I leave you with this. At the age when Greenberg began his Fifth Symphony, John Cage was so entranced by the piano music of Edvard Grieg that he wanted to devote his life to learning every romantic note of it.
And near the end of his thoughtful post on Greenberg and the reaction to him, Greg Stepanich makes this observation:
What we might be in for is a long period of excellent music that isn’t very profound. It may take a very different kind of musical intelligence to make something truly lasting out of all the influences that are now so abundantly available.
I hope he's wrong. To paraphrase Crash Davis, "I'm too old for that shit."
Recent Listening:
Beethoven: Symphonies 3 and 5; John Eliot Gardiner; Orchestre Révolutionnaire Et Romantique.
Mozart: Requiem, Wesler-Most, et al.
Stravinsky: Music for piano and orchestra, Paul Crossley, Salonen.
Stevie Wonder: Fulfillingness' First Finale.
Don Ellis: Tears of Joy.
Adams: Näive and Sentimental Music, Salonen, LA Phil.
Excellent but not profound. Hmm. Maybe that's the period we've just been through and something profound is next...
ReplyDeleteBy the way, after not hearing it for twenty years, last weekend, I looked for Tears of Joy. Tower didn't have it but it's now on my list.
Music is always one Bach away from the unimagined.
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