Over-egging the pudding

We don't have much actual music criticism these days, but we have a great deal of what the English would call "over-egging the pudding." YouTube has become almost unwatchable because of it, but I have commented on that before. Alas, we find it even in such rarified heights as writings by Richard Taruskin. In his scholarly works it doesn't appear, but when he writes for newspapers or magazines, it creeps out. Journalism these days is all about shouting out extremes. Here is an example from The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays. Referring to the performance of the Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven on the occasion of the falling of the Berlin Wall he says:

What did Beethoven symbolize? Just packaged greatness, I'm afraid, and all that implies of smugness and dullness and ritualism. Just what the revolutions of '89 were revolting against.

And that is why classical music is failing, and in particular why intellectuals, as a class, and even the educated public, have been deserting it. The defection began in the sixties when all at once it was popular music that engaged passionately--adequately or not, but often seriously and even challengingly--with scary, risky matters of public concern, while classical music engaged only frivolously (remember radical chic?) or escaped into technocratic utopias. By now, the people who use to form the audience for "serious" music are very many of them listening to something else.

Now I am a great admirer of Richard Taruskin who has delved so deeply into the truths of music history for the benefit of all, but here he really over-eggs the pudding. I'm not saying there are not large grains of truth here, but they are exaggerated to the point of being nearly irrelevant. No, performing Beethoven on the occasion of the Wall coming down did not just symbolize "packaged greatness." What an absurd distortion. And who was smug and dull? Certainly no-one present for that event, nor the musicians, nor the viewers worldwide. So "that," and at this point in the argument it is becoming vague exactly what it refers to, certainly has little to do with why classical music is "failing." Actually, the performance itself would seem to demonstrate that classical music had a distinct role to play on that occasion. Why would he claim anything different? And the idea that popular music was courageously engaging with those scary, risky matters of public concern that classical music was too dull or smug to deal with is just, well, pretty funny really. However this was just a momentary lapse. 

But lots of other folks are indulging in excess. Here is a classic example from Ted Gioia:

"I spent ten years researching and writing a book about love songs.

I learned many things, but two facts stand out:

Everybody knows hundreds of romantic love songs, and can even sing along—because the words are deeply embedded in our memory.

Most people are deeply embarrassed about this, and don’t want anyone to know.

You can’t deny it. Every one of you knows the words to a bunch of sentimental, icky-sweet songs—but would hate to admit it to your friends."

What are the exaggerations there? Everything! He likely spent ten years off and on writing a book about love songs during which he mostly did other things. No, everyone doesn't know hundreds of romantic love songs. Unless you count "Don't Let Me Down," I doubt if I know more than a line or two from any love song. But even if I did know lots, I wouldn't be embarrassed about it and would be happy to admit it. You see, the whole thing is just one unfounded exaggeration after another. 

It is much too much when both sides of a debate so absurdly exaggerate that you really don't want to hear from either of them ever again. And yes, I am talking about "climate change." Yes, climates do change, but the belief that any amount of human intervention can "fix" it and also that it doesn't exist at all are both so far from the truth--yet we hear this every day--that ignoring the discussion entirely is the rational choice.

Of course, politics, the wildly polarized politics that is the norm today, is the locus classicus which is why so many avoid it. A key tactic that instantly reveals both the existence of and the uselessness of partisan exaggeration is the pretending to foretell the future. No, no-one can do that and thinking you can is a variety of madness.

Why is everyone doing this? I'm not really sure, but part of it, I suspect, has to do with the idea that we need to manipulate and propagandize one another with every utterance. Just telling the plain, simple truth is too risky. It might not benefit us enough!

Let's have some plain, simple, truthful music from our old friend Joseph Haydn. Here is Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the Symphony No. 94 "Surprise":

Albums to Hear Right Now?

