Don Satz:

>...Liszt and Tchaikovsky.  Their music is loaded with over-wrought
>passages of indulgent emotionalism ...
>
>Fortunately, there are over-emotional classical music lovers who eat up
>this type of music.  No matter what type of music, one can usually find
>an appropriate person to match it up with.  To some degree, you are what
>you listen to.

Passages in Tchaikowsky's Fifth Symphony could be described as "frenzied."
When I was fifteen, and sometimes felt frenzied myself, I felt that this
expressed my feelings.  When I "grew up" and heard Tchaikowsky and his
music described as "musically adolescent," I agreed and stopped listening
to this work (and quite a few others by late romantic composers.) Later it
became something like a secret vice, embarrassing to indulge when anyone
could overhear, and definitely not "cool." The fact that this work has some
of the most ravishing solos for horn and clarinet and bassoon ever written,
not to mention its melodic appeal, made it impossible to give up, though,
and provided a kind of "justification." What I think now, in late middle
age, is that: yes, there are "frenzied" passages; that if presenting
expressions of feeling or emotional states is one of the functions, or
realities, of some music, and if frenzy is one kind of emotional state,
then it is to be expected that this be included within the full range
of musical expression.  Also, a listener can hear--in a detached
way--expressions of feeling as an element of music without necessarily
sharing or feeling that kind of emotion him/herself, just as, in fact, a
composer might write expressions of feeling that he/she was not necessarily
experiencing at the time, but which had been experienced or observed in
others at another time.  Thus, finally, individuals or whole audiences can
listen to works like this without embarrassment.

Jim Tobin