Certainly I do listen to contemporary composers. I find the 12 note atonal scale highly irritating, and I think it is dying a death which it should. I find most minimalist composers very boring. I do count new music as music newly discovered by composers overlooked. Top of that list goes to Florence Price, an African American composer who was forgotten, and by huge luck a vast number of her scores were discovered in the attic of the last house she lived in prior to its demolition. By some luck someone felt that these papers may be important and had them evaluated. Now she is mainstream, and I am pretty sure will come to regarded as the greatest composer this country has so far produced. Her output was vast, and of high quality. She was a brilliant pianist, and organist. She wrote chamber, vocal solo music and quite a large body of organ works. She must have been an accomplished virtuoso as she played the solo in her piano concertos, which are astonishingly difficult. The fact she was so neglected in her lifetime and since, is testimony to the extent of racial discrimination and to some extent I suspect against women. Shortly before she died in the early fifties she was to have played at a Prom Concert of her music at the RAH in London. I think she was booked on the Queen Mary liner. But that was not to be. Thinking about it, we should have a Florence Price thread. Her music is wonderful and absolutely unique. Audiences just go wild after every performance.
I do listen to some jazz and folk, but not a lot. I do not listen to rock at all and can't stand it. When I was in Bologna I went into a CD store and every disc I could have gladly owned. I congratulated the owner, and he said to me:- "Ah, but it only gives me pleasure to sell beautiful music." I could not agree more, and I only want to listen to beautiful music. I have devoted much of my life to bringing it to life in the home in the most accurate fashion and beauty, to do it the justice it deserves.
