Triumph of the Will (and Ariel)

For many years Winthrop Sargeant, music critic of the New Yorker, has been singing the Lord’s song in a strange land. In numerous columns this stubborn romanticist has preached the idea that too much contemporary music turns out to have no popular audience. In fact, it is composed from the beginning as if a popular audience were to be avoided as a mark of shame. Unfortunately, the audience that today’s composer seems to want is an audience of other professional musicians. The public is ignored and would just as soon be ignored, since it finds in new music a succession of revolutionary but still aridly technical exercises, altogether lacking in depth, inspiration, and emotion.

Sometimes I think that what the historical profession needs is a Winthrop Sargeant. It needs to be warned that, just like contemporary music and for similar reasons, contemporary history is too frequently being divorced from the public. In their sometimes inane quest for originality scholars tend to become more and more submerged in a well-documented triviality, or else they become peddlers of ideas that are merely weird or outrageous. Small wonder America yawns.

BS

About the Author

Brenton H. Smith

For many years Winthrop Sargeant, music critic of the New Yorker, has been singing the Lord’s song in a strange land. In numerous columns this stubborn romanticist has preached the idea that too much contemporary music turns out to have no popular audience. In fact, it is composed from the beginning as if a popular audience were to be avoided as a mark of shame. Unfortunately, the audience that today’s composer seems to want is an audience of other professional musicians. The public is ignored and would just as soon be ignored, since it finds in new music a succession of revolutionary but still aridly technical exercises, altogether lacking in depth, inspiration, and emotion.

Sometimes I think that what the historical profession needs is a Winthrop Sargeant. It needs to be warned that, just like contemporary music and for similar reasons, contemporary history is too frequently being divorced from the public. In their sometimes inane quest for originality scholars tend to become more and more submerged in a well-documented triviality, or else they become peddlers of ideas that are merely weird or outrageous. Small wonder America yawns.