The German word "Kitsch" is very easy to explain:  If you watch a movie and
you see the two lovers kiss - well, that's nice.  If they kiss and you hear
violins - well, why not? If they kiss and you hear violins and some bells
chime from somewhere and the camera slowly turns round the lovers and the
moonlight shimmers in her eyes (and in the one tear rolling down her cheek)
and there is a light rain - yes, that is Kitsch.

Today I listened to a feature on my favourite classical music channel.
The title was "Real Emotion?" and I could hear some pieces of music I
wished I had never heard.  It was music of our times and it was ghastly.
The beginning was Philip Glass' Symphony No.  5.  Friends, folks,
countrymen - go and buy this music and have the horrible experience of
a musiclover's lifetime.  I couldn't believe my ears.  Hollywood choirs
singing the most banal lyrics, in the background strings and strings and
strings (and them some more strings) and everything meant deadly serious
and going on foreeever.  You know, before I tuned in to this Kitsch orgy
I could compare Glass with real masters because I listened to some of
Deutsche Grammophon's fabulous 12 "Millennium"-CDs, a journey through
1000 years in the company of our friends Perotin and Dunstable, Bach and
Telemann, Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin, well, of the people we
love.  Some of them unashamedly sentimental - but kitschy? None of them.

The second piece in the feature was Gorecki, his symphony of lamentations.
Regarding the music this piece is immensely much richer than the Glass
porridge but working with one old and stale film music technique after the
other.  And there is the soprano singing a graffiti of a young girl written
down on a concentration camp wall.  And the music had nothing to say but:
well, life is terrible but, hey, isn't there comfort after all? For me it
is the Benigni symphony from now on.  How I wished Penderecki in his St
Luke Passion mood would have taken this text.  Artists, please, don't
try to make horror pleasant.  Horror is horror.  Make me feel miserable,
crushed, afraid, shocked, stonedeaf - but please don't give me false hope
and false comfort.  The poor girl is made singing like an angel - and she
was butchered and gassed and her bones used as soap, isn't that the truth?
Nothing of that in the music.  Give Gorecki his Disney composing contract.
He will be worth his money.

The last example was Arvo Paert's St John Passion.  The Hilliard Ensemble.
I love them, you know.  I fancy Gregorian music and Arte Nova music and
madrigals and love their work with Garbarek.  But what use is it that a
composer writes like the guys 1000 and more years ago? Give me something
new, for our times.  You know, I sometimes use Perotin and the like as
relaxation music.  I know that their music wasn't used meant to be
relaxation music.  It is ritual music, meditative, yes, but music with
a fixed function, an exotic but necessary piece in a meaningful context.
And Paert sounded to me like relaxation music.  No contrasts, no fury, no
window to reality.  With Paert's Passion we are in a church.  It's not bad
to be in a church sometimes.  But to be in a church to escape for good and
ever from the world with its air pollution and child soldiers and global
warming and death penalty and all, to shut the doors behind you:  I don't
think that this is the right way.  Again, I take Penderecki's St Luke
Passion as anti-example:  it is music that makes you want to run away.
But it is honest.  It speaks of horror and it makes you feel horror.  It
is art.  When is art art? I think when it is honest.  Otherwise it is
Kitsch.

Robert Peters
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