The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian EssaysThe 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. |
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Abbate academic Allen Shawn American Arnold Schoenberg artistic audience authenticity avant-garde Babbitt Bach Bartók Beethoven Bloom Brahms Cage Cage's called Cantata century Charles Wuorinen claim classical music composer composer's composition concert conductor contemporary critic culture Death of Klinghoffer Debussy decades dissonance early music esthetic French German harmony hear Hindemith Horowitz idea Igor Stravinsky Jews John Cage Klinghoffer Korsyn listeners means Messiaen Milton Babbitt misreading modern modernist moral Mozart musicians musicologist myth Nazi neoclassicism never opera orchestra original performance piano piece pitch play poem poietic political première Press published Quartet recording Reich Richard Taruskin Rite of Spring Robert Craft romantic Russian Schoenberg score seems serial Shawn sical social Sonata sort sound Straus Stravin Stravinsky style Symphony Taruskin theory thing tion tonal tradition turn twelve-tone twentieth twentieth-century University utopian voice Wagner words write wrote York