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PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Archives for March 2013

Through the Eyes of the Unencumbered

If there’s anything I remember about being a grad student, it’s what a ruthless and unobstructed view one has of the world. You are not yet complicit in its ubiquitous ills, you are not yet bought off by its bribes, you have made no moral compromises, and your judgments are made with a relentlessly clear eye. In the intervening decades I have learned to make admissions of self-interest and allowances for human frailty and differences of taste, but I do not at all feel more right today than I was then. A certain amount of willful blindness has proved necessary for survival.

After my Ives lecture the other day, a grad student composer came up and plaintively asked, “Does anybody really get excited about the music of all the composers who are getting a lot of attention these days?” Many will be quick to suggest a counter-example here and there, but that a well-informed student could ask such a question speaks volumes about the extent to which our institutions have reduced a great art form to a mere profession.

Tell Me the Meaning of Minimalist?

Andy Lee links me to a lively interview with the resurrected Dennis Johnson. (Wow, I’m blogging this from an Amtrak train to Buffalo, where I’m lecturing on the Concord Sonata for the musicology grad stoonts this afternoon.)

Not Content with Mere Concept

My analysis of Phil Glass’s Einstein on the Beach is now up at New Music Box, thanks to Frank Oteri.

November Is Bustin’ Out All Over

1854526170-1Via pianist Andy Lee and David McIntire’s Irritable Hedgehog record label, Dennis Johnson’s November is taking its place in the repertoire. Andy is giving the five-hour, 1959 piano work its European premiere at Cafe Oto in London on March 9 (and I’m thrilled to see that he’s playing music by the greatly underrated Paul Epstein there the previous evening). Then he’ll give the New York premiere at Issue Project Room on March 16, starting at 2. And Andy’s absolutely lovely four-disc recording, which I’ve been enjoying mp3s of, is now available, with my liner notes (which you can read in their entirety at the link). This definitely changes our picture of the history of minimalism – it will be difficult for anyone ever again to refer to Reich, Glass, and Riley as three of “the original minimalists.”

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.

Recent archives for this blog

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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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