The theory and practice of music criticism is a topic we kick around from time to time here and today a recurring feature at the New York Times provides some grist for our mill: 5 Classical Albums to Hear Right Now. This is a monthly feature and perhaps another time we can look over a few articles, but today I just want to glance at the June repertoire. New York journalism always seems to have a special flavour, a sense of place and a sense of time. It's music to hear right now! Here are the five albums:

1. American music recorded by the Lucerne Symphony. A reasonable selection of music by Leonard Bernstein, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Samuel Barber and Charles Ives. The musical examples are the usual 30 second bleeding chunks from Spotify. Say, has anyone ever looked into what the financial arrangements are between Spotify and the NYT and the WSJ? The only glaringly weird bit is the first paragraph: "How bold to title an album “Americans.” And what a lot to deliver on: a theme of near-infinite programming possibilities, and a concept under intense scrutiny these days, as classical musicians grapple with the United States’ history of exclusion in the concert hall." Bold? No bolder than Hilary Hahn titling her latest album "Paris" because it is all music composed there. Ah, but it all comes clear as we learn that "classical musicians grapple with the US' history of exclusion." It's as if no music or no composers were ever excluded from any concert hall anywhere, except in the US. One gets the impression that certain genuflections have to be made if one is a New Yorker.
2. The next album is by the Jihye Lee Orchestra and it is a fine example, but of jazz, not classical music. Isn't this rather the wrong place for it?
3. Next pianist Samantha Ege offers an album of music by Florence Price and we are told that "The Florence Price revival continues apace. In just the last few weeks, the Philadelphia Orchestra announced that it would record Price’s symphonies under Yannick Nézet-Séguin; the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective released a gorgeous premiere recording of her Piano Quintet in A minor on Chandos; and the musicologists Douglas W. Shadle and Samantha Ege gave notice that they are writing a biography of this long-overlooked composer." Fair enough, though I believe that musicology departments have been looking at her music for decades now.
4. I have put up a number of posts on French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau and this new release, "Melancholy Grace" is another example of his outstanding musicianship. A terrific new talent on the scene.
5. Finally pianist Leif Ove Andsnes presents an album of music from a particularly prolific year in the life of Mozart including three piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra plus some solo and chamber music. Great idea. 1785 was a really spectacular year for Mozart especially if you consider that he also published his six Haydn quartets in the same year. Mind you, Mozart wrote something truly spectacular every few months.

Instead of engaging my own critical faculties here, I will just mention that this is the kind of closet music criticism that our day seems to specialize in. Speaking of exclusion, if you pick out just five albums to promote every month, then you have already gone through an extremely rigorous selection process of eliminating the vast majority of releases. All this is unnoticed because it is behind the scenes. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The five albums selected are all promoted with uncritical enthusiasm of course, because we seem to believe that actually stating criticism is impolite or biased or something.

What do my readers think?

A Brief Visit with David Hurwitz

A commentator alerts me to this editorial over at Classics Today by David Hurwitz, author of several books on classical music. The essay itself combines some rather odd ideas with some good common sense:

Considering how culturally valuable and self-evidently important classical music is supposed to be, its proponents are a surprisingly defensive group. At performing arts organizations, press departments fret that the slightest negative comment about an artist might attract public notice. What little marketing that takes place with respect to recordings always assumes that the latest issue is necessarily “the best,” or at all events of earth-shattering importance. Classical music, we are assured, is really “good for us” intellectually, spiritually, and even physically, the aural equivalent of cod liver oil.

That's in the first category. This immediately shows itself to be one of those defences of classical music that Taruskin, in a scathing essay, regarded as being in the "with friends like these, who needs enemies" category. The problem is that this is a gross exaggeration. Yes, classical music people can be a bit defensive, but that is because, in North America, the art form is under threat of simply being erased. When he simply advocates critical judgement he is on solid ground:

I propose a radical new idea: Tell the truth! Stop insisting that the classics consist of an unbroken chain of perfect masterpieces of equal worth, and let people compare, judge, and even (gasp!) dislike some of them.

But when he goes on to list examples, categorizing them as "ten of classical music’s dirtiest secrets" he shows how unreliable his own judgements are in practice. Let's have a look:

• Mozart really does all sound the same.
• Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge is just plain ugly.
• Wagner’s operas are much better with cuts.
• No one cares about the first three movements of Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique.
• Schoenberg’s music never sounds more attractive, no matter how many times you listen to it.
• Schumann’s orchestration definitely needs improvement.
• Bruckner couldn’t write a symphonic allegro to save his life.
• Liszt is trash.
• The so-called “happy” ending of Shostakovich’s Fifth is perfectly sincere.
• It’s a good thing that “only” about 200 Bach cantatas survive.

It's like Charles Ives fused with Wilford Brimley and weighed in on classical music!

