American composers that I admire - Let's see?
Duke Ellington, T. Monk, K. Dorham, H. Mobley, C. Mingus, O. Coleman, J. Coltrane, G. Schuller, R. C. Seeger, D. Martino, M. Babbitt, E. Carter, O. Lake, J. Hemphill, D. Murray, B. Morris, S. Rivers, A. Braxton, J. B. Gillespie, C. Parker, T. Dameron, J. Giuffre, G. Russell, A. Davis, M. Waldron, M. Richard Abrams, J. J. Johnson . . . .
For the most part I prefer chamber music - 33 pieces or less -: string quartets, jazztets; intimate music that's economical to produce and the parts of which are distinct and not doubled. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven fit in here. My worthy exceptions to 33 pieces/less are Wagner, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. I never liked Bruckner; I still try, but nothing for me there.
One of the major problems that Americans represent is Academy-itis (as my grandmother would have put it: music making, music composing, music theory as research projects. (This may have been one of the things bothering Stanley Cavell.) Unmusical university administrators wouldn't have understood new-music performances; but would have believed of themselves that they understood the written word in journal articles about new music. For American academic music it's publish, publish and perish.
Except for the overlooked, disdained, and disparaged creative music greats there doesn't appear to be a lot for America to shout out to the rest of the world about - Ives, Carter, Schuller, any others?
Must bounce again. More later.
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