Richard Todd:

>Steve Schwartz takes on Jan Jarvlepp's opinions of 20th century music,
>several times implying that Jarvlepp is rather uninformed.  He also says
>
>>Most composers - even serial ones - are fairly simple creatures, just
>>like you and me.  They differ in that they can compose and we can't.
>
>In fact Jarvlepp is a composer and a respected one among those who know
>his work.  He has as thorough a knowledge of 20th century music as anyone
>I've met, including knowledge of Schoenberg and Webern.  He has a PhD in
>composition.  He's told me that his education was geared to producing an
>avant- garde composer.

As was mine.  Or, rather, not avant-garde, but serial.  However, neither
Mr. Jarvlepp nor I currently write this way.  It is also true of John
Adams, Steve Reich (I think), Lou Harrison, and Philip Glass.  So how much
did serialism stifle composer creativity? My guess is not very much for
those who had something else to say.

>I've often wondered whether his teachers wring their hands wondering where
>they've gone wrong, since he has chosen to develop a style that people
>actually want to hear.

I have not heard Jarvlepp's music, so don't take this the wrong way, but:
which "people" are those? Are those who like serial music by definition not
people? Insincere? Aliens from Neptune? Are the lovers of tonality just the
plain, wholesome, ordinary folks you meet in the supermarket checkout line,
or are they too busy listening to Garth Brooks? I've got nothing against
modern tonal music, per se.  I've also got nothing against non-tonal music
per se.  To me, it's all music and wringing one's hands over the method of
production is silly and irrelevant.  Furthermore, it applies to no other
music.  I've never, for example, heard anybody wringing their hands - at
least not lately - over Beethoven's distortions of the classical style in
his late work or over Wagner's abandonment of "numbers" in his operas.
It seems to me that the emotional reaction to a work doesn't consider the
means of production.  Yet, as soon as one says "serial," a lot of guts seem
to wrench.  It's become a label of opprobrium without much meaning - just
like the current use of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" in U.S.
politics - and an excuse not to have to listen at all.

Steve Schwartz