Ratzinger on Classical Music
I was amused by Ratzinger's comment on classical music and I thought you would be too:
If you have ever sat through an entire performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or a Bartok String Quartet (as I have) or even the ridiculous "composition" 4'33 by John Cage, you know exactly what he's talking about.
- "Modern so-called 'classical music' has maneuvered itself, with some exceptions, into an elitist ghetto, which only specialists may enter--and even they do so with what may sometimes be mixed feelings."
If you have ever sat through an entire performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or a Bartok String Quartet (as I have) or even the ridiculous "composition" 4'33 by John Cage, you know exactly what he's talking about.
2 Comments:
Suddenly your blog (and the last dozen entries) started working in my blog reader again, so that's why I'm only just now responding to this post!
I'm reminded of the essay written by modernist composer Milton Babbitt, "Who Cares If You Listen?", which precisely reveals that elitist attitude.
I actually like Bartok's music a lot, and find a lot of it fairly accessible. That may be, in part, because he was a musicologist and based a lot of his music on Hungarian and Romanian folk tunes. Perhaps I can't speak on it completely, having studied his music some.
Jon,
My RSS publishing was broken for about six months. I just fixed it on Tuesday, so that's the reason.
It's true, Bartok is not all bad by any means. Some of his pieces are quite listenable. But I think perhaps later in his career, he began experimenting beyond the bounds of shall we say, enjoyable music.
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