Andrew Stiller wrote:
Only after some thought did I realize that you were using "contemporary" to mean "popular." To be quite frank, you shouldn't do this. Every person I've ever encountered who uses "contemporary" in this way, does so because they honestly believe that popular music *postdates* classical music, that is, that all classical music is old (and vice-versa), and that popular music superseded it. By your own statements, you know better than this, so it ill becomes you to willfully adopt the language of the ignorant.
Well, I spend part of my time in "missionary" activity trying to convince many of the ill-informed who _do_ think that popular music postdates art music (actually, I personally prefer the term "high music", but that has its own set of problems.) that the there is music being composed by people today that they do not mean when they use the word contemporary. I do know the difference, and it was not a matter of willfully adopting the language of the ignorant, more not stopping to realize that I was not being careful enough to make clear what I meant by the terminology I was using.
The Hovhaness reference confused me for a minute, because I was referring to living classical composers, of which he is not one, and of recently dead composers in a similar style--of which he is also not one. (Nothing against H., BTW; I think he's gotten a bad rap over the years).
I'm not sure I understand why you don't think Hovhaness was a "recently dead composer" in classical style, since he died in 2000, and when find references to performances of his music it is by "classical music" groups, and the recordings are in the classical music section of the local retailers.
The purpose of language is to communicate. Ask yourself whether you succeeded in communicating your thoughts when you used "contemporary" the way you did. Your post, and my reply, have generated a whole, lengthy subthread to which every single contributor misunderstood your original posting, nor did anyone on the list other than you say "hey, wait a minute, that's not what he meant!"--which implies that the whole list misunderstood you.
No, only that four of the five people who responded misunderstood me, since Dean's question about ASO was tangential to my point. I would note, too, that so far, the respondents who misuderstood me all appear to be from the U.S. contingent of the list. And it is yet to be determined exactly what the fact that four people misunderstood me mean: I provided specific examples to illustrate what I meant (Wakeman's collaboration with London Symphony in the 1970's, and McCartney's L:iverpool Oratorio), so it may simply be that the respondents failed to read my post thoroughly, as I have done from time to time, on this list and others.
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