Presence of Mind
I’m still shaken after reading Mark Singer’s tender and forthright Profile of David Milch and his experience with Alzheimer’s disease (“Hello, Darkness,” May 27th). Milch’s capacity for honest self-reflection even as time and physiology take his talents away is unprecedented, instructive, and deeply moving. In his undefended vulnerability, Milch offers those who are a few steps behind him a lesson in possibility.
Corey Fischer
Kentfield, Calif.
Reading Singer’s piece made me uncomfortable; the interview with Milch felt exploitative. As a speech pathologist, I know how vulnerable people with Alzheimer’s can be. I don’t see the value of asking a man to comment on how his brilliance is slipping away. We’re told that Milch’s family and his work still give him fulfillment, but there is little in the analysis of his mental decline to support that hopeful assertion.
Elmera Goldberg
New York City
I invite Singer, and others writing about dementia, to abandon the term “Alzheimer’s patient,” and to use instead the phrase “person living with Alzheimer’s disease.” The fact that Milch has achieved so much after the onset of symptoms demonstrates why the Alzheimer’s Association has moved toward highlighting all the living that can be done while one has the disease, provided there is early detection and diagnosis.
Kerry Lanigan
Associate Director, Care and Support
Alzheimer’s Association
Chicago, Ill.
Musical Chairs
Alex Ross is right to encourage the reconsideration of the music of Antonio Salieri, whom recent history has treated with iniquity (“Salieri’s Revenge,” June 3rd). The efforts on Salieri’s behalf make it all the more striking, then, that Ross dismisses another composer of similar stature, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, as “second-tier.” Whatever we may think of Dittersdorf today, he was not second-tier in his own time: he travelled in the same circles as Mozart, Haydn, and Gluck, and was awarded a Kapellmeister position—a plum that eluded Mozart. Dittersdorf’s output, considered as a whole, may fall short of the level of inspiration found in Mozart’s, but there are unquestionable high points, and these are as deserving of our attention as those in Salieri’s music.
The process of canonization is often considered to be akin to evolution, whereby the fittest survive, and the cream rises to the top. The truth is more complex, as Ross’s piece illustrates, and circumstances having little to do with artistry are often decisive in establishing an artist’s place in history. Do we like Mozart the most because his music is superlative? Or because his portrayal as a towering genius is so pervasive in our culture that we listen to him with reflexive deference? It may be impossible to know.
Stephen Buckley, D.M.A.
Assistant Principal Double Bass
Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra
Copenhagen, Denmark
I was glad to read the piece on Salieri, whom I played in the film “Amadeus.” As you might imagine, I’m extremely defensive about him. I once arranged an evening of music by both Mozart and Salieri, to be performed without identifying each piece’s composer. The audience members were quizzed afterward, and they could not decide which was which.
F. Murray Abraham
New York City
