Dear Editor
Dear Editor Brecht In his interesting article, "Creative Politics in Poland" (NL, April 20), Jan T. Gross tells us: "Bertolt Brecht once quipped that when government and society are at odds in...
...One's opinion of the "vast erudition" Gewen attributes to Mellers is not helped by the expansive inaccuracy of referring to Leibniz' and Spinoza's logic as dialectical, but what I have in mind runs deeper than an irritation with a critic's overblown language...
...A trip to the dictionary would have saved you the embarrassment in two places` in your Spring Book Issue...
...They are very close, swim and sleep outdoors together, and all those special things that "knit their souls together...
...Music does indeed have "the power to move masses, to influence everything from politics to haircuts...
...Gewen disputes this, claiming that in the pieces Mellers is discussing, only Bach's narrower sectarian interests were at play...
...Bellevue, Wash...
...They are incredibly sensitive and touched me deeply...
...this fact, however, has nothing to do with the compositions themselves...
...I would argue that this is also the case with music...
...Whereupon Brecht suggested that the simplest solution would be for the regime to dissolve the populace and elect a new one...
...allow...
...New York City Charles Wayne No Typo As a former student of art history, I find it irritating when people misspell the name of the Flemish painter, "Breughel...
...Most revealing here is Meller's bringing in logic at all, for the strength of formal symbolism lies in its distance from "experience" (whatever that loaded word might mean...
...On the subject of music's relation to the world, I pride myself on being stupid as Nietzsche, who, in a different context, said: "At best, music only tolerates words...
...To me, the crucial question is whether it means anything at all for music to "encompass" "experience...
...But I find regrettable its acceptance of the notion that there is an immediate connection between a work of music and the culture in which it is born...
...New York City Patrick Bryant According to The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists, "Bruegel" is the preferred spelling.-ed...
...I take pleasure in listening to what Gewen and Mellers have to say about that realm, for there they are obviously sound and sensible...
...world is much more obscure and indirect than Gewen, Mellers, et al...
...That the presumption is widespread, though, is hardly proof of its correctness...
...The East German government, shaken, offered the preposterous idea that the people had betrayed the confidence the regime had placed in them...
...Arlene Schuster Music Critics Barry Gewen's review of Wilfred Mellers' Bach and the Dance of God was informative and well written ("A Blissful Musical Genius," NL, May 4...
...Mellers, for example, declares in a passage cited by Gewen: "Bach's musical mathematics in his last works may be as exact as an exercise in the dialectical logic of Leibniz or Spinoza, but it is 'truer' in that its intellectual rigor encompasses the total range of human experience...
...I am a mother who has been blessed with six wonderful sons...
...There is no more irritating bore than the fellow who says, "That's not the way I heard it," but I don't think Professor Gross' rendition of the remark does justice to what Brecht said in the aftermath of the East German uprisings in 1953...
...I have encountered the same premise everywhere from Theodor Adorno's maunderings on why Arnold Schoenberg's compositions are politically "revolutionary" whereas Igor Stravinsky's are "reactionary," to the rock criticules in Rolling Stone magazine who assure us that reggae music is on the side of the powers of light...
...Mamaroneck, N. Y. Richard Hanser Margolis Please convey to Richard J. Margolis my deepest appreciation for his "Poems of a Small Brother" (NL, April 6...
...I also write some poetry, so I especially appreciate Margolis' poetic expression of the uniqueness of brotherly love...
...Dear Editor Brecht In his interesting article, "Creative Politics in Poland" (NL, April 20), Jan T. Gross tells us: "Bertolt Brecht once quipped that when government and society are at odds in East Germany the solution to the conflict is simple-the government proceeds to change society...
...Too often, critics trundle out absurd metaphysical contentions about the implications of the work...
...Separate and alluring, music is its own reality: We obscure its essential autonomy by harping on circumstances that might have had a lot to do with its creation, but are spurious guides to the musical realm...
...I would suggest that the link between music and the The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
Vol. 64 • June 1981 • No. 11
