Jon Gallant (and Dr. Phage) wrote:

>As Steve asks: "Does the Beethoven Fifth Symphony, for
>example, become less good as you know it better?" That is as good a test
>case as there is.  The first movement of the Fifth ALWAYS shakes me by
>the throat, the millionth time almost as much as the first.  I don't
>understand how it works.  If I did, I would program a computer to write
>music with that characteristic, whatever it is.

However it works, Mahler's songs have "IT" as well- at least for me.
But all great music does.  My theory is that the great composers from
Monteverdi on, have known about a rare herb, whose dried seeds, when
sprinkled over a manuscript, endow the work with "IT".

As for computers, I fear that it is only a matter of time before a digital
version of those seeds is developed, and will hear Mozart's" Forty Second
Symphony", Mahler's "Yeats Songs", Ive's " Variations on a theme of
Elliot Carter", and -last but certainly not least, Bach's "Science of
the Fugue" - all endowed with "IT".  Not to mention jazz by "Big Blues".

Bernard Chasan