Supporting the view that...

>...there really is still no substitute for live music.

John Smyth said:

>Mahler, Respighi, and Bruckner come to life architecturally and
>spacially; Ravel's sound floats in the air above the orchestra;
>and opera suddenly makes sense.

With respect to John for commendable courage, IMO this confirms my
reluctance to articulate *how* live music is preferable.  Maybe it
just can't be done.  Though, as you add:

>Modern music, with its heightened visceral element, is much more
>interesting heard (and seen) live as well.

Too visceral to put into words, yes, but contemporary works that
deliberately play up the spatial dimension of musical experiences
may be a special case.

One recording I recently heard might illustrate the point: it's the
enchanting Universe Symphony, a 52-min., 4-movement work by Stephen Gellman
(b.  1947).  I heard it on a CD of a cassette made from the original tapes
of a live concert (yes, you read right!).  I gather that only some kind of
sensurround might begin to do justice to the work, since according to the
CBC's Larry Lake, who once conducted it, "...the electronics are 8-channel
surround sound.  At one point during the electronic cadenza, the sound
spins around the hall."

If I gather correctly, John would agree that such staged effects just
enhance the general case about live performances, and do not amount to a
qualitative difference in the musical experience.  Just a difference in
degree, that is, so witnessing Gellman's piece is a "heightened" form of
the live experience of a Haydn SQ, not making for a musical experience of
a different kind.

Despite such seemingly clear counter-instances, the unconvinced might
still say that live music -- where, as I once put it poorly, one can
hear the very wood of the instruments resonating -- is not preferable to
studio-crafted music coming from a good sound system, which can replicate
any concert-hall effect.

Persuasion might, in the end, require hiring a musical ensemble to play
live in the skeptic's house, freeing them for a comparison in the absence
of hassles with babysitters, parking, whispers, the thunder of paper
peeling off shiny toffees, or the obligatto phlegm-dislodging harrumphs
between each movement that one bears with at concert halls.

Bert Bailey