I had an extremely uncomfortable moment the other day when I went to look at a new apartment and accidentally went to the door two doors down, and it turned out to be the door of J------- P-------, the general manager of Baltimore's classical music station. I assure you I had no idea he was living there, but it was a deeply uncomfortable experience since I have had the distinct impression for years that, if he ever gave me any thought, he does not like me and possibly viewed me as potential competition for his music history teaching gigs and there's a miniscule chance he may have muscled me out of the only one I got (though, of course, my chronic meshuggas is more than reason enough). I didn't like the place I looked at anyway.
The idea of being his neighbor is an anxiety provoking experience by itself. When I moved to my current place, I found myself the accidental upstairs neighbor of the Baltimore Symphony's assistant conductor, and that alone became a deeply uncomfortable experience because I took that as a sign from the universe that I should pursue conducting, and god knows what conclusions that lead him to about me... and suddenly I found a very friendly neighbor going to great lengths to avoid me. But I assure you, dear reader, that it was an entirely accidental coincidence, and an experience I have absolutely no desire to repeat...
But, more importantly, looking at the statistics of who's looking at 'ye olde blogge', clearly someone is looking at old posts of mine, from the years when we kinda/sorta knew each other thanks to the introductions of Bubbie, who, of course, faithfully took his classes for years.
During that period, as young people do, I made all sorts of claims that I didn't quite believe, that corresponded to my latest system at the time of what constitutes great art. I was playing in rock bands, I was completely stultified by the stuffiness of classical music. I wanted to thumb my nose at all sorts of established wisdom, and deliberately made outrageous claims like that Bach was absurdly overrated, no great music was written before Monteverdi, only late Verdi is really worthwhile, the music of Prokofiev and Hindemith is synthetic and mechanical, and classical music went spectacularly wrong at some point in the 20th century that ceded its place to popular music.
I mean.... I suppose I still believe a minor league version of all that, but now I've made my peace with what it means to be in the cultural trenches. Once you realize that the path for you is not foreordained, you let go of your narcissistic messiah complexes, and you make a point of trying to be much, much more generous. Sadly, some people never learn, but being in the arts is spectacularly hard at the best of times, and how much moreso in America, where everybody thinks artists have only their own selfishness to thank for the fact that they can't make a living doing what they're best at.
You can't demand everything from every piece of art. Not every piece of art is meant to sum up all things of the heavens and the earth, and just because it isn't it doesn't deserve some little shit who fancies himself an enfant terrible talking smack about it. I still love certain composers beyond reason which I did at the time (Monteverdi, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Mussorgsky, Mahler, Janacek, Ives, Shostakovich...) precisely because, from my POV, these nine particularly bare witness to the entirety of the human condition from the grand to the intimate. I feel the same way about certain artists and writers: Shakespeare and The Bible obviously, Chekhov, Pushkin, Cervantes, Dickens, Montaigne, Bocaccio, Rembrandt, Goya, van Gogh, Leonardo, Seurat, Turner...
But there are different ways to get there. Just because Schubert and Brahms and Dvorak and Faure and RVW imply the human condition inwardly rather than dramatize it does not make them anything but the most transcendent composers. Just because Nielsen's humor and Bartok's compassion is subtle does not make them any less than the top of the pantheon. And just because some artists get there sometimes or occasionally does not mean they should be penalized. There are literally hundreds of composers, and thousands of artists, who have risen at times to that level of transcendence. I've tried to feature them here, and I don't wish to repeat myself with another playlist of works that get there.
But I want to renew my commitment here to showing an affirming flame. Not everything is worth your time, but so much of it definitely is. I want to make sure it gets featured, that some people know of it, and that some people are around to appreciate it, make contact with it, and know that artists' contact with the mysterium remains heard.
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