estebanana -> RE: Do the Classics Suppress Contemporary, Creative Works of Music? Literature? Art? (Sep. 16 2015 13:55:21)
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Miguel, of course current writers and painters are competing with the classics in their respective fields, i.e., literature and art. They also compete against each other, as any glance at a weekly literary "best seller" list can attest to. But, and this is key, they are not being suppressed--via economics, intimidation, or "an aging audience lacking discrimination"--by the classics in their respective fields of endeavor. Writers such as Graham Greene, V.S. Naipaul, Thomas Pynchon, E.L. Doctorow, and others whose works are considered classics were not suppressed and intimidated by the literary greats of the past. Miguel, you keep evading the question--this time you appear to have shifted the operative verb from "suppressed" to "competing." That is a completely different game. My question remains unanswered: How do you explain your assertion that composition and performance of serious music today is suppressed by the classics (i.e., Mozart, et. al.), while that is clearly not the case in other creative endeavors such as literature and art? Why, in your estimation, is music different? The painter Richard Diebenkorn said (I paraphrase) I never wanted to be an avant garde artist or an artist that invented a new format, I always knew that I would extend a tradition. And that is what he did, he extended a modernist way of seeing and he took Matisse, Mondrian, Bonnard and many others as his role models, inspiration, and he was challenged by these other, often dead painters, to rise to do his best work. But he knew his measure, and he knew he was damned good, and he was good enough to take on Matisse who is a formidable artist. And Diebenkorn, possibly more than anything else formally and traditionally, extended Matisse's work. He did not compete with Matisse, and Matisse certainly did not suppress Diebenkorn. Diebenkorn in the realm of his relationship with Matisse's work extended the paint language and way Matisse was seeing and using color. A similar thing can be said of Stravinsky in relation to Rimsky-Korssikov; Stravinsky extended R-K's language in harmony and orchestration. Then later this happens again with Boulez and Stravinsky, Boulez extends Stravinsky's language in harmony and structure.
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