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Message text written by INTERNET:[log in to unmask]
"Cris's post was interseting on the Poetry Review. This is kind of by the
way and has nothing to do with the core issue at stake, but I am
concerned with the mention (by EM) of William Glock. What Glock actually
achieved at the BBC was the total hegemony of the post-Schoenberg and
-Webern line to the almost total exclusion of contrary points of view. I
enjoyed many of the programs that he sponsored, but regret the
predigested view of history that I was forced to imbibe. Took me years
to find out that other things were going on that might have had validity
"
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While the authoritarianism of total serialism in music in the 1950s may now
be deplored, it is also true that this authoritarianism no longer holds
sway. We have much more pluralism in composed music now - but Glock's
legacy in this country is the acceptance of modernism as the major 20th
century aesthetic phenomenon against which other movements in Western
composed musics have to define themselves.
Everyone must judge for themselves whether this was a healthier outcome
than was the case in poetry, where currently there is no true pluralism:
the battle has been entirely lost to aesthetic conservatism. Whether the
Poetry Society/Poetry Review affair had a major bearing on this, or any
bearing at all, I don't know. From my point of view, the outcome was
significantly worse.
Mottram's lurking aesthetic authoritarianism posed a problem for me - I say
this as a committed friend, student and supporter. And the question of
whether the Poetry Society faction of the mid-1970s made tactical errors in
dealing with the Arts Council et al, refusing to compromise etc, is not one
I want to resurrect (I seem to remember Peter Riley had quite a lot to say
about it on this mailing list a few months back). But I seriously wish they
hadn't lost. What we have NOW in poetry certainly seems like "the total
exclusion of contrary points of view".
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