Dear Marion,

Your letter appeared in my e-mail box last evening at
that final check on closing the computer preliminary to
a midnight trip to Manchester NH, where Klemens' flight
was scheduled to land at 11:55 p.m. The drive was effortless;
plenty of time to meditate on the lion's roar.  There was
virtually no traffic, as if the country were in an economic
depression.  Klemens commented that he had never seen so
bare a highway.

I can't remember what brought the phrase: Well roar'd, Lion,
to mind, but it was only a few days ago that I consulted
de.wikipedia and learned that we owe it to Shakespeare.
Until then I had been aware only of the German, Gut gebruellt,
Loewe. If pressed, I would guess I heard it from my father,
and he, from our grandfather. But I'm not sure. 

I was much flattered by your writing:

> I think that ascribing our actions to free will
> is a cultural and ethical phenomenon.

as if you knew my mind better than I knew it myself.
We had been arguing whether free will did or did not exist
as a phenomenon of nature, and you sagely identified it
as a reflection of culture and ethics, which surely it is.
Inasmuch as cultural and ethical phenomena are also, for
anyone who takes culture and ethics seriously, facts of
nature, your solution to the equation was like the roar
of a lion against the background of my ineffectual chatter.
 
I was much interested in your report:

> In recent decades there has been this woman in England
> who composes remarkable works, each in the style of a
> well-known classical composer.
 
since intoxicated as I am with the music of Schubert,
Beethoven, Mozart, Haendel and especially Bach, I have
often asked myself why contemporary composers find it
necessary to distinguish themselves by repudiating the
classical tradition and writing music so different that
it grates on my ears. I say to myself that if I were a
composer, my aim would be to imitate Bach, Haendel, Mozart
as closely as possible. As a matter of fact, I've fantasized
about writing a computer program that would by means of
structural analysis, generate algorithms to define the 
unique characteristics of diverse musical compositions,
making it possible to compose uncounted parodies using the
computer keyboard. Unfortunately such a project, being
far beyond both my musical and mathematical and computer
programming competence, must remain just that: a
megalomanic science fiction fantasy, the implementation
of which, though impossible in this life, will have a high
priority in my next incarnation, if any.

The disparity, so bemoaned by me, between the compositions
of contemporary and classical composers, might also corroborate
the considerations of "free will" which we have been bandying
about.  Surely any contemporary composer with even a modicum
of financial acumen would do her utmost to replicate the music
of Mozart or Haendel, and if none does, that would most likely
be on account of an impossibility, an impossibility rooted in
the circumstance that her composition is not deliberate, is
not an expression of her determination, is not an expression of
her "free will", but wells from a substrate of subconsciousness
to which she has no access and over whose dynamics she has no
control.

Jochen