My Impromptus today is titled “Woke hell, &c.” It’s about diversity training, language police — all that (or some of that). I also have a few notes about sports and music, to help the medicine go down. On the subject of music: The latest episode of my Music for a While is titled “Beyond the sabre.” It offers a program of Khachaturian — including, yes, his No. 1 hit, the “Sabre Dance,” from Gayane (a ballet).
All right, some reader mail. Almost all of my reader mail these days comes via e-mail. But when I started out — almost 30 years ago — I got plenty of mail through the U.S. Post. When did this tail off? Starting in about 2005, I’d say. I got letters — proper letters — from two groups of people, basically: senior citizens, who probably went without an e-mail account, and prisoners. I enjoy getting this mail — certainly from the first group.
In recent months, I have received letters from Mary D. Churchill, of Marietta, Pa. (Marietta, Ga., I knew about. But Marietta, Pa., is new to me. It’s in Lancaster County.) MDC writes with great — strength. And conviction. And lamentation. All in a bold, graceful hand. I will give you a sample:
. . . This society today has no interest in great music. Nor will it resurrect.
When I was a girl, one could turn the dial of one’s radio and hear Mozart, Bach, and other masters on two or three stations. Not so today. It does not fit into a degenerate world. . . .
Perhaps 40 or so years ago, I attended a Philadelphia Orchestra concert and heard Muti conduct the Piano Concerto No. 5 of Beethoven with a young Polish pianist who played the concerto à la Chopin. It was simply horrible!
Earlier, Stokowski was doing some pretty awful things too. Szell maintained a high standard, but lesser conductors, not so. . . .
Think we’re entering the new “Dark Ages”? It seems so.
Okay, there’s more where that came from. Another letter:
There is little one can do to promote great music. In this country, its heyday climaxed in the 1930s. Most Americans are simply not interested in any “music” except the “pop” product one hears in all venues today. . . .
Too many generations have grown up with meager cultural influence of any kind. Books, too, are rare in many homes. “One can pull them up at any time on one’s computer” is the excuse given for that deficiency. We have become a people who are satisfied with the “bread and circuses” of life.
A few of the major orchestras will survive for a time, but too many of the young people who fill our music schools will not find the careers they hope for. That is very, very sad.
But in each culture, the arts, literature, religion, and trades wax and wane. I am simply very grateful that the fine accumulation of music, art, and literature has occurred when man may still enjoy it, if he will.
I thank you for your zeal.
And I thank you for yours, most assuredly, Mary D. Churchill.