I've gotten some pushback for my "Left behind" posts (here, here, and here). (Quite apart from two people on Twitter -- Danny Felsenfeld most amusingly -- who thought I might be playing off the Christian novels about the Rapture. OK, Danny, I'll buy into that! There's going to be a classical music Rapture. Don't get left behind!) Some of the pushback is about labelling music, or, rather, labelling alt-classical music. Nobody ever pushed back at me for mentioning serial music, or Baroque music, or Renaissance music, or New Age music, or death … [Read more...]

This comes from Michael Gilliland, whom I've met on Twitter. I asked him to tell me more about something he tweeted, and this e-mail was the result. I'm copying it here with his permission, of course. You'll see that he starts with something the Fort Smith (Arkansas) Symphony did -- which sounds just marvelous -- and goes on to ideas of his own. Thanks so much, Michael! One event in which I was a participant was fun, and engaging for the young people in attendance. This event was staged by one of Arkansas' regional orchestras the Fort Smith … [Read more...]

Finishing my impulsive three-part series on how/why contemporary classical music -- as presented by mainstream classical music institutions -- isn't really part of current culture. In the first two parts -- here and here -- I showed how, both now and in the past, new classical music, and especially modernist new music, didn't connect with other cultural developments. How modernist literature touched on popular culture and everyday life, but new classical music didn't. How modernist music in 1960s Paris -- Boulez -- looms large in classical … [Read more...]

Continuing what I started in my last post. 3, Recent history, art and music. Music. Atonal composers started dominating composition -- in prestige, grant-worthiness, faculty hiring, and, retrospectively, in the way classical music history has been written -- sometime in the 1950s. (Though we know they didn't dominate --- outside the new music ghetto -- in the number of performances they got, or didn't get.) (I'd also say that this is a US-centric description. The atonal composers seemed also to lead in prestige in Europe, but I don't know … [Read more...]

I'm going to write again about new music and orchestras, because -- in the present state of these discussions -- it's easy for me to be misunderstood. This isn't my fault, or the fault of the people who misunderstand me. It's more, I think, because the discussion is very new, and the context I mean to put it in is (naturally!) more familiar to me than to others. So no blame to anyone here. I'll try to explain why (at least as I see it) I'm not simply voicing a personal preference when I say that orchestras should do much more alt-classical new … [Read more...]

This one, you'll see, is a little different from the last two. I expand into some writing that has, maybe, the length and detail l'll have in the finished book. And no, this isn't the actual book text. Still just a riff, but partly expanded. You'll see that I'm asking you if my plunge into a new subject -- the classical music tradition, and what's not just good, but profoundly wonderful about it -- makes sense, at this early stage of the book. Remember that I'm riffing my way through the first chapter. The plan: maybe one more first … [Read more...]

No, not my next book riff, though that's coming very soon. What's long overdue are two things -- first, major classical music institutions seriously acknowledging alt-classical composers, and, second, a little celebration, here in my blog, for the Chicago Symphony doing just that. A month ago! I should have posted this much sooner.So what happened? The Chicago Symphony appointed Mason Bates and Anna Clyne as its two composers in residence next season. Here's their press release. In it, they say:Both Mason Bates and Anna Clyne are artists who … [Read more...]

Janis, who comments often on my posts (and who wants to be known here just by her first name), e-mailed me with a fabulous idea. In a moment, I'm going to turn this post over to her, and simply show you what she e-mailed. (Abridged a little, but I didn't leave out anything crucial. And of course i'm doing this with her permission.) But before I give her center stage, I want to say that I went to the Star Wars Uncut website she mentions, and believe me -- it's everything she says it is, and more. Such an outpouring of fun and creativity, from so … [Read more...]

I've been forgetting to mention my course at Juilliard this fall, about music criticism. The link takes you to the week by week assignments, which include classical music criticism by George Bernard Shaw and Virgil Thomson, as well as some rock and jazz criticism, and some unusual writing about music, by Nick Hornby, Tom Johnson, Jack Kerouac, and E.M Forster. (That last link takes you to my blog post about how wonderfully Forster wrote about music.)Each week, one of the students brings a New York Times music review to class each week, and … [Read more...]

Last night I went to the gala season-opening show at the New York City Opera. That was a night with special meaning, obviously, because the company was coming back from the dead, with a new directo, a refurbished theater, and a new point of view. Let's wish them luck. But in past weeks I also went (without addressing them here) to the season openers at the Met and the New York Philharmonic, which of course are the other two big classical music performing institutions in New York. And, looking back, as I sat in the audience last night, it struck … [Read more...]