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...]

1. I'm driving from New York out to my country place, late last night. I'm listening to sports radio. A commercial comes up; I don't want it yapping at me. I flip over to NPR, aka WNYC, New York's public radio station, and often a good place to hear surprising music. I just miss the announcement of the music coming up, but when the music starts, I'm drawn right in. A woman with a strong, high voice -- nice edge on it -- is singing something repetitive, with a good sharp beat. But really not repetitive; that's an illusion created, I think, … [Read more...]

"Those who maintain, or, more commonly, just assume, as adherents of western classical music tend to do, that their own [musicmaking] is in its very nature superior to any other, can only mean, finally, that they believe themselves, by virtue of the culture to which they belong, to be inherently superior to all others." Christopher Small, Music of the Common Tongue [And if this seems too strong, just restrict it to classical music vs. pop.] … [Read more...]

The mainstream classical music world, I sometimes think, lives in denial. Tell it that its audience is aging, and some people simply don’t believe it. Others say it doesn’t matter, because the audience always has been old. (Not true.) Or else it doesn’t matter because younger people, as they age, will turn to classical music. Whereas when model railroaders age — their median age was 30 in 1970, and it’s over 50 now — everybody in the model railroad world starts saying, “Yes, goodbye, it’s over.” Which is only common sense. If you don’t see … [Read more...]

From Gillian Gallagher, a violist who was one of my Juilliard students this spring. Reprinted from her final paper, with her permission: We think of the general public as being ignorant and unable to pay attention -- we don't give them enough credit. The average American consumes a vast amount of entertainment (complex TV shows, hours of music on their iPods, movies) a day -- I feel fairly confident that they will want to listen to and watch concerts if we present them in the ways that they are already accustomed to consuming their … [Read more...]

This past weekend, I found myself at a party with three opera stars. I'm not going to name them; no reason they should go to a party, and then get talked about in public. But they're singers anyone who goes to the Met would recognize. And this is worth blogging about, in part because of a comment someone posted to my "Nuns with Manicures" post. The person commenting asked what I'd thought of an intermission feature in the Met's live movie-theater presentation of Puccini's Il Trittico. This was a short film about the Met's National … [Read more...]

Twice before I've quoted one of my Eastman students. Here's yet another one, who prefers to be anonymous. She's writing here about why even she -- not normally a big pop music fan -- was drawn in by a pop event: I am not the type of girl to go to a Warped Tour concert willingly, (my high school girlfriends basically had to drag me there) but it really was mildly entertaining. Here is the big reason why someone like me (sort of nerd) wanted to go out a buy a Good Charlotte CD after I attended an afternoon at the Warped Tour: stuff happened! … [Read more...]