Kennicott in Washington Post

I'm informed that Kennicott was in St. Louis when Slatkin conducted its orchestra and had a reputation for bashing

So who followed whom?

What, pray tell, is unfortunate about Kennicott's arrival?

evan, a curious occasional Kennicott reader and temporarily displaced DC native

Slatkin was brilliant back when he was a Grant Park regular (in Chicago); he used to try out new or unfamiliar stuff that would be in the following St. Louis season (and then get recorded or at least broadcast); and then there was at least one week when he had been touring the country with some particular new work and those broadcasts from four or five different orchestras all turned up in a single week on WFMT. (Which had a regular schedule for the Big Five or whatever.)

Then a year ago the National came to Carnegie Hall with a dreadful Danielpour concerto for string quartet, and the Joan Tower piece and the Symphonie Fantastique showed that the NSO in Slatkin's hands is a superb ensemble.

So if this Kennicott fellow has a personal problem with Slatkin, that's

oh. no wonder I like him.

evan, composition student and voracious consumer of 'avant garde crap'

Most of what I've heard seems written to OFFEND (there being little other apparent reason for writing music that seems not to have any intention of communicating with an audience). Why would someone who writes something esoteric even expect a public performance?

Kennicott is just trashing the overwhelming majority of the already-small classical music audience in his frustration and anyone who dares write music for them.

I've seen this attitude in conservatories: if you write something at all tonal most professors will sneer, 'That's been done!'

I cannot avoid a sneaking suspicion that your definition of 'esoteric' and 'not having any intention of communicating' is 'music I don't like.'

When was the last time you were in such a setting? I'm there now, and I'm in the distinct minority for writing in a so-called 'high modernist' style (i.e. 'esoteric and having no intention of communicating with the audience.'

didn't Schoenberg, in the Wiener Brautblatt, say this same thing about johann strauss the other day? good grief, why are you quoting Schoenberg? don't we have enough trouble already with Paul Hindermith? this young man's melodies are so ugly. he has talent, but why is he wasting it writing in Those people's style? please quote only the devine Mozart, or i will not be able to read your posts.

R. Strauss

I was in a conservatory almost 40 years ago.

Maybe the reason you're in a minority is that 40 more years have passed without audience-hostile music having produced anything.

Copland and Prokofiev (to pick a couple of names off the top of my head) tried your path, too, in their youth, but then wised up.

Maybe you will, too, assuming you have something you want to communicate to the public.

conservatory? this is what they were calling institutions for the alienated 40 years ago? i diin't know that.

as a below the belt rejoin: shlokstakovich is getting more and more poplular. that ought to be a clue that we are passing through the tail of the evil comet vulgaron 322b. decent music is turning to dust in the atmosphere. Cage and Stockhausen were great romantics, but their music is too complicated to filter through the comet's orgone emissions. all CD players are having their phases inverted. marginal intellects are bleating out their pique to such high decibels, that the sounds of harmonic order, that real music zooms into the aether, are obscured.

when will it all end? (before or after i finish my octet for dot-matrix printer and seven dwarfs?)

(and, you're 'tooty', right? auditions are at 3.)

yes, four sure. an old viennese frau doktor of botony i knew only liked premozart -except for zauberflote, fledermaus and rosenkavalier!

and, zee flaw is only in the head of people who think music is a passtime. you are john cage when you tappy-tap on the keys, i think?? yes?? and sometimes a little shubertchen???

ahk, yah. an die moosik.

F. Doktor mike