Steve writes: >>>...almost every performance of the Seventh I heard seemed to miss the >>>point, although I had no idea what that point was. I write: >>Have we led the uninitiated to believe that art has to have a point to >>be "fine?" Deryk writes: >He (Steve) certainly didn't emply the word "fine", so your two sentences >above really constitute, I submit, a non-sequitur. But I really think they *do* follow, as I was suggesting that the qualitative, aesthetic potency of *fine* art--it's ability to please and it's right to please--is mistakenly understood by students of critics and educators as a function of its intellectually quantitative elements, such as its *point* --its technical merits. By endorsing Mahler's music and Barbirolli's performance on the basis of technical merits, (coherence?), IMHO Steve is suggesting the presence of aesthetic hierarchy--a finer art. What if people enjoy the music without knowing the point? What if the point can never be found? If one type of music is "smarter" than another, will one type of listener have to be smarter than the other? How do you explain to Mahlerians that not everyone is stopped in the same place on the road to Damascus? But this is what critics, educators and aficionados do, So I don't mean to do Steve an injustice. Technical talk and historical perspective are enriching. Leading listeners toward a conductor sensitive to the desires of a composer is a great service. My concern is how this is all interpreted by people *not* familiar with the music or the idiom. Please excuse the analogy: When college students show up to a sex education class, which covers theory, psychology, physiology, etc.; they probably have already made the pursuit their own, and know that the aesthetic enjoyment of sex is wholly independent of intellectual capability. Undertanding the subject matter of the classroom discussions--no matter how technical--is never mistaken to be a prerequisite for enjoyment. For the captive music student, or one with a nascent interest who has never understood that "serious" music has a non-utilitarian, diverting purpose; I think these people could easily see complicated theory discussions as a requisite need for aesthetic appreciation. Hence the belief-smart music needs smart listeners. John Smyth