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Pastimes : A CENTURY OF LIONS/THE 20TH CENTURY TOP 100

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To: w molloy who wrote (399)	10/20/1999 11:27:00 AM
From: Raymond Clutts	Read Replies (2) of 3246

Let's take these in order. Neil Armstrong: It's true that NASA like most governmental bureaucracies bereft of the motive of personal gain has dropped the ball and lost sight of its objective. You're also right that in measuring the comparing their personal accomplishments that, the landing aside, Neil Armstrong's weigh lighter on the scale than Lindberg and the others you've cited. Of course saying something like, "the landing aside" is like saying of Christopher Columbus, "So what else did he do but get lost and then get lucky?" That does not change the fact that he was the man who achieved what I regard as the single momentous event of the 20th Century. He stays. Frank Lloyd Wright: Personally, I dislike the Guggenheim and regard it as Wright pandering to the New York cognoscotti in a final attempt to reaffirm the critical weight of his reputation before he died. Now that we have taken the Guggenheim off the list of his critical successes, look at the remainder to see what it is that I cherish about his work. The other architects that you cite are apologists for a style of building that originated as cheap German "workers" housing. These architects rejected all historical modes of expression and stripped buildings of both ornamentation and proportionality. As a style of architecture they proved as inhumane and ugly as the school of socialist realism that they were derived from. In fact, they have remained popular as architectural styles only with those who approved building budgets and they latched onto them as a means of justifying cheap, unadorned office structures. In time most modern architecture will be rejected as nothing more than experiments in inexpensive civil engineering. Wright will be loved as someone who created a new style of expression that improved the lives of those who lived in what he built or who were privileged to view those structures daily. He stays and the others go. George Gershwin: Your point is that Ellington was a better and more influential composer than Gershwin and I agree. I include Gershwin in preference to other modern composers because of an unspoken assumption that when assembling this century's most illustrious we must include someone who composed classical music. Maybe the point we both agree on was that in the 20th Century, jazz superseded classical in importance and Ellington was the best of that wave. Alright then, Gershwin goes so long as Ellington remains and no other classical composer is present. Louis Armstrong: Give Satch his due, yes there were later instrumentalists that were stylists of equal weight but Armstrong invented a modern jazz style of play and brought it to the forefront of music throughout the world. Itself no mean feat at the time for someone who was black. He also preceded these others by about thirty years and they built on what he did. Also, jazz gives the instrumentalist's expression greater importance than other forms of music and as the first to really win jazz's national and international audience he built the genre that his successors used to elaborate their own styles. Also while popularity is certainly not itself the sole measure of his relative importance, the fact that his audience was so much wider than the other jazz musicians you've sited (excluding Robert Johnson) is itself some evidence of how universal his appeal was and that is an important consideration in assessing an artist's lasting impact. He stays. I'm also willing to consider adding Robert Johnson to the list. Thanks for taking the time for a hearty rebuttal.

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