Comments on: A Cowboy Hangs Up His Spurs

By: Dave Soldier

Dave Soldier — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 21:30:50 +0000

Kyle, good for you!

It’s hard for critics to be anything other than reactionary, no matter their politics: they can only respond using the tastes they already have when they hear something new. Welcome to the tough real world, where one can only contribute by struggling to make work one thinks should exist — rather than only praise or disparage others making what they think they should exist.

We will still need writers to help music lovers find music and understand how and why its made.

By: Christian Hertzog

Christian Hertzog — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:28:35 +0000

Kyle Gann pretty much pioneered an alt-weekly classical music style, one which used a conversational tone, had a terrific sense of humor, and at times really broke open what classical music criticism could be, an alternative to the staid daily newspaper classical tone. (I especially remember being blown away by his private-eye-story parody about the death of New Music). Reading Kyle’s work in the Voice was tremendously inspiring to me when I started to review in the 1990′s, and I continue to read and admire his writing. No Such Thing as Silence is the best book on contemporary music for the general reader since The Rest is Noise. I look forward to hear more compositions from him, at the same time as I mourn his critical retirement.

By: David Toub

David Toub — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 01:04:07 +0000

Actually, Kyle and I have always been 100% in agreement with the appraisal of academic music and composers. His lemmings remark is just so much more eloquent than my own comments on the subject.

By: Christian Carey

Christian Carey — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 01:38:05 +0000

Dennis Bathory-Kitsz says:

We all love/hate Kyle, and his blog is must-read stuff. He’s been prickly and generous at the same time. I’ve sparred with him about the atonal composer scene back in the day, and yet he turned around and wrote a generous and loving profile of me for Chamber Music Magazine. The complexity and candor are just great … so time for more music!