Mr. Smythe writes:

>Maybe this is the answer.  I talked long ago about the Dominant listener,
>(type A), vs. the Submissive listener (Type B), (which Stirling built upon
>in a recent posting without giving me credit), where I explained that the
>Submissive associates music with his own experiences while the Dominant
>simply experiences the sounds.  A Dominant can enjoy music from all periods
>while the Submissive will logically gravitate towards music that is easily
>associative.

I would appreciate it if you would not misquote me.

My assertion was that one way of dividing aesthetic experiences is along
the following lines:

One kind experiences the work as en external sequences of events.

The other kind experiences the identity through the activity of parsing or
grasping the art work.

One of the reasons this division is useful is that it is not based on
style.  There are those whose sense of self comes from Baroque music,
from American Depictionalist Prose, from Greek Poetry and from any other
conceivable combination.  There are those who treat every experience for
its narrative value in every style.  These types of audience members, even
when focused on the same work will have radically different needs from the
work, and hence radically different interpretations of their interaction
with it.

Neither type is "dominant" or "submissive" - and such terms imply a value
judgment not present in the idea which I outlined.

Your statements are offensive.  Your theory a transpearant attempt to
assert the superiority of one kind of artistic experience over another,
namely the kind you happen to prefer.  I am nost sure which is more
offensive, Mr.  Smythes accustaions of plagarism, or the implication that
I would subscribe to any idea which differentiates people into "human" and
"less than human" such as his does.

Stirling S Newberry
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