• Mozart sounds the same in that it is all in Classical style, but someone who thinks that the Requiem and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik sound the same should not be allowed to go to concerts unattended
• The Grosse Fuge has its intense moments, yes, but nothing about it is "just plain."
• Even with this incitement it is hard for me to defend Wagner--but lots of others would!
• Well, Berlioz... Still, there are some good bits.
• Schoenberg is an acquired taste like pickles or olives or single malt. Perhaps Mr. Hurwitz should start with the Gurrelieder?
• Ok, I agree with him re Schumann's orchestration. He tends to be obsessive about rhythmic patterns sometimes too
• Bruckner has other qualities
• Saying Liszt is trash is like saying Hungarian cuisine is trash--you obviously are oversimplifying
• Ah, Mr. Hurwitz is engaging in a bit of mind-reading--not only of Shostakovich, but also of his audiences.
• As for dismissing all the Bach cantatas so cavalierly, now I am sure Mr. Hurwitz is going to hell!

 

Writing About Music: Then and Now

This is a followup to an item in my miscellanea yesterday. I mentioned that nowadays there is never anything in the mainstream media that requires the slightest acquaintance with music to understand--and that applies specifically to articles supposedly about music! --I know!

I'm finally getting around to reading volume 2 of Richard Taruskin's magisterial book on Stravinsky: Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra. He could only have written this if he were intimately familiar not only with every piece that Stravinsky composed, but also every letter he ever wrote and every letter that was ever written to him (if it were preserved in some archive somewhere) as well as every article every written about Stravinsky in any language whatsoever. And he is not shy about offering voluminous quotes and musical examples. This two volume monograph should be the model for any future publications of this type. Sadly, I suspect that there will be virtually no future publications of this type! Who has the intellectual capacity to do it? Right now I am wishing that there were a similar book(s) on Arnold Schoenberg, because surely he deserves it. But never mind, let's just have a brief sample of the Taruskin to get my argument started.

Stravinsky was feted by the French avant-garde, especially by one Jacques Rivière in the pages of the Nouvelle revue française. This kind of magazine really doesn't exist any more. It was an aggressively nationalistic (as Taruskin describes it) literary forum and ironically it looked to the aesthetic revolution heralded by Stravinsky and the ballets russe as a model. As Taruskin describes it:

Henri Ghéon, one of the founding editors, would announce: "Our dream has been realized--and not by us." The Russians great gift to the French had been an object lesson in "two principles common to all the arts, unity of conception and respect for materials [respect de la matière]." The exemplar of exemplars had been The Firebird, which "confronts us with the most exquisite miracle of equilibrium--of sound, movement, form--that we have ever dreamed of seeing... [Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, p. 990]

Rivière was particularly eloquent about the Rite:

The great novelty of Le sacre du printemps is its renunciation of "sauce." Here is a work that is absolutely pure. Bitter and harsh, if you will; but a work in which no gravy deadens the taste, no art of cooking smooths or smears the edges. It is not a "work of art," with all the usual attendant fuss. Nothing is blurred, nothing is mitigated by shadows; no veils and no poetic sweeteners; not a trace of atmosphere. The work is whole and tough, its parts remain quite raw; they are served up without digestive aids; everything is crisp, intact, clear and crude. [Rivière, Nouvelles études, 73, italics added by Taruskin, quoted in Taruskin, op. cit. p. 992]

There are a couple of points I am trying to make. First, that the music of Stravinsky was important to the art scene in general. Paris was a major, perhaps the major center of artistic activity and Stravinsky was at the heart of it. As such he received real criticism, not just positive as in this case, but lots of negative as well. His work was a nexus of aesthetic debate. Second, notice who Stravinsky is being contrasted with. Who was active in Paris in the early part of the century whose music could be described as atmospheric and poetic? Debussy, of course. Despite that fact that they were friends, it was necessary in terms of the aesthetic battle to see Stravinsky as being the counterpoint to Debussy. Another thing to note here is that the coming neo-classical period of Stravinsky is being hinted at with phrases like "crisp, intact, clear."

Sadly, musical discussion in the mainstream media these days is really not about any kind of aesthetic questions. It consists of puff pieces that simply advertise upcoming concerts such as the piece I mentioned in the miscellanea yesterday. This probably covers 90% of the writing. The other kind of piece revolves entirely around identity politics: why are there not more women conductors, why are there not more black composers featured and so on.

The inevitable conclusion is that, apart from being a small source of income for a few people, classical contemporary music really has very little importance in society and there is virtually nothing at stake musically!

