"William S. Lear" wrote:
> On Thu, November 26, 1998 at 16:39:40 (-0800) Eric Pawlett writes:
> >Hi. My name is Sam Pawlett and am new to the list but have been lurking
> >and unable to contribute due to lingering medical problems. ...
>
> Hope things are better now...
>
> > I once read that the great pianist Maurizio Pollini was a lifelong
> >member and funder of the Italian Communist Party. Anyone know anything
> >about this? ...
>
> Hmmm ... news to me. But his recordings of the Etudes and Preludes
> are, to my ear, superb.
>
> > One of the least attractive features of the book is the Kitty
> >Kelley style of biography uncovering the seamy side of the personal
> >lives of the stars. Who Herbert Von Karajan (a favorite punching bag of
> >Lebrecht's) slept with is of little interest of little relevance to the
> >serious reader and to the music. ...
>
> But might it be of interest to the serious student of human relations
> under capitalism? Doug, you back from your jaunt? What do you think
> of this?
> Yes, it might be of interest to some for a variety of different reasons.
> Someone doing research on gender relations within the cl. music industry
> would be interested as would someone pursuing a feminist critique of that
> same industry. I just don't see how pertinent a composers personal life is
> to the political economy of the industry. Whether Bill Gates practices
> monogamy, polygamy,beastiality or necrophilia makes little difference to
> MIcrosoft's stock prices, the structure of the software industry and the
> overall structure and performance of the U.S. economy.
> > .... In the end, Lebrecht's intense personal
> >attacks on Karajan, Abbado, The Three Tenors, Zubin Mehta, Kathleen
> >Battle and Jessye Norman amongst others is enough to turn one off of
> >their music or at least make one stop buying their records( perhaps this
> >is the authors intention.).(2) `
>
> I guess it depends on whether or not you agree that the people he
> skewers deserve it. If Karajan had Nazi sympathies (or worse) and was
> a jackass to boot, I think it'd be fine reading.
> Lebrecht maintains that Karajan was a member of the Nazi party and never
> repudiated it. He was also good friends with Menuhin. As Lebrecht makes very
> explicit, he was a tyrant both off the stage and on it.It could be that
> Karajan was apolitical and joined the Nazi party so he could continue
> performing.I don't know. Does Karajan's unrepentant Nazism(if true)
> invalidate his work as an artist? Does Heidegger's Naziism invalidate his
> philosophy? Some say yes, others say no. A tough question.
> > ... liberal complaining of
> >the if-only-the-capitalists-were-nicer-the
> >- -world-would-be-so-much-better variety found in the writings of William
> >Greider and Richard Rorty. ...
>
> I don't know about Rorty, but I do think Greider goes a bit deeper
> than this.
>
> > .... The solution then is not for
> >individual i.e. the agents and their clients to somehow become "nicer"
> >but to alter the structural nature of the system from the standpoint of
> >the whole where production and performance are not for profit but for
> >need and enjoyment.
>
> As you could say about any aspect of the system, for sure. However,
> hasn't the classical music universe always revolved about money?
> Isn't it something that was developed through the good graces of
> churches, lofty courts of kings, and other criminalia?
>
> Edward Herman did write an admiring bit about Mozart a while back in Z
> Magazine... and reading some of his letters to his father, he seemed
> to want to just get by so he could concentrate on his music.
>
> > .... The classical labels
> >are barely surviving especially with the upstart budget label Naxos.
> >Naxos has, in effect, taken over the market through its excellent prices
> >and decent recordings of unknown performers from the former Eastern bloc
> >countries. Lebrecht goes into the fascinating story behind the rise of
> >this label.
>
> It'd be nice to have some solid support for this "in effect" bit.
> Naxos is a privately held company so its hard to get hard stats on things
> like market share. I was just relying on what Lebrecht says in his book.
> Perhaps it would be wise to fact check his book.
> > Corporate involvement
> >has transformed classical music into the public relations department of
> >large corporations. ...
>
> This goes too far. You lose too much of the richness of the system by
> saying this.
>
> > Lebrecht gives us no hint as to why the audience for classical
> >music is shrinking and why that diminishing audience is composed
> >primarily of petty-bourgeous and bourgeois types trying to show that
> >they are sophisticated and ":cultured" and in the process distancing
> >themselves from the hated unwashed masses.
>
> What exactly do you mean by "petty-bourgeo[i]s and bourgeois types"?
> Do you have support for how the audience composition is changed?
> Persons in the,say, top two quintiles of income distribution.As for audience
> composition, my evidence is anecdotal drawn from my own as well as friends
> experiences in concert halls around the world.I don't know of any studies
> done on the class composition of audiences over, say, the 50 years.
