Re: Thanks
when treasures are "re discovered" . ( not sure the re is appropriate ). it needs to be evaluated ( here you can use "re" ). it requires close examination to ascertain its new value. the auction house , is a nice way of determing it. and a long way on its path to recognition.
I am finally home.
First, let me wish you a happy passover; second, thanks for the candor and the friendship. So you won't mind if I push back.
There are, as I can see it, three issues and if each can be addressed, with a third round of checking, you might think differently. I have had Lynne send on names.
The repertoire. The works we do are worth doing, sometimes because a masterpiece is unearthed, and sometimes, something good but influential and worth hearing has been revived, and and sometimes as a foil from history against which we measure our so called greatest hits. In all cases, the works have to be performed and experienced and therefore performed. And we have a loyal following in the hall and on the internet. So something is working.
The format of the concerts is a curated one that links music with literature, politics, history--a necessary part of what music is. In that sense the ASO is totally unique.
Botstein and the ASO. The truth is that I have been such a thorn of the side of critics, conductors and managers that I am not surprised at what you found. But you will find support and real support within the profession. Pardon the expression but I have not gotten medals and awards for anything but my work in music. I just got the Bruckner Medal this month (the other recipients have been Toscanini and Walter, among others). And I got the same Austrian Cross for contributions to music as Sir Simon Rattle--the same year. I hate that stuff, but there it is.
On 1--again think of Nabokov, whose favorite Russian poets were often obscure figures derided by all the other critics. He stood alone. The Marschner is beautiful opera and a crucial link between Beethoven and Wagner. So I stand in the Quixotic defense of works that are worth it--even if they are not as good as others. Music does not follow Darwinian patterns (a longer discussion). It is not science. That is, if i may say so, a commonplace; the idea that history is a judge that seems right but is not. One of the greatest plays was forgotten after the writer died and rediscovered in the 1920$, 100 years later--Woyzeck. That is just one example.
As to 2, that is one way to build an audience, by linking music to other forms of life--to pretentiously paraphrase Wittgenstein.
And to No 3) I am still haunted by early criticisms by angry competitors and idiot ignorant critics who hated my ideas and the fact that I was an outsider with another career in scholarship and education.
That being said, why not give me one last shot at proving the majority wrong. I have been at it for nearly 25 years, and in the next five, if there can be no measured improvement on the execution front--then that will be that. But 120,000 sales and a Grammy nomination for a rare work--a Popov symphony from the 19305,--and more than 20 years of some real success (we have generated a body of new scholarship in music history--is cause enough to inspire you to give us help.
This is my plea. But I am not Moses, and if there were a God, he would not be on my side. (Another reason to help). I greatly cherish this new friendship and I have real admiration for how you go about doing things----tough as it is often I truly enjoy the argument. But this time I and not your preliminary findings and researchers--am right. Given the
firestorm I created 20 years ago I am even surprised I did as well in your research, whatever grade you put on the result. It is not the final exam, only a badly constructed mid-term, I am a bit proud not to have gotten a top grade. True controversy rarely leads to praise in this business. Nabokov became famous and admired only at the end.
Leon
I agree that something not acknowledged as a treasure needs to be evaluated. But the auction house metaphor does not quite work--for reasons of actual as well as perceived value, speculation, collection madness, exclusive ownership. What is relevant is the re-emergence of music in new contexts, so that the evaluation reveals itself in part in influence (e.g. forms of neo-classicism). Also I am interested in the evolution of musical meaning, and treasures are not the only purpose of the endeavor. Remember your own enjoyment at listening to Herzogenberg. Leon
academically correct, auction metaphor related to ultimate value„ new fossil record changes history, explains and possibly connects, destroys closely held beliefs. I have searched for the impact of the cage performances. it was not undiscovered , it had miniscule impact, and would have been as effective as a lecture with a small demo. ./ II want you to win, it would be easy to just shrug your argumnets off. There is a reason you are still struggling and it is not your talent. . the people that come an hour early to listen , are your audience, the others are inside to get warm.
The Cage concert is both a good and bad example. Check in contrast the impact of the parallel programs in the previous years on Henry Cowell and Walter Piston.
It would not have worked as you suggest--a lecture demo, and would have cost the same. The three pieces by Cage--two of which were premieres in the US--had to be seen and heard; they are performance arts. You are also wrong about audiences. Many concert goers do not like lectures and never go; some can't and won't make it. And we did the Cage because Bard is the home of the Cage Archive, a gift of Merce Cunningham. Otherwise I would have skipped the idea.
I have the sense of fighting my worst enemies in a a shadow way, not openly, and I surely have them. I am not struggling--I am struggling for the primary source of survival in music history for large ensembles--patronage. And you once asked a question of me. The answer is that I wish to work on the podium, to perform and the continue to fight--if one odes not work one dies inside--and I am sure many many in the profession would validate the need and the accomplishment. Ask Emmanuel Ax, for example of the members of the Emerson Quartet. Shrugging off arguments in my line of work is only possible when you have an endowment or like Stokowski, Munch , Leinsdorf and Koussevitzky, you married money.
Leon