Ravings of the Occasionally Opinionated

An Open Letter to James Levine

I am sending the following letter to James Levine, the conductor and music director of the BSO. It is simply a more formal, unhumorous rehash of my posting immediately below. Why have I taken action for the first time after some God-awful production and actually written a letter? Because the reputation of music itself is at stake! There are a series of Beethoven/Schoenberg programs this season.

November 9, 2006

Mr. James Levine
Music Directory
Boston Symphony Orchestra

Dear Mr. Levine:

I would like to whole-heartedly applaud more 20^th (and 21^st!) century music performed by the BSO. I have always felt that BSO programs reflected overly stodgy and conservative musical tastes. However, I must take issue with programming the compositions of Arnold Schoenberg. While I have occasionally considered writing a letter to the director of a bad play, never before have I actually taken action and written after attending an event. I must do so now because Schoenberg single-handedly did more damage to the reputation of 20^th century music than all other bad composers and music that pushed the limits of convention combined. It is a marvel to me that many people don’t like “modern” music which was written before they were born or when they were children! Schoenberg is to blame.

Too many people say they “don’t like 20^th century music.” What they really mean is that they don’t like Schoenberg, whose compositions have been inflicted upon us as great “music” of the 20^th century. Exclude Schoenberg from any consideration of 20th century music and you are left with the likes of Adams, Barber, Bartok, Carter, Elgar, Gershwin, Ginastera, Glass, Holst, Ligeti, Orff, Penderecki, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Scriabin, Shostakovich, Tan Dun, Varese, Vaughn Williams, and Villa-Lobos. Great music. Beautiful, or at least interesting. Beloved by most. Present this list to people and you find that some don’t even lump much of this great music in with “20^th century music.” Why? Because Schoenberg represents 20^th century music and they hate it. Even Berg, Schoenberg’s pupil, wrote 12-tone music with recognizable melodies and thematic development. This is proof that it is not the “modern style” that the public doesn’t get, but it is Schoenberg specifically who wrote unrecognizable junk from start to finish.

It is way past time to call a spade a spade. Schoenberg’s “music” was crap when he wrote it, crap fifty years later, it is still crap now, and will continue to be crap in the future. I cannot and will not forgive him for giving 20th century music a bad name. His violin concerto was the last straw for me, and I will no longer forgive people who program it on public concerts, wanting to appear musically astute and display their wide variety of taste. They prove they are duped by crap. After many decades of listening to every variety of music, including way too much Schoenberg, I am no longer able to believe that his violin concerto moves you emotionally, or that you could sing back to me any significant section of it. It is many decades past the time to acknowledge that the public is neither going to “come to understand” nor “learn to like” this complete junk. As an American, I recognize his right to have written it, and our obligation to allow it to exist, but we have no obligation to perform it. There is a vast repertoire of music which is completely ignored or under-performed, so please, stop foisting Schoenberg upon us as if it had any value.

Please, continue to mix Beethoven’s wonderful music which packs the house with wonderful contemporary music, as well as the early-to-mid 20^th century music which is somehow still considered “modern.” But don’t ever expect anyone to confuse the compositions of Schoenberg with real music and to enjoy them. You continue the irreparable damage to the reputation of modern music with the Schoenberg programs.

Respectfully,

signed by non-anonymous me