The Fredösphere

So, it turns out my idea to write a science fiction story about the Three Wise Men is officially one of the Overused Science Fiction Clichés:

k. A major historical figure (Jesus, Einstein, Lincoln, Elvis) was really a space alien.

Meanwhile....

I was shocked, frankly, to read Jens Laurson's description at Ionarts of an audience's hostile reaction to music by MacMillan and Britten at a concert in Munich.  Let's be perfectly clear--we're not talking here about Munich, North Dakota:

Mad gallops toward the end of the third movement [of James MacMillan's Vigil] sent yet another wave of listeners out of the hall - and during the work's end over faint, silver touches you could hear those patrons just outside, discussing angrily what they had just been made to listen to.

It was a fine day for good new music and a courageous triumph for the Munich Philharmonic (which offered professional, if not great, playing). But it was also a monument to the lack of curiosity of much of its clientele. The Munich audience had proved by virtue of its absence that it will only pretend to be interested in modern music to a certain extent… and that programming a “modern, little known composer” like Britten (that’s sadly his status among many attendees) with a contemporary piece and some obscure renaissance prelude is far too much for them to respond to. As rich as the cultural environment is in Munich, and as much as it prides itself in its diversity, it cannot deny a certain provincial attitude that is often coupled with a plain ignorant and dismissive attitude of all (cultural) things Anglo-Saxon and, indeed, foreign. Give the subscription holders of the Munich Philharmonic their Strauss (either), Mozart, Brahms and they shall be happy. Give them Britten and they won't come - or come and leave mid-concert. A pity.

I'm always interested in these cases of overturned expectations regarding relative cultural sophistication.  I prefer the term "reverse provincialism" (alluded to in my previous post) in cases where a pseudo-sophisticate assumes the worst of supposed rubes, and only exposes his own ignorance in the process.  This is another, different, example of the same trend.  Frankly, I can't imagine such a thing happening in Ann Arbor or Detroit.  Britten?  Unknown???  And what about MacMillan--I thought he was Mr. Accessible Modernism.  I've heard of the locals here in S.E. Michigan walking out on an unusually screechy Kronos Quartet concert, but Britten and MacMillan?  Madness.

Oh, well, what does it matter?  We're all going to die.

Labels: Culture, sci-fi