Subject: | |
From: | |
Date: | Mon, 8 Mar 1999 08:04:23 -0600 |
Content-Type: | text/plain |
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
Jon Johanning wrote:
>I can excoriate the evil capitalist system with the best of them when I'm
>in the mood, but let's not pretend that "market share" was entirely foreign
>to the minds of the great masters of the past. They also wrote for specific
>audiences who furnished their bread money, and had to keep those audiences'
>preferences in mind to a certain extent. What made them great was that,
>while doing so, they also were able to write for the ages.
I guess I see that the artist's relationship with the audience has varied
over they years. One can find the extremes with the Church determining the
harmonic limitations to a an extreme like Babbitt who "doesn't care if they
listen."
The other day I had a wonderful conversation with someone who had
known Varese. We were talking about the shifting perspectives in music
criticism. He mentioned having attending a concert where Varese, after
many years of being placed in the lunatic fringe by the critical writing
of his time, got his first standing ovation. Calling him the next day he
asked Varese why he thought he was finally getting the critical acclaim
after all of those years of negative reviews. He said that Varese replied,
"you just have to outlive the bastards."
Somehow I see that there is some fundamental difference when it comes to
the motivations for writing popular music versus art music.
Karl
|
|
|