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loveglove3 wrote:

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This is, of course, not to suggest some kind of jingoistic position that American culture is superior in all respects. For example, if you examine trends in classical music in the 20th century, the American school clearly pales in comparison to the much richer and more affecting traditions in Europe. In particular, eastern Europe has emerged as a center of a truly emotionally rich avant-garde. This is perhaps a rather serendipitous effect of the cultural isolation from the west which was enforced under Soviet rule; the decadence and academic games that have dominated American and western European music in the last fifty years (in particular, the extreme by-the-book serialism of Boulez, and the soulless minimalism of Riley, Adams, Glass, Reich and their disciples) were not given the chance to penetrate. Instead, Russian music experienced a true Beethovenian apotheosis in Shostakovitch, who stands as the most recent addition to that Pantheon in which Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner and Schoenberg reside.

Shostakovitch's music provides a rallying point from which Russian composers can derive a national tradition and the confidence to stake a claim over the soul of that tradition which originated in Italy and France and lived comfortably in Germany and central Europe ever since the early 18th century. Classical music in our age has the potential to be every bit as vibrant and truly dynamic as it was in the 19th century, as we have many exceptional composers among us and recently departed to fill the roles of the Schuberts, Mendelssohns, Schumanns, Dvoráks, Liszts and Francks who gave the romantic and post-romantic eras their spark of life.

The responsibility is on us as listeners to not let this rebirth go unnoticed!