Bernard Chasan wrote:

>Bob Draper wrote:
>
>>I find many Mozart melodies almost unbearably sweet like a sticky toffee
>>apple.
>
>It constantly amazes me that some list members spend so much time and
>energy knocking down and criticizing.  What is the point? What is the
>motivation?

Well you've taken this out of the context of the rest of the message but
I will nevertheless explain the point.  I was offering support to another
list member who was under fire for expressing their opinion.  The statement
above is one of my opinions.

I would argue that 90% of what appears here consists of personally held
opinions.  Every time someone gives a review of a recording they are doing
just that, offering an opinion.

The point is that classical music fans are few on the ground so we knock
ideas around with one another here.

>And when I hear a statement about unbearably sweet melodies I conclude that
>the writer simply does not know the viola quintets, the late symphonies,

I've heard all those works except the viola quintets.  The opening movement
of symphony 40 is one such sweet example.

>the transcendental Divertimento for Strings, K 563 (possibly the greatest
>piece of music ever) just to name a few.  And let us have no nonsense about
>in my humble opinion.  This is objective truth.  Trust me, I'm a physicist-
>I deal with objective truth professionally.

Objective? There is the obvious difficulty of there being so many millions
of works that you cannot have more than scratched the surface in your
exploration.  Have you heard all the Haydn songs? What about all the
Vivaldi concertos?

There is also the question of what criteria you use to be objective by.
Indeed, the thread "suggestions for criteria to judge a piece by" ran for
months without us reaching any agreement.

I am also surprised that you think that physics provideds an objective
description of the universe.  Mathematics is a man made invention for
the purpose of description of nature and physicists are inventing extra
dimentions to give us string theories.

Neils Bohr said "what does it mean, to exist?" If we cannot be certain
about that then making 'objective' comments about a piece of music is
impossible.

I think you must be playing devil's advocate here!

Bob Draper
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