[LAU] Criticism (was: A Resonance Of Clouds [music from the Rack])

jonetsu <jonetsu(a)teksavvy.com> writes: Why announce it if you didn't care how it would affect others? Particularly on a list of insiders? The last major completed work of J. S. Bach, the "Great Catholic Mass in B minor" is a bit of a puzzler in that regard. Utterly unperformable (wrong church for the composer, wrong rite for the century even if you went to the right church, too large for private performances and too sacred for concert halls) and several composers of renown likely held a cherished copy. Dissemination too wide to be a mere accident (other works like the Musical Offering or the Brandenburg concerti almost disappeared in spite of being more in line with the times), purpose questionable. I suspect that the initial distribution might have been via a composers' mailing list. Or what has passed for it in the 18th century. I doubt it would not have affected him if someone replied "Johann Sebastian, that is totally unlistenable. I barely got through three seconds of it." on the list (even though what happens with the tonality in the "Confiteor" when its ars antiqua fugue runs into the "Et expecto" like a locomotive engine into zero gravity is somewhat out of the ordinary). But there were likely fewer list members anyway. And he did not survive long enough for a flamewar in that medium either. -- David Kastrup