The local classical radio station which I listen to pretty much all day every day is, as you would expect, a dyed-in-the-wool, Mark-1 Mod-0 Left/“liberal” outlet, as steeped in the brain-devouring catechism of Wokester/PC as it’s possible to be. So naturally, they have this godawful program they run several times a day called Noteworthy (or, as I refer to it with a snarl, Notworthy©, for the sake of accuracy and truth in advertising), dedicated to seeing to it that “marginalized” Black Lesbian non-binary Lesbian Neegrow Composers Of Color (also ©) get the greater exposure the PC knotheads running the station feel they “deserve.”
Problem being, they don’t, they really don’t. From the Notworthy webpage:
NoteWorthy is a series of audio stories created to broaden our view of classical music by shining a light on the lives and music of artists of color, women, and others from historically underrepresented groups. Each episode provides an introduction to an artist, performing ensemble, musicians, or composer from all eras and genres of classical music. In a couple of minutes, you can learn about the contributions these artists have made and are making to the art form while discovering some great music along the way.
“Underrepresented,” is it? So now we’re required to adjust our musical tastes according not to talent or creativity but to make up the numbers based strictly on a composer’s skin color, ethnicity, gender (if any), and/or preferred sex-kink? Good to know, I guess. Pleasing to the ear, inspiring, imaginative, truly innovative? None for me, thanks, I’m a “liberal.”
With the barest handful of exceptions—practically all of them alive and working no later than about 1945-50—Noteworthy’s lousy, talent-bereft stable of contemporary (mostly) hacks aren’t fit to carry Ludwig Van’s jockstrap. Exhibit A: Etharnopian “composer” Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou’s rousing piece for solo piano entitled “In Memory Of Catherine Brady.”
It carries on like that for a long, miserable while, but the first minute and a half to two minutes of it will give you the general flavor. I can’t in good faith recommend you bother with any more of it than that lest you wind up hurling something hard and heavy through your monitor screen in a fit of philistine pique at the kind of twaddle some PC über alles pinheads are willing to laud as “genius” nowadays.
Now, having played a heck of a lot of classical and ragtime piano myself since I was seven (7) years of age up until the curse of DuPuytren’s Contracture ruined all that for me several years ago, I feel myself eminently qualified to point out that what this hot mess sounds like to my trained and experienced ear is the sort of thing a concert pianist might run backstage to limber up the hands, wrists, and fingers as a pre-show warmup. Compare, contrast the above “marginalized” Noteworthy composer’s random, tuneless noodling around brilliant work with, oh, f’rinstinct, the moving, hauntingly beautiful Larghetto movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 26 in Dmaj.
Comparison? Ain’t none, sorry. Mozart’s music has stood the test of time, still beloved and enjoyed 233 years after he prematurely departed this mortal coil in 1791 at the too-tender age of thirty-five. Likewise Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Haydn, and so many truly noteworthy (a-HENH!) others. The music of the masters from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods will live forever. With good and valid reason, too.
Contemporary trash-haulers such as Msxz Guebrou and her fellow dumpster-diving luminaries being pimped all to hell and gone by the Progressivist lackwits behind the Notworthy© program, on the other hand? If their “art” is remembered more than three (3) minutes after the latest NW episode has concluded, the stench dissipated, the resultant pounding headache set in, that’ll be about two and a half minutes longer than it merits.
The underlying conceit here is that these self-indulgent muttonheads are being unjustly denied their due and proper because Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, all the standard hobgoblins of the small “liberal” mind—prolly Republicans, Whypeepuh, ((((Dem JoojoojooJOOOOOZ!!!))), Election Deniers, Fox News, and of course Trump, too. T’ain’t so, McGee. With vanishingly few exceptions, the reason WDAV’s precious Notworthy© noodlers, doodlers, and purveyors of musical meat-beatery are “marginalized” and “underrepresented” is plain as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face: because they deserve to be. Because they, y’know, suck dead green donkey dicks. Full stop, end of fucking story.
As composers of classical/orchestral/symphonic music they do, at any rate. They might be really nice people, excellent mechanics, great cooks, I couldn’t say. But composers? Yeah, no.
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That first “piece” reminds me of this: Lexikon-Sonate (1994) – infinite realtime composition for computer-controlled piano, by Karlheinz Essl … at https://soundcloud.com/karlheinz-essl/lexikon-sonate — it’s an app, which can go on forever – “Recording of the world premier on Feb 2nd, 1994 at the Austrian Radio in Vienna during an interactive concert that was broadcasted live. Listeners on the radio could influence the compositional behaviour of the computer program by dialing a certain telephone number. Lexikon-Sonate is an interactive realtime composition environment for musical composition and live performances. It takes advantage of composition algorithms that has been developed by Karlheinz Essl since 1985. With this algorithmic music generator on can easily create fascinating and complex musical structures on the fly. Furthermore, Lexikon-Sonate is an infinite music installation that can run on a computer for years without repeating itself. Finally, Lexikon-Sonate can be used as an instrument for live performance of electronic music.” https://www.essl.at/works/Lexikon-Sonate.html
I lasted for 1m7s of the performance, no way am I going to put up with the entire 1 hour plus…
That sounded like a mouse running back and forth over the keyboard. With a car sitting on the chair taking paw stabs at it.
Scott Joplin?
Stevie Wonder?
Quincy Jones?
Even Barry White and Isaac Hayes?
Hell yes. No problem. Inducted to the pantheon of great composers on the first ballot.
Most of the stuff the commies at NPR have extracted from the gaps alongside sewer grates with a scraper?
Nofuckingwayever.
Notice how no one writes classical like that in decades, maybe even centuries. I like Vagner, yes I know, and Pachelbel as well.