Taruskin quote, with more context

Heh. Although I know hardly anything about contemporary classical music, somehow one of my posts made it to this contemporary classical music blog. Check it out.

Since the author of the blog linked it and commented that the connection I referenced between sex and classical music seems tenuous, I thought I'd take the opportunity to link to the original article and offer more context. I should've done this in the first place, but I believe I was knee-deep in Mahler and German at the time. I do agree it does look tenuous without the context, though it is also quite dramatic (and admittedly bordering on sensationalist) without the background info.

I excerpted the quote from this lengthy book review by Taruskin in the New Republic. (Hint: if you find clicking on multiple pages as irritating as I do, click on the "print" link and read it all in one page.)

It is a scathing, if not interesting, worthwhile read, so I'll only briefly summarize it, but he starts by sharply criticizing the Pulitzer Prize-winning article about Joshua Bell playing incognito at a D.C. subway during the middle of rush hour.

His general thesis is that those who profess to be the biggest fans of classical music are often the ones responsible for classical music's so-called "death". He then proceeds to excoriate three classical music books and argues his point via these scathing reviews.

I read this shortly after reading Wuorinen's article on art vs. entertainment in which he talks about the demise of music written for wind ensembles. Taruskin takes a contrary view on this art vs. entertainment dichotomy. He is critical of any notion of setting apart classical music as a high art form. Again, read the article to get the full gist, but he argues against such elitization (yes, I know that's not a word) of classical music and says that such elevation is partly responsible for classical music's "death".

Finally, he addresses those who keep decrying the death/demise of classical music and points out that a) this is nothing new; that classical music's existence in modern society has always been challenged
and that b) classical music is not so much "dying" as constantly evolving.

So here is more context for the aforementioned classical music/sex analogy, but do go read the article, or else you will miss gems like,
"As with rising gorge I consumed these books, the question that throbbed and pounded in my head was whether it was still possible to defend my beloved repertoire without recourse to pious tommyrot, double standards, false dichotomies, smug nostalgia, utopian delusions, social snobbery, tautology, hypocrisy, trivialization, pretense, innuendo, reactionary invective, or imperial haberdashery."

I'm not even sure I know what imperial haberdashery is, but I will now be declaring that everything is imperial haberdashery for the next few days.