Shostakovich...Genius or Hack

An interesting article from The Guardian about the "difference of opinion" on the works of Shostakovich.

I like the part where Pierre Boulez plays the role of "Grumpy Old Man No. 1".

Only six years ago, the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, evidently frustrated by the continuing ubiquity of Shostakovich's music in concert halls and on CD, declared that popular interest in the Russian composer was "influenced by the autobiographical dimension of his music". A modish enthusiasm for him was bound to be short-lived, suggested Boulez, for the music itself was just "third-pressing Mahler" (an allusion to the process used to extract the cheapest and most tasteless kind of olive oil).

Come on, Pierre...can't you just be happy for him?

But...since Pierre started it, here are a few quotes about him.
(from the very interesting website for The PIERRE BOULEZ Project)

"Boulez's whole life has been nothing but bluff, invective, impertinence, and conceit. He's exercised a bad influence over an entire generation that's wasted its energies in following him" -- Henri Sauguet, from 1987 interview in Gai pied hebdo..

"Boulez, who is everything I don't want art to be... Boulez, who once said in an essay that he is not interested in how a piece sounds, only how it is made." -- Morton Feldman, "predeterminate/indeterminate"

"he has, at times, presented himself as little more than a Napoleon complex with a comb-over." -- Timothy Ouellette

"[Boulez] was a regular jack-in-the-box. He was also the most arrogant of all. I thought he wrote too fast, too carelessly, that he threw in too many notes." -- Rene Leibowitz, quoted in To Boulez and Beyond

"I'm not into Boulez, but that's kind of obvious." -- Jim O'Rourke, 1999 interview

"Conductor and composer Pierre Boulez was one of the most articulate members of the French postwar musical avant-garde, but now many music lovers believe his compositions are sonic sewage. Boulez played a role in driving contemporary music into a cul-de-sac." -- Frederick Stocken, New Statesman, March 20, 2000

"And to live in a world only with Boulez would be a sad existence." -- Georg Graewe

"You could say: 'Why not invent a completely new language of music that uses none of the existing ideas?' Well, Pierre Boulez said he would do that, and who listens to Pierre Boulez?" -- Richard Stallman

"Boulez's only concern is with power. He lost the leadership of the avant-guard more than ten years ago to Stockhausen. Now others have moved in. With the need for power, where was he to go? So he chose to be a conductor. He is a wonderful musician, a wonderful intelligence. It's a pity there is no humanity there. Does he have sex? I think not. When men have no sex, they go after power in this big, obsessive way." -- Lukas Foss, 1971?

Ouch!

We should get Lukas Foss and Pierre Boulez together and let them have a "Your Momma is So Ugly" contest. My money's on Foss.