Another crrosspost from Orchestra-L:
Martin Kettle Tuesday February 1, 2005 The Guardian
When did the music die? And why? It will be 30 years in August since the death of Dmitri Shostakovitch. Next year also marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten. Aaron Copland, older than both of them, lived on until 1990 and Olivier Messiaen until 1992. But apart from these?
I can see them already. The protestations on behalf of the half-forgotten and semi-famous, the advocates of Henze and Berio, the followers of Tavener and Ad�s. Perhaps there will be a good word for Golijov or Gubaidulina, for Piazzola or Saariaho (enthusiasms I share). And maybe, even now, there remains someone who believes that Stockhausen should be mentioned in the same breath as Bach, the last of the true believers clinging to the shipwreck of modernism.
He forgot Schnittke and Lutoslawski and Lou Harrison. Also Cage (who, whatever one may think of him, was and is much more than semifamous). Feldman remains firmly in the chamber repertoire 20 years after his death. Xenakis has a very strong following working to secure his legacy.
Coming up (and deliberately omitting Boulez, Stockhausen et al since Kettle seems to regard them as beyond the pale): Crumb, Riley, Reich, Adams, Glass, Ligeti, Penderecki, Dougherty, Higdon, ... Need I go on?
The music didn't die, Kettle did.
what is the most recently composed piece of classical music to have achieved a genuinely established place in the repertoire?
Probably "A Short Ride in a Fast Machine."
I mean a piece that you can count on hearing in most major cities most years,
That leaves out, let's see, all of Bach, all Handel except the _Messiah_, Brahms' _German Requiem_, every bit of polyphony composed before 1680, except for a handful of madrigals, all of Couperin, all of Purcell, all of Scarlatti, all of Stravinsky except maybe the _Firebird_ suite (even the _Sacre_ is not performed in "most major cities in most years"), all but a handful of Mozart and Haydn symphonies, all the operas of Wagner... Jeez, this guy should listen to himself!
And you think this is conservative?
Nah. Conservatives like serial music (fl. 50 years ago). The word he's looking for is "reactionary." The prevailing tone of rejection and nostalgia is a tipoff.
For the general public, he argues, classical music ceased to exist by 1950.
Two problems here: 1) as above, numerous counterexamples could be cited. 2) Classical music never sought or had the ear of the general public. It is *by definition* the music of a minority.
The pioneer figure was Arnold Schoenberg, with his theory of the emancipation of dissonance
The theory, and the term, belong to Charles Seeger. The emancipation of a large chunk of the American population was still a living memory at the time he coined the expression, and the echo is deliberate.
The (as I assume) British author of this article seems to be unaware that an American classical tradition exists--but that too is typical of Europeans of his mindset.
-- Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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