E-Book Overview
The Danger of Music gathers some two decades of Richard Taruskin's writing on the arts and politics, ranging in approach from occasional pieces for major newspapers such as the New York Times to full-scale critical essays for leading intellectual journals. Hard-hitting, provocative, and incisive, these essays consider contemporary composition and performance, the role of critics and historians in the life of the arts, and the fraught terrain where ethics and aesthetics interact and at times conflict. Many of the works collected here have themselves excited wide debate, including the title essay, which considers the rights and obligations of artists in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a series of lively postscripts written especially for this volume, Taruskin, America's "public" musicologist, addresses the debates he has stirred up by insisting that art is not a utopian escape and that artists inhabit the same world as the rest of society. Among the book's forty-two essays are two public addresses—one about the prospects for classical music at the end of the second millennium C. E., the other a revisiting of the performance issues previously discussed in the author's Text and Act (1995)—that appear in print for the first time.
E-Book Content
The Danger of Music
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Music in America Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from Sukey and Gil Garcetti, Michael Roth, and the Roth Family Foundation.
The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays
Richard Taruskin
UNIV ERSITY OF CA LIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley
Los Angeles
London
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2009 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taruskin, Richard. The danger of music and other anti-utopian essays / Richard Taruskin. p. cm. — (Roth Family Foundation Music in America imprint) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-24977-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Musical criticism. I. New York times. II. Title. ML3785.T36 2009 780.9—dc22 2007052244 Manufactured in the United States of America 18 10
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This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
To James Oestreich and Leon Wieseltier, my co-perpetrators
Intellectual life floats ethereally, like a fragrant cloud rising from fermentation, above the reality of the worldly activities which make up the lives of the peoples, governed by the will; alongside world history there goes, guiltless and not stained with blood, the history of philosophy, science, and the arts. —arthur schopenhauer, Parerga i Paralipomena (1851)
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contents
preface: against utopia /
ix
1. Et in Arcadia Ego; or, I Didn’t Know I Was Such a Pessimist until I Wrote This Thing (a talk) / 1 From the New York Times, mostly
2. Only Time Will Cover the Taint /
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3. “Nationalism”: Colonialism in Disguise? / 4. Why Do They All Hate Horowitz? / 5. Optimism amid the Rubble /