"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.  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!

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.  His way with
rhythms, handled in the tradition of serious music but advancing the state
of its art, is, I think, paradigmatic.  Moreover, he and his very few likes
personify the truism that art is NOT a profession; it is, rather, an
achievement.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]