I think that American composers (and their supporters) must often envy their fellows (and predecessors) in countries less free. There is so much less scope for bravado here; so much less to protest. We are reduced to inveighing against an orchestra's change of program. And even that we don't do particularly well.

The change in question is the Boston Symphony's ditching of three choruses from John Adams' Death of Klinghoffer in favor of Copland's First Symphony. David Wiegand, in the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote that the cancellations were “insensitive to the possibility that Boston Symphony audiences might be capable of thought and emotional depth.”

Gosh, yes. Thought. Emotional depth. Maybe they have those things even in Boston.

John Adams said, in an interview on the Web site Andante.com: “Classical music consumers [consumers! Et tu, John?] are being typecast as the most timid and emotionally fragile of all audiences. I think this is an insult to a very sophisticated group of people, and I can't believe that the kind of person who regularly attends concerts in Boston wouldn't be enraged to think that someone had made an executive decision to protect the fragility of their emotions.”

Ah, yes, those fragile emotions, and those sophisticated Bostonians. But the same interview confirms that London performances of Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine have been been cancelled twice, once just after Princess Diana’s death in a car crash some years ago, and once just after 9/11. Adams says, in the Andante.com interview, that he approved the cancellations of Short Ride, but that “[he doesn’t] think the BSO’s decision to cancel [the Klinghoffer choruses] was made in the same spirit.” Surely it's unfair to tweak the BSO for "protecting" its audience from the content of a piece, if it's okay for other orchestras to "protect" their listeners even from the title of another. Who are these shrinking violets who can't get past a piece's title?

But the audiences aren't the whole story. It turns out, as Anthony Tommasini reported in the New York Times last Sunday, that one of the choristers who was to have sung in the performances in question had a husband on Flight 11. She declined to sing, and many of her colleagues agreed with her.

Tommasini writes: "Should performers be compelled to perform a work that offends them? Of course not. And yet it is only fair to ask performers, especially members of a large chorus or orchestra, to try hard as professionals and artists to put aside personal reservations about repertory. " Yes, but . . . um, no. That is, it's fair to ask them to try hard, but it is not fair to require them to go forward after they have made the attempt. And the "sensitivities" of the performers ought to be right up there with the "sensitivities" of the audience. No one ought to be subjected to unnecessary pain, and that goes for musicians as much as for listeners.

The obvious parallel is the informal "ban" on the performance of Wagner in Israel. It is not particularly about what Wagner said or felt about the Jews; that's not the point. The point is that Wagner is painful to some Israelis — players as well as listeners. They should not have to work through pain. Neither should the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. And no one ought to be branded a "yahoo" (Wiegand's word) for trying to spare them it.

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