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Re: [microsound] blowing up boulez



On 07/07/03 13:40, K. Scott Handley said in living color:

> I am a friend of Josh Ronsen's and apparently the
> second-largest contributor thus far to the project,
> which is too bad, since I only gave a few items.
> Ronsen is so incredibly far from being a Francophobe,
> that he probably warrants Ashcroft supervision.  His
> politics and aesthetics are hardly anti-French or even
> for that matter anti-Boulez, though even if they were
> anti-Boulez, what of it?  French aesthetics and French
> artistic production can do better than that crusty
> bureaucrat, anyway.

I for one didn't interpret the "project" as being symptomatic of
francophobia. (Personally, I just think it's silly. But what the heck, if it
amuses some people...)

However, unsubstantiated dismissals -- or rather ad hominem attacks -- such
as the one at the end of the quoted paragraph do bother me.

When confronted to such a situation, I always wonder what level of
familiarity with the subject at hand the person issuing the venom possesses;
usually, it's very slight.

Are you remotely aware of the colossal impact "that crusty bureaucrat", as
you call him, has had (and is still having) on contemporary music and on
music in general? Both as a composer and as a conductor? How many pieces of
his have you heard/are you familiar with? How familiar are you with his
(enormous) recorded output? Are you aware of the level of devotion and the
drive with which he promoted music of this century, even under sustained
fire (his years at the NYPO, for example)? Etc.

I'm not saying the man is a saint, that we should all pray at the altar of
the all-mighty Boulez or that we ought to like his work, but to disparage a
man like him with blanket statements such as those one can read in the
quoted message strikes me as disrespectful and cowardly.

g.

-- 
Guillaume Grenier - grenier.g@xxxxxxxxxxxx

in space there is no north  in space there is no south
in space there is no east   in space there is no west

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