Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!amdahl!ames!aurora!agate!ig!uwmcsd1!bbn!rochester!udel!princeton!phoenix!tom
From: tom@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Thomas C Hajdu)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: still more musique pour le . . . . .
Message-ID: <1652@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 6 Feb 88 05:33:55 GMT
References: <2727@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1630@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <3a16fe27.b263@hi-csc.UUCP>
Reply-To: tom@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Thomas C Hajdu)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 33

In article <3a16fe27.b263@hi-csc.UUCP> giebelhaus@hi-csc.UUCP (Timothy R. Giebelhaus) writes:
>In article <1630@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> tom@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Thomas C Hajdu) writes:
>>>4th Movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony
>>>The Planets by Gustav Holst
>>>Mozart's Requiem
>>>
>>
>>OH MAN....I DONT WANT TO DEAL WITH IT....
>>
>>and on top of that Holst with Mozart and Beethoven!!! What a joke!
>
>Try it before you "splash" it!  If you listen to those classical pieces,
>you may find that they are not quite as boring as you might have expected.
>
>Besides, if they can have classical music in the milk bar in Clockwork Orange,
>why not have some classical music here.  Not everything that is old is bad.

I had hoped it would not require a particularly close reading of my
comments to discern a sensitivity to and experience with these three 
composers.  One of the targets of my knee-jerk reaction was the
comingling of Holst with Mozart and Beethoven.  This seems to me 
boorish at best.  The REAL offense, however, was the reliance on 
music of the past for describing a culture of an imagined future.
I never said that Mozart and Beethoven were boring -- they are in fact
places where I have spent much of my listening life.  They seem,
however, in this context, to be used merely as pitons poked frantically
into the rock wall of the present to try and avoid plummeting headlong
kicking and screaming into the future.

Tom Hajdu 
Composer-in-residence
Princeton University 
Music Department