I know what you mean about being put off, but I came to Barthes long before I came to his opinion of DFD, and so I just regard it as one of his eccentricities (there are many of them, but they're worth putting up with for the occasional really special insight or turn of phrase/presentational trick).
At a certain point I think I had read, or in some cases started to read and then stopped reading, most of Barthes' translated work, and I eventually decided that what was important to me about it, namely the way it exemplified a certain way of analysing things, had so to speak sunk in and become part of my own "toolbox", and I wasn't interested any more in further exemplifications, I dare say it's quite possible to derive pleasure from such writings in and of themselves but I've never really felt that way about any kind of critical theory (using that term in its most general sense). I've paid my dues though, don't worry.
Richard, thanks: I'd just been browsing and found that Tinctoris recording, now added to my rapidly expanding hmv wish list! You haven't by any chance heard it, have you?
I am hearing it as I write. Edward Wickham's recording (on one of his Ockeghem discs) of Brumel's
Du tout plongiet/Fors seulement is clearly inspired by Munrow's version elsewhere on "The Art of the Netherlands", and I think the same goes for his Tinctoris. The
Homme armé mass it's combined with is also worth hearing. I find the recorded sound too dry for this kind of music, which means in particular that the basses in the
Sine nomine don't sound as resonant as I think they should, but apart from that it's fine.
