Artists today are at a crossroads. With funding for the arts and
humanities endowments perpetually under attack, and school districts all
over the United States scrapping their art curricula altogether, the
place of the arts in our civic future is uncertain to say the least. At
the same time, faced with the problems of the modern world--from water
shortages and grave health concerns to global climate change and the now
constant threat of terrorism--one might question the urgency of this
waning support for the arts. In the politically fraught world we live
in, is the "felt" experience even something worth fighting for?
In this soul-searching collection of vignettes, Patrick Summers gives us
an adamant, impassioned affirmative. Art, he argues, nurtures freedom of
thought, and is more necessary now than ever before.
As artistic director of the Houston Grand Opera, Summers is well
positioned to take stock of the limitations of the professional arts
world--a world where the conversation revolves almost entirely around
financial questions and whose reputation tends toward elitism--and to
remind us of art's fundamental relationship to joy and meaning. Offering
a vehement defense of long-form arts in a world with a short attention
span, Summers argues that art is spiritual, and that music in particular
has the ability to ask spiritual questions, to inspire cathartic pathos,
and to express spiritual truths. Summers guides us through his personal
encounters with art and music in disparate places, from Houston's Rothko
Chapel to a music classroom in rural China, and reflects on musical
works he has conducted all over the world. Assessing the growing canon
of new operas performed in American opera houses today, he calls for
musical artists to be innovative and brave as opera continues to
reinvent itself.
This book is a moving credo elucidating Summers's belief that the arts,
especially music, help us to understand our own humanity as
intellectual, aesthetic, and ultimately spiritual.
