Robert Peters:

>What is it that makes so many posts by you, Steve, Christopher and
>Janos sound so awfully snobbish?

Perhaps because we disagree with *you*?

>You write as if you are the only people in the whole wide world who
>have read something about classical music.  Everyone who is not of your
>opinion does not know what poetry is, hasn't read Mozart's letters, is an
>illeterate hulk, is not learned enough.

Well, I, for one, have noticed a similar tendency in your posts to
dismiss others not of your opinion.  After all, you've accused me (to take
one example) of not knowing poetry or what a literary definition is, simply
because it's not your definition.  I don't claim to know what poetry is,
but please don't tell me I don't know literature.

>I don't like this attitude.  All my life I lived a rich life full of
>intellectual and cultural pleasures.  I studied literature and languages,
>have a thorough knowledge of the arts

You're at least one up on me.  I have never made an issue of what I've
studied or what I've earned.  If I had, for example, four advanced degrees
in two different disciplines, it wouldn't make the nonsense I spout any
less nonsensical.

>and, yes, find a lot of profound ideas and wonderful entertainment in
>Peter Shaffer's Amadeus

You have accused several people of mere rant - that is, invective
without analysis to back it up.  At least one negative poster has analyzed
something specific in Amadeus.  I've seen no such post from you.  So I now
challenge you, in a friendly way, to produce something more than mere
cheerleading.

>- and I don't find it good style to call an artist I don't like an
>"arsehole"

For this I apologize.  I learned the word from another German-speaking
list member whom I remembered wrongly as you.  I thought I was giving you
back some of your own, but as it turns out, I was giving you back the bad
manners of somebody else.  Again, I'm very sorry.

Steve Schwartz