Manifesto (A Mini-Rant)

After listening to WQXR Q2's Web stream for some 4-6 hours per day for the past two weeks, we wish to declare a manifesto banning forever the airing or performance of any "music" written by Terry Riley or Steve Reich except for strictly historical education purposes (we were tempted to include the non-opera music of Philip Glass as well, but his non-opera music has its uses as movie music which saves it from our call for banning). These so-called "minimalist" works are nothing more than curious if occasionally interesting acoustic experiments, and only by absurd, Postmodern, post-Cagean conceit could be considered genuine music as they lack any semblance of a coherent, sustained musical narrative unless that narrative be that musical narrative is dead. They're tedious, mind-numbing bores — clear reactionary responses to the complicated (posing as complex) musical gibberish produced by Modernist-era, avant-garde charlatans such as Cage, Babbitt, and Stockhausen and their ilk, and, pace Alex Ross and other well-informed appreciators of the 20th-century's musical avant-garde, taking them seriously as music is something that ought not to be encouraged.

That is all.

As you were.