I suggest you show this post to your "fellow academics".

You are a trouble-maker and a disgrace quite frankly and I'm not afraid to say so.  Here follows an example :-

 
I told you very plainly that my post was tongue-in-cheek at the time.  I have no serious racist views at all - nor could I - because I am of mixed race myself.

Whenever you join a discussion it seems to end in mayhem with people being affronted, insulted and scorned by what you seem to think is your superior intellect.  Nobody understands what you're trying to convey - is that right?  If they disagree that's certainly the case anyway. 

You cut no ice at all with me and I think it's a shame that you are allowed to spoil discussions in this way.

Another astounding post from (soon-to-be?) ex-member Pace in which he continues to insult the rest of the membership from his "superior" position.  His post doesn't warrant any discussion - its faults are self-evident aren't they? Can this thread now be locked?

I'm sorry Autoharp but that is how he comes across to a lot of us.  It would be a shame to lock the thread just because unnecessary ill-feeling has been caused.  You don't have to insinuate that people are Nazis because they don't agree with you, surely?

However, your irony doesn't escape me so I will bow to the majority decision.

It does not really make sense to say "both" when they are three does it?

We cannot think there should after three hundred years be much "debate" about Bach's music. It is only the UNsophisticated who "debate" and "construct" about that! Fine art is the great constant through the ages is not it?

May we add that we are puzzled and rather taken aback by the word "reactionary," which conveys no particular meaning to us. What is its definition and context? Does it just vaguely mean "old-fashioned" and "not of the avant-garde"?

Do not fear, autoharp, Baz, Milly et al - I do not have any more intention of posting on a board where it's more contentious to ask about whether views of Bach which were once common but also demonstrate some continuities with particular appropriations of that figure (there are many levels of continuities between directions in music and musical aesthetics both before 1933 and after 1945 with the interim period, not least in most 19th-century musical nationalism - if even to suggest that is made out to be tantamount to labelling everything/everyone Nazis, then there's no point in discussing further) than, as I say, to debate about the word 'nigger' and 'political correctness' (or to gang up for a spot of pleb-bashing when someone dares to raise their voice against snobbery and other aspects of classical music culture). In a community where the latter is even an issue, I do not wish to debate - call that 'superior' if you like.

Here endeth the final(?) Lesson.

The choir will now sing the Halleluia chorus.

P.S. Please note that in unsubscribing it is necessary for your account to be terminated!

Having just trawled through the last few tens of posts in this thread to try to get a perspective on it, I can do no other than agree with your stance here. It is indeed a pity, because not only are some of Ian's "favourite issues" interesting in and of themslves but some of what he writes about them, whether or not I agree with it all, is also interesting and stimulating; the problem that you highlight here is, however, that intelligent debate and/or observation has all too often a tendency to disintegrate into mud-slinging and it appears that there is a fairly wide consensus of opinion as to the specific origin of much of this disintegration.

I have myself read ample examples (albeit not recently) of Ian firing insults in my own direction, although whether it down tos a MacDiarmidesque "thick skins and thicker heads" insensitivity, a rather simpler couldn't-care-less what people say to or about me or some other factor on my part I cannot say but I have never actually felt insulted by Ian; that said, I can quite imagine how some others may respond differently.

As to the politics business in relation to music, its creation, practice, dissemination and so on, it seems to me that, as it is patently obvious that times change, that politics change with it and that all manner of different political persuasions can co-exist, however uneasily, there has been insufficient acceptance in certain quarters that, however aware composers are and have been of the political climates within which they and their colleagues work and of historical contexts and precedents, reactions to their work, both positive and negative, can and do arise from listeners of very different racial, political and religious persuasion. Why is this? Why can a Jew, a Roman Catholic, an atheist and a Protestant Christian all derive things of value from listening to The Dream of Gerontius, Delius's A Mass of Life, Shostakovich's 13th Symphony and those aforementioned four dozen preludes and fugues? - in other words, if it's all down to conditioning, accidental or wilfully enforced, why are there such widespread commonalities of response type? Also, as Robert Simpson observed in not altogether different context, it is impossible for us today to listen to the music of Bach with the ears of Bach's time, so what price the political thrust inherent in Bach's music in terms of the consistency and meaningfulness with which it supposedly may come across to 21st-century Japanese, American or even German listeners? Speaking personally, might the reactionary positions that Ian has in the past alleged that I adopt reflect - or be expected to reflect - in the kind of music that I write of which Ian says he has heard none so cannot comment? and, if so, how come I accordingly fail to fit into some kind of accepted and acceptable (to some) "conservative" British set-up? Whilst I am obviously aware of the political contexts within which I work, I do not give thought to them when actually working in terms of seeking to reflect them, react to or against them or the like in the music that I write, nor do I believe that it should be my moral brief as a composer to do any such thing; perhaps that is where I'm going wrong and I should accordingly contemplate a lengthy and cathartic period of study with Ian for the purpose of putting my thinking processes to rights - but then I'm not sure that educating a simple mind such as mine - i.e. one capable of falling for the gross solecism that issues of politics, race, gender, etc. occur far more widely in certain kinds of musicological discipline than in actual musical creation - would appeal to him, so I'll have to pass up on that one.

If the board cannot trade civilities without also trading insults while engaging in intelligent debate, then it is a pity and something clearly has to change in order that it survives intact.