Let's listen to The Firebird for our envoi. This is Valery Gergiev conducting the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival in 2000:

Best Albums of the Year?

We live in a time when criticism, music criticism in particular, is abhorred. Ok, let's go with that. If you don't have criticism, which has to be some sort of bigotry: sexist, colonialist, oppressive, exclusionist, etc, then you have wide open doors and windows, let the sunshine in! In practical terms this means that, as we find from Ted Gioia, you just give a long, long list of everything under the sun: The 100 Best Recordings of 2018. Not only that, but there is a long list of also-rans. Just reading the list makes me tired. So is this any kind of service to the listener? Maybe, let's listen to a few samples. Number two on the list is Marisa Anderson: Cloud Corner, described as "Serene Folk Guitar Instrumentals from Portland"

Uh, ok. Fairly harmless, but I have heard pretty much exactly this dozens of times before. So nothing special. I only skipped the first one because it was described as "Contemporary Soul/R&B Influenced by Billie Holiday, Etta James, Nina Simone" and I have heard lots of that before. The third one is Mark Applebaum: Speed Dating, described as "Experimental Spoken Word Music / Contemporary Classical Music" Blogger won't embed, so follow the link for "3 Unlikely Corporate Sponsorships: No. 1, Nestlé"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOSDV0OeCMQ&list=PLLZA_Fo1X0dh_gR4EhJ_kqTPbaAWZaCx-

This is a polyphonic version of Kurt Schwitters Ursonate mixed up with Tom Waits "Step Right Up" in a special version for kindergarten. Number four is Typh Barrow: Raw, described as the Belgian Amy Winehouse.

Pretty typical soul/blues to my ear, but with a nicely gravelly voice. Number five looks really promising: Thomas Bartlett and Nico Muhly: Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music, described as "Gamelan Transcriptions and Contemporary Songs Inspired by Them" Oh dear, imagine my disappointment when what I hear is gamelan reduced to kind of bland new age music with dreary breathy semi-spoken vocals. I would describe this as road trip music for overstimulated folks who really need to calm down.

And besides isn't this the worst kind of cultural appropriation?

I could go on, but all this seems to prove is that 90% of everything really is crap. If Ted Gioia had actually done the proper job of a music critic and tried to pick the ten good ones out of the hundred, now that would have been a public service. And we could have some good arguments about it. But as it is, in this post-critical wasteland, he makes no critical judgements so you have struggle through the whole bloody list to find the few gems that might lie within. How marvelous.

UPDATE: Just to be fair, this is Ted Gioia's reason for presenting the list as it is:

I am listing my top 100 and honorable

mention albums for 2018 in alphabetical

order, rather than ranking them. This

marks a change from pre-2017 lists. I

am doing this because each of these

albums deserves recognition and the

sequential ranking tended to focus

too much attention on just a few

recordings.

Each of these albums deserves equal recognition? Why is that exactly? How delightfully egalitarian.

Catty Micro-Reviews, New Edition

I can't claim to have invented the mini-review, in fact as classical record reviews seem to be shrinking more and more, pretty soon everyone will be doing them. With horror, I realized the other day that I haven't done a set of catty micro-reviews for years and years. So here goes. My methodology is simple. I just go to YouTube, type in a single letter of the alphabet and listen to the first pop song that comes up. Then I try to deliver a one or two sentence review. Let's start with "A."

First up, believe it or not is "Adventure of a Lifetime" from Coldplay with an astonishing 721,780,550 views:

The opening of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey redone in CGI with a tedious pop-rock back-beat. Kubrick's original soundtrack featured music by Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss and Györgi Ligeti.

Agh, this isn't my day! The first thing that comes up with "B" is "Bodak Yellow" by Cardi B and Blogger doesn't want to embed the original video. Just follow the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEGccV-NOm8

It is a rare accomplishment for a music video to be aesthetically unpleasant in all these dimensions: music, lyrics, fashion, and culturally, but this one manages. How over 490 million people managed to watch this without resulting nausea is a mystery to me.

Typing in "C" brings up a tune by Mexican rapper C-Kan, "Un Par de Balas" which means "A Couple of Bullets."

As rap goes, this is fairly tolerable. I wonder, is it sort of illegal for anyone in this sub-culture to actually not, you know, have any tattoos?

