Okay, it was suggested that I start another thread on this aspect of the article by Macauley on Balanchine and NYCB. I've said my piece, but if anyone else has any ideas, put them here instead of bart's thread which is to focus on NYCB's performance of Balanchine as seen by Macaulay now.

I'll just reprint my whole post from over there, and there I'll delete the part that is focussed on here. Has to do with the question of proclaiming Top Geniuses. I'm sure plenty of people have strong ideas on this, so say something if you do--this has come up before and some people seem to think genius can only be one. I disagree totally. Anyway, as before:

I admit that when I first read the article I loved thinking of Balanchine as part of a Holy Trinity, largely because I value his work just as highly as Shakepeare's and Mozart's. However, as you say, the idea that a single creator can "dominate his art" is simply incorrect. I wonder, though, how literally Macaulay makes us to take this.

Your post made me think of those public buildings raised by worthy institutions in the 19th century, each with its list of Great Men (rarely women, unless its a nursing school) engraved along the entablature. The names are often accompanied bas reliefs or busts). Which names go on the wall, and which do not, is culturally determined and will vary from place to place, time to time. It also depends on the prejudices of the people paying for the building.

I imagine that Macaulay's pieces are strictly limited as to word count. So reducing the names to three has the virtue of making the copy fit its allotted space, if nothing else.

I hear what you are saying Patrick, but I don't take it as seriously as you do.

I sort of liked Macaulay's comparisons of Balanchine to other "greats" such as Mozart -- and particuarly how the preception of greatness evolves over time. OTOH, if I thought that Macaulay was really proclaiming who the "greatest of the greats" are in the arts, I too would have a problem with his statements. However, I don't read him that way. I see his comments as interesting examples of possible ways of looking at historical figures in order to put flesh on his overall points. I see nothing wrong with such specualtion, and I have a very hard time believing that Macaulay himself actually thinks that somehow he is picking the absolute #1 great of all the greats in any given field. He's giving us analogy that's all......and like most analogy you can't take it to extremes.

Sandy--he may not think it, but he does write it, at least in the case of Shakespeare--because it is not something established that Shakespeare became the world's greatest playwright. I think he frankly does it a bit more with Shakespeare and Mozart than even with Balanchine. While I think it is appropriate to see Balanchine as equal to Shakespeare and Mozart, it would be interesting to know what someone thinks in terms of how one genius is like another, which is where you would find the 'Trinities' that bart refers to. But there would be other 'trinities' for other geniuses, I think. Thanks for the remarks.

I don't know of any other playwright who has been translated into as many languages and is part of standard curriculum, advanced scholarship, and performance as Shakespeare, nor has been adopted informally as a national playwright by other countries, such as Russia and Germany. If not the world's greatest playwright, Shakespeare has proven to be the most important playwright of the last half millenium by those standards.

Love of Shakespeare is not universal. Once of my favorite fictional responses was by Gunilla Dahl-Soot in Robertson Davies' "The Lyre of Orpheus", who called him a "grocer".

He's the Nutcracker of English studies!

Oh, I adore Shakespeare and don't think of any playwright as greater. My emphasis on this as that certain forms of expression are from other periods and ways of experiencing and thinking, so it's never accessible to one 'greatest' person. Sophocles couldn't write 'a Midsummer Night's Dream' and Shakespeare could not write 'Antigone'. For another example, many French think Racine is greater than Shakespeare, and I've found him quite as impressive, even though the output is far smaller. I imagine I'm sometimes taken off-guard when Macaulay tries to do these big sweeping things, because they never seem to be nearly as convincing as when he talks about the individual works (incidentally, a Macaulay review of Martha Graham Dance Company in NYC in 2007 is also very interesting, because he is actually talking about 'Night Journey' in specific ways, just as he talks about 'Union Jack' in this one (the description of Von Aroldingen was worth the whole review), not making hierarchies based on putting Ashton, Graham, and Tudor into little categories as Jonson, Marlowe, etc., These I find tiresome mainly because they are never accurate and illuminating the way his insights into actual pieces, recent performances, and dancers are. I think I'm always a bit allergic to anything that has too much suggestion of Cult, though, and that Mozart- and Wagner-lovers can be especially extreme here--and these are two of my favourite composer, by the way.

