Robert Peters <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Again, I take Penderecki's St Luke Passion as anti-example: it is music
>that makes you want to run away.  But it is honest.  It speaks of horror
>and it makes you feel horror.  It is art.  When is art art? I think when
>it is honest.  Otherwise it is Kitsch.

What makes you think that horror is any more honest than kitsch?;
or indeed, that honesty in art is any more to be admired per se than
dishonesty? There's noone more honest than a bigot; & no 20th century art
more appalling than the purist vision of Nazi generate (as opposed to the
degenerate) art.

Some people - even some admirers of the hardcore legend Krz Penderecki,
as i often am - may come close to suggest that the St Luke Passion comes
close to kitsch itself (Kosmogonia absolutely crosses that line), with its
gestures of cheap fury producing plenty of smoke but telling you nothing
about the pain of the 20th century night that doesn't come out more
profoundly in Frankel's In Memory of the Six Million (Concerto for Violin
& Orchestra).

How people deal with pain is incredibly individual; & one person's
overdrawn kitsch may be some one else's shattering vision...  that's
certainly the case of the Gorecki symphony, which was a undergound classic
before it became a fashion accessory; & which appears well on the way to
becoming an archetypal score of the late 20th century musical avanta garde.
Paert has similarly developed a distinctive - if limited - voice, with the
Canctus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten as effective in its highly focussed
manner as any mighty masterpiece in dealing with real pain ever has (i
admit, though, that Glass will never do much for me personally).  It may
be kitsch; but its kitsch which hits the target for the audience.

If classical musical art has to experience human emotions through such
Calvanistic narrows, is it any wonder that it seems irrelevant to the
outside world?

All the best,
Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>
endeavour2 project <http://www.geocities.com/robtclements/endeavour2.html>