Jocelyn Wang wrote:

>No, I do not advocate uncritical listening under any circumstances.  The
>beauty of Mozart (or Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, etc.) is that, the more
>critically one listens to them, the more brilliantly they come through.

Thank you sincerely too for this response, though I should add for
those readers who have joined the discussion part-way that I am of course
being quite deliberately provocative:  but only in the hope of generating
deeper discussion, and apologise to those whose toes I tread upon!  Indeed
I should like to share the story of how when Arnold Schoenberg dared to
criticised a work by Wagner in front of Mahler.  Mahler replied that he
too had gone through periods where he had in his mind, demolished the
reputations of various composers.  The truly great ones, he added remain
intact in their places long after the smoke has settled.

Moving on I must ask whether this above view advocated by Jocelyn however
ought to be extended to cover not just Mozart, not just Beethoven, Bach, or
Schubert but to perhaps include a Salieri, or a Dittersdorf.  Then why not
include virtually any composer one would care to name, including those who
are still contemporaneous - say for example Berio, Stockhausen, Carter, or
Boulez.  Why only be reverential to those better established or wait till
they're six foot under earth before becoming reverential? And really have
you never, never even once dared to utter even the slightest criticism of
any well established composer, or is perhaps everything such composers
write so utterly sacred that one must humbly remain the unconditionally
unquestioning servant of every single note - including every repeat mark?
That would surely consitute a kind of musical utopia.

Must one however really be led to believe that everything written by
ever so-called 'great' composer is so absolutely perfect that one is forced
to'critically' (the word is being used in a totally different sense here to
that which I used it) examine these composer's works until one even forcibly
convinces oneself as to the utter perfection of every single note that they
EVER wrote? At times I fear that one is expected to believe of Mozart that
every musical note that he produced since he was old enough to suck his
thumb or coo was such a deeply sacred utterance of the Musical Messiah
that to suggest otherwise is considered Unspeakable Blasphemy.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia