Friday (6/29) on the Washington Post blog Classical Beat, Anne Midgette writes, “Last week on his blog, Unanswered Question, Joseph Horowitz (co-founder of The Post-Classical Ensemble, among many other claims to fame) posted an open letter to the director of the Corcoran about music in the galleries. During a recent visit, he had encountered a cellist playing Bach suites in the atrium, and he felt that this clashed with his experience of looking at the art. This point is seldom made, and for that very reason intriguing. I would guess that for many people, music in a museum seems genteel. I fear, though, that a Bach suite in the Corcoran atrium—as opposed to in the museum’s performance space—is in effect an upscale version of background music. … On the other hand, museums have been the breeding ground for a lot of the most important music of the late 20th century. Philip Glass and Steve Reich are just two of the composers who for a long time found their audiences in galleries rather than concert halls. … It partly depends on context. If musicians are playing in a gallery for a seated audience, I think the tacit assumption is that the music is being offered as an art work alongside other art works. If a musician is playing in a museum lobby, I don’t think it’s necessarily meant to be arresting in the same way.”
Posted July 2, 2012
