LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

RESPONSE TO GRAHAM PHILLIPS

I find Mr Phillips response to mine, an interesting mixture of insularity and lack of substantive response to my points.
Unlike some people, who choose to live in Majorca, I chose to live in Majorca, his so called “back of beyond” where the majority of people are Mallorquin.

If I wanted to live in Spain, England, or Germany, I would have picked other parts of the island where Mallorquins would be a minority, that way I would not have to bother with the local culture and would only have to speak English, German, or Spanish.

As an example of his insularity, as opposed to the Catalan speaking audience attending Mozart's “Requiem”. While Mozart was a German speaking Austrian, his requiem, as is usual with pre-Vatican II masses, was in Latin.

My point was that the program was in Catalan and used Latin only for the text of the Mass. Evidently those who arranged the program, attended by the Queen, President and other political leaders, felt that Catalan would be sufficient, and judging by the audience they were correct.

Perhaps, being a little more integrated in the culture out in the “back of beyond”, my seating in the nave gave me a bad sample of the general audience, which was some how arbitrarily segregated, with the NNS stuck in the aisles and having to watch the event on TV screens.

Strange how those “back of beyond” types would know and expect a mass by Mozart to be in Latin.

Richard Goss