James Tobin raeplies to Chris Bonds:

>>How music makes you feel has nothing to do with its value.
>
>I think what you really want to say, Chris, is that how an individual
>listener feels about a piece of music--or how it makes one feel--is not a
>sufficient measure of its musical value for (other) listeners.  At least,
>that is something I would agree is clearly true.

I would certainly agree with this, and I thank you for taking me to task
on it.  However it isn't exactly what I wanted to say, because I was
referring to value in the absolute sense.  We could argue about whether
there is such a thing but that would really be outside the scope of this
list.  My opinion, for what it's worth, is that there is such a thing as
intrinsic value (intellectual, aesthetic or both) to music, because humans,
regardless of culture and education, are more alike than they are
different.  True, some people will always have a deaf ear for certain kinds
of music, but that is not the music's (or the composer's) problem.  I will
concede it does make the problem of establishing standards of value more
difficult, however.

Chris Bonds