I would add that Macaulay was probably using popular 'genius' figures that would be recognized immediately by general interest readers, as a sort of shorthand to indicate the kind of company in which Balanchine belongs and, as Sandy says, to flesh out his points.

That's the sense I get from it, that he's not ranking Shakespeare, Mozart and Balanchine but referring to how they're ranked by the general populace. He at first only writes of Shakespeare's being "accepted" as England's best playwright, and of Mozart likewise being accorded supremacy soon after his death (which was considerably before the time of most of composers who'd be mentioned in the same breath). He goes on from that first comparison to call Balanchine "a growth industry," not the greatest choreographer of all time.

Of course he does later write of "Balanchine’s supremacy" and that of Shakespeare and Mozart, but then a short while later he laments that Balanchine's contemporaries are being eclipsed in the same way Jonson, Marlowe and Masinger were. All in all, he could have been clearer.

Granted.

Maybe this needs to be a third thread discussing Macaulay's article from Sunday but I thought the paragraph in which he compares Ashton, Graham and Tudor to Jonson, Marlowe and Massinger (second to last in the article) should have been the lead paragraph.

I can only speak for myself but I would rather have read Macaulay's thoughts on how to preserve Ashton, Graham and Tudor (and others) in the face of the global Balanchine onslaught than read yet another article about the extent to which performances of the Balanchine repertory have/have not declined under Peter Martins' leadership. (And, for the record, a more apt comparison would have been between Ashton, Graham and Tudor on the one hand and Baal, Isis and Odin on the other. After all, we still have the texts of Shakespeare's contemporaries. But dances are perishable goods. Once lost, they're as impossible to revive as the cult of Isis.)

miliosr, you made me laugh. The cult of Baal may be lost for ever, but I'm pretty sure the Ancient Egyptians left enough written material to be able to revive the cult of Isis (and thanks to the Rosetta Stone, we can even read it).

You know, it's not nice to make me laugh like that, and splutter all over the monitor!

I thought that Macaulay made some very important points in this essay, particularly about the changes that occur over time, after an artist has stopped producing new work. Bach's importance as a composer waned and then waxed after his death, as far as the general musical population is concerned -- I don't know that time is always the most accurate editor of history, but it's certainly the most inexorable one.

Thse posts have sparked a lot of interesting thoughts. I think, on the whole, that kfw's makes the most sense as to Macaulay's use of these three exemplars.

What's important to me is to see Balanchine -- someone not hugely understood outside ballet circles -- placed on a pinnacle along with much more generally familiar Great Names. I thank Macaulay for that -- and for explaining rather persuasively why Balanchine should be in such select company.

I also hope that more thoughtful and intelligent writers will start to think in terms like these. It's about time that "ballet" rejoined the company of the higher arts, where it was -- briefly and perhaps only locally -- when Balanchine was creating in New York City in the 40s-70s.

GWTW -- Reviving the Cult of Isis is analogous to reviving Antony Tudor's Romeo & Juliet, isn't it? We can figure out (with some certitude) what the principals (Isis/Osiris, Romeo/Juliet) should be doing but what about all those pesky corp members/other Egyptian dieties?? And, the cost of recreating all those ancient Egyptian temples/head pieces would appear to be as beyond us as recreating those marvelous sets/costumes from Romeo & Juliet!

Alas, I'm beginning to feel a bit like Julian the Apostate. Except where his dying saying was "Vicisti, Galilaee," mine will be "Vicisti, Balanchinean"!!!

