John Dalmas:
>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.
Look. It's simple, really. Some of us like the composers you dump on.
That's all. If enough people dump on the composers we like, it may very
well be that we will not have the opportunity to hear this music again.
In the 1960s, Crossroads label (CBS's budget line of recordings licensed
mainly from Supraphon) had a marketing slogan: "Stamp out Beethoven
Bullies." Supraphon concentrated on people like Martinu, Monteverdi, Novak,
Suk, Mahler, Lassus, Honegger, Dussek, Vorisek, and so on - at that time
(and largely today) the byways of music. In my lifetime, Mahler has become
a major figure. Martinu and Monteverdi seem on the verge. But major vs.
minor strikes me as a crude division music. Every one of these composers
has something individual to say and some speak to corners of life not
normally addressed by the titanic, bona-fide Great Artists. We don't love
something because that something has earned our love. Love is mainly given
and taken.
>These partisans are absolutists. Each and every note written by their
>particular champion is sacrosanct; moreover, any criticism of one or more
>of the works of their hero is simplistically interpreted as a blanket
>condemnation of all of the composer's works. 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.
Actually, I haven't heard anyone on the list take this position on any
composer. I have, however, read blanket condemnations of composers by
country and period, without apparent exception. Seems pretty absolutist
to me.
>A professor of literature once told me that appreciating poetry is a
>solitary vice, one that seldom can be shared. That was the case, he said,
>because if one truly knows poetry, one will find that too many other people
>one might want to share the experience with only know reputations. Unless
>you answer the question, Who wrote that?, they will not know how to
>respond; and if you deviously attribute the poem to a well known poet
>before you read it, they are sure to say they loved it. The one thing he
>wanted me to remember from the course was that there were not many bad
>poets inside the pantheon, but an awful lot of bad poems outside it.
This is mostly fine and probably true. However, it assumes that everybody
of good will and honest feeling agrees on who's good and who's not and that
those who don't agree are swayed merely by reputations. Actually, I've
found that the latter characterizes more truely those who resent anything
outside the Era of Common Practice than those who tend to like other
things, perhaps because consensus in those areas isn't as extensive. After
all, we've had recently people wrangling over A. Tcherepnin, Christopher
Rouse, Thomas Ades, Schoenberg, etc. etc., none of whom can be said -
fortunately - to have been finally ranked.
>So I say, why not leave the great composers in the pantheon, and be honest
>about the music outside?
Because we're not clear on the exhibits that should be inside. I really
don't understand the need for the pantheon, but apparently many people feel
it. First, it implies that composers are gods (pantheon = "all gods"). In
the weakening of formal religion since the 19th century, art very largely
has supplanted it among the educated, even among the badly educated. Since
we're now talking about religion rather than pleasure, a pantheon I suppose
becomes important. We don't want to be worshipping false gods. However,
this implies that we know divinity when we see or hear it. I'm wondering
how. The only thing I know for sure is that at a certain time I'm
interested or bored, attracted or repelled by a work of art. If I think
about it, I can narrow what features arouse which response. That's about
it. I know others react differently. I find Bruckner's masses, for
example, windy bores. Others think them an exalted peak in the history
of music. I don't question their honesty or their competence. I accept
as fact that people react differently. I also believe that people
change their minds - something borne out by the cyclic nature of musical
reputations throughout history. I don't accept - or at least no one has
shown me - that there is only one valid way to react. The pantheon is
probably a lot of pantheons - one for each listener who wants to build one.
But, of course, that radical individuation destroys the reason for building
a pantheon in the first place. It's hard to have a temple of one.
Steve Schwartz
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