Atlas Society
Top 10 Articles
Eric Barnhill
The Irrelevance of the Avant-Garde
Categories:
Commentary |
November 2001 -- In the normal course of events, the world is content to ignore the capers that take place in our ivory-tower institutions. But in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the public has suddenly cast a sharp eye on obscure academic figures whose reactions demonstrate either an appalling callousness, an extreme removal from reality, or both. One figure in the latter category is Karlheinz Stockhausen, a German composer considered a modern master among contemporary academic composers—and ignored by the rest of the world.
Switzerland's Most Wanted
Categories:
Commentary |
February 2002 -- Pierre Boulez (1925– ), perhaps the most highly esteemed postwar composer, has finally achieved what he wanted. Throughout his long career, Boulez has done his best to provoke and intimidate the bourgeois establishment. Unfortunately for him, the general public has contentedly ignored him, and his influence has been significant only among the most abstruse composers and theorists of the ivory tower.
The Rachmaninoff Revival
Categories:
Commentary |
May 2002 -- New York concertgoers discovered an unusual overlap in this season's programming: the two rival powerhouses of Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall both offered, as a primary focus of the season, the music of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Even more unusual is that no noteworthy milestones in his life, the dully predictable rationale for most such programming, prompted the choice.