"D" brings up a tune by Ludacris, well known for his recurring role in several Fast and Furious films. Everything in the video is turned into a weird cartoon with more CGI. You know, I think this is how the elite of music these days distinguish themselves from the low-rent artists: CGI budget. A couple of guys in a garage just can't compete, which is the whole idea. Mind you, they certainly could musically, as this music is about as tediously formulaic as possible. Again, follow the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4dPrjh9wCc

"E" brings up a song by Matt Mason, a country singer with a mere 4 million views.

This video is so low-budget that they use default captions from iMovie! Apart from that it is pretty much a standard country song: unfaithful wife, car (or rather truck) chase, use of shotgun, steel guitar solo. Kind of like Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan around the time of Nashville Skyline, with about 70% of the inspiration removed.

After all that, we really need a palate cleanser, don't we? Here is "Lay, Lady Lay" from the aforementioned Nashville Skyline:

Huffpost Explains Why Classical Music Is So Awful

This reminds me of an occasion, years ago, when I was walking through the central plaza just a few days before the chamber music festival was due to begin and I overheard one visitor say to another "chamber music is so boring!" Well, so are superhero movies, dear.

The article over at Huffpost is titled: The Awfulness of Classical Music Explained and you should follow the link and read the whole thing. Here is an excerpt:

there are a great many “clap here, not there” cloak-and-dagger protocols to abide by. I found myself a bit preoccupied — as I believe are many classical concert goers — by the imposing restrictions of ritual behavior on offer: all the shushing and silence and stony faced non-expression of the audience around me, presumably enraptured, certainly deferential, possibly catatonic; a thousand dead looking eyes, flickering silently in the darkness, as if a star field were about to be swallowed by a black hole.

I don’t think classical music was intended to be listened to in this way. And I don’t think it honors the art form for us to maintain such a cadaverous body of rules.

One step therefore we might take to make classical music less boring again is simply for audiences to quit being so blasted reverential.

The most common practices in classical musical venues today represent a contrite response to a totalitarian belief system no one in America buys into anymore. To participate obediently is to act as a slave. It is counter to our culture. And it is not, I am certain, what composers would have wanted: A musical North Korea. Who but a bondservant would desire such a ghastly fate? Quickly now: Rise to your feet and applaud. The Dear Leader is coming on stage to conduct. He will guide us, ever so worshipfully through the necrocracy of composers we are obliged to forever adore.

All this falls into the general category of what I would call "let's make classical music palatable to those people who have no experience of it by making the experience as much like pop music as possible." But Mr. Dare goes overboard with his purple prose, doesn't he? A "thousand dead looking eyes?" Eww. Classical music is just like slavery! Or North Korea! And this is the guy that Huffpost lets write about classical music?

Let me break it down for you. Yes, in the past the etiquette of concerts was quite different. In the 18th century the nobility liked to sit in their private boxes when they attended opera performances so that they could not only eat and drink, but also have liaisons with their mistresses. However, as time went by, a certain etiquette grew up along with the development of public concert halls and subscription series that was designed to reduce the annoying behaviour of some concert-goers and allow the others to hear the music without distractions. Honestly, you can learn this etiquette in about two minutes. None of this applies to pop music, of course, but since it is normally performed with the aid of massive stacks of amplifiers and speakers, it is virtually impossible for any kind of behaviour, no matter how noisy, to actually distract from the deafeningly loud music. The same is not true of a Beethoven adagio.

I could deliver a similar, equally baseless, critique of pop music performances. I find them very unpleasant because of the crush of people, the confusion, the deafening amplification and not least the mechanical drum machine rhythms.

Let's listen to some of that awful music. This is the Emerson Quartet performing the "Dissonance" quartet by Mozart:

Reviews and a Concert

I just ran across a delightful piece of journalism that is a bit of a homage to nasty, critical reviews. It is full of gems ranging from restaurant reviews to record reviews to movie reviews: Why everyone likes to read a negative review, but nobody likes to be reviewed negatively. A sample:

When Pete Wells, restaurant critic at the New York Times, descended upon Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square in the winter of 2012, and returned to his desk to pen an outrageously scornful open letter to owner and namesake Guy Fieri (in lieu of a straightforward review), he transcended New York, transcended his reputation and transcended even the circulation of the Times. “Guy Fieri, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square?” Wells writes, worked into a paroxysm of sardonic fury. “Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?” Those, by the way, are some of the milder barbs. Even a harmless Baked Alaska Wells eviscerates as nothing less than “a representation in sugar and eggs of the experience of going insane.” Wells is, of course, an influential and prolific critic, and a fine writer. Not one word he has written before or since is quite as famous as these.

