Please nit-pik away. I am always happy to have my knowledge corrected. I have been listening to all that music on ipod for so long now, I had forgotten... I am thinking of Gates of Delerium, also Awaken on Going for the One (right?) was a wonderful surprise for there later work.

Yes, I agree. That is the genius. In the movie, Amadeus, Salieri had an opportunity to inspect Mozart's originals. Obviously overcome, Salieri stated "And music finished as no music is finished. Replace one note and there would be diminishment. Replace one phrase and the structure would fall." Here is the scene....
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=s...

For many viewers this song seems to be the main takeaway from the movie. Its official YouTube videos (with lyrics and without) have been seen over 1.2 billion times, or 7x the number of any of the film’s other songs. Hopefully it will encourage many of today’s and tomorrrow’s adults to become less concerned about the opinions of others, and more confident of their own values and their own worth.

I agree. I did not know anything about her when she was performing on the world stage and "discovered " her on CD's and YouTube. I had dismissed her because I didn't know anything about opera and because she was from America ( I didn't know she was Greek). When I first heard her I realized that she was not just great but special. Like I said above my ignorance knows no bounds outside of things that I dealt with day to day in business. Retirement and the internet is leading me to a broader education.

SarahMontalbano: "I took a jazz workshop a few years back and I loved it because there was, in fact, patterns I hadn't noticed before."

There are patterns in all kinds of music, many more subtle than casual listeners are aware of. But finding patterns in music doesn't establish objective criteria for music appreciation, especially for the kind of sense of life Ayn Rand referred to. There is much more to jazz in particular and the kinds of emotions it evokes than patterns of notes with mechanical rhythms (though it can sound like that the way some play it).

For the evolution of the sounds of jazz in its various aspects from its beginning in late 19th century America watch the Ken Burns documentary Jazz (which is far better than most of his work, which is increasingly politically propagandistic).

The greatest of the pioneers was Louis Armstrong. Most people don't know much about the nature of jazz or its history, or about Louie in particular, who invented and established at the age of 30 the standard for the jazz solo for a century with his majestic West End Blues in 1928 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W232O... This is where it started. It was his "romantic manifesto". No one had done anything like it before -- and no one has since been able to duplicate what he played in that recording in terms of phrasing, rhythm and tonality projecting his sense of life. It isn't just patterns.

To hear how much Louie added, compare that version of West End Blues with the original composed and recorded by his friend and colleague Joe "King" Oliver a few months before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOVdw...

Armstrong grew up in poverty on the streets of New Orleans, learned to play the cornet in a waif's home, and became through his own inventiveness, dedication and effort an international star making a music that had previously been undreamed of. Many who have heard of him know him mostly for his unfortunate showmanship 'mugging' later in his career, and not for his pioneering accomplishments in the 1920s and 30s. His career is a part of American history not to be missed, especially if you wan to understand the roots of American jazz.

When he recorded West End Blues in 1928 electric recording was only a few years old and lacked the fidelity attained even in the next few years, let alone today, but his sound still shines through. A few years before, those players had been recording into big acoustic horns to transfer the sound pressure waves directly onto a record master with an even muddier sound than the earliest electrics -- with Louie in the back of the room to not overwhelm the balance. Not many years before that it was done with wax cylinders.

This is the 1929 Armstrong recording of St. Louis Blues, supposedly the most recorded blues of all time, but not like this, even by W.C. Handy himself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j_Az... "Playing the blues" didn't mean "feeling blue".

Here is an early video capturing both the sound and visual effect of Armstrong's drive in his playing and singing Dinah in Copenhagen in 1933 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhVdL... Watch at the end the way the audience is dressed, as if to emphasize how far back this goes in history.

All of this is a part of American history not to be missed. The jazz and swing of the early 20th century which swept Europe and beyond in another American "shot heard 'round the world" displayed a sense of life that you don't often find in today's music (let alone in its bottom of the rap pit). There is still a lot of talent, and often more instrumental "technique" and theoretical musical knowledge, but not serving the same purpose.