From: mgresham@dscatl.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Cardew and "people's music"
Date: 30 Aug 92 10:50:56 GMT
Reply-To: mgresham@dscatl.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Organization: Digital Systems Co,  Atlanta, Ga

In article <1992Aug29.103654.5557@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> bobs@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Bob Sutton) writes:
>In article <1992Aug28.150812.24215@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk> jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:
>>Well, the US has got Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, Samuel Barber, William
>>Schuman, Vittorio Giannini, and a whole bunch of similar hacks who sound
>>pretty near indistinguishable from Khrennikov and Schchedrin and who are
>>played by the major orchestras solely because of their similar
>>acceptability to a bureaucratic establishment.   ....
>
>Blasphemy!!!!!!!  How can you possibly compare the above American composers 
>to a garbage collector like Krennikov?  The one of the above who come
>closest to the Stalinist ideal of a composer is Howard Hanson.  His "Song
>of Democracy", two Walt Whitman poems put to music singing the praises of
>American democracy, closely resembles the politically correct Shostakovich
>2nd Symphony, which is a hymn to the dead Lenin by a now-obscure early Soviet 
>poet.  But Walter Piston, Samuel Barber, and William Schuman surely
>are important composers in the history of American music and western-style
>music as a whole.  Especially Barber!!!  (I'm afraid I don't know the 
>work of Giannini.)

Whoops, I left out one item in my last response to this.
William Schuman was left nearly unplayed (in much of the country)
for a number of years (I can't speak for New York City considering
how powerful he was as a music administrator there) although
several late honors plus his recent death has sparked interest in
his works again.

>I don't see how you can lump all of these into one bucket and say they
>are indistinguishable.  Each have a distinguishable style, some more than
>others.  It's true that all are symphonists; you can put them in that bucket.

There has been a rising re-interest in the loosely-grouped
"American Symphonists" composers, but only in very recent years.

>[...Copland...]

Instead, Jack might want to not forget his less "populist" works,
such as the Piano Sonata and the Piano Variations.
Copland, again, was a victim of the "Red Scare," though sturdier
than others -- he survived it, generally.

>And you missed a few Americans -- like Eliot Carter, Carl Ruggles, Leonard
>Berstein, Alan Hovanness, Bernard Herrmann, John Adams, Joseph Schwantner,
>Phillip Glass, John Harbison..  I'm sure I missed a bunch.

And outside of Harbison, Schwanter and Adams (who *are* played
somewhat) and some Bernstein "favorites" ("Overture to Candide,"
"Symphonic Dances from West Side Story", "Chichester Psalms"...
while his symphonies ["Kaddish," "The Age of Anxiety," etc.] are
almost universally ignored), the works of Carter, Ruggles, and
Hovanness are nt often heard, while both Herrmann and Glass are
special-case re performances (context) and the latter's heyday is
waning.

>You seem to assume that orchestras are dictatorial because they are 
>partially funded by large corporations.

They will certainly be dictatorial if public funding gets smashed.

> It appears more likely that
>they are dictatorial because they have a music directors like Fritz 
>Reiner or George Szell, both tyrrants of the baton, or because they
>are operated by a CEO-like person who is a dictator, as in the case 
>of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the orchestra I go to see.

Do tell: who is the CEO-like individual and what are they doing
that is so dictatorial?  The last info I have, Musical America
1990 directory, shows the following:

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (200+, A, aa)
(x) 105 
Ernest Fleischmann, Exec. VP & Mng. Dir.
NancyBell Coe, Gen. Mgr.
Ara Guzelimian, Art. Adm.
[...address etc. omitted here...]


Cheers,

--Mark Gresham

dscatl!mgresham@gatech.edu

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