Restaurant reviews, like movie reviews, can be even more entertaining than their subjects. Music reviews, alas, rarely are. Not sure why, unless it is because popular music reviews tend to be largely advertisements for the product while classical music reviews have to avoid the kind of technical detail that would make for a really telling critique. Mind you, this was much less true in the past. Apparently Hanslick's review of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto haunted him the rest of his days and he was able to quote large portions of it verbatim! Nowadays most classical musicians trudge along, suffering the humiliation of no reviews at all, with the occasional ones consisting of a kind of bland boosterism: "audiences thrilled this past weekend to concerts by ******* and ****** as they performed a selection of music by ******** and *******.

This past weekend I did attend a concert by visiting artists Dmitry Kousov, cello and Yulia Kousov, piano in a concert of music by Bach, Beethoven, Schumann and Prokofiev and quite enjoyed it. I have to admit to a fascination with Russian music and musicians in recent years. This was true even before my mammoth series of posts on Stravinsky (and before him, Shostakovich). Russians, as a people, just seem to take music so very seriously. The first piece on the program was the Sonata in C major, op. 102 for cello and piano by Beethoven. I don't know the Beethoven cello sonatas very well, but from the very first notes, the performers gave an engaging and committed performance. What do I mean by that? As a matter of fact, a lot of performers in classical music are what I call "note-spinners." They go onstage and deliver the right notes in the right order and right rhythm, but one senses that they don't mean a lot by them. They are something less than deeply committed artists. Audiences often don't pick up on this and regard these performances, if they involve enough virtuoso fireworks, as being perfectly acceptable. I find them boring. How is this manifest? It is really in how the details are handled: the timbres, the balancing of harmonies, the minutia of how phrases are shaped. This is where the soul of the music is communicated. In any case, our Russian duo were very much in the music and it was communicated very well.

The second piece was the Cello Suite No. 3, also in C major, by Bach and this was a lively performance. Actually, I thought the prelude was rather too fast. Also, I wish he had done the repeats, at least of the first halves of the dance movements, which he did not, apart from the second bourrée. Very enjoyable nonetheless.

In the second half the Schumann was beautifully lyrical, just as it should be. The Prokofiev was successful as well and I need to investigate his chamber music more. I was puzzled by the enthusiasm of the audience at the end of this piece, given as it was the most challenging on the program. But my companion explained it to me: the audience leapt to their feet and shouted bravo partly because this was the last piece and it is sort of expected. Ah. The performers came back and gave an encore, the Vocalise by Rachmaninov. Luckily we have a YouTube clip of the artists playing that very piece:

The Need for Criticism

A hat tip to Slipped Disc for sending me to this article about the need for criticism: The Reviewer’s Fallacy: When critics aren’t critical enough.

The Reviewer’s Fallacy is a different sort of phenomenon, less premeditated than baked into today’s critical enterprise. One of the root causes stems from Sturgeon’s law, named after its originator, science-fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once observed, “It can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap.” The “It can be argued” part usually isn’t quoted, and the figure is very ballpark. But it’s inarguable that the majority of what comes down the pike, in any medium, is mediocre or worse. It would be tiresome for critics to constantly be counting the ways that the work under review is crap, nor would their editors and the owners of the publications they write for be happy with a consistently downbeat arts section. The result is an unconscious inclination to grade on a curve. That is, if something isn’t very good, but is better than two-thirds of other entries in the genre—superhero epics, quirky or sensitive indie films, detective novels, literary fiction, cable cringe comedies—give it a B or B-plus.

Which can be summed up as "mediocre works reviewed by mediocre critics lead to a universe of mediocrity!"

What is the situation in classical music? One thing that skews both criticism and audience reaction is the impact of popular music. Economically, classical music is dwarfed by the huge amount of money devoted to popular music. In the world of classical music itself, contemporary music is dwarfed by the (relatively) large amount of money devoted to the standard repertoire. I see the trend toward streaming as yet another kind of pressure on classical music and contemporary music in particular. In the past, and still the case in Europe, classical music was so deeply rooted in the culture that it retains a high visibility. concert halls and opera houses dominate the cultural landscape in major urban centers and there is a strong, healthy festival culture that attracts very large numbers of listeners.

