Klarinet Archive - Posting 000564.txt from 2001/11

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausmann1@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] A few facts about scary avant-garde noises
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 16:39:37 -0500

At 12:33 PM 11/16/2001 +0000, Virginia Anderson wrote:
>Thank you kind sir, she said. I recall a foreword to a medieval theory text
>of perhaps the 15th C. (the part that is all "Deo Gratia" usually) in which
>the writer was insisting that some composer (can't remember who) was still
>worth a listen, despite having written his masses and motets some forty
>years previously. In other words, our forebears would dismiss music as "so
>last week" and wanted new stuff. And while older music was played in the
>19th C., it was thought that Alkan's emphasis on Bach rather than newer
>works in some of the come-back concerts he gave in his final years was
>another sign of his eccentricity. And yet people think it's normal not to
>like recent music.

The question is, is modern music unappreciated because it is simply not as
good as what came before? Or is it the pitiful musical education and lack
of exposure to good music the average person gets nowadays that leaves
him/her unprepared to accept anything but the simplest harmonies,
etc.? Personally, I think it is a combination of both.

Bill Hausmann bhausmann1@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive
Essexville, MI 48732 ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is TOO LOUD!

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