Jan Templiner <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >Could someone perhaps give an overview of Rosen's concept or give a source; >where did Rosen elborate on elitism? Charlese Rosen is too careful to ever propound the glories of elitism in print; rather, a sometimes condescending writing style coupled with a steadfast advocacy of Modernist music as the only great music is what provoked my comment. Rosen wrote an article in the April 1998 New York Review of Books ("Who's Afraid of the Avant-Garde") that generated a lot of debate on the (pre- Archive) List. His attitude has not changed and is reflected in his later NYRB article "The Future of Music." Basically, Rosen champions what he refers to as "difficult" music, music that is best listened to with rapt attention in the concert hall, music that has been vetted by a select group of "qualified" musicians and critics. Essentially, Modernist music. To quote his conclusion at length: "... the concert coerces attention: the performance, with lowered lights and the demand of silence, cannot be interrupted or repeated, and must be seized at one hearing; the work has to be perceived as a whole, and we cannot go over some of the details again. This focuses attention in a way that is more difficult to achieve by listening to records, which tens to dilute and disperse the attention necessary for difficult music, in the same way that watching a video in a room at least partly lighted is less intense than seeing a film in a darkened theater. "Easily assessible works may have a quick and immediate success, but they do nothing to restore the intensity of experience which is the foundation of serious music. I do not know what music of today will survive into the future. Great figures like Josquin and Monteverdi have been forgotten for centuries only to be revived. History teaches us, however, that it is the art that is tough and that resists immediate appreciation that has the best chance of enduring and of returning." Rosen supports this thesis with the standard histories of composers whose works were reviled in their time but are now revered, counterpoised with examples and supposed examples of "listener friendly" composers who faded into obscurity after a splash: "Telemann is listener-friendly, and was considerably more popular than his contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach; by the end of the eighteenth century, hwoever, he was almost completely forgotten, while Bach's reputation has never ceased to grow." With composers problematic to the thesis like Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, Rosen resorts to excuses such as the technical difficulty of performance for the former, and "Tchaikovsky was more controversial than is cometimes realized" for the latter. Rosen's essay was in the context of the '90s "war" on the Modernists and the so-called cabal of "Academic" composers whose "difficult" music drove the general audiences away from classical music. He claims that "what the enemies of modernism cannot accept is the way the avant-garde have taken possession of the mainstream of the great Western tradition." Rosen disingenuously denies the cabal with: "As for [the] 'cabal', it never existed. Conductors and solo performers program works they like to play. Critics campaign for works they think have not been given a fair hearing." As for condescension: "Nothing is more comic than the resentmentof contemporary art, the self-righteous indignation aroused by its difficulty. I remember once being invited to lecture in Cincinnati on the music of Pierra Boulez and Elliot Carter. In the question period afterward, a woman posed what she evidently conceived not as a question but as an agtressive defiant challenge: 'Mr. Rosen, don't you think the composer has a responsibility to write must that the public can understand?' on such occasions I normally reply politely to all questions, no matter how foolish, but this time I answered that the question did not seem to me interesting but that the obvious resentment that instpred it was very significant indeed." To sum up, my charge of elitism is in fact my apprehension of an attitude prompted by reading many of Rosen's writings on the contemporary music scene. By now, I must confess I am biased against him. Let it be said I recognize on bended knee that Rosen's reputation as a performer and student of past musical eras is deservedly outstanding. It is his refusal to grant that ANY audience-friendly music could ever be worthy, his insistence that ONLY "difficult" music understood by an initial select few will ever last, and an overall Authoritarian attitude that makes my Postmodernist blood boil. Do you have to be a priest to know God? Jeff Dunn <[log in to unmask]>