[Jill,]

I was thinking again this morning about the irony of the whole situation. It strikes me that Louis has lost the argument in virtually every way possible: It is his diatribe that now seems empty, vulgar and meaningless. "So, even to those whom it does not offend directly, it can not possibly communicate anything." It is German accented with a recognizable but foreign intonation. It is speech that seems to make sense one moment, and then collapses into equivocal nonsense the next.

Mahler, in contrast, is undergoing a meteoric rise in the classical music world. No world class symphony can afford a season in which less than two Mahler symphonies appear. His songs are being sung at chamber venues from Prague to Kyoto. Recordings of his music are in tremendous demand. His influence among composers and conductors has long been equaled to that of Beethoven, Haydn and Bach. Mahler was the model and the inspiration for the symphonies of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Weill, Simpson, and many many more. As we turn the clock a century after his death, Mahler speaks to the world in a language we understand.

As for controlling the public discourse, I am absolutely sure that it cannot be done at the governmental level (although the figureheads of government, by their mere example, can and do have a profound effect on the tone and color of public discourse). Louis, and men of his like, were allowed to prosper because many academicians considered them harmless brutes. The public discourse was permitted to slide into such clap-trap because scholars did not consider it their duty or their role to play the game of refutation. Thomas Mann provides a stunning picture of this phenomenon in Doctor Faustus. I believe Mann felt more than a little guilt for playing too passive a role in Germany's public life.

David