"Art is not only about angst"
About this Quote
Corigliano’s line is a polite swipe at a stubborn stereotype: the idea that “serious” art earns its seriousness through suffering. Coming from a late-20th-century American composer whose career spans the prestige economy of concert halls and the wider public of film, it reads like a defense of range. He’s not denying darkness; he’s denying darkness as the admission ticket.
The word “only” does the heavy lifting. It concedes that angst has been a dominant currency in modernism and postwar high culture - the grim aura of difficulty, the romance of the tortured maker, the belief that pain authenticates craft. Corigliano pushes back with a composer’s pragmatism: music is an engine for many states, not a single moral mood. In that sense, the quote is anti-pose. It’s wary of art that performs misery because audiences have been trained to equate bleakness with depth.
There’s also an institutional subtext here. Classical music culture can fetishize severity: long programs, forbidding liner notes, a sanctified hush that tells listeners to expect heaviness. Corigliano’s statement quietly reopens the doors. It suggests that joy, play, sensuality, humor, even sheer color can be as formally rigorous as despair - and that accessibility isn’t aesthetic treason.
The intent feels restorative: to reclaim pleasure without apologizing for it. Not as a retreat from complexity, but as a reminder that complexity includes light, too.
The word “only” does the heavy lifting. It concedes that angst has been a dominant currency in modernism and postwar high culture - the grim aura of difficulty, the romance of the tortured maker, the belief that pain authenticates craft. Corigliano pushes back with a composer’s pragmatism: music is an engine for many states, not a single moral mood. In that sense, the quote is anti-pose. It’s wary of art that performs misery because audiences have been trained to equate bleakness with depth.
There’s also an institutional subtext here. Classical music culture can fetishize severity: long programs, forbidding liner notes, a sanctified hush that tells listeners to expect heaviness. Corigliano’s statement quietly reopens the doors. It suggests that joy, play, sensuality, humor, even sheer color can be as formally rigorous as despair - and that accessibility isn’t aesthetic treason.
The intent feels restorative: to reclaim pleasure without apologizing for it. Not as a retreat from complexity, but as a reminder that complexity includes light, too.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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