“European cities are going the way of cities in America: high-rise offices in the center, surrounded first by a ring of lawless dereliction, and then by the suburbs, to which those who work in the city flee at the end of the day. Admittedly, nothing in Europe compares with the vandalism that modernists have wreaked on Buffalo, Tampa, or Minneapolis. Nevertheless, the same moral disaster is beginning to afflict us–the disaster of cities in which no one wishes to live, where public spaces are vandalized and private spaces boarded up.”
Tag: 04.08
Modernism As A Narrative
“There is no doubt that Modernism is often compelling. And its central thesis – that modernists were characterised by ‘the lure of heresy’ – does capture not just the widespread interrogation of artistic convention, but also its subjective counterpart: the sovereignty of the artist.”
The Music Industry Is Ailing, So…
“concerts might be a short-term fix. As one national concert promoter says, “The road is where the money is.” But in the long run, the music business can’t depend on concert tours for a simple, biological reason: the huge tour profits that have been generated in the last few decades have come from performers who are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. As these artists get older, they’re unlikely to be replaced, because the industry isn’t investing in new talent development.”
School Of Rock And Bach?
Most classical musicians no longer adhere to the idea that their genre is somehow superior to all other forms of music. But there’s still a stigma attached to non-classical music in conservatories around the world. Things do seem to be changing, though…
Where Is Britain’s National Epic?
“This lack of a national epic has set a hare running among both readers and writers. The novel of national origins has now been relegated to mass-market fiction. But what has occupied more elevated practitioners and critics of the art is the novel of national life in a contemporary, or near-contemporary, setting. It has come to be called the “state-of-the-nation” novel, and it is currently all around us.”