One of the comments in these pages expressed incredulity that I could even consisder the possibility of Barber’s popularity waning. Well, I can conceive this possibility because of what happened to me from my conservatory days to the present, which is the central musical irony of my life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Read descriptions and register - Early Bird Registration ends December 10
Be notified of additions to this website related to Graham School classes:
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.
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.
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
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.
John Gibbons
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