In Peter Shaffer's AMADEUS, there is a scene where Constanza shows up at Maestro Salieri's palace conservatory bearing a sheaf of original Mozart compositions purloined from her husband's papers. The scene is narrated by the aging, institutionalized Salieri: "Astounding! Beyond belief! He had simply written down music that was already finished in his head. And finished as no music is ever finished." The aged Salieri elaborates on that perfection: "Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall."
The aged Salieri's reflections came to mind, painfully, when I learned how a few arrogant Latino pressure groups mobilized meddlesome apparatchiks to strongarm Ken Burns into editing his World War II documentary to suit themselves. Shamefully, they succeeded. This does not bode well for free expression in our country. Tell me, Juan Gonzalez and all you self-appointed political commissars: How does your manhandling of Ken Burns differ from the meddling Mozart endured from the Emperor's advisers? How does it differ from the insufferable Soviet meddling in the work of Prokofiev and Shostakovich? Your blind pursuit of a narrow political agenda - pluralism run riot - has pushed the country a giant stride toward cultural sterility.
Why couldn't you simply produce your own documentary? Why meddle with Ken Burns? Could you not tell your own story better than he could? Or, perhaps - like the Emperor and the Soviets - you share Salieri's lament at Divine Fate: "He gave me that longing, then made me mute."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment