Som might share this view (indeed, some paople's salaries and reputations would be dependent on their at least being seen to share it), whereas others with or without direct vested interests in the subject may not.

I have never had intercourse of any kind with a newspaper reporter, but whilst your precious and oft-cited "we" may well have such a right, the remaining "we" has an equal right to take the opposite stance - or none at all - in any such case.

You really have a problem with seven, don't you?! But let's take this one apart. Music by women as well as men is presented in public. Halls on such occasions are not always full. It is not usually the composer him/herself that presents his/her music (relatively rare exceptions being when the composer participates are conductor or soloist or, more reraly still, as an orchestral or chamber music player in the performance); more usually, the music is presented by others and the concerts in which this occurs are put on by peoploe other than the composer. Any view as to good, bad or indifferent judgement in the decision to mount any such new work should at the very least be directed towards those responsible for putting on, promoting and giving the performance rather than at the composer; judgement of the composer should properly be restricted to whether or not it may have been a good idea to offer his/her work for performance. Once again, the "right to judge" to which you refer is open to everyone and, as in the case above, people will inevitably adopt different stances.

Your suggestion and question here appears to stem from something of a blinkered view of new music, if I may say so.

OK - so let he/she who is without compositions to his/her name cast the first judgemental stone - but a wee word of caution; please ensure, for the sake of clarity, that the spelling of any composer's name be correct according to common practice rather than that bizarre and inconsistent one sometimes adopted by Member Grue...

Best,

Alistair

At the moment I'm thinking of two spots in Chostakovitch's Second Symphony, composed for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution which of course was in November.

At one of these spots he has a solo trumpet play the first line of Happy Birthday to You. At another he has the horns blast out We'll Meet Again at a ffff dynamic over the orchestra.

The symphony is from 1927 and it's thus highly unlikely he would have known the latter song which wasn't written until 1939. But even the former had nothing like its current circulation until a little later.

There are, of course, cases where composers have withdrawn whole works (or even a selection of their output) completely, but if they begin to have grave doubts about a piece during the process of composition, then the chances are that it will be abandoned or rethought well before it reaches its public. In any case, who but the creator has the right to question his judgement? And will a judgement made at any single historic point necessarily be valid ten years later, let alone for all eternity?

Once again we seem to be invited to row into the maestrom between Scylla and Charibdis, where the clashing rocks of one listener's sense of failed judgement are opposed to another's view of the same work as a bravely taken and worthwhile risk, and once again it seems little more than an inducement to members to trot out their prejudices. Since such prejudices are by their very nature a matter of subjective consideration, then once again the thread is inviting the objectionable rather than the objective: personal taste, pure and simple is surely what is actually being sought here.

De Gustibus...

Here's an article on perhaps music's most famous relatively undisputed error of judgement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington's_Victory

I do very much like the use of the word 'so-called' in this bit: "Many cynics lump it into a category of so-called "battle pieces" along with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Franz Liszt's Battle of the Huns".

Why not have a look at the score?


There we admit that our judgement did fail us quite spectacularly for a time although in our defence she wasn't a newspaper reporter yet.

I must award you ten out of - er - seven for accomplishing the literary equivalent of Schönberg's in making certain parts of his Gurrelieder sound more like Wagner than Wagner himself, in having presented something that sounds more like Member Grue than member Groo himself does (notwithstanding the absence of mis-spellings of composers' names therein)...

Garnett? More like a Diamondd, methinks!

Best,

Alistair

We are indebted to Member Pace for pointing up the dangers to the innocent traveller of wandering too far up the garden path of "aestheticism" where the eager hands of little Dr Pater and other Balliol Men of questionable character are waiting to beguile him. A timely warning indeed!

Member Pace may be assured, however, that this particular Seeker after Truth, has no wish to place the aesthete in a position of dominance or superiority over the moralist. That would not do at all! Our preferred image is rather of these two strains of human sensibility occupying different trouser-pockets, albeit loosely conjoined within the same pair of well-cut Oxford bags. The attempt to keep the two in balance and harmony is our constant aim, a process which may perhaps have the appearance to an unsympathetic observer of a man "struggling with his inner contradictions".    




                             
                 A leading aesthete de nos jours contemplating the Sublime

Upon the important question raised by Member Pace a few admirable words of advice from St. Oscar:

"The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely any one at all escapes.

"Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand 'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism - are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.


"There was a woman who was taken in adultery. We are not told the history of her love, but that love must have been very great; for Jesus said that her sins were forgiven her, not because she repented, but because her love was so intense and wonderful. Later on, a short time before His death, as He sat at a feast, the woman came in and poured costly perfumes on His hair. His friends tried to interfere with her, and said that it was an extravagance, and that the money that the perfume cost should have been expended on charitable relief of people in want, or something of that kind. Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out that the material needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that the spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine moment, and by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might make itself perfect. The world worships the woman, even now, as a saint.

"Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in His day and community in a very marked form. 'Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?' He said, when He was told that they wished to speak to Him. When one of His followers asked leave to go and bury his father, 'Let the dead bury the dead,' was His terrible answer. He would allow no claim whatsoever to be made on personality.

"And so he who would lead a Christ-like life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science; or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep upon a moor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who throws his nets into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him."

Who knows? Perhaps Member Garnett too that promising pupil will be persuaded.