I haven't read the article you reference, I opened it and shut it. I don't
have time to read that nonsense. And it is nonsense. Vivaldi, Verdi,
Puccini and Rossini weren't German. Nor was Caltalani, nor Donizetti, nor
Scarletti, nor Palestrina, nor Giordano, nor Raspighi. Sibelius wasn't
German, nor was Greig, nor Berlioz, nor Bizet, nor Debussy, nor Boulet, nor
Ravel, nor Gounod, nor Saint-Saens, Tchaikovsky wasn't German, nor was
Aurensky, not Shostakovich, not Scriaben, not Rimsky-Korsakoff, not
Rachmaninoff, Chopin wasn't German, nor was Paderewsky, Liszt wasn't German,
nor was Dvorak and not Rosetti, nor Smetana, nor Weber, nor Bartok, not
Paganinni, not Borodin either, scratch Glinka off the German list as well as
Prokofieff and Mussorgsky and Medtner and Stravinsky and nix dat Elgar.
Why didn't your man ask were are all the German composers of Indian music or
Chinese music or Hip Hop? Why no German composers of Raggae? Why no Inuit
Bob Dylans? Why no female Michael Jackson? Wait, I think I might know one
come to think of it. But you get the idea.
Mike Geary Memphis
At The Valve, Adam Roberts asks, "Why are the greatest composers all German?" He ponders an evolutionary explanation which has provoked many comments.
http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/why_are_the_greatest_composers_all_german/
the various branches of art enjoy long periods of mediocre achievement, punctuated by blazing, tightly-defined (geographically and chronologically) ‘golden ages’, which then go on to dominate the canon or received climate of the art for many subsequent generations.
Why should this be? If artistic ability is distributed evenly amongst the population, as seems likely (so that, let us say, one in two hundred thousands humans has exceptional ability regardless of accident of place or time of birth), we would expect artistic achievement to be spread evenly, throughout time and throughout countries. But this is not what we find. Why not?
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