Ken Moore wrote:
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dennis Bathory-Kitsz writes:
I think the nonpop world has made a big mistake -- practically and psychologically -- in dedicating itself to museum culture. (The term I use for DWEM lovers is "necrosones".)
I guess I'm one of those (can't I be a necrophilharmonic? at least that all comes from Greek) when I listen to Messiaen or Berio.
The term DWEM actually refers to the composers ranging from the Baroque through the Romantic era -- it rarely refers to people such as Berio or Messiaen. Just being dead isn't enough to be a charter member of the DWEM club -- having your music played endlessly to the exclusion of newer music is far more important an attribute. Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Tschaikowsky are among the charter members.
Lest people start a flame war, I don't think anybody is saying their music shouldn't be played at all, just that it should be pushed to a back burner so that composers of more recent times who haven't had a chance to be heard because of the preponderance of the DWEM composers on orchestral programming schedules.
Let's face it, it's hard to compete with music in the public domain when it comes time for budget considerations. It's also hard for new works to compete for programming space with works which are already in an orchestra's library, again due to cost considerations as well as the logistics of getting the music and distributing it in time for rehearsals and performances as well as collecting it and returning it to the publishers.
Interestingly enough, the band world has no such programming problems. Bands and their directors are willing and delighted to be playing new music all the time. For the band world, it is more the compositional style which precludes a work from a program than it is the name recognition of the composer or the time period within which it was written.
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
