Klarinet Archive - Posting 000149.txt from 2005/11

From: or3mondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: RE: [kl] Conversion
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:17:24 -0500

Dan wrote:

> This is absolutely indefensible. Are you
> suggesting that a person's religious affiliation
> (not cultural affiliation) can be discerned
> through his music?

No! No! No!

Not at all! You have misunderstood my point entirely! You are adding
a thought which I did not suggest!

In fact, your "German clarinetist" experiment has cast considerable
doubt on discerning cultural affiliations in music as well, hasn't it?

When I wrote:

> We can say that VPO's performance of
> Mahler's "Titan" suggests some questions
> which eventually lead us to unresolvable
> questions about Mahler's religion.

I meant exactly what I said --- namely, the original comment from
someone who heard=A0VPO perform "Titan" has led us into a conversation
about Mahler's religious beliefs, and I stated that we cannot *assume*
anything about his internal motives because he changed his religious
declaration.

Perhaps a historian can come close to "proving" something abut Mahler's
internal beliefs at a certain moment in his life by examining his
letters, speeches, words in his songs, etc; but "assuming" is not
justified.

I specifically suggested that instead of saying "we must assume", the
best statement is "we cannot resolve"; and I did not say a single word
about what the character of his music does or doesn't prove about his
religious beliefs. Some of his music (Resurrection Symphony, for
example) include choruses with words, and perhaps from these words we
can speculate a bit. But this is *NOT* what I was talking about in my
post.

Rather, I was talking about your use of the word "assume".

And to get to the root of what this thread has mutated into, I
absolutely agree that there is nothing 'genetic' about musical
preferences. Cultural and historical, yes. Genetic, no. Absolutely
not. A devout composer of <whatever religion> can certainly write
intense and stirring music for an opera about atheists.

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