Well, it has sparked some interesting thoughts, but I still disagree with much of it. The only rationale is that it is only a newspaper article, half-polished, not an essay of the sort a real writer would publish (as opposed to someone who writes excellent dance criticism, which he does), because even though I think kfw and dirac are probably right to some degree (but not nearly all) that Macaulay is referring to rankings by the general populace, that is not a subtext one should be expected to realize. You should not have to read beyond a literal statement of what Macaulay proclaims Shakespeare to be, unless you have the right to disagree with it (and he is neither clear about this, nor is he correct, for the reasons I've given.) It should be clear on its surface, otherwise it is really not written for 'general interest readers', but rather for those intellectual and probing enough to be looking for subtexts in newspaper articles (which is not where they should be; journalism is not literature.) Macaulay does not need to convince me that Balanchine should be in such select company, as I already see him there--and 'Mozart' is only the buzzword of the 'general populace' because of the boon created by the movie 'Amadeus', notable for having nothing to do with Mozart and/or Salieri, cf., Peter Gay's Mozart bio. It would only be interesting to me if he explained why he chose those particular Titans with whom to 'place Balanchine'--what the kinship is (in any case, he, like all of us here, makes only a ripple by making such judgments, there's then the March of Time). The 'other trinities' I was talking about could be as when people make a trinity of greatest 20th century artistic revolutionaries--although I'm not going to be limiited to trinities, if there are 4, I think we can accommodate it: Here we often hear Picasso, Graham, Stravinsky and Joyce as having come up with the most original new languages and artistic expressions. There is not one of these great artists and many others who does not have a cult, and cults are irrational, you do not argue with them. And those who make a point of claiming not to be cults nearly always are the most exclusive and elite cults. This is just a fact of life, like religions you don't share.

As for ballet 'rejoining the company of the higher arts', I am surprised to hear you say that, as it has never left them. Balanchine's work did not 'briefly and locally' place it back 'up there.' His work is important and it is among the greatest of all artistic work, but the Kirov and POB were operating well before 'Balanchine in New York' as 'high art' (as was Balanchine himself before New York, by the way. There was also major work at ABT). Dance at its greatest is obviously one of the High Arts, and has been for the entire 20th century, not to mention the 19th, where we get the Petipa. There's been a dance department at Juilliard longer than there has a drama dept. You wouldn't have had Stravinsky writing for Balanchine and Barber, Menotti, Schuman and Copland writing for Graham. Even great performances of the Romantic Petipa repertory are 'high art'. What I would say about the periods in which Balanchine was most prolific and profound is that that is the only period in which Balanchine himself will ever be quite that profound, whether or not the 'growth industry'. In the 'global Balanchine onslaught', in miliosr's term (I don't sympathize with that either, but I do see it as a reaction to a concept of cult), there is a popularization of his work that is exactly like the gradual popularization of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, but that will never be comparable to the exciting period of creative fruition when he was still alive and coming up with new works. Martha Graham Dance Company is somewhat different, in that the directors are not trying to do a new company for Ms. Mycene and Ms. Dakin, but to hold the works of Graham sacred as Suzanne Farrell does Balanchine's; Martins is doing this combination of Martins and Martinized Balanchine, maybe. Even so, live performances of Graham are not quite what you see on film with Martha herself, Bertram Ross, Matt Turney, et alia. In short, this is a dispersion and popularization which is just fine with me, but it has to do with different kinds of sensibilities than that of the cutting edge, which all things lose. So we do need 'growth industries' of great artists like Balanchine, but not nearly so much as we need much more cutting edge. I think there will be new cultural changes due to unmentionable events which may allow the cutting edge to get sharp and ruthless again, instead of having to work in hiding.

Other examples are of the romantic concert pianist, whose pinnacle was surely Franz Liszt in that he was treated and adored like a rock star. In the 20th century, Horowitz may have come closest, but he was anything but glamorous, so it took on another dimension with his magnificent playing. Maria Callas excited opera lovers more than anyone else does now. There are all sorts of examples, but while all these geniuses 'live on' to some degree, they do not make up for the need for new art of an equivalent genius, and thus are all to some degree museum pieces. This is incomplete, and I don't have time to polish it either, but it's too long anyway and just a forum comment post

Oh, and as regards Ba'al, I still worship him and many other pagan gods. I agree with Isaac Asimov that Jezebel got a bad rap, and had a lot of things going for her. Polytheism in general has a lot going for it, too. Idolatry can be defined in many ways--money and fame are often referred to as 'gods', etc.

