Thomas Heilman:

>What do you think of the idea that concertgoers these days attend
>concerts expecting some sort of psychotherapy session, some sort of
>cathartic experience? I am not saying I agree with this idea, but I have
>certainly heard it proposed.  And if this is true or an agreed-upon-truth,
>has this always been the case?

No. Read Bamboula! by S. Frederick Starr, on the life and times of Louis
Moreau Gottschalk.  Among other things, he traces the rise in the 19th
century of the churchly notion of concertgoing, an attitude that got going
around Boston, on the fringes of American Transendentalism.

Steve Schwartz