No, it's not background music, but it's pretty approachable. The early
first quartet is adorable (musicological jargon) and should pose no
difficulties, and the second is no harder to get than say the Ravel. The
hird Symphony is almost easy listening. The 2nd is a pure hoot. The 4th
requires some effort, but it's the Moby Dick of American music.
But this is modern music. I was about to mention the Harvest Home Chorales
and some of the psalm settings when I realized how daunting they could
sound to folks not used to the far more daunting Schoenberg chaoral music.
Bernstein mounted a sales campaign for Ives that actually worked--lots of
younger patrons, and only mild demurs from the subscribers. It's the latter
that really control programming, and season tickets go by preference to
those who held them the year before, etc. So a built-in bias towards
conservatism.
My mother was one of those seasonal holders. When I was living in New York
I was an occasional beneficiary, and I got her ticket for a performance of
Wozzeck at the Met. I was surrounded by elderly subscribers. Wozzeck is one
of my favorite operas. The subscribers actually listened while there was
singing, but long stretches of Wozzeck are purely orchestral, and they had
no qualms about chatting in those stretches--like tv commercials.
Probably the same situation would prevail in Europe if there wasn't such a
high level of subsidy. Without those subsidies tickets would be
unaffordable for most of the under 40s who might e inbterested. It's hard
to imagine a rustbelt town like say Toledo supporting on its own anything
like Pina Bausch's dance company; the subsidies allow the rustbelt town of
Wuppertal to afford her.
Mark
At 01:37 PM 11/30/2003 -0500, Kenneth Wolman wrote:
>At 12:52 PM 11/30/2003, you wrote:
>>Ah, the ups and the downs. There's been, thank God, a dramatic
>>reduction in the number of performances of Beethoven's 5th also.
>>
>>Hal
>
>Oh dear, we're really not going to do a thread of music criticism, are
>we? I am no musicologist, not even close, and I'm not going to say "but I
>know what I like" either, even though I might think it and buy
>accordingly. FWIS (a new acronym--From Where I Sit) the worst thing about
>Beethoven's 5th is its overexposure. The same way opera houses survive
>economically on the big tub-thumpers like Aida, Carmen, and Boheme,
>regardless of whether there are voices equal to the principal roles. If
>you stage them, they will come or something like that. At the Metropolitan
>in New York revivals of Berg's Wozzeck or Lulu or Schoenberg's Moses und
>Aaron are the easiest ticket in town--they're not "pretty" and you don't go
>out humming the melodies. But the tired old warhorses pay for them. So
>people will attend a concert featuring a Beethoven tub-thumper. Not nice
>to say, but the whole business at times seems to come down to money. In
>the context of performance, Ives may not happen without Beethoven,
>Tchaikovsky, or Mendelssohn. One pays for the other.
>
>As for Ives...I've tried, I really have. And probably done it wrong. He
>is not background music to my reading or writing--I can write even to
>Stravinsky--but appears to demand absolute attentiveness in the same way
>that some poetry doesn't yield its meanings and resonances easily,
>requiring instead complete concentration. I'd love to know how many times
>Leonard Bernstein, when he was Music Director of the NY Philharmonic, was
>able to program Ives' works without raising a riot among the patrons.
>
>Ken
>
>Kenneth Wolman http://www.kenwolman.com
>
>"i had not really expected to find any of the art world populated with
>ex-murderers fascists green berets and now i know that you can find
>anything in the art world and they can even become prophets' -- David
>Antin, "Tuning"
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