Andrew Carlan <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>It isn't we who are interpreting our rhythmic experiences back into
>Beethoven.

Sure it is.

>Jazz, not syncopation, was there all the time.  We just hadn't
>become hooked on these rhythms and so missed them like the schnook
>who can't get the beat and so he can't dance.  That's why certain
>blacks assume Beethoven must have been one of them.  Who else could
>write such pure swing in the middle of sedate Europe?

The rhythms may be the same, but they have very different musical
connotations now from the ones they used to have.  To suggest that
Beethoven was listening to his own music with the same ears that we use
now, with almost two hundred more years of listening under our belts,
seems rather weird to me.  Listening to Beethoven in 1999 is fundamentally
a different act from listening to Beethoven in 1820.

Dan Schmidt -> [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]