Janos Gereben wrote:

>Giacinto Scelsi and his five surviving orchestral works: in the city of
>St. Francis, we have two down and three to go.  Oy.

Mr Gereben favors us with quasi-journalistic fare of allegedly
authoritative nature from time to time, in the course of which an
assortment of questionable observations and somewhat hazy conclusions
has given me some serious doubts about his competence.

The installment which began as above blows his credibility completely as
far as I am concerned; In addition to standard repertoire, I conduct and
work with an enormous amount of "contemporary" music, running from early
20th century standards to premieres with the ink still wet on the parts,
or the scores still toasty from the laser printer.

I'd be a liar and hypocrite to say I like it all but I find it difficult
to understand the logomanic impulse to favor the list with such a diatribe
against a score or a composer I didn't like, repelete with witty
sociohistoric allusions.

We should be grateful that the author actually took the time to attend a
second performance of any Scelsi; in doing that he reveals a higher degree
of professionalism and plausibility than anything else in this silly effort
suggests.

Joel Lazar
Bethesda MD