Dave Pitzer wrote: >walter Meyer quoted a John Hersey's novel *The Wall* .... > >> "said he thought the second movement of Beethoven's >> Fourth Piano Concerto was one of the greatest love scenes in music-- >> with the orchestra masculine, the piano feminine. Rachel remarked >> that her idea of a love scene was not simply a situation where a >> woman talks a man to sleep." > >This attaching of motives/emotions and even programs to non-program music >is disheartening to see -- especially on what is -- to me -- an erudite, >informed music discussion group. To me, saying that a particular Beethoven >movement, for example, is meant to express "love" or "hate" or "bravery" or >represents a "love scene" between a man and a woman is sheer poppycock. >It's juvenile, in my opinion. I hope readers will have noted that: 1. I did not attach any story or scenario to the movement, and 2. the character whom the novel's narrator admires, Rachel, rejected someone else's reading of such a story into the movement, w/out necessarily substituting a story she was willing to accept. I happen to agree that music, like beauty, is its own excuse for being. I don't agree, however, that it's juvenile poppycock for someone to see tales in the music s/he also hears. I believe Beethoven himself is supposed to have said on learning of Napoleon's death that he had written the music for that occasion eighteen years before. Walter Meyer