Ed Zubrow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Sunday's Boston Globe features an interview by Richard Dyer with composer
>Geoprge Benjamin.  In the context of recent threads on the list and our
>everpresent ruminations on the state of classical music, one of Benjamin's
>quotes struck me:

Fights over words like "accessible" and "original" are like fights over the
word "simplicity" back in the 1903's - catch phrases for people to fight
over.

Benjamin is a hack.  He doesn't need worries about accessibility to
trip him up, he does that quite well on his own.  It is true there are
hacks that think they are better compsoers because they make music with
a particular kind of pleasing sonic surface.  But the over riding
problem is that they are hacks, and would be whether writing complex
poly-tuning/poly-rhythm/multi-ethinic serial music or I-IV-V rehashes.

Things haven't changed much since Schumann's "Shrovetide Oration" some
decades ago, and likely never will.

It would do great good to set this fights aside, since they are not only
unmusical, but aesthetically and philosophically uninteresting, and allow
the people who rush behind the crest of this or that banner to sink into
obscurity.

Really what it boils down to is that there is a small crowd of people who
likes one kind of music - and they want all the money and all of the power
and all of the positions of prominence for it, and a larger crowd that
doesn't like it- who wants it to be erased from the planet.  The rest is
window dressing.

What is unfortunate is that most of the words published about classical
music are about this - a naked political cat fight - rather than anything
which could be construed as being about the artistic experience.  Is it any
wonder that classical music is in decline in its social relevance? People
out there do not care about fights over "accessibility" or "complexity" -
it means as little to them as arguments over whether lacto-ovo veggies are
real vegitarians, or whether only pure vegans qualify, or arguments over
whether lesbians that use dildoes are really lesbians.

The business of the social world of "the arts" should be to connect artists
with audiences, to educate people in understanding, engaging and enjoying
what they experience as art.  Not in fighting over who has the big offices,
the big title and who controls what is spoken and written about art.

Stirling Newberry