Donald Satz writes:

>I'm not enrolled at Sterling Newberry University where the sensitivities
>and whining of the students is indulged.  I go to Listeners' University
>and these are my listening requirements:

I've gone from being insensitive to over indulgent in the space of a day -
ah frailty, they name is logic in mortal hands.

As far as Mr. Satz's listening requirements - de gustibus non est
disputandum - there is no arguing with taste, and every listener, audience
member, artist, musician and just plain fool out there deserves to have
their taste.  I've said many times that most music is made for use, and
Don has outlined what he finds "useful" in music.

So far no one should have much to disagree with, he wants music that is
useful to him, and he tosses aside that which has no use for him.  Until we
come to his last point - that if he feels the emotions are insincere, he
tosses the work.  As they say in Hollywood, sincerity is the key, once you
can fake that you have got it made.  Beethoven was certainly sincere in
Missa Solemnis, but was Mozart in the Requiem? Bach was sincere - but was
Mendelssohn? Yanni is sincere, really, truly sincere.  Does that elevate
his music?

What Don Satz is really saying is that if it really moves him, then he
judges it sincere.  Which really means that he listens to music for how
it makes him feel.  Again, taken this way, who is to argue?

But all of the verbiage that Don call's listeners rights does not justify
something else that Don takes as a right:  the right to impose how he feels
on what actually happens.  The right to demand that if he feels oen way
about a piece of music, then that is how the composer actually felt when
inspired.

This assumption, gnawing at the structure of his statements is what I,
and others, have taken issue with.  That he can listen to what he likes
and feel what he likes no one has challenged.  No one has once said he
can't listen to Cage or Varese or Montverdi played on period instruments.
He can listen to historically informed performances of Stravinski or
updated performances of Palestrina.  He can cry or smile as he is moved to
do.  No one has said one word that would bar him from feeling as he wants
to feel.  There is not one scrap of evidence for the accusation he makes.

The assumption that he makes is that because he *feels* one way, then he
can demand that the universe *actually* is that way.

There is a word for this assumption, that word is *religion*.  The
religious sentiment is the belief that the narrative of the self, the
conscious self, is the narrative of the whole universe.  On the one hand I
am glad that music can inspire religious feelings in its devotees.  On the
other, it troubles me that some become zealots about the belief that what
they feel is what the composer must have felt, and that if they don't feel
the composer felt that way, then their feeling is proof positive that the
composer its at fault.

I don't think that Don's ear could hold up to any credible test of
compositions - exposed he could tell which passage was written in dry
calculation, and which with tears streaming from the cheeks, which were
icons of joy, and which were simply churned through as the result of
assumptions already made.

Stirling