A few weeks ago I wrote about my coming back to Beethoven after a number
of years and discovering that I didn't care much for his music anymore.
Having thought about it for a while, I realize that I completely missed
the most obvious reason for the change--I'm simply a different person.
Although Beethoven has many moods, his music tends to emphasize individual
struggle and triumph, and those are ideas I just don't find particularly
compelling anymore.  Mozart is more about acceptance and compassion, which
is where I am right now; hence my current love of Mozart.  Different
composers are likely to appeal to different sides of people: Mahler
perhaps to the ironic side, Bruckner perhaps to the spiritual side, Brahms
perhaps to the nostalgic side, and so on.  I was wondering what people on
this list saw as the philosophical essence of various composers, and why
they felt that certain composers did or did not appeal to them.

Peter Goldstein