In his statement,



I thought that the underlying question was what made Shakespear turn into the "great" one, as opposed to his contemporaries, with analogy of what made Balanchine become the "great" one compared to his great contemporaries, like Ashton and Tudor. While he then goes on for several pages to explain this in artistic terms, towards the end, he writes:



Part of the answer to the underlying question is institutional and luck-based. We've discussed on Ballet Talk, and it was a major theme of Martin Duberman's "The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein" that what we consider a given, the success of Balanchine and New York City Ballet, was so tentative for so long.

But then we consider the irony of the man who always said it would fall apart after his death, and "who cares?", to have had an institution that ensures that what happened to Ashton and Tudor does not happen to his works, at least in the near term, and a "family" that has extended his work across the US and the world.

That's not the underlying question for all of us, but rather for Macaulay and whomever else. I think the analogy of Shakespeare and his contemporaries with Balanchine and his contemporaries is very poor. It doesn't mean anything, unless the 'growth industry' and popularizing determines all there is to the Value of Art. And it doesn't. The analogies need to be made with other great figures from other periods, because Mozart would not necessarily win even within his own lifetime. That's revisionist history, and he certainly did know who Bach was.

Another way of putting it is that the analogy of Shakespeare with his contemporaries is certainly apt, but not at all an analogy to Balanchine and Tudor, Graham, and Ashton. And certainly the 200 years later becoming the world's greatest needs all the great playwrights since recorded plays to mean anything at all.

You do have a point in the institutional luck, and the award for that goes first and foremost to NYCB, no matter what its faults. Then the industry spreads to Suzanne Farrell Ballet, MCB, PNB, and everybody else who love to dance these great works. I'm just talking about Macaulay, not Balanchine.

I tend to agree.

Now, would this be interesting???? How about a similar movie based on Balanchine's life. It seems to me (seriously) that Balanchine's life would make a fascinating movie. It would have it all.....escape from an oppressive regime, wild life of youth, success and failure, genius, 6 marriages (or how ever you count), beautiful sexy babes everywhere, great artistic achievement, Hollywood, Broadway, his friendship with Stravinsky, the Suzzane Farrell entanglement of unrequited love. Makes Mozart's life seem humdrum in comparison!

I'm going to copy Sandy's post and start another thread on the Balanchine movie. Please post your thoughts about the cinematic possibilities HERE:

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=28327

I wouldn’t say ‘only a newspaper article.’ Denby wrote a lot of his best stuff for the papers. Macaulay is writing for an audience of general interest readers as well as dance fans, which does make a difference. It doesn’t make the writing sloppier or necessarily inferior.



Most of us posting here would certainly agree that ballet never left, but the intelligentsia’s interest in ballet peaked with Diaghilev and later with Balanchine. However, I don’t think ballet will ever return to the time when many people, even highly educated and cultured ones, did not know what it was or condescended to it.

Patrick, I see your point. I was aiming at irony and clearly missed the target.

I did not mean to suggest that ballet was not a higher art, just that it is no longer perceived as such to the extent that it was in Balanchine's day. It's not "ballet" that has changed, necessarily. But the cultural environment IS significantly altered, especially in the decline of the role of intellectuals as cultural commentators.

I concur.
Balanchine in not merely important, he is significant I say this with sincerity even though neo-classicism is my second love in ballet. He, his legacy and contemporary performance of his oeuvre
needs to be commented upon and occasionally looked at from a different angle. It is healthy to do so. I believe we all need to be challenged on our appreciation and views as our deep consideration and response, may help keep senility at bay.
I do not know what is like in New York, in London it seems that many commentators are terrified that an interest in the "high arts" and the consideration of using the descriptive "high" is politically incorrect and would avoid the expression at all costs. The problem here has been that we have a large number of critics who think they have an authoritative position, but regrettably they apply little or no intellectual rigour or knowledge in what they write to justify this self view. I believe many critics in London prefer to write about dance as they feel (like fans) that they are part of the creative performance process by witnessing new works and touched by the celebrity of the event. Regrettably they also write about ballet. I'll say this now and say it often, ballet, is not for everyone. If you do not love it, know it in depth and see it often over a period of years, you will never reach that mystery that ballet has to elevate the spirit which the "high arts" can do in a special way, but not the only way. Ballet can entertain, but it is not entertainment and there are some who want to change this. There are those that want to see “real life and experience” expressed on the ballet stage if in doing so, it will become "more inclusive". Fine, just remember ballet is an old tradition and it has it own rules and there are still more people every year that want to see ballet as an experience of a “high art” and not go to see something they could see on the television or a film. Balanchine's genius stands comparison and should be compared to ensure that his stature is confirmed and that his works are not just part of a night out.
I would say support any writer that looks in depth at the art of ballet and if they are a newspaper critic and you do not agree with what they have to say, write to the editor. Or better still do what we are doing now, post it on ballettalk.


