Steve Schwartz wrote: >Sure. At one point, to hear music, most people had to play it themselves. >Technology has eliminated this requirement. Of course, I don't know for >sure and would be happy to find myself wrong. How many on this list - not >academic or professional musicians - read music? How many can play a Bach >two-part invention or the slow movement of a Mozart sonata? If someone >handed out full scores to a Beethoven symphony, how many people could >follow it? I play piano (fairly advanced), sang in our San Francisco symphony chorus for 8 years, play bass, tenor, alto, and soprano recorders, and spent about 12 years playing harpsichord, continuo and solo repertoire. I'll say one thing that happened as a result of that: I've heard far less recordings than most listeners in classical-music groups. Many I've met play no instruments and many don't read music. But they spend hours a day listening. They are also among the harshest critics, in my experience. I think that those who go through the actual playing of some of these things tend to be a little more forgiving or a little more empathetic. >For example, Charlie Rose (a US chat show with intellectual aspirations) >falls all over himself to get novelists like Paul Auster or Dom DeLillo or >Toni Morrison on his program. When he has anyone from classical music on, >it's a performer. He doesn't ask Pierre Boulez about his music, but about >other things. He doesn't talk to composers as composers. He barely talks >to them at all. I think that it's because he has a common language with novelists. Classical Music is a language that's quite specialized. And, in this country, it's not valued much in that many early schools have cut music education to skin & bones where they exist at all. >I would say you're right about poetry and CM, but not about fiction. >For some reason, that art still seems to matter culturally. Common language style and experience? Andrys in Berkeley http://www.andrys.com/books.html search sheet music, videos, CDs http://www.andrys.com/cbooks.html newer classical music books