[NewMusic] Zorn/Taylor Lincoln Center review in NYTimes

[Phillip Greenlief]

-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of weasel walter
Subject: Re: [NewMusic] Zorn/Taylor Lincoln Center review in NYTimes

>>>For example, how is it that Cecil's music can be deemed as avant
garde
today? 

because he's working with an advanced, intuitively sound personal
system that most people still have a hard time relating to today. it
might sound like good old rock and roll to us, but it's still friggin'
greek to the other 99.8 percent of the world.

ww

PG:
Sure, but my point is this: the term avant garde is supposed to be used
to represent the most innovative, the most "forward" of music (or the
other arts, or...politics for that matter) in any given point in time.
Just because Schoenberg's music was radical in 1909 when he wrote those
sublime Opus 11 piano pieces, does that make those works "avant garde"
today? 

If I use your argument, then the answer is yes. And maybe you're right -
I doubt if many American listeners could whistle those Opus 11 melodies
today. But I would hesitate to refer to Schoenberg as avant garde in
2007. Influential - inspired - conceptually brilliant - radical in its
day: sure. But what about today? There's post-serialist music now.
Wouldn't that automatically disqualify Arnold's 12-tone system as
something that is avant garde today?