[Dixielandjazz] The Music "Lofty & Dead?"

[Steve barbone]

Below is a book review about the problems of classical music today which IMO
are virtually an exact parallel to those of OKOM. It is severely snipped for
brevity. If anyone wants the full review, write me off list.

Delete now if not interested. If you read on, substitute "OKOM" for
"Classical" in the context of the article and note the synergies.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Books of the Times | 'Classical Music in America'

A View of Classical Music in America as Lofty and Dead

CLASSICAL MUSIC IN AMERICA A History of Its Rise and Fall
By Joseph Horowitz 606 pages. W. W. Norton. $39.95.

By GREG SANDOW June 25, 2005 NY TIMES (SNIPPED FOR BREVITY)

Joseph Horowitz is a force in classical music today, a prophet and an
agitator. He's written books and essays arguing that classical music has
been "sacralized" in America - treated as if it were something dead and
sacred from the European past. He pines for what he thinks was a brighter
time, the 1890's, when the great Czech composer Antonin Dvorak came to
America, became inspired by black and American Indian music and wrote his
"New World" Symphony, which became the talk of New York.

More striking still, Mr. Horowitz, a former music critic for The New York
Times, puts his preaching into action. He works with orchestras (though not
the largest ones) to put on music festivals in which he tries to bring back
the colloquial ease that classical music had in Dvorak's time, along with
its cultural relevance and intellectual heft.

For Mr. Horowitz, the story here is dead serious, meant to show us (in
historical microcosm) both the problems classical music has and a dream of
what it might have been. Boston looked backward, and worshiped Beethoven;
New York moved forward, embracing new composers.

Mr. Horowitz elaborates his most important thesis: that in America classical
performers became more famous than living classical composers, thus closing
off classical music from contemporary life and sealing its doom. To show how
this culture of performance functioned, he summons a parade of classical
music superstars - conductors, pianists and violinists - assessing each in
sensitive, acute little essays, which are by far the best writing in the
book.

Toward the end, for instance, Mr. Horowitz at last looks outward long enough
to note that Europe now has the same classical music culture as America
(built on great composers of the past and star performers of the present).

But enough. This book is best understood not as analysis or history but as a
cri du coeur. Mr. Horowitz despairs of classical music as it functions now.
He thinks it's doomed. He longs for it to reconnect with all our culture,
high and low. If his passion helps in any way to make that happen, then this
flawed but eager book will do a lot of good.