Denis Fodor writes:
>"Leighton M. Gill", who strikes me as something of a Horatio At the
>Bridge fending off the Stockhausen barbarians, has emerged from the fracas
>in pretty good shape. The Henzes, the Nonos, the Stockhausens of our time
>were instructed musicians, yes, but their fame is mostly due to what I'll
>call the sociolology of music.
I'll fight you to the mat on Nono. The other two I'm willing to let go.
>Following on the counter-tradition of the belle epoque, where received
>aesthetics were scorned and absinthe made the heart grow more beautiful,
>we got the political musicians, supported by the gobbledygook of Theodor
>Adorno, who went into a new round of the merry game called epatez les
>bourgeois! What a bore!
Yes, if that's all their music was. I can't think of any work by Henze
that falls into that category, can you? It all seems fairly conservative,
even a bit bland, to me. Stockhausen has written transcendently beautiful
things that have little to do with shock. Nono can hardly be said to
*have* a career, at least in the US. I heard *of* him from a professor
of mine, whose enthusiasm led me to seek out Nono's music.
>Which is not the same as saying that no valuable new work happened
>along the way. I have in mind, for example, a good deal of Bartok's
>composition--the work of a totally committed, earnest genius.
And yet - talk about epatez les bourgeois - Bartok made the notorious
remark to Nielsen after a performance of one of his violin sonatas, "Modern
enough for you, Mr. Nielsen?" I agree with you that Bartok was a composer
committed to his art, but he also had at least a hankering to shock. How
else does one explain The Miraculous Mandarin - libretto and music designed
to give the raspberry to prim and proper notions of the Mission of Art.
I see absolutely no difference in aim between Bartok on the one hand and
the Unholy Three on the other.
Why suspect the motives of artists, simply because we happen to dislike
the art? Does being a "bad" artist mean you're also a bad human being?
(Rhetorical question: the answer is "no").
Steve Schwartz
|
