Steve Schwartz writes:

>Second, I like variety in my listening, and I like the thrill of
>discovering for myself something wonderful.  Third, my dislikes limit me.

Dislikes also help define people, but I too like variety in my music:  a
Bach organ work followed by a Bach violin sonata and topped off with a Bach
cantata or two.  For an encore, dare I suggest a Froberger Canzon? That's
really going far afield.

Concerning music as a language, it fits my criteria.  The primary criterion
is 'communication'; the sole purpose of language is to provide a means of
communication and music certainly falls into that category.  Also, music
has systematic elements to assist in communication.  In the world of
baseball, there are hundreds of signs and gestures used by teams to
communicate without speaking; that's also a language.  I think we need to
be more expansive in our thinking on this issue as well as in how we might
define and identify music.  I don't believe there's a viable reason to be
'tight' about any of this.  Music is determined by the individual; language
is determined between/among individuals.

Don Satz
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