Perhaps a sense of proportion all round might be a good thing, before 
one side of the debate gets perceived as more extreme than it perceives 
the other to have been.

It makes little sense to speak of personal insults when comments (as 
made by me and, as far as I recall, by others expressing roughly similar 
views) have been neither personal nor insulting. Criticism is not 
insults. Commenting on a person’s playing is not (in the pejorative 
sense) personal. Criticism and reviewing self-evidently assist in the 
whole activity of music: if not, then quite a few of us are wasting 
quite a lot of time! I doubt that it’s appropriate to try to censor each 
other. Within the bounds of politeness (which I quite agree is most 
important), it should be acceptable to make reasonable critical 
comments. (And it it surely also acceptable to use a more informal, 
though not impolite, style in an email than we would do in a journal.)

Similarly, there is no reason to claim that those of us who questioned 
the aggressiveness in a particular performance are therefore advocates 
of an ‘Apollonean approach’ liable to bore people silly. Of course there 
isn’t ‘only one true way’: none of us has suggested that there is any 
such thing. I think we simply asked the question as to whether hitting a 
harpsichord hard is part of any true way.

Truce, gentlemen? Otherwise we might enter the cloud cuckoo land of some 
of us feeling a little insulted at being insultingly accused of being 
insulting when we’re not being insulting. And that might insult 
everyone's intelligence.

John Erskine (UK)
www.thomastomkins.org.uk

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