At 04:51 PM 11/30/2003, you wrote:
>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.
Right, and that is how Leonard Bernstein used to win audiences for music,
period--new, old, whatever. He talked to people. He educated without
condescension. The only part of my junior high school years that was
endurable was the Young People's Concert series at Carnegie Hall every 4th
Saturday in fall and winter. Bernstein (I refuse to call him "Lenny")
explained the theory of music: not formal music theory, but how a piece is
built, how it captures and conveys emotion. And he had the Philharmonic to
show things to you. He explained what to listen for. If he used Ives as
an example I don't remember it. But I heard him conduct Berlioz--and if
anyone thinks ol' Hector was "easy listening" or all about the Symphonie
Fantastique, they need to go back and listen to Les Troyens again.
>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.
Yeah, but they won't. Not in our superannuated lifetimes anyway. I'll
settle for a redefinition, thusly--
Accessible is a good performance of Philip Glass, Charles Ives, Dominic
Argento, George Rochberg (I know, there are four different styles at work
there).
Inaccessible is a mediocre performance of anything, be it the above or
Rigoletto.
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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