> I had season tickets to the Boston Symphony a few years ago when I
> lived in the Boston area. It was rare to see a black person at a
> show, and rare to see one on stage as well.
>
> Funny, don't have too many female conductors either... that'd
> probably be a good thing to mention.
>
> > .... The truth is that most people
> >who attend concerts do so for the social prestige and to be "seen". The
> >musical experience is secondary. Still, there is no reason why classical
> >music and popular music cannot be one and the same.
>
> 1) If you are really throwing something out here for which you have no
> support, you should be forthright and say so. 2) I do think that
> there are some reasons your last sentence may be false. Classical
> music (now we enter the realm of composers) can also be tedious,
> complex, arcane, etc. Rock and roll is accessible. But, then, Mozart
> did enjoy popularity among the lower orders, if I remember correctly.
> Anyway, I think it'd be better to expand a bit on how it could be
> popular (ever take a look at Renaissance Madrigals?) and the various
> factors blocking that --- I don't think it's quite so simple as you
> imply.
> Well, I do know that jazz and popular music were one and the same during the
> 1930's and the 1940's. If one listens to Ellington, Tatum or the Benny
> Goodman small groups from this era, the harmonic and rhtyhmic complexity of
> their music certainly rivals that of Mozart and many later composers as
> well.A lot of Mozart's and the early Beethoven's music is based on the
> circle of fifths and uses standard chord progressions like I-IV-V or II-V-I
> that are found in a lot of todays rock music. Many later jazz musicians
> employed sophisticated devices like twelve-tone rows, shifting tonal
> centers, and ninth and eleventh chords, that were originally introduced by
> pioneers like Stravinsky and Shoenberg. Of course, as their music became
> more complex and dissonent its popularity began to wane. So, I don't think
> there is a problem with complexity and dissonance that prevents classical
> music(up to about the mid-19th century when things started getting more
> complicated) from becoming an art form that can be enjoyed and participated
> in by all classes in society.As for madrigals and other forms like gregorian
> chant, these early forms are very simple harmonically often just using
> pentatonic scales or a single mode as in greg. chant.I think the problem is
> more exposure and education. Young people are not exposed to cl.music and
> often do not have the opportunity to learn about it, if they are
> interested.There are very few radio stations which program cl. music or jazz
> music. I remember when I was in NYC, the jazz capital of the world, I
> couldn't find a single 24hr jazz station. Historically, I do not know much
> about the relationship between cl. music and popular music. Until Beethoven,
> composers and musicians were required to take their meals with the servants
> and were considered part of the working class.I'll do some more research and
> get back to you.A lot of rock bands like the leftists Sepultura,Earache and
> Napalm Death are about as accessible as the Charles Ives' music for detuned
> pianos. It is very hard to generalize.
> > Lebrecht does not criticize today's music from a musical point of
> >view. He could have pointed out that today's music is often played cold
> >and clinically with most of the performer's attention and effort spent
> >on technical details rather than the emotional and psychological aspects
> >of the music. Lost is the 19th century style of playing where a
> >particular performance depended as much on the performer as on the
> >composer. These performers practiced a kind of hermeneutics where they
> >placed themselves in the shoes of the composer trying to understand and
> >recreate the feeling and meaning of the work as it was understood by the
> >composer. To revitalize itself, classical music must regain this
> >romantic notion of the individual's interpretation as paramount, perhaps
> >at the expense of technical detail. The great interpreters, say
> >Schnabel's Beethoven or Rubinstein's Chopin, gave a sense that they were
> >engaged in a titanic struggle to understand and to come to terms with
> >the piece they were playing, viewing the composition as an organic
> >totality and not simply exercises in finger dexterity and sight reading.
> >This type of playing and feeling towards the art must be regained if the
> >music is to attract new listeners and regain old ones. The contemporary
> >state of musical education is deplorable. 99% of the population cannot
> >read music. Even musical appreciation classes in the public school
> >system would be a boon.
>
> I think you're being a bit dismissive here of a great number of who
> are still engaged the way you claim has been lost. Also, this
> yearning for better times past isn't altogether convincing without
> further evidence ... as I mentioned, classical music, in my mind, has
> always been aloof and has forever served as finger food for the
> well-to-do.
>
> Bill
I agree that there are many performers today who play with the same passion and intensity as those of yesteryear. I don't know, it just seems there is something missing from Midori or Yefim Bronfman as compared to Kreisler or Cortot.I don't know if "finger food" is a good way to describe the music of Bartok or Webern. Anyway, thanks for your comments and your points are well taken. Sam Pawlett.