The follow I excerpted from Today's NEW YORK TIMES Magazine:
Quote:
GRINBERG : One of the things that intrigues me is that art is devised by individual human beings. National policies or regional policies are products of organizations governments, communities for good or ill. And great artists themselves can be, as we say in psychoanalysis, compartmentalized: capable of the most magnificent instincts and thoughts and products, and at the same time capable of the most sordid conduct. So its a constant puzzle. And I draw from this no greater or more profound observation than that were all capable of it. What prevents us from doing the worst? Or what prevents us from doing our best? Or what doesnt spur us on to do our best? Circumstance? National pride? Countless things. We all have to watch ourselves.
OESTREICH : Is there any lasting effect on the music itself?
DRUCKER :I think that classical music may have lost some of its status, position, in society for various reasons. And the main one, in my mind, is that popular culture has diverged, has gone much farther away from classical music, as far as I can tell, than it was 60 or 80 years ago. Whether that has anything to do with the Second World War, Im not sure. I do know, from watching American movies from the 1940s and 50s, that classical music was much more part of the general culture then than it is now. I can think of specific examples where people just let casual remarks drop, even if the movies not really about music, when you realize: Oh, these people knew about Jascha Heifetz. They knew about Brahmss Second Symphony.
Usually nowadays when theres a reference to classical music, I find it very stereotyped. Its meant to almost caricature the way classical musicians might seem. And I dont know if that has anything to do with what happened in the Second World War. I would tend to doubt it.
OESTREICH :Are there any other thoughts on any of these issues?
