Frederick Seidel is one of the coolest men in America for quite a few reasons:
I studied music as a boy and for a little while thought I might end up being a classical violinist. I’m interested in the music of the twentieth century. The difficulty of it. I’m thinking particularly of Anton Webern, whom I wrote a poem about in My Tokyo. There’s something wonderful about how Webern thought that within fifty years schoolchildren would be whistling his impossible tunes on their way to school. I admire that. But I also admire the attitude of Milton Babbitt, who said about the difficulty of modern music, Who cares if anyone listens?
I would love to write an opera about Webern. I actually got as far as writing a scene that has Webern, Schoenberg, and Alban Berg singing a lullaby to put Webern’s child to sleep. It’s a lovely idea, isn’t it? Those three atonal composers singing a lullaby to a kid.
Click below to see another reason why he is so cool (and no OC is not talking about the Huntsman suits)