Word: aestheticism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Photography is a fad right now, and so the show's catalogues will probably sell well, despite their $25 price tag. But if photography is to become more than a fad and be recognized for the serious aesthetic potential which it does have, its new proponents will have to develop...
Bernstein claims to have something new to offer in his view of musical history, a new tool for aesthetic theory: linguistics. He suggests that scientific analysis should replace the "purple prose" of most musical discussion with a whole new discipline, "musicolinguistics," and that is where his troubles begin.
Bernstein wants to suggest that these same processes are at work in music, "transforming" basic musical material into its complex "surface" form. This is an appealing thought. Reiteration and variation of thematic material is certainly a fundamental principle of Western music, and poetry as well. If Bernstein could demonstrate an...
BERNSTEIN'S CASE for Stravinsky is eloquent and convincing. He quotes Theodor Adorno, a dogmatic advocate of Schoenberg who accused Stravinsky of hiding behind an insincere mask of eclecticism. Bernstein defends the neoclassical mask as a reaction to the extreme subjectivity of overblown Romanticism and draws interesting parallels to the...
Aesthetic theory has found no way to distinguish between the mediocre and the great, no way to tell us what is art. That, finally, is the unanswered question. Bernstein speaks well on Stravinsky's behalf, but the proof is in his conducting. And no amount of pseudoscientific analysis will prove...