GLR September-October 2023

dozen greatest sonatas written by a modern American and is likely to outlast anything John Adams or Philip Glass produced for the piano. Of course, Antony and Cleopatra was a disappointment, perhaps because he made the mistake of trying to incorporate avant garde procedures and techniques incompati ble with his sensibility and gift for melody. It ’ s true Barber was ignored by the American avant-garde, but it ’ s also true that the avant garde of that period has been ignored by American audiences of serious music. Whose string quartet will bear comparison to Barber ’ s? His works will continue to find an audience because pianists, violinists, singers, and conductors want to perform them. Walter Mosley, San Francisco To the Editor: For decades I ’ ve admired the editorial brilliance of TheG&LR , particularly its in sightful and clever choice of writers for par ticular assignments. So it was disappointing to read Richard M. Berrong ’ s review of the new biography of Samuel Barber by Howard Pollack. Berrong ’ s superficial, simplistic im pressions unfairly demean the achievements of a sensitive and gifted composer. Berrong ’ s deprecation of Barber ’ s opera Antony and Cleopatra is basedon amateurish, inaccurate generalities about “ dissonance and unusual harmonies ” and “ an endless string of fragments suggesting no clear direction. ” His comment that “ it would take composers like John Adams and Philip Glass to show how avant-garde opera could be both musically innovative and emotionally appealing ” suggests that Mr. Berrong has never heard an opera by Britten or Janá č ek or Shostakovich. Worst of all, he entirely misapprehends the qualities that characterize a great com poser, chastising Barber because he “ never really created a distinctive line of his own. ” In fact, the greatest composers didn ’ t create new styles; they infused existing styles with their own genius. Bach didn ’ t create the Baroque; he culminated that style. Mozart was the capstone of the Classical period, not its progenitor. On the other hand, the influ ence of Arnold Schoenberg — a brilliantly original musician who did create a new mu sical language — was short-lived. Readers are advised to listen to some of Barber ’ s music and judge for themselves. Bob Goldfarb, New York City Richard Berrong Replies: The second of these two letters does as good a job as I could of dealing with one of the objections to my review in the first: Mosley too finds Antony and Cleopatra a lesser work, and for reasons similar to mine. (Antony, not Anthony; we all make spelling

mistakes.) It is the only one of Barber ’ s works of which I spoke negatively, pace Goldfarb, and I don ’ t think I “ demeaned ” it. As far as “ chastising ” Barber for not creat ing a distinctive style, those were not my words but Pollack ’ s, as I indicated with quotation marks. We all miss things, no matter how carefully we reread our work. Mosley makes an important point regard ingBarber ’ s chamber music that I should have addressed. I checked the 2021-22 reper tory of a dozen major American orchestras to see how often Barber ’ s symphonic works are being performed today. No orchestra did more than one, some none at all. I did not have any way of determining how often his small-scale works show up in chamber music performances, however. There I sus pect Mosley is right: Barber ’ s songs, espe cially, are probably still regularly done. Richard Berrong, Cuyahoga Falls, OH Can a Loaded Word Be Disarmed? To the Editor: As an eighty-year-old lesbian, I was shocked to see in the May-June ‘ 23 issue the headline “ Blackbeard ’ sBitch. ” Itwas the title of a review of the HBO series Our Flag Means Death . Theword “ bitch ” is commonly used to denigrate women. Its use in TheG&LR was an unwelcome re minder of the disgust some gay men feel toward women. It wasn ’ t even an appropri ate use of the word, as the HBO series shows Stede Bonnet, the putative bitch to Blackbeard, loved and nurtured him. For this he is called a bitch? Quite the disappointment that a publica tion for the homosexual community, of which I am a member, uses the same gross vocabulary to describe women, femaleness, loving natures used by rednecks. Betsy Tabac, Tallahassee, FL Editor ’ sReply: The headline was written by me, and surely I did not wish to offend. But it seems to me the word “ bitch ” has moved beyond its exclusive association with women to refer, often humorously, to anyone who is defeated or humiliated in a social context. Thus Trump was sometimes mocked as “ Putin ’ s bitch. ” A cartoon in The New Yorker several years ago shows an overstuffed American breakfast (pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, etc.) next to a measly French croissant and demi-tasse, with the caption: “ Welcome to America, bitch. ” I think this usage describes to a tee the relationship between Blackbeard and Stede in Our Flag Means Death . Vaughan Williams Not ‘ OneofUs ’ To the Editor: Now wait just a minute. I ’ ve lived and worked in classical music for decades, and I

have never heard even the slightest sugges tion that Ralph Vaughan Williams was gay as stated in your introduction to the “ Pride Issue ” in May-June 2023. The composer is being confused with Griffith Vaughan Williams (1940 – 2010), who was an outspo ken British champion of gay and lesbian rights and, so far as I know, no relation to Ralph Vaughan Williams. Robert Wennersten, Saint Joseph, MO Editor ’ sReply: Thanks for setting me straight (as it were) on this point. I was going by memory from a series of three pieces that the late Ned Rorem contributed back in 2000. I ’ ve now had a chance to check the record, and it turns out there were a couple of versions of the “ top ten composers ” list. In the “ gay five ” list that I recalled, please replace Vaughan Williams with Leonard Bernstein. In another piece, he offered a longer list that seems even more gay-heavy than the afore mentioned: “ Of all the arts in which gay men have played a prominent role in this century, music is the one that they seem to have dominated. How many are left once we eliminate the following names? Bernstein, Britten, John Cage, Copland, Peter Maxwell Davies, Heinz Werner Henze, Daniel Pinkham, Poulenc, Rorem, Thompson, Tip pett; and, more recently, David Del Tredici, Tyson Street, and John Corigliano. ” Correc ti ons A number of readers pointed out a rather egregious error in Richard Berrong ’ s review of Samuel Barber (July-Aug. 2023): the misspelling of American composer Aaron Copland ’ s surname. As familiar as the edi tor and five proofreaders are with Copland, we all somehow missed that errant “ e. ” In the same review, it ’ s stated that Samuel Barber and his partner lived in Capricorn, an estate located “ outside Philadelphia. ” Capricorn was actually located in Kisco, NewYork. In the May-June 2023 issue, the caption for a portrait of Henry James gives the wrong date for the painting. The correct year is 1913 (not 1922; James died in 1916). In the May-June 2023 issue, a photo accom panying an Art Memo on poet George Cecil Ives is not of Ives but instead of an Aus tralian rugby player named George Treweek. A review on the art of J. C. Leyendecker in the May-June 2023 issue states that Charles Beach, who became Leyendecker ’ s lifelong partner, was hired by the artist in 1900. In fact, Beach was hired by the artist ’ s brother Frank in 1903.

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