The Glastonbury Festival in the UK, five days devoted to popular music, attracts a total audience of 135,000 (figures from the last two years available) while the nearly 100 year old Salzburg Festival in Austria attracted 261,000 last year. Mind you, this is over a six-week span.

Along with the deeply-rooted presence of both standard repertoire and contemporary repertoire in the leading European music institutions, goes a level of criticism that also participates in the traditional aesthetic values--I am speaking here largely of Europe. It is only in the occasional pocket in North America that one encounters much genuine music criticism. When I lived in Montreal, for example, it was only found in the French newspapers and among them only in the most intellectual, Le Devoir. (Real intellectualism seems to be almost restricted to the French press where we also find it in Le Monde and Le Monde diplomatique.) You might also expect it in, for example, the New York Times, the New Yorker and perhaps the Globe and Mail. But, in my view, this is not the case. I have mentioned on a number of occasions my reservations with the writing of Alex Ross at the New Yorker and, absent the occasional column in the past from Richard Taruskin, I don't find a lot of criticism at the New York Times. What is missing? Largely the critical spirit and the tools necessary to express it. Instead we find a slavish genuflection to the received wisdom of the progressive left.

It would take a great deal of courage, backed up with considerable knowledge and expertise, to go against any progressive shibboleth, of course. And I have only seen this exhibited with much finesse in the popular press by Richard Taruskin, who has both in abundance. And even he is very careful to only opine in areas where he has overwhelming expertise.

For a good read, go to the comments on the Slipped Disc post.

Music Criticism, part 1

I've been leaning heavily on Mr. Beardsley when it comes to aesthetics and criticism, but if I am going to do some sample exercises then I need to define my own turf. Part of music criticism, I feel, is the historical aspect. You might think that this is just because, as Frank Zappa said, all the good music was already written by dead white guys in wigs, but in fact all music, even pop music, takes place in an historical context. My early education as an undergraduate included a course in the philosophy of history and I have continued to do a bit of reading in that area. My Renaissance Music History professor was a bit surprised to learn that I not only knew, but had read R. G. Collingwood's The Idea of History. At one time I also tried to read all of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History, though I didn't quite succeed.

I like the idea of what is sometimes called a "thick" description:

In the fields of anthropology, sociology, religious studies, human-centered design and organizational development, a thick description of a human behavior is one that explains not just the behavior, but its context as well, such that the behavior becomes meaningful to an outsider.

This comports well with Collingwood's idea that a historian should try and "get inside" historical figures and events, that is, try to see things from their perspective.

Just as a little experiment I would like to pick a favorite piece of mine and do some aesthetic criticism. The piece is a transcription, by Luys de Narváez for vihuela, of a four part secular chanson by Josquin des Prez titled "Mille Regretz." The original is in the Phrygian mode on E:

Click to enlarge

Most scholars attribute this to Josquin, but there are some who disagree. The practice of transcribing vocal music for fretted string instruments like the lute or vihuela was common in the 16th century as those instruments were just finding their way and the intabulation of vocal counterpoint was an important technical advance. Narváez' setting was known as the "Canción del Emperador" because it became a favorite piece of Philip II, We learn from Wikipedia:

The exact date or even year of Narváez's birth is unknown. He was born in Granada and the earliest surviving references to him indicate that as early as 1526 he was a member of the household of Francisco de los Cobos y Molina, a well-known and very successful patron of the arts who was the Secretary of State and commentator for the kingdom of Castile under Charles V. Narváez lived in Valladolid with his patron until the latter's death in 1547. It was during this period that the composer published Los seys libros del delphín (Valladolid, 1538), a large collection of music.

By 1548 Narváez was employed as musician of the royal chapel, where he also taught music to choristers. His colleagues there included the famous keyboard composer Antonio de Cabezón. Narváez and Cabezón were both employed as musicians for Felipe, Regent of Spain (later Philip II of Spain), and accompanied him on his many journeys. The last reference to Narváez is from one such journey: during the winter of 1549 he resided in the Low Countries.

Narváez was very highly regarded during his lifetime, particularly for his vihuela playing; he was reported to be able to improvise four parts over another four at sight. His son Andrés also became an accomplished vihuelist.

