Stirling S. Newberry wrote: >I'm afraid I can't take this description seriously, it does not match the >evidence of how either Brahms composed his four symphonies or Beethoven >composed his symphonies. It is interesting that Mr. Newberry brings up Brahms first, as Brahms is a composer who makes my point exactly, that of a composer who often tried to write music greater than he felt e.g. the First Symphony. The very fact Brahms put off writing a symphony for so many years attests to the fact that he didn't really have it in him to write a symphony but then took the plunge anyway. But don't take my word for it: listen to what Tchaikovsky said about Brahms, that he heard in Brahms' music "the conscious aspiration to something for which there is no poetic impulse, the striving for something that must be unstriven for, the conscious attempt at Beethoven's profundity and power (speaking of Beethoven) that results in a caricature of Beethoven, and the operation, for these purposes, of the technical mastery that produces so many preparations and circumlocutions for something which ought to come and charm us at once." Further, in Mr.Newberry's own "preparations and circumlocutions" about what constitutes greatness, he falls into the common trap of thinking every age and every era, including our own, necessarily has to produce greatness, when in fact, to borrow from Mr. Newberry's prose style, there are "many, many, many" periods in history when nothing great was produced. John Dalmas [log in to unmask]