John Smyth:

>There might be something to all this vanity stuff.  I read in a book
>about Romanticism that the disappearance of God from culture, (because
>of the rise of the philosophy of materialism, Newtonian physics, etc.),
>created a need for "supermen," seemingly super human people who could
>do the impossible and the miraculous, to replace God.  Super virtuosos
>fit the bill, and of course one has to be a little vain to be god-like,
>not to mention the music some wrote for themselves.

Actually, there's a difference between attitudes toward music and
musicians, and music and musicians themselves.

>Are not cadenzas complete vanity?

No, they're not.  They're entertainment, a rhetorical strategy in the
course of a movement, and perhaps several other things besides.  Beethoven
and Mozart wrote cadenzas, after all.  According to at least one poster,
Beethoven, who wrote cadenzas, was not vain and arrogant -- although I
myself would say that Beethoven was at least proud.  The *fact* of the
inclusion of a cadenza has no psychological meaning at all.  The cadenza
itself may.

Steve Schwartz