Professor Chasan was on the mark when he wrote:

>In the final analysis the work moves you and draws you into its world
>or it doesn't.  And different works will do it for different listeners,
>although there is clearly great overlap in the results when masters are
>producing the music.

Just a few additional comments (drawn from my essay "Being a Composer --
Ruminations on an Undescribable Art", published in this month's issue of
SOUNDING BOARD - the journal of American Composers Forum):

   "Music is eminently a living medium -- it will change, even just
   a bit, in the performance of every player.  (So, for example, Fur
   Elise, is not merely the sum total of three pages of Beethoven, but
   the Gestalt of every rendition of this lovely piece, from the beginning
   pianist who lives on the corner to Artur Rubinstein's fluid and lovely
   version -- to its use as sinister background sound in the movie
   "Rosemary's Baby", and beyond!)....  And, just as a specific piece
   changes in the hands of every performer, the music itself is changeable,
   mutable.

   Fundamentally, Art is both a lens and a mirror -- meaning that
   although composers may wish to think of their works as distillations
   of personal conceptions and idiosyncratic display of craft (the Lens),
   what the listener grasps from any given performance is precisely
   those aspects of the piece the listener is personally ready to take
   in at the time (the Mirror).  Every listener has a different degree
   of 'listener-readiness' -- and this fluctuates with time-of-day,
   stress level, musical sophistication, inquisitiveness of the moment,
   and other factors.  So, if a piece is quite intricate, perhaps
   non-tonal, and proceeds in large essay-like evolution, it might not
   reach Listener A at next week's concert -- particularly if, at concert
   time, Listener A is readier to hear a burnished, rhythmically lively
   set of glossily-scored miniatures -- or nothing at all!  Ah, but the
   week after, who knows? Listener A just might bond deeply with this
   self-same composition."

>From experience I know this *does* happen.

Judith Lang Zaimont
Professor of Composition
School of Music - University of Minnesota
WEBsite: http://www.joblink.org/jzaimont/