Archives for 2007

If you want to know why classical music has receded from our culture, just watch some of Captain Blood, the classic (and wonderfully silly) 1935 pirate film, starring Errol Flynn. It might as well be an opera. Its plot, dialogue, and aesthetic are almost operatic, and so is its score, by Erich Korngold. Which meant that in 1935 you could go to the opera, and go to the movies, and see practically the same thing. So opera was close to everyday life, in a way that it just can't be now. Why not? Because the horizons of our culture have … [Read more...]

I took a long trip over Labor Day, to attend anniversary celebrations for a marvelous art project my wife's stepfather has funded for the past 40 years. And while I was there, I made my debut as a free improviser, either on piano (when one was available), or else with anything that might make sound -- chairs I could drag along a concrete floor, my voice, resonant steel stairs I could stamp on -- when we improvised inside a sculpture as large as a house (larger than many houses) that my stepfather-in-law commissioned on the land near his … [Read more...]

I'm in the July issue of Gramophone, the cheerful, energetic British classical CD magazine. That's old news by now, I guess, but they were late in sending me the issue, and I was late in looking at it. They like to reprint things they read in blogs, and they chose my "Boring Old Handel" post from this past April, which they cut very skillfully, to fill the space they had for it. My title, of course, was ironic. What I meant was that Handel, in his time, was anything but boring, and that his operas were unabashed spectacle, visual, vocal, and … [Read more...]

Here's the second statement I promised, outlining where classical music currently is. It's from the extraordinary musicologist Robert Fink, who explodes with ideas, and connections between music and the rest of the world. (See, for instance, his book on minimalism, Repeating Ourselves). Here I'll quote from Robert's paper "Elvis Everywhere: Musicology and Popular Music Studies at the Twilight of the Canon" American Music, Vol. 16, No. 2. (Summer, 1998), pp. 135-179). This paper was delivered to an audience of pop critics, and academics who … [Read more...]

Our discussion of classical music and pop -- or vs. pop --seems to resonate very deeply for many people, and one reason has to be its larger context. We're in an era of great change. One long-term change has been the dethroning of classical music -- when I grew up in the 1950s, it reigned unchallenged as musical art, but for decades now, this hasn't been true. But I don't think we've caught up to this understanding yet (And by "we," I mean not only those of us who take part in this blog -- which I'm starting to think of as very much a … [Read more...]

I've said before that the comments are often the most stimulating part of this blog. That's especially been true in the 19 posts (so far)  in response to my "Miniatures?" post, which itself was a response to a comment. Together, all this is a terrific discussion of the artistic merits of pop music, as opposed (or not opposed) to classical. Read it! * In an earlier post, I asked whether any classical music organizations buy carbon offsets, to undo (or at least make a gesture toward undoing) the environmental effect of their … [Read more...]

BP, in a comment to my last post, suggested we resume the debate about the artistic merits of pop music. I'd lain down a challenge -- can anyone argue the negative side (pop music doesn't have much artistic value, or at least less than classical music) with detailed reference to specific songs and albums from pop musicians widely accepted as serious? Bob Judd -- the executive director of the  American Musicological Society -- posted a comment to my  pre-vacation post, in which he didn't quite do this, but did raise an interesting and important … [Read more...]

Here's something that seemed obvious, once it occurred to me. But I'd never thought of it before: classical music might be better for the environment than pop, because it (probably) has a lower carbon footprint. Or, more simply, it seems to use less electricity. This came to me when I was reading British press comment last month on the Live Earth event, comprising concerts in many countries, which were designed to draw attention to global warming. The British press (or at least the Guardian and the Independent, the two papers I read … [Read more...]

I'm back from vacation, and (before getting back to all the serious stuff) I want to show you this little guy (or girl) -- a very young hedgehog, eating from a plate of food we put out on our driveway, during our month in England. The plate is four inches across, which should show you how tiny the hedgehog was. Hedgehogs -- adorable bristly animals -- aren't found in the US, but people in Britain (and elsewhere) go crazy for hem, and we've joined the cult. We had a family of them living under some bushes near our house, a mother and three … [Read more...]

It's time for my vacation, lasting all of July. As often before, I'll be going to a remote spot in the Yorkshire Dales, in England, a very quiet place, impossibly gorgeous, with far more sheep than people. This is what I see when I step outside: I won't be isolated; I'll get e-mail (on a very slow dialup connection); but I won't be blogging or posting comments, until the beginning of August, when I'll return. But before I go, I want to say how much I've enjoyed the conversation that developed around … [Read more...]

For some of the last two weeks, I was blogging on a  special ArtsJournal blog leading up to the American Symphony Orchestra League's just-concluded conference. The subject was, more or less, the state of the arts, and the need for arts organizations to engage audiences in a much more vivid way. If I'd been the least bit organized, I would have noted this here, while it was happening, and maybe even crossposted some of my many entries. But to tell the truth, even while I almost obsessed with that blog, I was discouraged. My view, simply put, is … [Read more...]

From Pauline Kael's essay "Trash, Art, and the Movies": We generally become interested in movies because we enjoy them and what we enjoy them for has little to do with what we think of as art. The movies we respond to, even in childhood, don't have the same values as the official culture supported at school and in the middle-class home. At the movies we get low life and high life, while David Susskind and the moralistic reviewers chastise us for not patronizing what they think we should, "realistic" movies that would be good for us--like … [Read more...]

I'd like to invite everyone to listen to my recent symphony, in one of the world premiere performances the Dakota Chamber Orchestra gave in April. Well, in a composite of two of their performances, which I edited from recordings I made. I'm grateful to the musicians for giving me permission to put this recording online. To hear the piece, follow the link, and scroll down the page till you find the symphony. You can listen to the live performance, hear my old computer demo, and download the score. I'm not going to be shy about this piece. I … [Read more...]