Jocelyn Wang wrote:

>Robert Peters <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>
>>Walter Meyer wrote:
>
>>>Finally, assume that Mozart, born in 1956, were to exhibit the same
>>>precocity, and compose the same works that he had actually composed two
>>>hundred years earlier.
>>
>>You mean exactly the same works, note for note? The critics would call
>>them old-fashioned stuff and right they would be.
>
>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!)

>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.
Let the critics do their work! They are no popes who send out dogmas.

Robert