PS
I have not always agreed with his views
but I now miss Mr Macauley's
presence in London.

I sure don't want to change it, but I do disagree with you that one has to be knowledgeable about ballet, or about any art, to experience it as art and not merely entertainment. The more one knows, the richer the experience is, of course. But I think even novices can experience that uplift. I did.

Your right, Of course your right. I was hooked as a teenager the first time I saw "Giselle".

We read Macaulay (and others) as if they're writing to us -- people with at least basic knowledge of the art and its history. He's not, at least not necessarily. I think he's hoping to reach people who take their kids to a Nutcracker and maybe one or two performances a year, without much background info. Maybe some including people in their '20s for whom ballet is a new experience. Perhaps for some of them, it's necessary to impress that yes, today Balanchine is considered the ballet equivalent of Shakespeare and Mozart.

Failing to mention other greats is no slight against them. Shakespeare and Mozart are cited as instantly recognizable icons, incontrovertible greats.

Ballet has changed, bart. It panders. ABT commissions a ballet to George Harrison songs. NYCB mounts a third-rate Romeo + Juliet. Come on, lets lay blame where it belongs.

I'm not saying that we haven't had any good works since Mozartiana, but when Chris Wheeldon, whose creative well is a mile wide and an inch deep, is feted as ballet's great choreographer of the 21st century, we're not doing so great.

I can't speak about Wheeldon, having seen only a few of his ballets on stage and not remembering much about the ones I saw. But -- a Great Critical Putdown is a Great Critical Putdown, regardless. Thanks, carbro, for the following:

We don't have to agree on this, the article is passe by now, as far as I'm concerned. By this definition, he is both trying to speak to the knowledgeable and those with no background at all--in which case you can surely write two separate articles, because those details about why NYCB is 'not doing Balanchine as well as it used to nor as well as regional companies' that the non-ballet-savvy will not recognize except for the ones in their own hometown. Nor will they know from Von Aroldingen or Whelan or Hubbe. I remember other articles he's written about the greatest dramatists of the century being Balanchine and Beckett or some such other overarching hyperbole. This is something he does, and it is not what he does well--which is deciphering the minutiae and sophisticated detail of rarefied dancers. An op-ed writer who'd taken a Freshman Survey course could do as well on the Great Geniuses, and it might be in a place where they'd read it. Or just one of the other non-dance critics who happened to be a balletomane, which I know there to be, even if they get their love for many things by reading the critics who tell them what to like. 'Failing to mention other greats' is, of course, no 'slight against them', because they don't need his approval, but it is misleading unless this is just some kind of public relations or advertising copy, which is partially how it reads (I mean that part only, if I haven't made myself clear.) It's possible that he hopes that there will be new balletgoers as a result of reading his first few paragraphs, but I doubt it. My experience is there is a tradition of going to the Nutcracker at NYCB among people who never see any other ballet ever, who go every single year, and never pick up the New York Times and read a dance critic. If these weren't written for 'us', I think he'd be more on the money to just say 'go ahead and go to NYCB, all you untutored bright people, it's still better than anything you've ever seen.'

Agree on Wheeldon and the associated ideas.

Edited to add: Here's the exact quote that Quiggin provided on another thread that I referred to above: "Watching this, as so often when watching the Balanchine repertory, I think it is reasonable to suggest that Balanchine and Beckett were the two supreme dramatists of the 20th century."

It is not at all 'reasonable to suggest' this. You can decide to suggest these 'supreme' things or not, and it is purely a subjective matter, but it has never occurred to me once while 'watching the Balanchine repertory' that this 'would be reasonable to suggest'. But this is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about in the current article.

