozart sum up in, for example, the Jupiter Symphony?

The truths that great music expresses are universal ones that have little
or nothing to do with when a piece was written.  I don't think, "Ah, how
utterly relevant to its epoch, the early 1800s" when I listen to Beethoven,
and I doubt if any or many listeners do.

>>Whenever critics adopt such a self-inflated role, I cannot help but think
>>of the eunuch analogy.  All the critics combined have not contributed to
>>music as much as even a single, semi-talented composer.
>
>Go on with your critics-bashing if you like it. But you cannot escape
>the fact that you yourself become a critic by saying things like this.

As does anyone in such a discussion.  But I am under no illusion that,
in doing so, I am making anywhere near as much a contribution to music
as those who compose it.

>Let the critics do their work!

I wouldn't stop them.

>They are no popes who send out dogmas.

That doesn't keep them from trying.

Jocelyn Wang
Culver Chamber Music Series