Thomas de Groot wrote:
> I take of my hat and bow low, Shay. Your effort reminds me of a Chinese 
> story:
> 
> A rich patron visited a famous painter and asked him if he could draw a 
> life-like copy of a bird (I think it was a cock, but I do not remember 
> exactly) with one single brush stroke. The painter told him to come back a 
> week later. That day, the painter took a virgin piece of paper and painted 
> the bird in one single brush stroke. The patron was duly impressed and asked 
> the painter the price of this painting. The price was a very large sum of 
> gold. "What? said the patron, so much for a single brush stroke?". The 
> painter took him to another room which was stuffed full with countless 
> rejected trials of the bird. "It is not that single brush stroke that you 
> pay, but all the days and nights I have spent to reach perfection."
> 
> Thomas
> 
> 
Nice take on Shay's larger story about this piece.

But the story bothers me.  The painter should have called the patron an 
idiot and left it at that, imo.  I mean suppose he'd painted it in a 
single stroke first time then and there!  Would that be more, or less, 
impressive/valuable?

More purely in the art realm, either it is beautiful/stirring/etc. or it 
is not.  Does it matter if takes Mozart second, a week, or ten years to 
come up with a beautiful musical motif?  If two hundred years later 
hearing it played gets us out of our seats cheering madly,... then it does.

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