dozen greatest sonatas written by a modern American and is likely to outlast anything John Adams or Philip Glass produced for the piano. Of course, Antony and Cleopatrawas a disappointment, perhaps because he made the mistake of trying to incorporate avantgarde procedures and techniques incompatible with his sensibility and gift for melody. Its true Barber was ignored by the American avant-garde, but its also true that the avantgarde of that period has been ignored by American audiences of serious music. Whose string quartet will bear comparison to Barbers? His works will continue to find an audience because pianists, violinists, singers, and conductors want to perform them. Walter Mosley, San Francisco To the Editor: For decades Ive admired the editorial brilliance of TheG&LR, particularly its insightful and clever choice of writers for particular assignments. So it was disappointing to read Richard M. Berrongs review of the new biography of Samuel Barber by Howard Pollack. Berrongs superficial, simplistic impressions unfairly demean the achievements of a sensitive and gifted composer. Berrongs deprecation of Barbers opera Antony and Cleopatrais basedon amateurish, inaccurate generalities about dissonance and unusual harmonies and an endless string of fragments suggesting no clear direction. His comment that it would take composers like John Adams and Philip Glass to show how avant-garde opera could be both musically innovative and emotionally appealing suggests that Mr. Berrong has never heard an opera by Britten or Janáček or Shostakovich. Worst of all, he entirely misapprehends the qualities that characterize a great composer, chastising Barber because he never really created a distinctive line of his own. In fact, the greatest composers didnt create new styles; they infused existing styles with their own genius. Bach didnt create the Baroque; he culminated that style. Mozart was the capstone of the Classical period, not its progenitor. On the other hand, the influence of Arnold Schoenberga brilliantly original musician who did create a new musical languagewas short-lived. Readers are advised to listen to some of Barbers music and judge for themselves. Bob Goldfarb, New York City Richard Berrong Replies: The second of these two letters does as good a job as I could of dealing with one of the objections to my review in the first: Mosley too finds Antony and Cleopatra a lesser work, and for reasons similar to mine. (Antony, not Anthony; we all make spelling mistakes.) It is the only one of Barbers works of which I spoke negatively, pace Goldfarb, and I dont think I demeaned it. As far as chastising Barber for not creating a distinctive style, those were not my words but Pollacks, as I indicated with quotation marks. We all miss things, no matter how carefully we reread our work. Mosley makes an important point regardingBarbers chamber music that I should have addressed. I checked the 2021-22 repertory of a dozen major American orchestras to see how often Barbers symphonic works are being performed today. No orchestra did more than one, some none at all. I did not have any way of determining how often his small-scale works show up in chamber music performances, however. There I suspect Mosley is right: Barbers songs, especially, are probably still regularly done. Richard Berrong, Cuyahoga Falls, OH Can a Loaded Word Be Disarmed? To the Editor: As an eighty-year-old lesbian, I was shocked to see in the May-June 23 issue the headline BlackbeardsBitch. Itwas the title of a review of the HBO series Our Flag Means Death. Theword bitch is commonly used to denigrate women. Its use inTheG&LRwas an unwelcome reminder of the disgust some gay men feel toward women. It wasnt even an appropriate use of the word, as the HBO series shows Stede Bonnet, the putative bitch to Blackbeard, loved and nurtured him. For this he is called a bitch? Quite the disappointment that a publication for the homosexual community, of which I am a member, uses the same gross vocabulary to describe women, femaleness, loving natures used by rednecks. Betsy Tabac, Tallahassee, FL EditorsReply: The headline was written by me, and surely I did not wish to offend. But it seems to me the wordbitch has moved beyond its exclusive association with women to refer, often humorously, to anyone who is defeated or humiliated in a social context. Thus Trump was sometimes mocked as Putins bitch.A cartoon inThe New Yorker several years ago shows an overstuffed American breakfast (pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, etc.) next to a measly French croissant and demi-tasse, with the caption: Welcome to America, bitch. I think this usage describes to a tee the relationship between Blackbeard and Stede inOur Flag Means Death. Vaughan Williams Not OneofUs To the Editor: Now wait just a minute. Ive lived and worked in classical music for decades, and I have never heard even the slightest suggestion that Ralph Vaughan Williams was gay as stated in your introduction to the Pride Issue in May-June 2023. The composer is being confused with Griffith Vaughan Williams (19402010), who was an outspoken British champion of gay and lesbian rights and, so far as I know, no relation to Ralph Vaughan Williams. Robert Wennersten, Saint Joseph, MO EditorsReply: Thanks for setting me straight (as it were) on this point. I was going by memory from a series of three pieces that the late Ned Rorem contributed back in 2000. Ive now had a chance to check the record, and it turns out there were a couple of versions of the top ten composers list. In the gay five list that I recalled, please replace Vaughan Williams with Leonard Bernstein. In another piece, he offered a longer list that seems even more gay-heavy than the aforementioned: Of all the arts in which gay men have played a prominent role in this century, music is the one that they seem to have dominated. How many are left once we eliminate the following names? Bernstein, Britten, John Cage, Copland, Peter Maxwell Davies, Heinz Werner Henze, Daniel Pinkham, Poulenc, Rorem, Thompson, Tippett; and, more recently, David Del Tredici, Tyson Street, and John Corigliano. Corrections A number of readers pointed out a rather egregious error in Richard Berrongs review of Samuel Barber (July-Aug. 2023): the misspelling of American composer Aaron Coplands surname. As familiar as the editor and five proofreaders are with Copland, we all somehow missed that errant e. In the same review, its stated that Samuel Barber and his partner lived in Capricorn, an estate located outside Philadelphia. Capricorn was actually located in Kisco, NewYork. In the May-June 2023 issue, the caption for a portrait of Henry James gives the wrong date for the painting. The correct year is 1913 (not 1922; James died in 1916). In the May-June 2023 issue, a photo accompanying an Art Memo on poet George Cecil Ives is not of Ives but instead of an Australian rugby player named George Treweek. A review on the art of J. C. Leyendecker in the May-June 2023 issue states that Charles Beach, who became Leyendeckers lifelong partner, was hired by the artist in 1900. In fact, Beach was hired by the artists brother Frank in 1903. 6 TheG&LR
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