Robert Peters wrote:

>I do and I am at least one listener.  I don't read a Henry James novel
>without thinking of the historical gap between him and me - it would
>be intellectual nonsense to do so since you are are missing on a very
>important layer of meaning.

And yet we read or watch plays by the ancient Greek dramatists, like
Euripides' *Trojan Women*, Sophocles' *Oedipus* trilogy, or Aristophanes'
*Lysistrata* because what those dramatists had to say about the
universality of the human thoughts, reactions and emotions, have the same
validity today as when these works were written over two thousand years
ago.  I, for one, do not think of any historical gap between the authors
and me when reading or attending their plays but rather of how similar
their views of the world were to mine today.

>I think to listen to Bach without giving credit to the fact that we listen
>to a musical testimony of the past is a strange thing to do.

Can you explain why you would not be able to listen to Mozart's g minor
quintet (K516) "without giving credit to the fact that we listen to a
musical testimony of the past", assuming that you, like me, consider the
work a sublime masterpiece?

Walter Meyer