Many thanks for that link, Tim. Good to hear that Kyle Gann has at last discovered English music. I wonder what took him so long? Hobbs' first minimalist piece (to my knowledge) dates from 1966 - and he composed a wealth of ground-breaking pieces before the age of 21, but KG's not realised this yet.

The Tim Johnson of Europe? Excellent! Keith could have done you a big favour there!

Well, that is an extremely, extremely common attitude in these parts, one often held by people with a great deal less native intelligence, knowledge and commitment than Gann, which I am ready to grant him despite our, shall we say, only modestly intersecting priorities.  (We do share a great admiration for Satie, Cage and Feldman, at least.)

Point being: for many, maybe most, American composers, Europe is the land of Boulez and Stockhausen and maybe Lachenmann, and for that reason best forgotten.  Ligeti and sometimes Xenakis get a pass, but whatever place they take up here is taken at the expense of, say, Babbitt and Carter (not to mention Cage and Feldman).

At least Gann sees the value in the non-mainstream American.  That's something.

Well put, Evan. Mind you, many of us in Englandland and old Yurrp are well used to the eurocentricity with which we are/were brought up. To the cost of all that wonderful American stuff from the first half of the 20th century.

Entirely agreed, but I would add that America after WW2 enjoyed a particularly fruitful period of artistic production in many spheres which cross-fertilised with each other.  Many Europeans had fled for their lives to America prior to, or during the war - so you had some of the most eminent Europeans (Schoenberg, Hindemith etc) working and teaching there.  Others were so revulsed by what had happened in WW2 that they never wished to return to Europe or consider themselves part of it...  Kurt Weill refused to speak German to his own wife, and insisted that Lotte Lenya spoke English to him.  He was so enthusiastically American that he wrote paeans of praise in favour of American achievement in electricity production and even the American Railways system (RAILROADS ON PARADE, a bizarre forerunner of STARLIGHT EXPRESS).  He also wrestled with the moral dilemma of abandonding European culture in favour of a better New World,  in works like THE ETERNAL ROAD (one of his finest works, for some reason utterly neglected these days, even by the neo-con tub-thumpers who might have made ready use of this stuff).  Although the Glass/Reich/Riley/Feldman/Young contingent of post-Kerouac composers were taken up in Britain, super music produced by composers like Menotti (notably THE SAINT OF BLEECKER STREET), Robert Ward (THE CRUCIBLE), Carlisle Floyd, Douglas Moore (BALLAD OF BABY DOE) has been greeted with the sniffiest of reactions in Europe...  not sufficiently acerbic to be respectable, not serial enough to interest row-counters, and most of all written for the theatre (and thus readily dismissable as yankee razamatazz ).  Even Barber is known for just one slow movement of a String Quartet - he might as well never have written VANESSA.

It's doubly unfortunate that current American foreign policy (viz William Kristol's PNAC etc) has been so strident and overtly rude to other nations - ensuring that American culture of the two preceding generations enjoys purposed neglect outside the USA at present.... and even within the USA, where you can't find a polite word about "fellow-travellers" like Barber, Menotti or Ward.

[Forgive the personal opinions here - as you might guess from my avatar-pic, I'm in the middle of rehearsals for some of exactly this music at the moment.... and getting "thank you, but no" replies from critics when they hear what we're performing.]

I take your point about Vanessa, but I think that the context in which you place I here is something of an exaggeration; one can certainly argue that Barber's best work is less well known than it deserves to be, but it's surely fair to say that he is known for more than just that quartet movement in its string orchestral guise.

Of those other mid-20th century Americans whose work is relatively rarely heard in US itself and far more rarely so elsewhere, a large proportion of the côterie of symphonists  pretty much fits the case - when, for example, does one ever hear the symphonies of Mennin, Schuman, Piston, Harris (apart from the almost inevitable no. 3), etc.? And what price Sessions? Some of these composers' symphonies are or have been represented on disc, but their presence in the concert hall is almost unnoticeable.

Best,

Alistair

Well the Kronos have espoused Johnston's transcriptions of his work which is a slightly different matter - you can't really get away from the fact that it makes a completely different work that way.
I'm hoping that one day someone will get a grant to make some new Partch instruments on a budget that allows his vision to really take flight. Then they can record all of the work (it would also be nice if Schott actually got around to publishing his music) rather than everything by Dean Drummond (I have nothing against him or his music incidentally, but it would just be nice to hear some of these pieces on better recordings than currently exist). The old instruments still do tours every now and then, so if you're in the right place at the right time there are still opportunities to hear it.
Do they?
Ahem. In case anyone missed this discussion yesterday.
We could also talk about James Tenney at this juncture at the risk of taking things off topic... Well more off topic.

Sorry - my fault  Another thread perhaps?

I don't know what they wash pigs with in your neck of the woods, AC, but every time I hear Kyle Gann, Alex Ross and co talk about this 'uptown/downtown' stuff I just giggle slightly and have visions of Billy Joel standing beside a tall leggy brunette.

I don't think it's complete rubbish, but I find it hard to think of a metaphor which belongs to another country's discourse about its own music so strongly as this side-of-the-town stuff is peculiarly American.

Erm, yes, my eyebrows already hit the ceiling when I read that. I mean, I'm not saying everyone oughtta've heard of Chris Fox but, well, you know, you would've thought Kyle Gann might have come across him somewhere or other. Or am I totally naive about the reputation of Englishmen abroad?