While many countries can claim more or less logical progressions of collectively cogent cultural traditions, the catalogue of truly excellent American New Music and its corresponding composers is for me a lineage of mavericks - determined, visionary individuals who have each to some extent made up their own musical traditions.
The ability to believe in and to follow out ones craziest imagining, ones most beautiful idea no matter how strange - even in the face of utter solitude and misunderstanding - this is the revolution in the blood and the core of our inherited legacy.
No matter where it happens, the art music scene will in one way or another continue to be mired in a milieu of marketing and very clever yet ultimately vapid and content-free filler, an onslaught of distractions and replications with only a handful of real treasures or worthwhile questions scattered among them. However, while it should be expected that garbage and mediocrity will continue to be the preponderance of what this scene exhales, I hope our best individuals never lose the ability and the courage to think and act beyond the common belief.
Ives, Cage, Bernstein, Partch, Nancarrow, Crumb, Zorn, Reich, Davidovsky - this is the American tradition.
