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Date: | Mon, 24 Dec 2001 18:42:47 -0600 |
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Mats Norrman replies to Margaret Mikulska:
>>I'm very enthusiastic about 20th-C music; that's why when I see composers
>>like Kernis or Corigliano winning awards for their tepid, easy neo-tonal
>>pabulum, I'm quite appalled. Thanks goodness Carter, Boulez, and others
>>do get some recognition as well.
>
>Why don't you go to the faculty of mathematics at your university? There
>you find lots of potential music by Boulez (though these one is in the
>faculty where it should be).
I quote from a contemporary Boston newspaper:
The First Symphony of Brahms seemd to us as hard and as uninspired
as upon its former hearing. It is mathematical music evolved with
difficulty from an unimaginative brain. . . . This noisy, ungraceful,
confusing and unattractive example of dry pedantry before the
masterpieces of Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Gade, or even of the
reckless and over-fluent Raff! Absurd! . . . All that we have heard
and seen from Brahms's pen abounds in headwork without a glimmer of
soul. . . . It is possible that as we grow more familiar with this
symphony it may become clearer to us, but we might pore over a difficult
problem in mathematics until the same result is reached without arriving
at the conclusion that it is a poetic inspiration.
As someone who has studied both music and mathematics, I don't really
understand why difficult music is labeled mathematical, unless most people
find mathematics as difficult as the music.
Steve Schwartz
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