Kosman To Modernists: Quit Blaming Everyone Else

Joshua Kosman wasn’t impressed with the bitter condemnations and whiny tone of conductor James Levine and composer Charles Wuorinen in last Sunday’s New York Times concerning the failure of serialism and other complex forms of new music to engage the public. “Audiences couldn’t care less. Wuorinen’s music and that of other similarly oriented composers has yet to make a dent in the culture at large, or in the consciousness of music lovers. Hence the bitterness, the self-pity, the snarling at the listeners for whose benefit all this scribbling is ostensibly being undertaken.”