Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony Question

[karlhenning]

I haven't read it - is it any good?

Mildly amusing, if at times a bit ribald.  In this revisitation of it, I find myself a bt more vexed at the degree to which Wittgenstein and Bakhtin are made cartoonish.  It's an easy and diverting read.

[Elgarian]

And I want to keep assuring you that I have not ever claimed that the emotional is not a part of the total experience, just that it's not the total of it. That is, I don't think the words "purely musical aspect of music," if they mean anything (and I'm not sure they do), exclude emotional involvement. What I do think is that for many listeners emotional involvement replaces practically everything else. (That is, it is all trigger and nothing else.)

Oh yes, I know. I'm assured. I'm not particularly arguing with you at all, really - just sort of poking at our conversation to make sure I understand what I said.

Oh, and you are most obviously NOT a musical ignoramus.

Oh but truly, I am! This is no false modesty, I promise. Music is of enormous importance to me because it takes me on such wonderful journeys, but my musical memory is pitifully poor, and I don't have any real understanding of what's going on. I can talk you under the table if it comes to analysing a pictorial composition, but if you point a quaver, a minim and a key signature at me, I'll surrender the field instantly and flee.