Date: |
Wed, 17 Mar 1999 22:32:57 -0600 |
Subject: |
|
From: |
|
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
John Dalmas wrote:
>It is astonishing to note that some subscribers to this list approach music
>not as an art to be appreciated, or as a medium to test one's maturing
>powers of discrimination and taste, but rather as an opportunity to join
>in partisan battle for this composer or that composer, as if matters of
>discrimination and taste had no relevancy. As if all that mattered is not
>the music, but the composer's name, the composer's reputation.
My work routinely gets turned down from this or that event because I am
"not famous enough." The music is rarely considered. A sad fact of life
in many places.
>... Dare to mention in a statement about one composer a contrasting
>statement about another composer, and right away: an almost puerile
>dichotomy arises. It is X vs. Y, A vs. B. The armor is donned. The
>battle joined.
In other times and other places these were called "guerres de bouffons"
(fools' wars), a name that I think fits quite well. French or Italian
opera, Brahms or Wagner,.... From our 20th-century vantage point we can
see that there's room for French and Italian opera, for Brahms and Wagner.
My only regrettable choices since I moved to Fort Worth have involved two
or more concerts (and/or other activities) going on at the same time. I
can handle that.
Aaron J. Rabushka
[log in to unmask]
|
|
|