WMV Music Web Log

I'm glad you share my enthusiasm for the Brahms sextets, David! Of course there is the anthem in the second movement of the Bb sextet op. 18, which has quite a different feeling; more like the song of the volga boatman, a kind of worksong of determination. And there is the opening theme of Faure's second Piano Quintet, which someone called the longest single motif he knew.

Anyway, I was going to blog about how classical music is dead, and how that is the context in which WMV was formed. That tradition of European classical music, with all its magnificence and pretentiousness and silliness, is really over. It doesn't mean the music is no longer of interest, but that vast repertoire has to be re-examined, sifted, and the good parts rescued, reinterpreted, even translated into something which speaks to us in the 21st century. The "classical music" thing degenerated into pompous hocus-pocus over the last 75 years or so. Now the music of the late 18th to early 20th century has become like the music of the renaissance, more dead historical artifact than living art. It is time to look at it with fresh eyes and ears, and ask what is it really saying? What is it supposed to do? Let's drop the awe and genuflection, and use our cultural heritage to save our souls.