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Entry: The Death of Music by the Spirit of Government Subsidies Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_death_of_music_from_the_spirit_of_government_subsidies#15468 Post contents: (1) Late in life Stravinsky wrote, “Most people would rather talk about music than listen to it.” Little written above would suggest he was wrong. (2) Odd that, in the many paragraphs of diagnosis and navel-gazing above, no one thought it worth noting that at some point between 1965 and 1975 the teaching of music (i.e., what some call serious music and others call classical music) stopped in virtually all elementary schools--public, private, and Catholic (formerly it was widely given an hour every week or two, a not inappropriate allotment given the limited time available for instruction and the need of the young for time not spent enduring the miseries of the classroom). Limited instruction in music was replaced with the canonization of noise--rock, rap, and other forms of cultural poison. Is it really any wonder then that new audiences aren’t appearing from within the ranks of the young, even as our grand “cultural” institutions prostitute themselves on every proverbial street corner? Is it any wonder that music is now thought of so little and, when it is thought of, regarded as a matter of supreme insignificance by even the self-appointed young saviors of the Right (e.g., TW and various other budding careerists at LRC and elsewhere)? (3) Odd that no one mentioned (surely Dr. Cathey knows) that many of the composers now rightly considered great were not so regarded in their own time. Surely this is worth mentioning when people WILL insist on droning on yet again about the critical importance of pleasing the public (as offensive a canard, mutatis mutandis, as the Broken Windows theory is in economics). Lobkowitz, Kinsky, Rasumovsky, and those other princes, dukes, and counts who were residents of or resident in the Vienna of Beethoven’s time didn’t give him money and advancement because his music pleased the generality of men (albeit that generality was incomparably more cultivated than anything this parlous age could produce); they supported him because they were smart enough to see and hear that his music was new and different and profound, wealthy enough to support what they liked (even after mistresses and other vices were also properly funded), and convinced enough of the centrality of music and art to man’s moral life to recognize that the money they were spending was money well spent. God bless them all--and God bless those Parisian parvenus who bankrolled Stravinsky in the twenties, too! (4) A few points of orthography and fact: it’s Xenakis, not Xenakkis, and his music may appeal to few, but it is astonishing enough almost to gainsay Qoheleth. Dr. Cathey, do not blame NBC for giving up its support of the Met; it NEVER supported the Met; what it did do was far more remarkable: it had its own troupe, the NBC Opera Company, which gave live staged-in-studio performances on network television. One such was a now famous (i.e., famous to those few who still remember or care) production (1960) of Don Giovanni, with Cesare Siepi, Leontyne Price as Anna, and Birgit Nilsson as Elvira. Elvira was a role Nilsson seldom sang--especially in English (the libretto had been translated by Auden and Kallman, no less). Most of the other errors are not worth correcting, because those who made them are literally ignorant of the topic at hand (ignorance is not a fault, of course, except when it is not ’fessed up to). (5) This is the last thing, you’ll be glad to know. I share Mr. Stove’s respect for Richard Taruskin’s learning and scholarship--given their extent, it would be dishonest or foolish not to--but he must be read with caution. Like most of his academic colleagues, he is not averse to twisting truth to serve rhetorical and ideological ends. In his case one end is attacking the Cross, of which he has long been an enemy. If you think this the raving of a crank, pick up his books, look up his Times articles, and read for yourself. Sent at: 2008 07 24