... a response to my critics ...

    The criticisms leveled at my essays are familiar. That they are too long, too dense, too rhetorical, too nostalgic, too abstract, too angry, too general, too hypocritical, and, finally, too impractical. Yet each of these reproaches, rather than refuting my argument, merely restates it in another key. They expose the very crisis I describe, that is, a civilization that has grown allergic to duration, to ambiguity, to contradiction, to the labor of thought. If these texts are “too long,” it is because the subject, the fate of music as a human art, is long. “Classical music,” as I have argued, is not merely a style or profession, but an entire metaphysical system, a postwar invention that has converted the living experience of music into a bureaucratic experiment in control. To treat such a problem briefly would be to betray it. The essays’ length is not indulgence, but resistance, the refusal to shrink what is infinite into what is scrollable.

             To those who say I overcomplicate, I answer that clarity and simplicity are not the same. Music, like consciousness, cannot be reduced to slogans without violence. My so-called “pretension”, the philosophical density, the invocation of kairos and chronos, of romanticus and classicus, is not an affectation but an instrument. The task of philosophy is to recover the meaning of words that have been emptied by use. If I write “ontology,” it is because the problem is ontological: not what music is, but how it is allowed to exist. To demand plainness in a subject so entangled with history, body, and spirit is to wish for anesthesia, not comprehension. Those who resent complexity rarely seek understanding, they just seek reassurance.

         Others accuse me of cliché, telling me, “Every generation laments decline.” Perhaps. But no previous generation has replaced the act of music-making with its simulation, nor consecrated obedience as virtue under the guise of professionalism. The “crisis” I name is not timeless but specific, born in the postwar West, when fidelity to text and institutional credentialism supplanted improvisation, invention, and risk. This is not romantic nostalgia for a lost paradise, but the tracing of a genealogy, that is, how an art of presence became a science of correctness. I do not mourn an idealized past. I mourn the disappearance of interiority, the substitution of technique for experience, and the conversion of art into a managerial enterprise.

        When I draw contrasts, romanticus versus classicus, intuition versus system, some call them false dichotomies. Yet such polarities are not prisons but mirrors, that is, tools to illuminate imbalance. The problem is not that we have too much technique, but that we no longer remember what technique is for. I advocate not regression, but reintegration, the reunion of precision with purpose, intellect with incarnation. The false dichotomy is not mine, but the system’s, which enforces it under the guise of neutrality.

        Then come the personal accusations, that my tone hides resentment, that I write from bitterness toward a musical elite I cannot match. This is the oldest weapon of the status quo, that is, psychologize dissent, and you need not engage it. Yet I write as one within the very system I criticize, having spent decades inside its temples, its conservatories, its competitions. My critique is not envy but a sort of repentance, that is, a confession of complicity and an attempt at repair. The “level” by which critics measure musicians, the very language of quantification, is part of the problem. Insight, unlike velocity, cannot be timed.

        I am also told I overgeneralize, ignoring exceptions, brilliant musicians who resist conformity, institutions that nurture creativity. I know them well. Many are my friends, my students, my peers. But exceptions do not invalidate the rule, they reveal it by contrast. That a few still play with genuine wonder only confirms how systemic the malaise has become. When a culture congratulates itself for moments of authenticity, it has forgotten that authenticity was once the norm.

    Others dismiss the essays as “philosophical overreach,” too lofty for practical musicians. But philosophy, rightly understood, is not withdrawal from life, it is the attempt to live it more consciously. When I write of “music as sacrament,” I mean the rediscovery of what every musician has felt in the moment of genuine creation, that is, that sound, when inhabited fully, discloses being. The practical consequences of this are tangible, that is, sing daily, improvise, compose, listen without agenda, risk error, refuse the mechanical obedience of the metronome. These are not abstractions but gestures of recovery.

        Nor does the charge of hypocrisy stand. Yes, I am part of the institution I critique. So was every reformer who ever loved a thing enough to wish it reborn. Silence would be hypocrisy. Speech is fidelity. To teach within the system while questioning it is not betrayal but duty, that is, to awaken, where possible, the forgotten power of imagination within the rituals of obedience. I am not outside the machine, but I remember that it was built by men, not gods, and thus can be remade.

       And to those who say I offer no solutions, only lamentation, I reply that lamentation is the first solution, that is, to grieve what has been lost is already to resist its disappearance. Yet I do offer paths forward, generalism instead of specialization, improvisation instead of repetition, risk instead of correctness, song instead of silence. These are not programs but reorientations, ways of recovering art’s original dignity as an encounter, not an experiment.

 

    In sum, to me, the criticisms that seek to discredit these essays only confirm their necessity. When a culture equates brevity with intelligence, credentials with truth, and polish with soul, it has already begun to petrify. The point is not to destroy “classical music,” but to liberate music from its classical captivity, to remember that before it was a profession, it was a human act, that is, a trembling of air, a gesture of love.

 

        To my critics, then, I offer no defense, only an invitation, that is, let us not guard the mausoleum. Let us reopen the windows. Somewhere beneath the varnish, the pulse still beats. And if we listen closely, we might hear it, quiet, patient, alive, waiting, as music always does, to be alive again…