Official List
The National Endowment for the Arts has the list of American choral masterpieces. Fans of the Fredösphere need not send letters of complaint; that would be redundant, as I have already informed them (courteously) that they somehow neglected to include my name. I'm sure there will be many red faces at the NEA when they realize their mistake.
Seriously, what really depresses me is how many of these pieces I've never heard. Thank goodness I can say the composers are familiar to me, all but one anyway. It's nice to see a government-compiled list doesn't succumb to false gravitas: the goofy and wonderful arrangement of What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor by Parker and Shaw made the list, quite deservingly. (The Ambassadors of Harmony have a teasingly short excerpt.)
Umie the Umlaut says, "ask your doctor about the Fredösphere!"
1 Comments:
That's a very disappointing list. The most adventurous repertoire on the list is by Billings and Ives, and the newer the pieces are the more conservative they are. How about Pauline Olivero's "Sound Patterns", or "Christian Wolff in Cambridge" by Morton Feldman, or Robert Erickson's "Do it"? Cage's Hymns and Variations? Terry Riley's "Olson III"? Or the contemporary shape note music by Neely Bruce, or William Brooks' Madrigals? Or scores in Just intonation by Leedy (Pastorale), Toby Twining, or Ben Johnston? Not to mention major choral works by Adams or Steve Reich, and I'm avoiding really "difficult" choral music in my list -- Reynolds, Ashley, Gaburo, Babbitt, or even the American choral works of Stravinsky. (Or do naturalized Americans not count?)
A list like this creates the false impression that American music has become less interesting since Ives, and the correct impression that American music bureaucrats have become more parochial.
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