Ooh, good one, carbro!

It’s not that he isn’t speaking to ballet fans, I’d suggest – he is -- but he’s speaking to others as well.



I'd say ballet is entertainment and it wouldn’t be doing its job as a performing art if it wasn’t. But great ballet isn’t only entertainment.

.

Well, the 21st century is barely underway. I expect that things will look different decades from now, and some of us reading this board today may not be around to see it. Genius doesn’t come with the mail, and the high expectations loaded on Wheeldon’s shoulders aren’t entirely his fault. People are looking around for ‘the next Balanchine’ and there may not be anything like him for a very long time.

And it crystalizes out of certain cultural contexts.

Balanchine was in an historically unique position to be able to draw on (and oppose to each other) two great resourses: 1) the still living works of Ivanov and Petipa which essentialized a whole history of ballet and 2) the hotbed of experimentation of the initial Soviet period, from Meyerhold and Tatlin to Vertov and Akhmatova. The Four T's and Agon come out of the latter and Symphony in C from the first.

In a way the rest of the twentieth century lived off the capital of the modernisms of the 1920's. Nothing came later that hadn't already been done already. Postwar Late Modernism is really self conscious High Modernism (this is how Frederic Jameson puts it).

It was difficult to write a sonata after Beethoven had written the form upwards, sideways and down, and as difficult to write a ballet after Balanchine. Wheeldon is a bit like Stravinsky (about whom Prokofiev said only rented his musical ideas) quoting wildly from here and there, especially in the Golden Hour that ends on a 4 T's note, having moved through Somnabula and Violin Concerto along the way.

I agree with Carbro's "mile wide and inch deep" characterization of Wheeldon. Maybe he's also trying to cleanse the palate, doing a restricted twelve toney thing. But the cultural habitat that Wheeldon is working in isn't that great either. Genius comes neither with the mail nor out of the blue.

And Macaulay's just fine.

I can see why you like him.

I'll only say that the sonata form was nowhere near exhaustion even after the Hammerklavier and opus 111, the Chopin Sonatas alone would prove that, and that's a miniscule contribution to the 19th century sonatas and the 20th as well. I don't see that it's comparable to ballet after Balanchine, because that does seem to be possibly exhausted now.

Of course great artists can say things like what Prokofiev said about Stravinsky--doesn't mean a thing, but it is more interesting than when critics offer grandiose statements, since they're not artists themselves, except perhaps amateurs. I wonder if that's why Balanchine loved Stravinsky's work--that 'rented' effect, offering no competition perhaps? I am sure not, as Stravinsky would have had to do a con job on the entire serious-music world if he were merely second-hand. The sophisticated dig by a rival would, in fact, be that he 'didn't steal' his ideas like mature artists do, in the well-known 'Immature artists borrow. Mature artists steal.' Martha Graham has a whole chapter in her Notebooks about 'I Am a Thief' which is about this and such related thoughts as 'the richest man is the most indebted.' These kinds of rivalries among different artistic schools are obviously part of the development of culture. The reason I say ballet may have been exhausted with Balanchine (although I certainly hope not), at least in comparison with sonata form, is possibly because it is delimited in its nature, which is both its grandeur and its limitation: It's not meant to express things outside itself, which is part of what Leonid says here:



