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