Walter Meyer replying to Robert Peters makes some interesting points:

>>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.

On the other hand, while I do feel a similarity, I am indeed conscious
that there are codes of behavior in all of the classic Greek stuff that
I must "mentally translate," particularly the choral passages in Oedipus.
In short, it's similar but not the same.  I particularly remember my first
serious contact with these works and how hard it was for me to fit them
into what I knew about the world (not much).

>>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?

One reason is because through continual exposure, we've become very
familiar with Mozart's and Bach's musical language.  I know this state
of things wasn't always the case, because I've read critics fighting to
bring these composers to people's attention over a number of years.  I
would ask, therefore, whether you feel the same way about a Josquin mass
or a Monteverdi opera.  Also, it seems to me not that the emotions within
abstract works like the g-minor quintet are universal (who knows how
Mozart's contemporaries would have felt?), but that these works still have
the power to arouse emotion, once we crack the language.

Steve Schwartz