On Nov 29, 2007, at 2:16 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I also believe this road of super-specialization
(i.e. _must_ use a 7-course for this piece, _only_ a
9-course for this..., etc.) is an _extremely_
dangerous road to go down for the entire field.
* * *
How can you program a whole concert that
features, for example, "Italian Music, 1538-42" or
"German Music, 1712-20" and have it interest anyone
but diehard specialists?
Really, really bad example. Lots of ensembles do "German Music,
1712-1720." They title it "Complete Brandenburgs" and sell lots of
tickets.
This also starts to sound ominously like the
philosophy laid out in Milton Babbitt's 1958 essay
"Who Cares If You Listen?" (interestingly, the
original title was "The Composer as Specialist")
stating that it didn't matter if a regular audience of
Joe Blows related to a composition at all: what
mattered was that the piece remained faithful to a
system of arbitrarily selected parameters that were
academically accepted by a small group of
self-appointed cognoscenti.
I think we should let Babbitt speak for himself. I'll just copy a
few sentences from "Who Cares if You Listen" without expressing any
opinion about whether it's self-important crap with logical flaws
that a retarded chimpanzee would avoid.
Why refuse to recognize the possibility that contemporary music has
reached a stage long since attained by other forms of activity? The
time has passed when the normally well-educated man without special
preparation could understand the most advanced work in, for example,
mathematics, philosophy, and physics. Advanced music, to the extent
that it reflects the knowledge and originality of the informed
composer, scarcely can be expected to appear more intelligible than
these arts and sciences to the person whose musical education usually
has been even less extensive than his background in other fields. But
to this, a double standard is invoked, with the words music is
music," implying also that "music is just music." Why not, then,
equate the activities of the radio repairman with those of the
theoretical physicist, on the basis of the dictum that "physics is
physics."
The whole essay can be found at http://www.palestrant.com/
babbitt.html#layman. I find Babbitt's prose mildly more palatable
than his music.
Well, were is Babbitt's
music today?
Right where it always was. I daresay it has as many rabid fans as it
always did -- about 37.
Too much artificially academic specialization has
lead to the absolute downfall of contemporary music in
its entirety as a legitimate cultural force.
Contemporary classical music is still present at the
university level were it is supported by grants and
endowments as if it were some kind of research rather
than art.
I think this is barking up the wrong tree. All sorts of popular
music is as specialized and limited in its way as Babbitt's, but it
sells. Lots of blues or country guitarists are more picky about
their instruments than lute players are.
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