Times Have Changed!

This past Wednesday I wrote about my mixed feelings about the composer Roy Harris after having read what Virgil Thomson had to say about Harris’ third symphony in his book of essays American Music Since 1910, which appeared in 1971. That was one of the chapters included in the second Library of America collection of his writings, edited by Tim Page. I have now finished this section, which concludes with an essay entitled “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” (without crediting either James Agee or Agee’s source, the Apocrypha book “Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach”).

What struck me is how Thomson’s perspective from over a quarter-century ago now seems questionable in ways that would not have occurred to him. Consider this sentence:

But for lieder in English I know of no model, excepting the patter songs of Gilbert and Sullivan, which are perfect.

These days, Gilbert’s words no longer seem as perfect as they used to be. One only has to cite the use of the N-word in Ko-Ko’s Patter song in The Mikado. Indeed, Lamplighters Music Theatre was so aware of the “political correctness” issue of proper British ladies and gentlemen pretending to be Japanese that the directors transplanted the entire narrative to Renaissance Milan for a production entitled The New Mikado: Una Commedia Musicale!

Mind you, the fact that Thomson had to turn to light opera, rather than art song, to account for “lieder in English” probably raised eyebrows even when his book first appeared. However, if that is the context that he wished to establish, then I suspect a good case can be made that Stephen Sondheim has displaced both W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan with his skills in crafting both music and lyrics. Indeed, the Wikipedia page for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has a section entitled “Opera house productions,” one of which was performed by our own San Francisco Opera during the fall of 2015.

Nevertheless, none of this has anything to do with the art song repertoire. The fact is that there is a glaring paucity of contemporary composers in the programs being presented by San Francisco Performances in its Art of Song series. Indeed, my most memorable encounters with that repertoire have taken place at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with recitalists performing songs by Mark Adamo and Jake Heggie; and even those events have arisen seldomly.

It is also worth noting that the “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” essay was probably written quite some time after the “Looking Backward” essay that cited Harris’ “eloquent Third Symphony.” In the later essay, Thomson writes:

Roy Harris’s works, I am sorry to say, do not travel so widely or so well.

Those that have read my earlier account will recognize my sympathy with that sentence. Thomson’s enthusiasm is directed at other composers, and my strongest agreement probably comes from his acknowledgement of the work of Lou Harrison. However, when it comes to living composers, I am not sure where my own preferences reside. I suppose John Adams continues to hold the top spot on my own list of preferences; and, among those “on the rise,” i have had several memorable encounters with performances of the music of Amadeus Julian Regucera.

There is one line that Maurice Chevalier sang in the film Gigi:

Forevermore is shorter than before.

I have not the foggiest idea whether any of the music I listen to these days will enjoy even an approximation of permanence. Indeed, the risk of going hopelessly out of fashion probably applies as much to Johann Sebastian Bach as it does Adams. That just happens to be one of the side-effects in the world the Internet has made.