Jan Templiner <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Could someone perhaps give an overview of Rosen's concept or give a source;
>where did Rosen elborate on elitism?

Charlese Rosen is too careful to ever propound the glories of elitism in
print; rather, a sometimes condescending writing style coupled with a
steadfast advocacy of Modernist music as the only great music is what
provoked my comment.

Rosen wrote an article in the April 1998 New York Review of Books ("Who's
Afraid of the Avant-Garde") that generated a lot of debate on the (pre-
Archive) List.  His attitude has not changed and is reflected in his later
NYRB article "The Future of Music."

Basically, Rosen champions what he refers to as "difficult" music, music
that is best listened to with rapt attention in the concert hall, music
that has been vetted by a select group of "qualified" musicians and critics.
Essentially, Modernist music.  To quote his conclusion at length:

   "...  the concert coerces attention: the performance, with lowered
   lights and the demand of silence, cannot be interrupted or repeated,
   and must be seized at one hearing; the work has to be perceived as
   a whole, and we cannot go over some of the details again.  This
   focuses attention in a way that is more difficult to achieve by
   listening to records, which tens to dilute and disperse the attention
   necessary for difficult music, in the same way that watching a video
   in a room at least partly lighted is less intense than seeing a
   film in a darkened theater.

   "Easily assessible works may have a quick and immediate success,
   but they do nothing to restore the intensity of experience which
   is the foundation of serious music.  I do not know what music of
   today will survive into the future.  Great figures like Josquin and
   Monteverdi have been forgotten for centuries only to be revived.
   History teaches us, however, that it is the art that is tough and
   that resists immediate appreciation that has the best chance of
   enduring and of returning."

Rosen supports this thesis with the standard histories of composers whose
works were reviled in their time but are now revered, counterpoised with
examples and supposed examples of "listener friendly" composers who faded
into obscurity after a splash:

   "Telemann is listener-friendly, and was considerably more popular
   than his contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach; by the end of the
   eighteenth century, hwoever, he was almost completely forgotten,
   while Bach's reputation has never ceased to grow."

With composers problematic to the thesis like Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky,
Rosen resorts to excuses such as the technical difficulty of performance
for the former, and "Tchaikovsky was more controversial than is cometimes
realized" for the latter.

Rosen's essay was in the context of the '90s "war" on the Modernists and
the so-called cabal of "Academic" composers whose "difficult" music drove
the general audiences away from classical music.  He claims that "what the
enemies of modernism cannot accept is the way the avant-garde have taken
possession of the mainstream of the great Western tradition." Rosen
disingenuously denies the cabal with:

   "As for [the] 'cabal', it never existed.  Conductors and solo
   performers program works they like to play.  Critics campaign for
   works they think have not been given a fair hearing."

As for condescension:

   "Nothing is more comic than the resentmentof contemporary art, the
   self-righteous indignation aroused by its difficulty.  I remember once
   being invited to lecture in Cincinnati on the music of Pierra Boulez
   and Elliot Carter.  In the question period afterward, a woman posed
   what she evidently conceived not as a question but as an agtressive
   defiant challenge: 'Mr.  Rosen, don't you think the composer has a
   responsibility to write must that the public can understand?' on
   such occasions I normally reply politely to all questions, no matter
   how foolish, but this time I answered that the question did not
   seem to me interesting but that the obvious resentment that instpred
   it was very significant indeed."

To sum up, my charge of elitism is in fact my apprehension of an attitude
prompted by reading many of Rosen's writings on the contemporary music
scene.  By now, I must confess I am biased against him.  Let it be said I
recognize on bended knee that Rosen's reputation as a performer and student
of past musical eras is deservedly outstanding.  It is his refusal to grant
that ANY audience-friendly music could ever be worthy, his insistence that
ONLY "difficult" music understood by an initial select few will ever last,
and an overall Authoritarian attitude that makes my Postmodernist blood
boil.

Do you have to be a priest to know God?

Jeff Dunn <[log in to unmask]>