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PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Class Action

“There’s no such thing as ‘the audience.’ Each musical exchange is a private one between a performer and a listener, and everyone listens differently. You can’t generalize about musical experiences.”

OK – there’s no such thing as “The Nazis,” either. Some Nazis shot Jews in the head with apparent unconcern, others felt quite anxious and guilty doing it, and still others managed to get themselves confined to clerical work. You can’t generalize about the Nazis, because each one was an individual who acted and felt differently. And if we composers can prevent people from generalizing about new music, then complaints will be limited to individual cases like, “On Sept. 22, 1982, Andrew Imbrie’s Cello Sonata made Walter P. Syasset of Fort Lee, New Jersey, wish that he had never let his wife talk him into coming to this boring concert.” That will free the composing community from any collective responsibility for their actions, and there will never have to be any self-questioning within the profession as to whether there’s perhaps something wrong with our pedagogical trends, or too much cronyism in the selection of award and commission committees. Anything amiss will be deemed at the most an infraction by a single composer, and since each listener’s response is entirely subjective, we’ll all be off the hook forever.

Only one problem: what if there are people who refuse to limit themselves to the modes of discourse that we’ve declared permissible?

(“You don’t mean like, Kyle Gann?”)

What’s going on here

So classical music is dead, they say. Well, well. This blog will set out to consider that dubious factoid with equanimity, if not downright enthusiasm [More]

Kyle Gann's Home Page More than you ever wanted to know about me at www.kylegann.com

PostClassic Radio The radio station that goes with the blog, all postclassical music, all the time; see the playlist at kylegann.com.

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Sites to See

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page- great Downtown composer

David Doty's Just Intonation site

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

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