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In Reply to: RE: The Deformed Sonata Form posted by Newey on October 29, 2015 at 22:49:54
And I do not regard myself as anything other than a blind Indian feeling a random body part of an elephant...
From my perspective, critics and musicologists who said ignore everything after Beethoven (yeah, I know that "Beethoven" is written on a shield at the top of the proscenium arch in Symphony Hall Boston, and there is no other composer's name in the room, big whoop) failed majorly in the case of Wagner, even in their own lifetimes, and eventually Mahler arrived at the place he should have been long ago. "Mahler is the new Beethoven" is the current catchphrase.
I am not saying that it was easy to be a modern composer after the time of Mendelssohn. And perhaps the exposure that most of Elgar's works got was either from local-hero-ism, or, "for lack of a better," as the French would say.
So, I think you may be overstating the harm done by the moldy figs, but I think you seriously understate the harm done to 20th-c. music, especially in America, by an Academic Mafia of Serialists and Fellow Travelers that held the purse strings for foundation grants and orchestral premieres.
I think it is little short of a miracle that David Del Tredici got the commission for "Final Alice." And worthy composers such as Lauridsen and Whitacre have had to carve out niches where the grassroots decides what it wants to hear and what it wants to sing.
If anyone can think of a more charismatic example of artistic freedom in music post-1950 than "Final Alice"...
Well, I am no longer writing for Stereophile, so it will not be a reader write-in competition.
ATB,
John
Follow Ups:
The lesser-known, mid-Century neo-Romantic composers-- whose compositions were lucky enough to be smuggled past the guards and over the chain link fence when the klieg lights were aimed the other way --seem well-represented. Apart from the usual suspects--Barber, Copland, etc--most are new to me.Problem is, for me any way, is that none of them have left much of an impression so far; no "aha" moments. No stunning epiphanies. All that came to mind upon listening was "nice," (Diamond, Foote) to banal, (V. Thomson, Chadwick).
Robert Helps OTOH might be a gratifying discovery for some; I played his Hommages in College. No one yearning for "substantial" audience-friendly music will be disappointed. (BTW, substantial = I like it.)
I was hoping for the kind of thrill of discovery enjoyed when going through Decca's Entartete Series; for me, the Schreker Gezeichneten was the crown jewel. Pity what happened to him.
One final note: Rochberg is yet another Serialist who flipped mid-career, back to a more "traditional" sound. So many composers whose styles were fluid back then. Makes squeezing the Century (and its actors) into neat boxes a treacherous business.
Edits: 10/31/15
. . . Here's another chance (since you mentioned Naxos' American Classics series) for me to hawk a composition ("Ford's Theater") by my late father in law (Ernst Bacon):
Speaking of Robert Helps, my wife studied with him for a short time in college and really liked his very physical approach to teaching. (He would apparently do things such as shoving you by the shoulders as you'd be playing!) I remember that we saw a performance (SF Conservatory I believe) where Helps played the piano in the Piano Quartet No. 2 by Faure. The other performers I remember were Bonnie Hampton (cello) and the venerable Felix Galimir (violin). (I don't remember the violist.)
Will check that one out.
If Helps throttled a student today it might become a viral video on youtube and be covered on the O'reilly Factor. He'd be in the pro-Helps camp, of course. : )
I think one year, she got $35. That was the high-water mark! ;-)
Edits: 11/01/15
Back in my university days I reviewed "classical" music for the university newspaper. I was exposed to a lot of music that I might not have bothered with otherwise, including a tremendous amount of twelve-tone music, which in general (not always) struck me as anti-music. Certainly I rarely found an emotional connection to the music. Milton Babbitt dropped by for a lecture one day, and I was shocked to hear him say that he did not compose for an audience, but rather for other academic composers, which seemed like nihilism to me. Very influential indeed was Babbitt, and your comment about control of commissions is dead on. Anyone who wasn't part of this mainstream was heavily criticized.
I think that composers are by and large back to looking for audiences, but unfortunately we have had a dumbing down of musical education that has offset the positive forces in composition.
You scratch my back, etc.Mozart knew he had a hit opera when he heard delivery boys whistling arias from it (according to legend).
Roy Harris was stopped on the street by a baseball coach or trainer who told him that if he had a pitching staff who could pitch the way Harris did in his Symphony 3, he'd guarantee the owners a pennant at least... .
What the 12-Tone Mafia's mutual backscratching (plus the non-person-izing of the unwashed) accomplished was that it drove or scared composers who actually wanted to reach people, into doing nothing but writing for movies.
Korngold wrote the score for "Robin Hood," but he also wrote this (get your hankies out):
Perhaps there should have been an ad featuring John Williams, with the headline, "They paid each other to laugh when I sat down to write a symphony, so I did not."
Thanks for the post.
The Once and Future John Marks
Edits: 10/30/15
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