Bill and Gert hint at a thread I’ve always wanted to do on this blog, which is a series on great bullshit moments in music text book history. Sadly, I lost all my old textbooks in the fire last year, but I have some fond memories of moments in Grout and Salzmann that were so factually challenged they could have come from the Bush administration press office…..

Alas- maybe someday I’ll have the research materials, but meanwhile, I’d love to hear some more great clunkers from “authoritative” sources….

K

“Sibelius had a definite contribution to make in the first quarter of our century, when the public was finding its way to the new music. There was sufficient novely in his work to attract those listeners who liked to think of themselves as advanced. At the same time there was enough of the old to reassure those who were not yet ready for the truly modern in art.”
…
“We today see the Finnish master more realistically. His music came out of the last period in European culture that was capable of romantic idealism. It stands in the nineteenth-century tradition. By the same token, it has little relevance to the problems of contemporary musical thought. Withal it bears the imprint of a dedicated musician who in the course of a long, fruitful career won an honorable place for himself in the annals of his art.”

BTW, I was unaware that you were opening the program with Rienzi. Way to just invade my personal dream conducting-scape and raid it for 3 of my favorite pieces to perform on one concert, rubbed right in my face from 4,000 miles away. Good luck…record it!