In my experience the "instinctual response" has to come first, followed (if at all) by the development of an interest in the hows, whys, wheres etc., which can obviously deepen and widen the response, and indeed lead to one interrogating the "instinctual response" and the balance between instinct and conditioning which lies behind it. There are some people who, when they don't experience an immediate response, assume that such a response isn't appropriate to the music and that they need to immerse themselves in all the background apparatus first - as a result of which most such people (understandably) don't bother, and brand the music as "difficult", "intellectual" etc., while others who do bother end up (understandably) being flummoxed as to why reading up all that stuff still doesn't make the music any more attractive to them.

I think it's more a case of developing a "way of listening" through listening, just like practising an instrument.

Yes, Coro is the one for 40 singers each with his/her accompanying instrument (although the music isn't so often divided up in quite such a schematic way).

So many posts since I went away!!!

I agree about the revolutionary 70s but I think the early seventies was more revolutionary in the conventional sense, if revolution is something that sticks, is workable - and it would have been a very British one as Orwell spoke of, I believe.

The early seventies strikes were a lot about power. "Who governs?" The winter of discontent was more workers, mostly public sector, trying the catch up with the rate of inflation, more in desparation.  Punk was in the middle of these. IMO it's wrong in hindsight to imagine that it came at the culmination of the potential "revolution". Societal breakdown maybe?

.It came at the time that the post war consenus had broken down and the workers had not gained power, well into the post Yom Kippur War era of retrenchment. I think the revolutionary zenith of the organised, but not extreme, left was at the end of Heath's tenure.

 It was  people leaving school in 75/76 with qualifications (but not going to UNi) who found there were no jobs, no apprentiships  ( I was one) that coincided with punk,. Among other trivial  things, but that are important in pop culture, like changes in fashion, being different from your older siblings, and progress that were more social than economic (eg not so much conscious feminism but a natural trend that working class girls and young women would want to play a full part outside of the home) "the youth" wanted things "sorting out"  -some voted for Thatcher-even punks - she was definitely not post war consensus!. Some trades unionsts voted Thatcher in order to get back to free collective bargaining



I can't see Britain in 77-85 as being pre revolutionary, unless you were a dreamer of the extreme left or fantasist of the right, the miners strike of the 80s was more about winning back territory whatever the rhetoric. Anti-racism Feminism and Gay rights seemed to terrfy the right and socially conservative in the 80s but though worthwile causes, they are not really revolutionary IMO, only incompatible with dictactorships and theocracies no challenge to capitalism on their own.

 The thing about punk music being dull. Yes you did have to be there I reckon, it was a social trend as well as the great rock and roll swindle.

I dont think X ray specs were "dull"

 I know it's my cultural embeddedness but I cant help smiling that juxtaposition

You mean, can a meaningful statement actually be made in a context like that? I think the idea is (taking a sympathetic view!) that the situation is so stereotyped (how the musicians behave, how the audience behaves) that it becomes transparent. How true that is for the individual depends on familiarity, and how familiar one is with it depends on a load of other things like how comfortable one is sharing a space with a few hundred "classical music people".

Another question is whether it's appropriate in principle to write music which attempts to give a voice to the "wretched of the earth" through the medium of a Western symphony orchestra and chorus (however reconstituted by Berio for the occasion). My answer would be that it need not be the orchestra in itself which has the connotations of imperialism (compare the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra), and that Neruda's words in the mouths of a classical choir is an attempt to reclaim those resources as a medium for a different kind of expression from those for which they were developed. That may sound like clutching at straws and maybe it is, but I think (in my more optimistic moments) there's something valuable to be expressed in the very act using the orchestra and chorus as the powerful medium it becomes in Berio's hands in this piece, rather, for example, than disdaining it as a middle-class entertainment institution completely resilient to any kind of radical appropriation.

(but then I would say that  )

 Fair cop richard . It made me smile but not dismiss the idea that radical relevant music could be presented in a hall named in honour of a monarch.  It's an irony that's all. In fact a reasoned written work would have more lasting value than a pop song, that is very vibrant but of its time. one thing about the early punk thing is it WAS  made up of  live events, after it had passed the music was gone in the air so to speak, also think harmony II was being a bit cheeky if he was inferring that he had less "cultural embeddness" than Ian. I doubt if he was.

    Sorry for that then HH

The point I was trying to make is that because all of our responses to either Berio or the Sex Pistols (or anything else) are culturally embedded, if there is such a thing as the 'work itself' that exists independently of these (and in one sense I do believe there is such a thing), who could ever have access to such a thing?