[lbo-talk] MP3izing music

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
Tue May 25 21:32:14 PDT 2010


On Tue, 25 May 2010 23:54:57 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


> On May 25, 2010, at 10:57 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
>
> > Durufle -- admittedly a very minor composer -- writes somewhere,
> > "So much experimentation, and nobody ever discovers anything."
>
> The first part is relevant to the second, no? Didn't he write a lot
> of very dull organ music?

A minor composer, as I said. His organ music *is* rather dull. I would never willingly learn any of it. How connected the two things are is hard to say. Doing music and writing about music might be quite distinct skills.

Durufle's Requiem is something I might actually enjoy singing again, minor as it is -- which is more than I can say for anything I ever heard of Schoenberg's. Not that I've ever sung or played in anything of Schoenberg's, but nothing I have heard makes me want to get any closer to it. Or even hear it again.

On the other hand, his essay about Brahms is quite entertaining. Maybe this is a point of similarity between him and Durufle -- better essayists than composers?

But of course there's no accounting for taste, as my grandma used to say. What startled me was not a taste for Schoenberg as such -- though I don't share it, obviously -- but the idea that he's somebody *Lefties* particularly might like.

I acknowledge the humor of the Adorno joke, of course. Very droll, and quite unexpected.

Here's a departure: What about Distler?

--

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com

"I am in favor of leaving people alone, no matter how imperfect their polity may seem." -- Stephen Maturin, MD



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list