Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I'm sorry, but, as I've said before, I think it's up to you to demonstrate
>a cabal actually existed.  A cabal, incidentally, implies a conscious
>conspiracy.  I doubt such a thing, even in academia.  It's true that there
>was a dominant academic style 30 years ago.  I don't see any evidence of
>that now.

Forgive me for not being very clear in my writing about Rosen and elitism.
I agree with Rosen on there never being a "cabal" or conspiracy against
tonal music.

In an piece Rosen wrote in the March 1998 Harpers just before the May
14, 1998 New York Review of Books article (corrected from my initial
posting), he states,

   "The music that survives is the music that musicians want to
   play.  They perform it until it finds an audience.  ...  The
   most significant composers are those who gain the fanatical
   loyalty of performers."

It is the fanatical aspect of some in the Schoenbergian (and post-)
school that made it difficult for others not embracing all aspects of
Modernism.  While not acting in concert like Al Queda, some these folks,
on a one by one basis, did what they could to denigrate music of tonal
composers.  Naturally the reverse was true as well.

I hope we are in a period now of a little less fanaticsim, and more
openmindedness.  Rosen is wrong if he thinks fanatic performers of
"difficult" music are the only ones dealing with "significant" composers.
And he should add that the music that survives is the music that musicians
want to play--and audiences want to hear.  For audiences will directly
or otherwise hire musicians to play their favored music for them, whether
the musicians like it or not.

I am convinced that Rosen favors an elite group of musicians who embrace
"difficult" music.  Elitist only in the sense that they think that those
musicians who are equally fanatic about certain tonal music (take Ron
Nelson's symphonic band music, for example) are not performing "significant"
music.

Only time, not Rosen, will tell.

Jeff Dunn
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