Electronic Justice

As usual, Ed has the facts right, but is not giving the complete story. The events that led to the destruction of his computer are straightforward enough. Some months ago, my piece for Euphonium Duodecad Perfect Counterpoint had its premier before an audience of forty-four middle-school students at PS117. I assure you, the response was nothing if not rapturous to the extreme. I have seen it written that today's young people are unable to appreciate the subtleties of modern serious music, but these bright students were hanging on every retrograde inversion. In fact, some of them were so transported by the music, that they pulled out those tiny telephones people carry with them these days and spent the entire concert taking down notes about the music.

However, all truly revolutionary music finds resistance among the ranks of small-minded critics, and this piece was no exception. The next day's edition of the The Green Gopher Gazette, included a slanderous hit piece by that thirteen-year old harpy, Jenny Blankstein, who described it as "a chromatically saturated mess of a piece that pretends to great profundities -- while in fact revealing itself as the desperate ramblings of a composer who has long since depleted his limited stable of ideas."