Three American Composers in Pursuit of the White Whale
Abstract When we want to find out if a film or book that has caught our interest is worth seeing or reading, one of our first questions is “What is it about?” We don’t ask that of music we’ve never heard. We’ve been taught that music is abstract, and to ask what it means is as naïve as trying to fig...
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | unknown |
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Oxford University PressNew York, NY
2006
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195162165.003.0021 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52393008/isbn-9780195162165-book-part-21.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract When we want to find out if a film or book that has caught our interest is worth seeing or reading, one of our first questions is “What is it about?” We don’t ask that of music we’ve never heard. We’ve been taught that music is abstract, and to ask what it means is as naïve as trying to figure out the point of a white-on-white canvas. But three important works that span the twentieth century and that take us into the twenty-first point in directions beyond the music itself—each is “about” something. Perhaps we could focus on other works as well, yet these deal with monumental issues that in their own ways touch us all. Charles Ives’s Fourth Symphony is a quest for nothing less than the meaning of life. John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 is a tribute to those who have died of AIDS. John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls is a response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Perhaps it’s coincidental, but each of these works is by an American. |
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