Hail to all of you who possess a capacity for irony, and who actually read the entire article.

It seems that Mr. Denk's being attacked by composers for encouraging composers to be themselves and find deep enjoyment in their work.

I think his only real mistakes are:

(a) Denk forgets that new music always presents a wider range of quality of creative musical output, because history has a big squelch knob to filter out the static - and of course our yardstick must be provisional, contingent and all that, more than ever before - but he shouldn't be surprised to find himself wading through some things that don't seem to measure up to the standards of the best western concert music of the past few centuries if he has set himself the task of exploring the works of the past few minutes;

(b) Denk forgets that far more people on earth have the privilege of calling themselves composers than ever before in history, and

(c) Denk forgets that common practice composers had a common practice; we should expect to see a wild profusion of stuff these days, most of which will be someone else's cup of tea, you know, Momus's "famous to fifteen people" and all that.

But, c'mon, he's a pianist interested in playing new music. I applaud him for posting something that doesn't coddle us, that holds us to a high standard - or invites us to reject it out of hand, and, with it, his standing offer to examine new scores.

So there's my quick counter-rant.

~Mark

The article is: Denk. A Subtle Analysis of Composer-Performer Resentment.
Available online at http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=5426