Ulvi Yurtsever:

>And hopefully we will not do so.  [Apply descriptive terms to
>emotions expressed in some war horses I mentioned.]
>
>All that "fate knocking at the door" stuff never fails to make my
>blood boil.

I don't really feel a need to do this to you, Ulvi.  I'd actually take more
satisfaction in a simple acknowledgment that it is possible in principle to
do so in a plausible way.  That would be a blow for the power of human
rationality, to articulate meaningfully even about some really murky stuff.
(Though if folks do find themselves irrepressible on this subject you could
always deal with it the way I deal with the repeat of the "repeats"
thread--just check occasionally to make sure it is still on topic!)

But, as long as you mention it, wasn't it Beethoven himself who came out
with that "fate knocking?" His Fifth is not a work I listen to much, and
I have heard it live exactly twice in my life.  But one of those times
was as an unannounced last minute substitution for a cello concerto that
Jacqueline DuPre was supposed to play with Daniel Barenboim and the
Philadelphia Orchestra (in Madison Wisconsin.) In retrospect, it became
clear (to anyone knowing the medical and biographical background
involved--this has to have been a concert scheduled for just around the
time it became clear that she would never play in public again) that
Barenboim's gesture in playing this particular work was meaningfully
enhanced by the expressive nature of the work itself.

Jim Tobin