Jeff Harrington:
I'll tell you what *I* think. First, you're just flame-baiting. You're
not participating in this newsgroup at all. You just point to what you
think are going to be incendiary devices, but are instead tired old duds
which weren't true even in the 70's when they might have been
at *least* pertinent.
Boulez and all of the other isms you're attacking in those essays are not
even an issue anymore. The issue? How do we get our music played when
tired old dinosaur academics (like you?) are getting all of the
commissions and opportunities. How do we raise the level of criticism so
that we can keep pathetic tonal composers from becoming the next wave of
crap (after 70's academic atonalists all die)? And how do we convince
musicians that new music is worth taking a chance on now. That new music
isn't *just* lame neo-tonal American neo-classicists and overly complex
half-baked Carter/Boulez clones.
Write about that and I'll take another look. Until then, I invite you to
join our discussion, stop your pathetic flame-baiting and share what
insights you have about today's problems for serious new music.
Robert Davidson:
Come on Jeff, settle will you. It's the late nineties, and there's room
for all kinds of music. The "next wave"? There's millions of waves all
happening at once on the ocean of sound. While you may not agree with
this guy's neo-square tonality, why can't we live in peace? If you don't
like the establishment scene, make your own scene.
By the way, most music is still decidedly tonal (broadly speaking) and
this by no means makes it conservative. Was Glenn Branca looking back
when he constructed his tonal guitar symphonies?
Jeff Harrington:
Hey, you mis-read that, I'd say. Notice the word "pathetic?" Pathetic
tonal composers. People who's music is plodding or trite, pretentious,
just dulllllll...
I've been hearing more and more recent
American music that makes the music of the American 30's and 40's seem
positively brilliant. (Good Davidovsky quote, "Todays tonal composer
makes Bernard Hermman seem like an Olympian Giant.")
I went to a concert at NYU a few months ago, where there was a piano
sonata played by a fairly well known composer. It reminded me, in all
honesty, of a Broadway composer - trying to be Beethovenian. It's like,
we got ripped off - musical education speaking - we were all forced to
compose modernist music right off the bat, but now we're free and we want
to write melodies, and tonal harmonies but we just don't know what the
hell we're doing....
: By the way, most music is still decidedly tonal (broadly speaking) and
: this by no means makes it conservative. Was Glenn Branca looking back
: when he constructed his tonal guitar symphonies?
Again, it's not about looking either way. My comment was about a
peculiarly American kind of plodding tonal music. You're in Australia,
you at least have your own patheticisms. Probably Indonesia-influenced?
If you'll take a look at Reale's diatribe, it's your usual
modernist-bashing. It's all the more pathetic, since this *is* the 90's
as you point out and the governing aesthetic is post-minimalist,
neo-conservative. He should be bashing David Lang, not Boulez. Boulez is
dead; old-school...
Still like that new piece of his, "...explosante... fixe...", though.
Robert Davidson:
It does seem rather odd to be comparing contemporary composers to Handel.
We don't compare Warhol to Michaelangelo - they simply have very little
in common. I love Handel, but also love Reich; they occupy very
different parts of my musical thinking.
The whole idea of great geniuses in music has been questioned severely in
recent decades, and it's hard to think of any composers working today who
could be said to fit this category. We live in a different society
altogether, one less addicted to Geniuses and Great Men who are Heroes
with Great Authority. Scenius has replaced Genius, and I'm glad because
its more inclusive and (for people of our time) more interesting.
I would suggest that Reich's and Part's music is extremely well made in
its context. And you can't dispense with context altogether.
Reich made an interesting comment about his former composition teacher
Vincent Persichetti which has relevance to this: "Persichetti could do
everthing and do it well, but you didn't really care."
Robert Davidson.