Steve Schwartz at [log in to unmask] wrote:

>I don't know whom you've been reading, but Schoenberg was anything but
>straightforward - he was quite often careerist.  ...  Schoenberg's
>memorial tribute to Gershwin - a composer, incidentally, I like very much
>- is sufficiently fulsome, but Schoenberg scholars have combed over it for
>insincerities.  They wouldn't have done that if Schoenberg was in the habit
>of speaking his mind directly.

There is a word for a composer that speaks his mind.

Obscure.

The truth is that getting music played is an intensely political exersize,
and composers - from Bach forward - are constantly spinning their
statements to get performances.

Sad, but true.

Stirling Newberry
http://www.mp3.com/ssn
http://www.coprenicus.com