Composers Forum is a daily web log that allows invited contemporary composers to share their thoughts and ideas on any topic that interests them--from the ethereal, like how new music gets created, music history, theory, performance, other composers, alive or dead, to the mundane, like getting works played and recorded and the joys of teaching. If you're a professional composer and would like to participate, send us an e-mail.
Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for review. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019
Congratulations to my colleague Rodney Lister for such an eloquent post on music and politics. I have very little to add to what he has said here and I have no quick fix about our current situation. Nevertheless, Rodney's post did persuade me to re-read some of Roger Sessions's essays on music and reflect on how our time is not entirely unlike the period of the thirties.
In an essay written in 1933 called "Music and Nationalism" Sessions writes: "This is of course the reason why modern political men of the type of the Nazi leaders whose power must ultimately rest on their ability artificially to stimulate and direct or even to manufacture popular passions, concern themselves inevitably with art and with culture in general. In its essence art reveals the inner nature of life and of men, and thus must be eternally opposed to those who are trying to force human impulses into purely interested channels. That art may sometimes be inspired by enthusiasm for a cause may be readily admitted, just as it may be inspired by any really profound feeling whatever. But when it remains on the level of an organ or reflection of popular prejudice, the artist has 'made the great refusal' and abrogated his responsibility as a man and therefore as an artist as well."
posted by Larry Thomas Bell
8:51 AM
