A Brief Comment on a Common Objection to Atonality

Like so many other classical music lovers, musicians, and bloggers, I too am impressed by the new book by Alex Ross, “The Rest is Noise”, and am enjoying this perceptive, engaging and big spirited work. But I would like to comment on a suggestion or appraisal made in the book concerning the deep difficulties a listener faces with Schoenbergian atonality — and I don’t dispute for a second that many fair minded listeners have difficulties with Schoenberg and his atonal colleagues and progeny. Schoenberg understood this as well.

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Some More Random "Maxims and Arrows"

This is getting to be a habit. It’s great fun to make outlandish statements without any need to back them up. My sincere advice: If you write in objecting to any of these observations, I want you always to keep in mind that the maxims you are objecting to are not the only ones that need to be objected to; the other ones are equally foolish. The solution? Pack a picnic lunch and make a day of it.

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Postscript to "If You Can't Beat 'em, Should You Join 'em?"

It occurs to me that in my defense of intractability, etc. I have made myself vulnerable to Richard Taruskin’s charge of irrelevantly clinging to the dying idealogy of German romanticism. And my case wouldn’t be appreciably helped if I substituted intractable works by say, Gesualdo or Scriabin for the works I did invoke by Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Berg. Oh, well, let it stand.

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Review of Taruskin's Article, Pt. 2: If You Can't Beat 'em, Should You Join 'em?

Taruskin claims: “There are two ways of dealing with the new pressure that classical music go out and earn its living. One is accommodation, which can entail painful losses and suffer from its own excesses …Composers have accommodated by adopting more “accessible” styles. Love it or hate it, such accommodation is a normal part of the evolutionary history of any art.” I don’t know where to begin with this seeming advocacy of cowardice and cynicism.

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Announcing Winter 2008 Classes

Just a quick note to let Chicago-area readers know that my winter courses at the Graham School are now open for registration. I’m offering a 1-day seminar on music literacy, and three 8-week courses:

• Italian Opera from The Barber of Seville to Turnadot (Tuesday mornings)
• Opera, Ballet, and Musical Theater Genres (Wednesday evenings)
• Classical Masterpieces: Music, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Cultural History (Thursday mornings)

Read descriptions and register - Early Bird Registration ends December 10

Be notified of additions to this website related to Graham School classes:

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Taruskin on the "Defense of Classical Music" Pt. 1

Why all the insecurity? It couldn’t possibly matter to me what Taruskin thinks about Schoenberg; he doesn’t love it, and therefore doesn’t understand it. It means a great deal to me what Pierre Boulez thinks about Schoenberg, however. But it doesn’t matter to me what Pierre Boulez thinks about Shostakovich. He doesn’t love it, and therefore doesn’t understand it. But it matters a great deal to me what Richard Taruskin thinks about Shostakovich.

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Arguments are Won by the Best Arguer, not Necessarily by the Best Argument: Richard Taruskin's Polemic in The New Republic

Richard Taruskin is a genius. Probably by most rational criteria. Can you say “indefatigable?” And his writing is scintillating. But Taruskin’s awesomely scathing and intemperate assault in The New Republic on musico-sociological tomes by Julian Johnson, Joshua Fineberg, and Lawrence Kramer does him little credit.

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Four Cellists, ONE Cello

Yes, all four guys are playing “Bolero” (in four parts) on a single cello.

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Last Night's Mahler Sixth: a Real Review

Some Guy irately complained about my irrelevant, sophomoric, and esoteric “non-review” of last night’s performance of Mahler 6, and requested — nay, demanded — that I write a “real” review. To this reproach I can only say “Touche.” So, here is my Official Review, translated into Standard Written Criticalese

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Mahler's Popularity? He's the Antidote for Medieval (and Modern) Anonymity: the Sixth at Symphony Center

by obsessing about himself, about Gustav Mahler, personally —and for 80 glorious minutes at a time as Haitink was in no hurry — Mahler gives us, by proxy, some of our dignity back.

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