His contentious and brilliant 1958 essay Who Cares If You Listen? is impressively relevant, especially if you find-and-replace music with poetry and composer with author. An interview is here.
(Bonus track –– replace concert hall with poetry reading in the following:
“I can't believe that people really prefer to go to the concert hall under intellectually trying, socially trying, physically trying conditions, unable to repeat something they have missed, when they can sit at home under the most comfortable and stimulating circumstances and hear it as they want to hear it.” –– Milton Babbit)
–– Ryan
"This fall from musical innocence is, understandably, as disquieting to some as it is challenging to others, but in any event the process is irreversible; and the music that reflects the full impact of this revolution is, in many significant respects, a truly "new" music, apart from the often highly sophisticated and complex constructive methods of any one composition or group of compositions, the very minimal properties characterizing this body of music are the sources of its "difficulty," "unintelligibility," and- "isolation."
ReplyDelete- from "who cares if you listen?"
thought this excerpt was relevant.