Low should stick to Opinion Page

Opinion columnist Grace Low is typically good at expressing her opinion in a qualified, well-reasoned manner. Her Oct. 18 Weekend article on Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks, The Human Experience,” is an exception.\n While I can (barely) stand the constant and excessive superlatives often applied around Bob Dylan’s name, I take issue with her blanket statement that “(n)o one in the history of music has displayed Dylan’s influence and consistency.” Perhaps she is confusing the history of music with the history of popular music. Even then, I don’t entirely agree with her. If Low feels in a position to judge the entire “history of music,” surely she should know that Josquin Des Prez, William Byrd, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Claudio Monteverdi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Josef Haydn, W.A. Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Duke Ellington, Charles Ives and Arnold Schoenberg, to name but a few, have displayed equal consistency, greater artistic output and a far greater influence on the world of music than the folk singer from Hibbing, Minn. It’s unfortunate that many of the previously mentioned artists are unfamiliar to most Dylan fans.\nI am a huge Bob Dylan fan, especially of his earlier work. I consider him among the greatest living American composers. But Dylan-worship often gets carried away to a hyperbolic level by our generation. Let’s appreciate him for what he is – great wordsmith, iconic American, decent musician – and was – voice of a generation – and leave history to judge his place in the much greater scheme of things.