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talent encompasses several things beyond sensitivity, hence both words are not interchangeable.

Sherlock strikes again. The example he gave showed a trait which leads to success and success in that case was running fast. Once again, your point is irrelevant as nobody mentioned speed and the physical ability of one to play the piano was directly affected by homosexuality.

FSO. Please don't take offense with what I am going to say. Can you please structure your post with a few spaces? it is quite hard to read one big long paragraph.

Exactly. That's what I meant by "the whole shebang".



Yeah, that example (which was one of three) wasn't a good one and I admitted it.



Ironically, the above is actually irrelevant as it pertains to my admittedly faulty example.

Also, if you were to read my posts thoroughly before trying to knock me down, you'd know that I said this just a few posts up:

Musical talent doesn't just mean being able to play a piece the fastest. It's the whole shebang, sensitivity included.

Thus proving your above statement even more meaningless.

That pretty much summarizes the gist of your contribution to the thread so far.

Collecting one's marbles and threatening to go home is not the same thing as participating constructively on the thread.

Go on, give into temptation!

Oh FSO... how did you do on English essays?

Well actually, I've been participating.

Hmmm - I've never considered whether a piano might be gay or straight. I'll have to ask the pianos I play. It's hard for a concert grand to be in the closet.

Saying in essence that the only thing that makes a good musician is being musical or that that which makes one musically sensitive is being a good musician or that those who are musically talented are musically talented because of their musical talent is to speak in tautologies.

To state categorically that the OP's question is irrelevant because you KNOW that sexual orientation has and cannot have any impact on the coincidence that there are any number of master pianists who have been revealed to have been gay is either to make a claim to secret knowledge or to state an unfounded opinion as fact and in its impact is but a variation on a theme stated by Silverwood et al.


I can't imagine a better example of " the whole shebang " than one's entire personal identity, which for homosexuals is intimately tied up with the developmental issues which were discussed up thread.

I just don't think that liking men inherently makes you a better musician. The notion that "gays are more sensitive because of their hormone makeup, allowing for more sensitive musicality" just isn't convincing to me. By this logic, the majority of women are better musicians.

Very conveniently, you missed out the bit that came after the first thing you quoted which makes a total difference to the point I was making .


And again, my point was that yours (about linking homosexuality to speed/physical ability) was irrelevant to the overall topic. Not really sure how quoting your point makes mine meaningless.

This thread is not about " liking men ".
This thread is about holding an open discussion about the apparent preponderance of gay master pianists and trying to understand and develop insight into what factors may be in play here.

Rather than just typing rapid-fire, random, off-topic opinions, why not take the time to go back and carefully read the thread, think and reflect about what you have read, separate it from your pre-formed bias and dogmatic formulations and then re-join the discussion?

This is more what I had in mind when I was thinking about creating this thread.

I just went over this. It was an admittedly bad example.

This 'who said what where' game is getting tiresome. If you're actually interested in communicating our opinions to each-other, and you feel that I do not understand your point, please organize your opinions into a single paragraph and I will respond accordingly.

First in my school...to get 0% for presentation in *all* exams (for which it's marked)

if I am actually interested? Lol.

I am interested in reading peoples opinions. But when the other person who is attempting to argue, cuts out bits which are essential to the point being made or makes random points with no plausible explanation to back them up, one will get nowhere trying to discuss

Okay, George.

gush, it's a shame moderators here cannot distinguish proper from non-proper post and they react on any idiot complaint...

p.s.
what happened with right to free speech in this country...

That was a stupid thing to say.

*Very* clichéd, certainly...

Was it Horowitz or Rubinstein or someone who once joked that all pianists are either Jewish, gay or bad?

At any rate, I will take a stab. I think that the best music, what we admire in virtuoso pianists, has a spiritual quality to it. It gives you a feeling that you have access to that artist's inner world, which contains this rich spectrum of feeling that includes joy and melancholy and grief and playfulness, and these feelings are realized moment to moment and note-by-note in the music. I think in order for a person to be able to express the full range of human feeling in music, he must have had some experiences in his life to get him in touch with what it is to really reckon with pain and look suffering in the eye. In buddhist thought, it's necessary to have an honest experience of pain in order to have an honest experience of happiness.

You could say of the Jewish people that they have an almost ancestral sense of suffering. Reminders of the pain of life are built into ceremonies and celebrations, such as stepping on the glass cup during the wedding ceremony. I think it would be impossible for a gay man to have gone through his life in the 20th century without a substantial measure of pain due to the lack of acceptance and understanding he would have received. Being gay in Gilels or Horowitz's time can only have been incredibly isolating, and no wonder that they would have created these beautiful, perfect musical worlds as a refuge from that.

If you're interested in further reading, here's a Telegraph article on homosexuality and pianists. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/stephenhough/100006381/gay-pianists-can-you-tell/