Dogma breath

A reader sent me a link to the Pierre Boulez Project, in which Josh Ronsen takes at face value Boulez's old proclamation that "all the art of the past must be destroyed." I'm not sure if journalistic ethics permit me to take part in the project, but I have a duplicate copy of Boulez conducting Birtwistle that I would happily donate to the bonfire.

Another reader pointed the way to David Rakowski's site, which gives a hilarious and harrowing picture of the pedantic gobbledygook that still infuses composition classes at some American universities. Imagine the expletives Mozart might have spat out if you'd told him to "keep all registers active." Rakowski also has a Lexicon with definitions for "Lenny's Revenge" ("Contemporary concert music that sounds like warmed-over Bernstein, especially ze mambo from ze Vest Side Story") and "Dogma Breath" ("A person with an overdeveloped sense of Manifesto Destiny"). Wise and funny stuff.