Of course he's posh - his remark that he wouldn't be surprised if the worst football violence is perpetrated by the lower middle classes is magnificently patrician.

(The working classes are, of course, victims. The lower middle classes, on the other hand, are simply too vulgar).

The lower middle classes! Oh dear. If only they were middle class. But lower middle class.

I've not met Ian or autoharp, no. I've been to some of Ian's gigs.

They didn't remind me of the Nuremberg rallies.

Actually, I said 'as much'. This is not fundamentally about class.

(I might also point out that one half of either class (in terms of gender) would be, I would be confident in guessing, far less involved in football violence than the other half)

Yes, but you surely know that I agree with you on this.

That's what I'm trying to point out: not that any of what you said in your earlier reply about people in the musical world and their agendas is wrong, simply that there are more worthwhile places to be having a go at that way of thinking than here. And that you sometimes seem to be suggesting that simply because someone doesn't want to talk about a certain issue, or take a certain approach, means that they have some deep-seated motivation for excluding it.

As any good psychiatrist knows when he comes up with a suggestion that gets vehemently rejected, sometimes the patient are in denial. But other times the suggestion was just wrong.

Certainly there needn't be such a motivation; I'm thinking about the occasions when some repeatedly post to the effect that certain approaches are not legitimate subjects for discussion, and the like. A lot of people here and elsewhere don't engage in various approaches to discussing music, which is totally fine.

This thread has certainly veered far away from Godowsky - looking back, this came from following up the implications of the notion of 'losing one's sense of reality' in music, with an allusion to Sorabji there, and also to a polemical post implying that certain aspects of mild misogyny and orientalism would surely (presumably alluding to my standards) imply Nazi sympathies. In both cases I'm simply responding to points already made in the thread, and then to further responses to those responses.

Yep, I must admit I wondered how autoharp came up with that one, too.

Maybe if I hadn't met him it would have led me to think he was posh. Commenting without first-hand experience, and all that. Easy mistake.

Your explanation does seem likely, Ian (and innocent enough).

So we're all sorted? No one's posh? Fine by me (the working classes are, of course, victims; posh, on the other hand, is simply too vulgar). 

Yes, I know. What with that & everyone munching prawn sandwiches and reading New Left Review.

(Just a side thought. For all that is grotesque about the modern football mega-industrial enterprise Trade Marked sponsored by Sky in association with etc. - it is not an industry where membership of the [edit: silly party] would be a so-called matter of private choice for one of its employees.

Unlike the ballet industry  )

That's actually a very good point! Certain standards are expected of those in that type of public life, from which certain artists seem to be exempt. They shouldn't be. Also, I would like to bet on it that your average football-goer has more day-to-day contact with non-white people than your average artist or person working in the 'high' arts (you know, the type who will make the right anti-racist noises when it's opportune to do so, but would move very quickly if lots of black families moved into their street).

What do the piano experts say about Konstantin Scherbakov?