James Tobin winds up an interestingly speculative posting thus: >Whether one can take my claims about perceiving quality in music any >further than I have is something I have been banging around for decades >myself, but I have mostly given it up because (1) I don't really feel >musically qualified enough--the "objective" consideration".... I think subjectively that Jim Tobin makes a great deal of sense objectively. As I get him, he tends to believe rather more that there is such a thing as objective judgement in music, and that subjective judgement is less important. I would hope so, anyway. For if anyone claimed to have a taste all his/her own, and then ac t on the strength of that conviction, that person would surely figure as a candidate either for the insane asylum or jail. One's judgements are mental processes that are bred and then developed by the teaching, or example, of others. Great music is discovered by authorities in the field who also then cause it to fall out of fashion--meaning the current fashion of judgement. Which doesn't dictate that one has to go with the newest fashion, but whatever one sticks with is a fashion to which one has assigned one's fancy. Music is wrought and enjoyed by social animals. Denis Fodor