Stirling replies to me:

>Steve says that he didn't pick Griffiths.  Let me ask him a question, let
>us suppose that a major party nominee, which everyone he belongs to, picked
>a well known racist as his press secreterry.  The job is not elected nor is
>it constitutional.  Would he be as comofortable then?

I'd be as uncomfortable as you.  Now you know one reason why I don't belong
to a political party.  Even so, the analogy is too loose, at least to me,
to mean much.  The significant difference is that there *are* such things
as formalized political parties, with mundane things like offices,
salaries, candidates, operatives, and legal privileges and
responsibilities.  I don't know anything comparable in music.

>The editor of the New York Times picked Griffiths because he knows
>that Griffiths will, reliably, draw the support of a particualr group of
>individuals.  As Deryk so ably points out, people who are not in agreement
>with the avant-garde world view don't count in criticising him.

How would the Times know, outside of a few names, what the aesthetic
affiliation is? You write a critical letter to the Times.  They publish
it or they don't.

>By the silence of the supporters of avant-garde music, Griffiths, because
>of his reach and prominence, is one of the de facto spokesmen for the
>avant-garde view point.  The silence of those who support him amounts to
>tacit consent.

I used to hear this argument in the Sixties.  I hated it then, I hate it
now.  First, you assume that anyone who likes the music that Griffiths
likes supports Griffiths himself.  These are two obviously separable
issues.  Second, silence does not necessarily mean assent.  Not everybody
in small Mississippi towns who kept silent over civil rights (and this
would include blacks and whites) thought that blacks should be harrassed.
They kept silent for other reasons, including fear of economic and violent
reprisal.  To move from a less dramatic example back to music:  I don't
know what "keeping silent" means as you use the phrase.  What are the
possible courses of action? We could write a letter to the Times, and
because we are who we are (ie, nobody with a recognizable name), the
Times could choose to ignore it.  We've both criticized Griffiths in this
forum, which means that 1000 people have received an e-mail which they're
perfectly free not to read (if an e-mail is deleted unread, did the author
write it?).

Finally, one could attack Griffiths in two ways.  It's quite clear that
Griffiths has a polarizing and highly selective view of what constitutes
"legitimate" contemporary music.  To him, there are barricades and
hedgerows and opposing armies.  It's tempting (and I think it plays into
his strengths) to answer in kind.  However, for those of us who could care
less about whose career is where and who have no connection whatsoever with
the career-making machine, contemporary music is an open landscape.  Since
we have no career ambition, there's very little someone like Griffiths can
do to us personally.  We can go whereever we want without having to answer
to anybody.  If someone wants to challenge us, so much the worse for them.
One can criticize Griffiths without accepting his world-view of new music
as an armed camp.  In fact, I think it important to criticize this view,
perhaps even more important than the lazy thinking of a particular column.

Steve Schwartz