Taruskin vs. Rosen / goring the Ox

 So Rosen says that Taruskin writes about 20th century music with a decided lack of sympathy. He never explains why anyone would like it. Taruskin responds that he is an objective historian, not an advocate. But... is such an overt lack of sympathy objective? 

Rosen:  "What he is unable to do, however, is to give us any idea of why anybody would want to write, or listen to, most of the music he treats at such length."

Taruskin:  "Advocacy is not the historian's task, and a historian who indulges in it has become a propagandist. As one who regard's Rosen literary output--all of it-- as cold-war propaganda, I am heartened that he perceives the distinction between our objectives and our methods the same way I do."

But surely this negativity does not occur in the rest of the five volume of the Ox (Oxford History) that Taruskin wrote. It only comes up with certain kinds of music. I haven't read the ox yet, but other people's reviews, as well as Taruskin's other writing that I have seen, makes clear that negativity pervades the parts written about 20th century music. Clearly the new musicologists have no use for musical modernism of the Schoenberg tradition. Taruskin even say he shares in the admiration for Elliot Carter, "although the Oxford History was not the proper place for me to say so." So he might even like it himself, but he has to disguise this to be objective?  Or to fall into place with the proper anti-cold-war stance? If he mentions this in a book with "history' in the title he become a CIA stooge.   

Later, in postscript written after Rosen's death, he voices some appreciation for his late and states the position that almost everyone would agree with, that the during the Cold War the CIA promoted the idea that art in the Western world was excellent because of its freedom and diversity and lack of government control. Of course, the CIA was completely right about this. The only problem was that by supporting this view, it tainted the very thing it was promoting, by exploiting it as propaganda.