Walter Meyer:

>Just maybe people are talking of different Benjamins?? There's Arthur
>Benjamin (b. 1898; d. 1960) by whom I know only his "Jamaican Rhumba"
>which I actually find quite nice, and whom I *thought* at first everybody
>was talking about until I found out that there was also a George Benjamin
>(b. 1960), by whom I don't recall having heard anything.

No Marcus and I are speaking of the same person.

If someone where to say "Beethoven is was a hack." or "Stravinski was a
hack" - the correct way to respond would be to point o various sections of
music which rise about hackery, which illuminate and show more than merely
chugging along through the notes.  Instead Mr.  Maroney offers us what? A
testimonial.  As is often teh case, the defenders of bad art work are the
best demonstrations of its shallowness - instead of isnight, defense,
eloquence, scholarship or musicianship he offers us "Well I'm a member of
the club."

Which was the point in the first place.  Hacks are sniveling slimeey
unpleasant people.  In general they are kind, professional, easy to get
along with and described by everyone who is allowed to know them as "such
a nice person".  After all, that is how a hack rises in the world.  Andrew
Lloyd Webber is a very engaging conversationalist and speaker.  He is also,
undeniably, a hack.

The other myth of hackery is also demonstrated by Marcus' reply - that
hacks are seen as shallow and empty.  Far from it!  Being a hack requires
greater inventiveness than being a genius!  Why is this so? Because a hack
must stretch thin less imagination, less substance - he has much more to
cover over.  It requires a great deal of inventiveness to make the shopworn
palatable to those who wish it.  One can easily see how the hack romance or
science fiction novelist has to make more decisions, do more things and be
in general more inventive than the author who has some rich insight and
follows it through.  That is the unfair thing about art - the person with
insight - once he has found it - often can exploit it with great ease,
where as the nice hack who is doing nothing more than providing people
with wha tthey want - must constantly be inventive about ways to cover
over the lacks which his art so keenly shows to the eye.

This is so for the same reason that one can see composers like Dittersdorf
working much harder to cover the ground of a symphony than Haydn.  Haydn
will put only a few tricks in a symphony, but they have so many aspects,
so many forms, so much reach, that a few will do.  Dittersdorf, since his
substance is thin, must constantly grope for the next rabbit to pull out of
the next hat.  One can easily see how much invention there is in Lachner,
in Bocherini - in Boito's music, in Pfitzner, in Jerry Goldsmith.  But that
is the point - once one has a good fugue theme, the invention is confined
to ordering the entrances and interweaving the episodes - but oh how much
work to make a poor one hide its defects.

So, if you are in the habit of taking the Microsoft spokesman's word
on what a wonderful man Bill Gates is and how mcuh good he has done for
everyone, and how he would never ever do anything that would hurt users -
then a testimonial from someone whose primary qualification for his current
station in life is that he is a useful follower should carry a great deal
of weight.  However if self-serving testimonials do not generally hold
credibility with you, then what Marcus offers is nothing more than that -
the word of one minion about how wonderful his group is.

Of course - this is precisely why the world of classical music has no
credibility in the outside.  The people in the outside world do not care
about whether Marcus feels good to be near people like Benjamin.  They
don't care about institutions errected so that academics can circle jerk
themselves about how wonderful they are, and they don't care about social
rules errected to make it so that the whole affair is a self-perpetuating
oligarchy.  They care about results.  And that is a place where Marcus is
singularly thin.  He has nothing to offer the grieving mother, the restless
youth, the introspective thinker, the individual pondering their own
nature.  He offers them a dogma of how much smarter his crowd is than
everyone else.

Stirling S Newberry
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