But it also has a lot to do with education and PR, Alison (oops . . . almost
said Scarlet, there). There's Cincinnati, Ohio, is not exactly on the cutting
edge of the music world, but several years ago Elliott Carter's piano
concerto (I think it was) turned up on the annual top-40 list of a local
PBS station, largely because Carter came to town and stood up front
and talked to the folks about his music, and they saw he was an old
gray-head just like they were. At least, that's how I heard the phenomenon
once explained. A few years before, Michael Gielen had caused many
to flee the halls by programming the Variations.
Once the words "accessible" and "inaccessible" go out of fashion, there'll
be a new wave of contempo music in all our darling old concert halls.
Hal
{ Fascinating discussion, guys. And absolutely true, Kenneth, unless
{ the patrons discern some status in being up with the cutting edge,
{ which can be the case (I think it is much more the case in Europe,
{ where there is still that bourgeois idea of a cultured person).
{ Contemporary music is a bit like contemporary poetry, in that only a
{ small percentage of people bother to attune their ears to it. Only
{ it's more expensive to produce: the musicians with the skills to play
{ this stuff don't come cheap.
{
{ Wozzek is one of my favourite operas too. There was a brilliant
{ production here in Melbourne a couple of years back, directed by
{ Barrie Kosky, who has since fled to Vienna to run a theatre there.
{ It's one of my favourite plays too, and Berg's genius is in not
{ adapting the play, apart from a few cuts, but just setting it.
{
{ We are moving to a less and less subsdised situation here as far as
{ arts funding goes, and consequently all our performing arts are more
{ and more conservative. And our culture is currently being sold out
{ thoroughly to the US in so-called "trade discussions". It's a grave
{ artists here dug for themselves 15 years ago when they so
{ enthusiastically embraced the model of an "arts industry". But
{ that's such a grim situation from almost any point of view that on
{ the whole I'd rather not think about it today...
{
{ Best
{
{ A
{ --
{
{
{ Alison Croggon
{
{ Blog
{ http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
{
{ Editor, Masthead
{ http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
{
{ Home page
{ http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
{
