James Tobin wrote:

>Corigliano certainly has had an audience, from his earliest works, which
>were so eclectic that I wondered if he would ever find his own voice.  I
>am not ready to say whether he has or not, because I am not really drawn
>to his work enough to have listened to it much, but I will say that his
>symphony is perhaps the most powerful expression of rage in music that I
>am aware of.

True, but that's not the only remarkable feature of the work.  The use of
the Albeniz Tango on offstage piano, immediately followed by the violins
drawing out the theme and altering it, expressing (to me) regret at the
beauty of it -- I admit that many musical connoisseurs would dismiss this
kind of passage as too obvious in its effect, but if music is going to
appeal to more than a very small audience, obviousness will have to rear
its ugly head somewhere, and the only question is the difference between
musical and unmusical obviousness.  I am certainly enough of a CM junkie
to find musical interest in some pretty weird stuff, but I can also go for
directly expressive things like the Corigliano, and I don't think composers
will run out of ideas for either kind of music any time soon.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]