Glass houses and stones
Elsewhere Kyle Gann is upset by comments being posted to his blog. Could this be the same Kyle Gann who recently posted this comment to another music blog?
'I’m so tired of the Brits shoving their immature wunderkind composers down our throats, and whining about being left out of music history in general, that I wouldn’t give a flying f**k about any criticism coming from that country. As for the Germans, after reading the book I wrote Alex a message complimenting the accuracy of his pessimistic assessment of that country’s current activity.'
Sometimes so wrong, sometimes so right.
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Comments
Kyle Gann's blog is purest pseudo-intellectual camp, and he doesn't even realize it--which, of course, is why his blog makes for such an entertaining diversion (in small doses). The tension between what he clearly believes to be DEEP THOUGHTS and the dishwater mundaneness of what he actually offers is what makes his blog readable.
How apt that he teaches at a pseudo-intellectual institution, Bard College!
The Kyle Gann post I remember most vividly from his blog is a ridiculously inane essay about Soren Kierkegaard, an essay fully worthy of a freshman's first paper in college. It was so overwrought, and so full of rot, that at first I thought it was a giant put-on. Alas, it was not. The essay would have been handed back to a college freshman to re-write from scratch, even at lowly Bard.
I showed it to other attorneys in my office, and people were falling over themselves in the hallways, in utter disbelief that a man in his fifties would write such appalling drivel.
In his defense, I recall Kyle Gann making one intelligent point on his blog: he remarked that many young American composers are primarily orchestrators, and not genuine composers.
He was right about that.