To the Editor:
I had two thoughts on Terry Teachout’s most interesting article, “No More Great Composers?” [August].
First, it seems to me that Sergei Prokofiev stands above the other 20th-century figures Mr. Teachout names as “great” and has in fact become one of the “super greats”—probably surpassing Schumann and certainly approaching the stature of Brahms. One could argue that Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto is the greatest concerto ever written and that his Romeo and Juliet ballet is the greatest dance music ever written. And a number of his other orchestral works and violin and piano concertos are also in the standard repertory.
Secondly, what Mr. Teachout fails to stress is that there seems to be no music written since the 1950’s now in the standard repertory. In opera, the most recent works currently being performed are those of Alban Berg (d. 1935). A group that includes Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes (1945) and Billy Budd (1951), Dmitri Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth (1934, revised 1963), and Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (1951) may be moving into the “standard rep,” but even these have been around for quite a while.
And can Mr. Teachout think of any pieces in the concert repertory that were composed since Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony (1944) and Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto (1940)?
So perhaps the current music scene is worse than Mr. Teachout makes it out to be.
Robert W. Wilson
New York City
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To the Editor:
I believe I can count on the fingers of one hand the instances in which I have disagreed with anything Terry Teachout has written. In fact, I consider his articles reason alone to subscribe to COMMENTARY. Yet I must, for once, take issue with him. Specifically, I cannot agree with his suggestion that contemporary concert audiences are not only beginning to “pay attention to new classical compositions” but actually to welcome them, as shown by the inclusion of these works in the current programming of major symphony orchestras. Really?
Over the past twenty years, I have had the privilege of being a subscriber to some of the world’s great symphony orchestras: Los Angeles 1974-79, Philadelphia 1979-89, and St. Louis from 1990 to the present. Of these three, the St. Louis Symphony, under the direction of Leonard Slatkin, played contemporary works most often. While the reason officially given for Slatkin’s departure to Washington’s National Symphony was his wish to pursue greater opportunities, there was, in fact, another, less public, explanation for his leaving: the disaffection felt by the St. Louis audience for his contemporary programming. Slatkin was and is largely loved by the St. Louis audience, and I myself enjoy and respect him immensely; but make no mistake about it, concert-goers did not like having the music of, say, Donald Erb rammed down their throats so that they could enjoy Mahler or Beethoven after intermission. This, mind you, is not hearsay, but rather the grumbling I witnessed firsthand.
My point, then, is that I do not think Mr. Teachout should assume that concertgoers enjoy contemporary programming just because they have been made to listen to it. In fact, I believe the opposite is more accurate; that is, as a rule, we do not enjoy it at all. It is not that we do not wish to expand our musical horizons, but that most performances of new music have been unsatisfying in the extreme and most of the works mediocre at best. In speaking to people in other cities, I conclude that these sentiments are not unique to St. Louis.
In conclusion, let me echo Mr. Teachout’s hope that “a new genius is indeed among us now, busily writing scores that will change the face of music.” My belief is that such a person will turn out to be a Neoromantic, since there is something about the tonality, lyricism, and emotional content of the music from Beethoven to Mahler that moves us profoundly in a way that atonal or contemporary music cannot.
Martin Wax
Wildwood, Missouri
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Terry Teachout writes:
I had the thoughtful words of Robert W. Wilson and Martin Wax very much in mind when writing an article on the new tonalists that will appear in a forthcoming issue of COMMENTARY. In lieu of addressing their specific points here—especially Martin Wax’s provocative suggestion that the great composers of the future will be Neoromantic in style—I will simply say that I hope they will find this piece at least partly responsive to their understandable concerns. I also hope at some later date to consider in detail the interesting case of Sergei Prokofiev.
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