Interesting Times

Last month, writer Heather Mac Donald wrote a piece for City Journal titled, "Classical Music’s New Golden Age", which brilliantly struck through the oppressive gloom purveyed by the current prophets of the imminent death of classical music (and which piece we made note of and linked in this July S&F entry) by declaring and demonstrating that "in many respects, we [today] live in a golden age of classical music."

Well, this was just too much for one of the arch prophets of the imminent death of classical music, Greg Sandow, who, instantly and with paranoid alarm, saw Mac Donald's article as striking at the very life spot of his cherished thesis, and in a series of five bilious, out-of-control and fevered rants (here, here, here, here, and here) proceeded to attempt to discredit Mac Donald and Mac Donald's article. To these five rants Mac Donald responded in a measured, neatly argued piece titled, "The Unsustainable Declinism of Greg Sandow", and the battle lines were drawn.

Drew McManus of Adaptistration took offense at both the tone and the arguments (but mostly at the tone) of Sandow's and Mac Donald's pieces equally, and wrote a sharply condemnatory post titled, "An Ugly War Of Words", which took both authors to task for what Mr. McManus saw as their, um, excesses. We disagreed with Mr. McManus's assessment, and our thoughts on that can be read in the comments section of his post which comments section we urge you to read, as we urge you to read the comments sections of all the above linked posts.

We live in interesting times.