More (Yawn) about THE DEATH

Once again, the Times plays Cassandra, once again heralding The Death of Classical Music. And in this article--ostensibly a review of Lawrence Kramer's book but more yet another thoughtless wailing over the dessicated corpse of a tradition (because, apparently, conductors don't rate boldface in the gossip columns)--the outsider's shrug is deafening. What I feel like they at the paper of record fail to understand is twofold: 1) that it is not the tradition that is dying but many of its institutions and 2) that they are partially responsible for its so-called death because they keep saying it is so. It has, alas, become fashionable to write with constancy and either relish or bile about The Decline--or to take Alex Ross's smart approach and declare the death of The Death; I wish I had his patience--and by doing so in such an overt and dramatic fashion, do these critics not realize that they have blood on their hands?

I know what it is: good, old-fashioned fear. As soon as these major instiutions close down, critics from papers are out of jobs. Please, if you know what is good for you, stop doing it, you are hurting it, you are helping to bring your own misguided prophecies to fruition.