If we went to see West Side Story in China would it be Chinese Culture or American culture ?
As I walked by an American orchestra the other day I noticed they play virtually no new American music, mostly older European classics as we all know.
I suggest to the American orchestras to take off the American city they are named after from their mast heads and change their names to "The American Chapter of the society for the preservation of 19th century European culture".
Are most American orchestras really American cultural institutions or just a musical variation of a fine wine and cheese import shop?
Should an organization that does not promote American music be funded by public funds or grants?
If this is the artistic path they choose to take it seems to me that they should be funded by European governments and large European companies that want to expose their culture around the world.
These orchestras really add nothing to the culture of our society. Instead of nurturing and creating our own indigenous orchestral art form they just import European culture and put American composers out of work in the process.
Perhaps I am naive in thinking that a local orchestra is there to nurture American art.
Maybe we as an American society are too inept to create something of true value. Perhaps that should be left to the dead Europeans.
In reality these orchestras are just filters that choke our own culture from developing and producing a new American musical art form ?
The contemporary world of American orchestra's culture has destroyed the modern American composer by reducing him to a mere street peddler and taking the transcendent out of his art.......
David
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