It isn’t everyday that a featured op-ed in a
newspaper draws our attention to
twentieth-century concert music. I’m grateful to Sharon DelVento for
passionately writing about music and her deeply personal response as a listener. We live in a
community that values music of all kinds, and it’s good to have such a conversation in the public sphere.
I take issue with some of Ms. DelVento’s assertions.
Describing 112 years of concert music (aside from vocal music) as “atonal dissonance”
and “crap” is a bit like saying “all (members of one political party) are
idiots,” or “all (members of a specific religious group) are zealots.” It may be
entertaining to read such language, but it isn't fair or accurate to paint with such a broad brush.
I do value Ms. DelVento’s pleas for memorable
melodies in modern concert music. In the case of the three composers she mentions (Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Shostakovich), perhaps further exploration of these composers' works would uncover something she finds appealing. I invite her and others to
visit my website, brookejoyce.com, where I’ve posted a link to a page called “Decorah
Listens.” Once there, visitors will find pieces by each of the composers mentioned
above that, I believe, might stir the “depths of your soul” and “make your heart sing.”
Please listen and post comments about what you hear.
Brooke
Joyce, Decorah
Composer-in-Residence, Luther College
Composer-in-Residence, Luther College
Just read this and thought it pertinent to the conversation. http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2012/05/my-shostakovich-1.html
ReplyDeleteSharon DelVento's "demolition" of contemporary classical music is so laden with undefined terms and unsupported assumptions as to be risible. Though she's unable to fashion a cogent argument in support of her position, it's clear she knows what she likes - or, rather, doesn't like. The fact that her chosen avatars of musical horror, the Three Esses, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Shostakovich, are dead and have already receded into the depths of history can, I fear, bring her little comfort, since their work remains widely-performed and influential. Just as Harold Ross, the editor of The New Yorker, opined many years ago that his magazine was "not for the little old lady from Dubuque", so one can only conclude that contemporary music of any depth or sophistication is not for this (little old?) lady from Decorah. Sort of let's Dubuque off the hook, no?
ReplyDeleteHarvey Sollberger - Strawberry Point, IA