Bill Pirkle:

>I was wondering what about CM makes it appealing to people and have
>determined the following possibilities:
>
>Its historical value - that it was written in another time
>Its musical value - that is it musically well done, emotional, pleasing, etc.
>Its composer - that it was written by, for example, Beethoven, Bach,...
>Its performance value - that it was performed by, for example, Rubenstein
>
>These four, there are possibily more, should add up to 100% of its value.

There are folks who will attend anything by a given performer or group, and
the "major" recording companies tend to place their bets on this.  I am not
one of those people.  Naturally, given a preference for a particular work,
it makes a difference to me who plays it, but I take that to be another
matter.

I am interested in cultural history and in the musical output of particular
composers, but I don't listen to music just because it is old or of a
certain time--though I might be in the mood for music that happens to be
typical of a certain time that I am familiar with.  Some of my favorite
composers wrote works that I find boring, irritating or even bad, though
I can't decide this unless I take a chance on listening to it.

This leaves "musical value." Without that, nothing else counts for
anything, and the other categories are entirely dependent on this.  So on
my interpretation, if I had to play your quantitative game, I'd give this
100% and the others nothing.

Jim Tobin