On 27 Jan 2006, at 12:31 PM, Phil Daley wrote: At 1/27/2006 11:40 AM, dhbailey wrote:
>It's time we start celebrating the LIVING composers, those who are >chronicling OUR TIMES in their music, reflecting OUR LIVES in their art.
The trouble with LIVING composers is that they don't write music that the "average" concert goer wants to hear.
Total bollocks.
New Yorker music critic Alex Ross says much the same thing as David Bailey:
Ignore Mozart Mozart did not come from nowhere. He was the product of a society that was avid for music on every level, that believed in the possibility of an all-encompassing musical genius. The society we live in now believes otherwise; we divide music into subcultures and subgenres, we separate classical music from popular music, we locate genius in the past. Today, a young man with Mozart's abilities would very likely labor in obscurity, and perhaps give up in frustration. As I once wrote, if Mozart were alive today, he'd be dead. If you really want to celebrate Mozart's world, Mozart's culture, Mozart's life, you would ignore the man himself and listen to music by a living composer. If you're not in the habit of doing so, I'd urge you to pay a little heed to contemporary music over the next few days or weeks. Buy a CD of a modern classic (say, Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, Ligeti's Lontano, Adams's Harmonielehre, Pärt's Tabula Rasa, Gubaidulina's Offertorium, or, for the radical-minded, Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room or Lachenmann's Schwankungen am Rand). Better, get out of the technobubble and patronize a live concert: Juilliard's Focus! or the Golijov festival here in New York, the LAPhil's upcoming Minimalist Jukebox, a Berkeley Symphony premiere, a Boston Modern Orchestra Project concert, etc. Celebrate Mozart another day, when he's not being rammed down your throat. And, oh yeah, happy birthday, Wolfie. You don't look a day over 175.
— Alex Ross January 27, 2006 | Permalink
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