“Another question that musicology doesn’t answer: Why does some music travel while other music doesn’t? Why is it that, in a given country, someone will write music that everyone will love but that no one outside the country will ever hear? Why do I write music when, most of the time, no one likes it, yet every country hears it? (He laughs.)
Why does music travel? Interesting question. What is it about music that makes it travel? Why are there styles in history that are simply removed from our experience—Couperin, Rameau? Why do my students listen to German Baroque but not to composers like William Byrd? Why did Adorno write a scathing article about Stravinsky? What is it about Stravinsky that doesn’t fit with, say, the Marxist perspective of that era?”
Morton Feldman
(Middelbourg Conference, 1985)
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