(No doubt some of you have already seen this, but someone brought it up at dinner the other day, and we were in stitches over it. . ..)
Seven score and five years ago, Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address.
Six score and 17 years later, someone reworked it to fit boardroom presentation format and accommodate modern-day attention spans and intelligence levels.
Hmm. If I had any more brainpower left in me, I might have compared composers who were Lincoln's contemporaries (Brahms, Wagner, Liszt, and Beethoven, (if we stretch the timeline a bit) to name a few) to composers of the great powerpoint era, and then made some outrageous speculation about the correlation between our present-day powerpoint/axis-of-evil-worldview culture and lack of Beethoven/Brahms-caliber composers, but I'm too tired to substantiate such claims, so lucky for you, I'll spare you my brilliant thoughts on this matter.
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5 comments:
1) That was hilarious.
2) I nominate, as composers of the Powerpoint era, Harbison, Corigliano, and Danielpour.
I'm not familiar enough with their works enough to comment (well, ok, except maybe Corigliano), but the handful of pieces I've heard of Danielpour are insufferable. It's not music, but I've only listened to his band stuff and a few of his other pieces, and marching band pieces are notoriously bad, b/c I think the main purpose is more "showsy" tunes than music.
Harbison spoke at my (most recent) graduation, and I almost threw something at him. "Let's pander to the audience!"
Yeah, let's not.
That's why composers like Feldman interest me so much. No 10-15 minute carbon copy, competition length junk, but balls-out six-hour long string quartets. You should listen to his music!
Six. Hour. Long. Quartets? You are talking to the person who has trouble sitting through some of Mahler's symphonies in entirety (depending on my mood).
Well, maybe I'll check out some of his shorter works. Thanks for the listening rec.
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