Bernard Chasan replies to Karl Miller:

>>Some years ago, one of our ethnomusicology students said..."of course
>>the symphony is dead.  (of course Bernstein said that many years ago)
>>It has no relevance to our society." While I would like to think it
>>should be relevant.  I wonder if there will be enough who do find it
>>relevant to provide the money to keep it going.  For me...there are times
>>when I think it is only through the recording that we will preserve this
>>"irrelevant" art form.
>
>We should make a list of recent symphonies which demonstrate that the
>reports of the symphony's demise are exaggerated, A few that come to
>mind going back to 1990 arbitrarily:
>
>Holmboe: last few
>Norgard Third Symphony
>Ruders  Second Symphony
>Schnittke Eighth Symphony

Of course, the crucial point is Relevant to Whom.  It seems to me that
the symphony's irrelevance to culture at large is indisputable, to judge
by the musical tastes - almost never including classical - of most of
my college-degreed friends.  To composers (especially to those composers
who started writing before the Fifties), it's probably more relevant,
although I've got to try hard to think of younger composers who've made
their mark as symphonists.  To classical-music nuts, it's hardly irrelevant.
The symphony has undoubtedly replaced opera as the Primary Prestige
Genre.

Nevertheless, the talk of relevance as a criterion misleads a bit.  What
we need is not a way toward relevance, but someone to write terrific
symphonies.

Steve Schwartz