While ballet is a 'high art', more importantly it is itself as a specific and singular art form. It is not meant or capable of expressing certain aspects of 'real life and experience' as does the greatest modern dance--which is why those came along; it was important to also express those things, and, of course, Graham, Taylor, Kylian, and many others have addressed this. Those things deserved to be expressed, and they also do leave ballet free not to express those things that don't have anything to do with, and which are eliminated quickly when they are found to be inappropriate. Actually, 'seeing ballet as an experience of a 'high art'' is exactly like seeing great modern dance, hearing a great orchestra, an opera, going to see great paintings, reading great books, in that they are all not 'low culture', etc., and at this point, you see less high culture in films and almost none in television that is comparable to these. I just added this because ballet's beauty includes that it is prevented from expressing certain things, and agree with Leonid that attempts to make it 'more inclusive' are not advisable, but also that that is actually what is being done with ballet as with all high arts, due to external necessity. It's not so much 'waiting for a new Balanchine' as it is also seeing that 'more Balanchine spread throughout the world' will not necessarily ever equal what Balanchine was in the great decades of New York City Ballet (it's not only impossible, it's not even desirable, unless you think a virtual replica would mean something). So this 'Balanchine growth industry' will not fill the need that the art itself has. If there are not great new creators, paradoxically the 'Balanchine growth industry' might be another way to make it 'socially and economically relevant' the way the 19th century warhorses have served bottom-line functions (though not only.) In any case, this 'Balanchine growth industry' is very limited still compared to Swan Lakes and Nutcrackers all over the place. You rarely find people who have heard of 'Concerto Barocco' and 'Davidsbundlertanze' before they've seen a 'Nutcracker' or 'Swan Lake' or 'Sleeping Beauty' (although that IS the order it went for me, and I never saw a 'Nutcracker' until 2006, after at least 5 'Liebeslieders' and many 'Apollos.')



Marxist theorists talk like this all the time, especially Jameson and Jamesonians (if that's what they're called, I do know one very well, unfortunately). I don't take any of it seriously, and there would have been no artistic development in the specified periods had anyone been thinking such things. For example, here we have the term 'self-conscious High Modernism' as if it were merely a kind of 'derivative'. PoMo itself, which this kind of thinking definitely is, is all derivative while claiming not to be (sort of.) It's patently untrue that 'nothing came later that hadn't already been done..', although if it were it would mean that this kind of critique would also be something that 'came later but had already been done.' 'Neo-classical' always refers to 'classical', which would be 'classical capital' on which something lived. Marxist theorists analyze artistic movements all the time, but in the case of most of the great figures we've all been discussing here, these Marxist theorists have a harder time than they think, since not a one of the figures (except perhaps Boulez and some French Marxists) is imbued with any of the Marxism--God knows not Balanchine and Graham, who were certainly interested in Absolute Monarchy!

Here's something from the NY Times obituary of Clive Barnes. It relates to Macaulay's statements about Balanchine's genius, and also about what Quiggin has called the "cultural context."



There've been times of exceptional creativity in all the arts (eg. Florence in the latter 15th and early 16th centuries). Those of us on Ballet Talk who are older were fortunate to have been around for the creation. Those of you who are younger have inherited the legacy.

It's a tough act to follow.

That about says it all when it comes to Mr B.

But the early twentieth century was an extremely fertile period in the visual arts that used up a great deal of the “intellectual oxygen”, especially the scenes in Paris and Russia. No one got over it. Twomley, Johns and Rauschenberg spent the 1950’s trying to come to terms with Kurt Schwitters, and in the 1980’s the New York galleries were filled with painters self consciously dealing with the Dadaist Picabia. Roche and Kahn were following Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe’s severe aesthetic was on the rapidograph tip of every architect ins the 60’s and 70’s.

That’s part of what Frederic Jameson, the hapless Marxist, meant about Late Modernism. In many respects the Late Modenists’ work was very good, but there was less genius to it and they had to work twice as hard to find their freedom. Happily Balanchine was part of the first wave.

I think what Macaulay means about Beckett is that Balanchine’s dancers pull their ideas out of their guts, like Beckett characters. They pull these monologues (and Balanchine pas de deux are often extended dual monologues) from their inner being and inventory them in front of you. His ballets are Shakespearean in their worldliness.

Stravinsky gives great pleasure, but he’s not Mozart in variety, and he’s not Balanchine in depth. Prokofiev was not really a rival of Stravinsky, and he is a delightful eyewitness to the period, much more reliable than Stravinsky, despite his--Prokofiev’s--often unbearable self centeredness.

And there does tend to be a general bias, albeit unfairly, towards the Chopin Waltzes and Etudes and Nocturnes at the expense the Sonatas.

