Jon Johanning <[log in to unmask]>

>Ed Zubrow wrote:
>
>>On our wonderful local radio show the Connection with Christopher Lydon,
>>pianist and NEC professor Stephen Drury is discussing contemporary
>>classical music.  He is urging listeners to approach modern music in a new
>>and different way in order to begin to appreciate it on its own terms.
>>
>>Do not think of music as telling a story.  Do not think of it as a dance.
>>Think of the sounds as an experience to be absorbed.
>
>Great advice!  (By the way, you don't have to confine it to modern music.)
>The problem is, it seems that so few people can follow it.

I was going to leave this thread alone; but Jon misses the obvious point:
it isn't that so few people can follow dreary Drury's fossilised masters;
but that they have absolutely no interest in doing so (& indeed:  noone has
yet offered a single good reason why they should).  Self-serving posturing
of the Drury school - Basil Ramsay's recent comments on the subject
mentioned elsewhere on just as bad - only stink up the place & do nothing
to alleviate the suspicion amongst the punters that comtemporary CM is as
bad as it sounds; & therefore can be quite reasonably dismissed without a
second thought.

I remember a documentary on Nono - an erratic composer; but capable
of real insight at times - where the composer was talking about making
his CM interesting to fishsellers.  This is hardly an attitude that i'm
unsympathetic to; & Nono is an elegant (& not overly cursed with aesthetic
presumption) advocate for his corner of the artistic field; but put bluntly
- & i should credit the media commentator Clive James as the source of the
insight - if he really wanted to create a democratic art, the issue he
should'ave been trying to face was not trying to make his art interesting
to fishsellers but making his branch of comtemporary CM as interesting as
selling fish....

All the best,

Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>
<http://www.ausnet.net.au/~clemensr/welcome.htm>