Stirling:

>In our own time there was an epidemic that swept with a broad broom
>across the well to do and cultured - AIDS.  The best we could do was
>The AIDs quilt, some low quality art songs, a third rate symphony from
>Corigliano and an overly long banal play that is rapidly falling into
>the mists of obscurity - and hundreds of incoherent screams of rage.
>In otherwords, we were able to stammer forth a crude documentary of
>our feelings - because crude documentary is the art of a placid age.

Well, I certainly agree with you about the quilt and Corigliano (why does
he even have a career?).  But if you're talking about Angels in America, I
differ.  I saw a very bad production of it here in New Orleans, and despite
this albatross, the play come over as very powerful indeed.  I don't know
why you would call it banal (the Wallace Stevens quote at the beginning all
by itself lifts the play out of the regions of banality), but don't take
the trouble to explain, particularly since that might not even be the play
to which you refer.

Jon Johanning adds:

>Also, I would hesitate to condemn the works of art which have been inspired
>by the AIDS epidemic.  The quilt seems to have a great deal of meaning for
>AIDS patients and their friends and families, though others of us might not
>consider it high art.

You can certainly criticize them as art - which is what Stirling was doing
- even if you applaud the intentions.  Good intentions don't count for much
in creating art, unfortunately.  If they did, Lloyd Webber's Requiem would
be a better work than Chuck Berry's "Johnny B.  Goode."

>And Corigliano's symphony is certainly not on the aesthetic level of
>Beethoven, Mahler, Shostakovich, etc., but then who else writing symphonies
>today is on that level?

How often do we get to hear contemporary symphonies? It's the old story.
We're probably hearing less than 1% of what's out there.  You can't make a
sound judgment on such hit-or-miss.  If I went strictly on what I've heard,
I would say that older composers - those who started around the Thirties
and Forties - are writing very good symphonies indeed - Diamond, Lees, and
so on.  But I haven't heard younger people.  I think the world of Larsen's
Third Symphony, not so much of her Second.  And there are lots of people I
haven't heard.  I love Arnold Rosner's work, but I haven't heard a symphony
(even though he's written at least one), mainly because it takes a lot of
money to record one, and it's money the angel won't recoup.  Whether any of
this work rises to the level of Beethoven, Mahler, etc., doesn't concern
me.  I'm easy.  As long as it interests me, I'm happy as a bivalve mollusk.

Steve Schwartz