Yes, that is probably what he meant, and I think it's wrong. You can make all these formulae, and say without Denishawn and Isadora, Graham wouldn't have been able to do her revolutionary work, and she 'lived on the capital' of her predecessors. But she produced much greater lasting work than they did. I don't mean in exactly the same way, but the real Marxist way of saying this spurious matter of Webern and then Boulez and Carter (the latter to a lesser degree in terms of serialism) 'living off the capital of the modernisms of the 20s', would be to say that 'they capitalized on the labour of the modernisms of the 20s'. If they 'had to work twice as hard', that's immaterial, as they have to work as hard as is necessary, hard or easy; and it's a matter of personal opinion that's there's 'less genius' to Boulez than to Schoenberg (as in my opinion, for example, which doesn't think there is, but that's just my opinion, just sayin...etc..) In any case, Balanchine is Romantic no matter whether also innovative and 'neo-classical', and this is shown clearly in the fact that he uses much more 17th, 18th and 19th century music than he does 20th for his works. You can call Balanchine 'modern ballet', but it is not 'modernist' in comparison to previous classical ballet in the same way that Webern, Boulez and Stockhausen are to previous music. It is a part of the 19th century as well as the 20th.



That is interesting, and no doubt true, but that is not the same thing as hyperbole about 'supreme dramatists of the 20th century.' This has to do with wanting to enshrine gods, and not everybody is interested. It's a serious issue. But what you said about Balanchine's works being 'Shakespearean in their worldliness' is equally true of Martha Graham, and she goes into many areas that could be said to be much deeper--but mainly it is just different, and I find the tenacious clinging to one or the other among many people to be understandable, but not the truth. Modern ballet, even in the hands of Balanchine, could not encompass everything that formal serious dance had to reach out to, so it is possible that modern dance developed side by side with ballet, which is different from growing out of Viennese tradition, with Schoenberg starting out with tonal works that then become atonal, and finally 12-tone--you can still see the direct line from Wagner on through with some tributaries in Debussy and Stravinsky before arriving at the seeming arrogance of the high modernists. The voice of this Viennese School is so loud that people forget that there are extremely important 20th century compositions by Britten, Copland, Carter, Tippett and many others that did not have to conform to these schools to produce masterpieces, and did not feel anachronistic.



This is the kind of thing that I meant about why you'd like Macaulay. There's no depth in some Balanchine (and there's not supposed to be), and there is depth in 'le Sacre du Printemps.' I'm with Shakespeare in 'comparison is odorous' even more than with John Donne with 'comparison is odious.' It's necessary, but my personal policy on comparison is to never use it except when there's no choice. I love Prokofiev more than Stravinsky, I'm quite sure, but these theories don't have nearly as much to do with art as they think. Artists are thinking about work and getting by just like everybody else, not just creativity and history (like Susan Sontag, for example, who always talked about making her place in history, and it turned out to be none of the novels, etc. Ned Rorem uses this ponderous talk as well, which is all right in either case. Nothing abnormal about being delusional about one's own work, although it's possible to be pretentious and tacky.) But there are film actors, for another example, who don't worry if their films are not all to the pleasure of the critics, they couldn't care less. They need work and will do pulp in a second, even if the critics start talking about how they've 'lost their talent and potential.' This discussion is making me like Farrell's use of the term 'spectator' more than I had before. Most audience members are spectators--only. But not all are nor have to be, and spectators can be creative during the act, as it were.



That's an interesting observation, too, although not the case among musicians. But here, I was not only talking about piano sonatas, but Sonata Form, which has continued to evolve well past Beethoven, and first theme, second them, exposition, development, and recapitulation as in the textbook First Movement of Sonata Form, is not limited to solo instruments, whether called 'sonatas', but also to concertos, symphonies, and all groupings of chamber music. But as for the Chopin, the B Flat and B Minor Sonatas are the same kind of staples that the Scherzi and Ballades are, and the Funeral March is the only thing that used to be played in the funerals of the glorious Brezhnev, Andropov, etc., accompanied by the Goose Step Dance of the special Kremlin KGB Guards. God, those funerals were great...concluding with the dirt-throwing of the politburo wives...of course the Funeral March is an exception to all rules, more than Eine Kleine Nachtmusik except for ringtones, and the general population will not know that if comes from Chopin's 2nd Sonata.

Keep them coming, folks, this is a productive discussion, and it seems to me meet and right if it needs to go into other aspects of culture not covered by specific critics; unless there is some objection to this, which is all right with me too, of course.