Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Aug 27, 2009, at 12:34 AM, Joanna wrote:
>
> > From where I sit, music begins with dance (Bach's gigues, gavottes,
> > etc., Mozart's minuets, etc.) and dies a slow but sure death the
> > greater its distance from dance.
>
> Beethoven is very un-dancey - Balanchine said you couldn't choreograph
> to his music because it was so complete in itself. And it just doesn't
> get any better than Beethoven. And Schoenberg? Even Bach's "dance"
> music is a long way from what people can cavort to. So I can't say I
> agree with this.
I couldn't agree with it either -- but I would suggest that a really good music historian with a sufficiently comprehensive grasp of music history _might_ be able to reformulate and expand Joann's claim in a way that made some sense of it.
Carrol