On Jul 2, 2011, at 4:27 PM, Mathias Roesel wrote:
We'll never know for sure, of course. But my guess is, as Roman
rightly put
it, that self-expression didn't become a standard goal until the 19th
century.
I disagree. I'm sure I can cite impassioned performances and
impassioned audiences from the historical record, but to what avail?
You can cite instances to demonstrate your point also. People didn't
suddenly change from neoclassical robots into emotional beings in
1800. That's obviously a very un-HIP notion. Modes of self-
expression changes with the times, and the elegant substitutes for it
can always be found in some form or other, today as then, but the
genuine emotional article is always there too.
People of the social classes where lute music was played in the
16th through 18th centuries, led their lives much more formal than
we do
today.
Again I disagree. Musicmaking in the late 16th and 17th centuries
was just as much a middle-class domestic affair as courtly. And
besides, do you think that the court of James I of England was all
that formal? The French court may have been, but that's just one of
many.
Self-expression would have been embarrassing, probably.
In some contexts maybe, but then again there are contexts today in
which self-expression is embarrassing. Others in which it certainly
is not. I really don't think that people have changed at all
throughout history. Modes and fashions change, and it's fun to try
to imagine exactly what forms they took. If it wasn't fun, I
wouldn't be interested in it, but I always take as my starting point
the idea that people are always people, enough like us for us to look
at them and see ourselves, and conversely to look at ourselves in
order to see them.
D
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