Rob Baldwin wrote:

>Like Ian Foster, I, too, am flabberghasted that so many on this
>list dislike Brahms' symphonies

Let's not get too carried away here!  I'm at least partially responsible
for starting this subject off again, and I never said - either this time or
last - that I "dislike" Brahms symphonies.  I don't get on with them.  As
someone else wrote, I tend to listen to them and either lose concentration
and go and do something else or get to the end and then think "so what?"
One way or another, whether the fault is in me or in them, they do not
engage me.  I have similar difficulties with widely acknowledged
"masterpieces" in other fields - the novels of Jane Austen spring to mind.

>"De gustibus non est disputandum"--"There's no disputing tastes"--but
>at least people on this list should recognize good, solid, musical
>craftsmanship!

I hope that I do.  I recognise it in Brahms - symphonies and elsewhere.
It's not the craftsmanship that's the problem.

>For me, Brahms perfectly wedded a craftsmanship and architecture equal (or
>at least close) to that of J.S.  Bach, but enriched by his own, unique,
>soaring ecstacies.

That's where we part company.  I love Bach (and Mahler!) and I admire
Brahms.  I don't *like* his symphonies much, but that's a very different
thing from "dislike".  There's not much music that I do unequivocally
dislike, apart from almost all country & western and "British Light Music",
and the reasons I dislike those are primarily because I find them so
shallow.  I do not accuse Brahms of that.

Ian Crisp
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