On May 26, 2007, at 6:10 PM, Phil Daley wrote:
At 12:41 PM 5/26/2007, Andrew Stiller wrote:
>IMO the cultural shift has been in the opposite direction. The
>fundamental antipathy among ordinary Americans toward classical music
>has its origins in the country's founding. In the 18th c., almost all
>classical music was commissioned by royalty or by the established
>church--both of which are outlawed in the US constitution. The
American
>people, therefore, came to view this music as inherently elitist. By
>extension, its practitioners came to be regarded as effeminate, which
>is why Ives was so defensive about the matter, and also is one reason
>why such a high percentage of American composers 1890-1970 have been
>gay.
I was unaware that American composers are gay.
Whoa! Don't go off the deep end. First of all, notice the dates: I was
talking about those active in roughly the first half of the 20th c.,
and not all of them. The best estimate I have seen as to how many of
those composers were gay is about 50%. Certainly one does not have to
strain to find examples: Copland, Thomson, Partch, Cage, Cowell,
Bernstein, Cage, Harrison, Rorem...
I cannot, for example, imagine any
>American boy nowadays being denounced as a "fairy" because he played
>the clarinet.
But when did this change?
I got that very comment in 1957.
Several other people on this list insist I was wrong about this, so
maybe I am. But what I had in mind was a *gradual* shift, starting in
the 1960s and culminating in, say, 1985.
I'm sure all the older Americans on this list will remember when
classical music used to be called "longhair music"--because of the
hairstyles of Liszt et al. This was a semi-pejorative, like "egghead,"
that went away when pop musicians began wearing their hair "shoulder
length or longer"--but the important point is that *nothing replaced
it.* It is still possible, of course, for an American to express
disdain of classical music--but there's no pat expression to do it with
anymore.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://www.kallistimusic.com/
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