John McWhorter, who is a guest columnist at the NY Times, decided last week that it was his turn to decry that awful modern music, meaning serialism, so he wrote a really pretty bad column. It starts with his personal experience with one piece of music that he sang in a chorus, but he doesn't say who wrote it or what it was. He then goes on to condemn serialism, state that melody isn't unsophisticated, and cite a limited number of sources, including Joseph Horowitz's recent book on Dvorak and John Mauceri's book on 20th c. classical music.
Where to start. Well, there is so much that could be said that I'm going to just give you an incomplete bullet list.
- McWhorter is entitled to like or dislike any music he wants to like or dislike.
- Some people like serial music, and they also get to like what they like.
- He's fighting the style wars of 50 years ago.
- He's not a musicologist. He is dabbling by reading music writing that fulfills his preconceived notions. It's possible to be better read than he is in current music writing.
- You'll hear a lot more music in U.S. concert halls by (for example) Adams, Reich, Glass, Harbison, Corigliano, Picker, Adamo, the other John Adams, Riley, Rouse, Holloway, Chin, Adès, Gubaidulina, Golijov, Saariaho, Lindberg, Ligeti, Dessner, Lutoslawski, Montgomery, Sallinen, Rautavara, Paart, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Bates, Stucky, Mackey, Clyne, Yi, Bernstein, Harrison, Feldman, Muhly, Diamond, Copland, Stravinsky, Salonen, and others than you'll hear by serialists or by composers using different compositional techniques whose music is dissonant.
- It's a bad idea to write about serialism as though all composers who use the technique write similar music. Remember, that means that you're lumping together composers as distinctive as Berg and Webern, to go back to early serialists.
- Whatever Boulez said....you need to look at the totality of his career. The guy who talked about blowing up opera houses ultimately conducted at a few opera houses.
- If you're going to read it at all, Horowitz's book must be read in tandem with Douglas Shadle's Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony. Doug is a musicologist specializing in American music.
There's lots more that could be said, but I don't have all day to write a NY Times-ready column, so that's it for today.
I'd like to respond to this, but I really ought to read McWhorter's article, and I don't want to try to hunt down McWhorter's article because past experience with him suggests that his entire oeuvre could be replaced with repeated exclamations of "Get off my lawn!" with no loss of intellectual content.
ReplyDeleteBut in direct response to what you're saying, without direct reference to McWhorter, I'd like to point out that:
1) if your first two points are true, then either there is no point whatever in opining what music you like, or no point whatever in criticizing people for opining it, one or the other;
2) the style wars of 50 years ago are not over, but continue to be litigated today, and you and I have litigated them;
3) if you're sufficiently alienated by serialism tout court, it doesn't really matter if you're listening to Berg or Webern;
4) when did Boulez withdraw and apologize for his offensively contentious statements? If he didn't, it doesn't matter what he did in later life.
Regarding 2, it's very clear that at the level of what actually gets performed, there's not much litigation going on. Hardly any serialist music is programmed by performing arts orgs, which have made their choices. There's plenty of academic support for people who are writing tonal music in various styles.
ReplyDeleteRegarding 3, but it should matter. They're very different composers in sound and style.
Regarding 4, I don't know whether he did and I don't care whether he did. Of course it matters what he did later in life.