Bernard Chasan <[log in to unmask]> writes in reply to me:

>>...  his PR is one reason Monteverdi successful - but actually
>>a better composer than his contemporaries.  That is, he was a more
>>effective communicator to his contemporaries.
>
>There is absolutely no  logical argument to be made that since music
>and PR both involve communication, good PR is to be equated with good
>composition skills.

Logic and quality are beside the point.  In real terms, PR is responsible
for getting most music heard and known.  It's the reason, for example,
that one fine work (Britten's "War Requiem") is regularly performed round
the world, whilst another dealing with precisely the same material in a
strikingly similar format (Vaughan Williams' "Dona Nobis Pacem") is not.

In this case, as far as musical quality goes you pays your money and you
takes your choice.  The difference is, that Britten's work was superbly
gauged to match the popular mood of its time (1960 post-war reconciliation)
and VW's (1930s pacifism) was not.  That is where PR - call it seizing the
moment, if you will - comes in.  If pacifist Britten had written the War
Requiem in 1939, whilst in America ...  well, we can all don our pith
helmets and imagine the reaction.  Would the piece have sunk without trace,
or become a cult classic? Certainly it would not then have enjoyed the
popular success it did twenty years later.

Of VW and Ketelbey ...

>Ketelbey made more money, therefore, by Christopher's curious logic he was
>the better PR guy and hence the better composer.

Your logic, maybe, not mine.  I'm interested in observation, not logical
argument or judgmental conclusions.  The only logical conclusion I've drawn
is pretty banal:  that Ketelbey was the more popular composer because he
made more money.  Aesthetic judgement doesn't come into it.

I might rate happen to rate Vaughan Williams' "Bredon Hill" higher up
my personal league table than "Bells Across the Meadows" yet possess more
recordings of Ketelbey's little gem, and listen to it more often (what the
heck, I admit it!) It's just that the Ketelbey estate has made more money
out of me here than Ursula Vaughan Williams.

>The problem with Christopher's line of argument is simply that there
>are tons of pop musicians more popular than the most popular classical
>composer.  So Phillip Glass can't hold a candle to Billy Joel, and Billy
>Joel can't be considered to be in the same league as ...Britney
>Spears.

True enough as far as it goes; but your line of argument again, not mine.
Music is not a monolith; and by popularity, in our particular neck of the
woods, Glass is currently up there ahead of Glazunov.  The fact that the
shape of the wood is shifting, as it always has, is part of the interest.
In a recent post on rec.music.classical Glass was called, rather cleverly,
"the modern Vivaldi".

>That is where using popularity as a criterion of excellence gets you.
>Once you go down that road it is hard to see how you get off it.

Easy, so long as you have your trusty personal road map with you.  You
can even do U-turns if you like.  What worries you about popularity? Does
it taint your listening pleasure?

>Chistopher is eloquent about what he sees as the qualities in Glass'
>music- fine.  But then he belittles Reich and Adams as mere tinklers,
>belittles those who like their music, and on what basis?

Apologies for using the glib phrase "subtler tinklings" (which isn't
exactly "mere"):  blame it on the Chianti and Porcini mushrooms I'd just
been consuming in quantity.  Let me hasten to reassure Bernard that I'm
first in the queue, couching at the virtual MDT door, whenever a new John
Adams CD is in the offing - "Slonimsky's Earbox" on Nonesuch is one of my
joys of the year.

My intention was to highlight that Glass has become a musical legend
outside our neck of the woods, whilst Reich and Adams have not.  That -
aside from his earlier work - is what most interests me about Old Phil,
coupled with the sheer quantity of sniffy backchat that he (but not they)
manages to generate.

The construction of lists and league tables, as Tim Mahon entertainingly
points out, are not for me a part of this interest.  My most painful recent
work was having to squeeze out a Top 60 list of zarzuelas for synopsis in
my forthcoming book on the genre, "The Zarzuela Companion" --- end of
personal PR!!

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"