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Date: | Wed, 14 Apr 1999 21:28:33 -0400 |
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Robert W. Shaw wrote:
>When I think of respectable (a provoking term, I know) music that average
>learned people know of, I think of Copland, Gershwin, and Bernstein. None
>wrote enough, I don't think, to establish themselves as giant fixtures in
>the art to which everyone, American and otherwise, can look. Gershwin (I
>always think he had the greatest potential of the three) died early, most
>of Copland's output was of the nonpopulist variety and thus is ignored by
>everyone, and Bernstein both didn't write all that much ...
I'm not sure what kind of quantitative standards you are using to decide
that these composers did not write "very much." I think all three of these
composers wrote works of sufficient stature that they can stand up to all
but (perhaps) the very greatest European composers, and that's fine for me.
Nationalism in music is not particularly important to me, anyway; there's
no such thing in my book as a CM Olympics. As you say:
>As for the European/American thing, it's really stupid in my opinion also,
>but it's there, so we need to figure out why and how to remedy it.
Except that I don't think it needs remedying; it's the nationalistic
nonsense of Americans who won't listen to music by "dead Europeans" that
needs fixing.
Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]
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