Peter Eotvos article from The Globe & Mail

[bluestateprommer]

Some food for thought, or otherwise:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/music/musician-peter-eotvos-never-give-what-the-public-asks/article2354177/

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Boulez once ... declared that anyone who wasn’t composing in an atonal serialist style was simply irrelevant.

Inaccurate: he wrote that "any Musician who has not felt* - not merely understood, but felt - the necessity of serialism** is USELESS".

* = or "experienced". ** = or "dodecaphonic Music"

And, in the United States, the composer Milton Babbitt once penned an essay entitled Who Cares If You Listen?, in which he defended the obscurity of his cerebral music.

Untrue. Babbitt wrote an article called The Composer as Specialist, in which he compared the composer exploring the possibilities proffered by the new serial languages was in the same position as the Physicist exploring the new worlds of Quantam mechanics. Neither could reasonably expect instant understanding from the general public, but that did not mean that what they were doing was invalid or irrelevant. The editor of the magazine in which this article was first published changed the title to Who Cares If You Listen?, knowing it to be more eye-catching and provokative. No Musician in the 20th Century cared more that audiences listen to Music, nor took greater pains to help them listen carefully.

http://palestrant.com/babbitt.html

If the writer of this article makes these two basic and slovenly mistakes, why should we believe that the rest of his article is going to be an accurate representation of what Eotvos (or anyone else "quoted" in it) actually said?

[heliocentric]

If the writer of this article makes these two basic and slovenly mistakes, why should we believe that the rest of his article is going to be an accurate representation of what Eotvos (or anyone else "quoted" in it) actually said?

Not to mention misspelling Eötvös' name throughout.

[ahinton]

Agreed all round - which is why I sccused the author of sloppy journalism at bests =on another forum where someone had drawn attention to it.

[Boilk]

Actually the sentence "the composer Milton Babbitt once penned an essay entitled Who Cares If You Listen?" is correct, except that he didn't entitle it that for its publication in High Fidelity.

More correct would be "the composer Milton Babbitt penned an essay once entitled (without his consent) Who Cares If You Listen?" But that doesn't have the same ring

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Actually the sentence "the composer Milton Babbitt once penned an essay entitled Who Cares If You Listen?" is correct, except that he didn't entitle it that for its publication in High Fidelity.

More correct would be "the composer Milton Babbitt penned an essay once entitled (without his consent) Who Cares If You Listen?" But that doesn't have the same ring

... and with acknowledgement to hêlìöçèñtrïc's correct use of the ALT characters!