Has anyone else noticed that OLD MUSIC has become
by far the dominant formative force in Classical Music
performance practice? More energy, more talent, and
more money goes there than anywhere else…In a way,
even though I love and listen to the fruits of this great
collective labor every day, it IS like a kind of once-off
strip mining of the past. Why? Because it creates
nothing new, no new repertoire.
From the broadest possible perspective, I really don’t
care what you record. Your new Bach, or your new Handel,
or even new Berio or Xenakis recording. Why should I?
History will only remember the new works you have
helped give birth to, brought into being from the soil
under your feet. This is necessarily so, because listening
itself, if it is truly creative, is never 2nd-hand. The works
of the past, it seems to me, can only be discovered afresh
by ears made vigorous and young by the challenge—and
the wonder—of the New and Unknown. “In wildness is the
preservation of the world,” also in the Arts.