att: Dan Koren

Dan, whereas you seem to be a knowledgable individual in many respects, I detect a general tone in your observations that betrays you to have some kind of chip on your shoulder. Are you a failed concert pianist or something? Were you beaten by your parents to play the piano against all of your wishes, and now you sit with all that knowledge and experience with nowhere to take it other than out on innocents at an online newsgroup - because you never loved it enough to become good at it? Perhaps your brother has a recording contract, whereas you have a teachers position at a mid-western university with a sad excuse for a music program? Or are you just an unhappy lonely soul in front of a computer?

Your arrogance is the arrogance of someone who still - for all of your knowledge - does not know that he really knows very little. Of someone who does not recognize that besides the fact that you may know more than the next guy about something, you can be almost certain that that person knows more than you about a lot of other stuff. Your little petty arrogance may give you temporary relief, because you have a discerning mind I can tell, and this mind, even when your conciousness tells it to shut up, will probably whisper to you these above facts, and the realities of your life probably shouts them to you.

People of real substance and knowledge have no time for arrogance.

Hah. My latest analysis of rmcr finds that in any given month 23% of threads containing more than 3 posts involve argument between people of 'substance' and knowledge, with arrogance in evidence in one or both of the arguers. Evidence to date is pointing me to influence from the other side, in particular from the shade of Hanslick.

I hope you realize, Dan, that further assistance from ACT will likely be charged at $100 per 50 minute session. That's if ACT has a sheepskin.

Act

Music.

Not that I feel inclined to defend Mr. Koren (far from it), but do you think it's in good style for someone who doesn't even post under his own name to attack someone who at least has the guts to sign his meesages?

No faulting your taste, but identity theft is a very real threat these days. That's why I take this pseudonym with me everywhere I go.

Yes indeed. If someone really seriously wanted to steal your identity, I'm pretty sure they'd find a way to do it in spite of the pseudonym you're using to post on r.m.c.r and oyjer newsgroups.

You're probably meeting 10x more people in real life than on the net (I hope so for your own good), and they have much better opportunities to steal your identity than anyone you meet exclusively on the net.

This sounds utterly paranoid.

I really don't think anyone will want to steal either of our two names or personalities, Dan.

Tom Deacon

Nearly all of Dan's remarks are defensible on one or another intellectual level. It's at the meat level that he gets into trouble.

Oof. Damn those stomach punches. Only slightly ameliorated by the 'Milton Babbit', you have placed me in Dan's orbit. Liszt and Berg at least made better music than Wagner, who indicated a pathway without being able to follow it.

OK, there's only one way out I can see. Dan - , Moravec, Firkusny, Kempff, Serkin, Arrau, all of those guys made valuable contributions to the body of recorded piano music!