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