One of the things that Narváez is known for is the very first published sets of instrumental variations that appeared in his book Los seys libros del delphín. But what I want to focus on briefly is the social context. Narváez was a member of the household of the Secretary of State of Charles V and later of the court of Philip II. Spain was, at the time, the first global empire. Transferred to the contemporary world this would be like being a close advisor to John Kerry when he was Secretary of State in the Obama administration and then being a close advisor to Donald Trump. In other words, Narváez was at the very center of world power for much of his career. This says something about his abilities, but also about how patronage has changed over the centuries. Then, outstanding artists were patronized by the highest members of the political aristocracy. Nowadays, the most powerful figures in the arts and media donate enormous amounts of money to elected politicians. Just think how different that is.

Now let's look at the piece by Narváez. He was a composer and performer on the vihuela, the fretted instrument, related to the guitar, that served the role that the lute did in the rest of Europe.

16th century Vihuela

16th century Lute

The two instruments were tuned identically: GCFADG (though some vihuelas were at a different pitch and there was no standard pitch in the 16th century so all this is relative). Guitarists can approximate the tuning of both instruments by tuning the third string to F# and then placing a capo on the third fret.

The first good modern edition of the piece was published in a brief anthology titled Hispanae Citharae Ars Viva ("The Living Art of the Spanish Guitar") transcribed and edited by Maestro Emilio Pujol in 1956. I purchased it in Spain in 1974 when I was studying with José Tomás. He had me do several pieces from the book as an exercise in the separation of voices. Here is the first page of the score:

If you compare the original with the transcription for vihuela you will be a bit perplexed as they don't look anything the same. The note values in the guitar transcription reflect those in the original tablature, but in the modern transcription of the vocal work are reduced by half: a breve (double whole note) becomes a whole and so on. Another change is that the four voices of the original become three voices on the vihuela. Also, if you compare the two versions you will see that one measure in the vocal piece becomes two in the vihuela. But that is far from all! Nearly everything is varied on the vihuela. Take the second measure in the vocal score: it becomes the third and fourth in the vihuela score. The bass line is the same (F to D in the voice becoming C to A in the vihuela) given the transposition from E Phrygian to B Prygian. But all the eighth notes are added ornaments. This is partly because the vihuela cannot sustain notes the way the voice can and also because these kinds of free ornaments were very popular in Spain at the time. Tomás de Santa María, a composer and theorist, published an extensive book on ornamentation in 1565 titled Arte de tañer fantasía. From then on the vihuela version is so different from the vocal one that it might better be described as a free fantasia on the Josquin original. This is not surprising as Narváez is a pretty significant composer: he was the first to publish a set of variations on a theme.

Now let's listen to the two pieces. First the Josquin original with the score:

Now the version for vihuela with the original tablature (the lowest string is at the top):

I think that covers the first two stages of criticism: description and interpretation? The third is evaluation. I think it is safe to say that this is one of the best vihuela pieces in the repertoire. It is based on a very famous piece by Josquin and the transcription is famous in its own right. It is popular with performers and audiences and was certainly a hit with Philip II. I think the reason is that it is a very expressive piece with the underlying melancholy of the Phrygian mode, successfully exploited in both versions, and with the delicate filigree of the vihuela ornamentation. As this is meant to be a very basic exercise in music criticism I won't go any further!

So there you go...

A Practical Exercise in Criticism

Way back in 2013, frustrated with the inadequate record reviews that seem to be the norm these days, I put up the kind of review I thought should be done: A Sample Record Review. That is just the first of four posts in which I compare three different recordings of the finale to the Op. 131, C# minor quartet by Beethoven. In 2015 I did another review in which I compared three different recordings on harpsichord of the Bach Goldberg Variations, none by Glenn Gould. Much as I think these were both valid exercises and generally superior to the reviews that typically appear in the mass media, I was largely going on instinct, meaning I didn't think much about my methodology. I think my instincts, honed by fifty years as a musician, are pretty good, but one of the things I have learned from Beardsley is that it is worth thinking about your methodology.

So to that end, I want to do what I am calling a "practical exercise in criticism" in which I will do some criticism and talk about what I am doing and why. Like most artists just the word "criticism" tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I think that is because most artists have suffered unfair and biased criticism in their lives and tend to prefer that they just be praised for what they do! But while that is probably better than nasty, unfair criticism, it is still far short of what good criticism can do. What is good criticism? I think that my recent posts on aesthetics give us a hint and especially the last one: Aesthetics: Categories and Criticism. I am going to continue those posts, based on Beardsley's book on aesthetics, but alongside them, I want to launch another series in which I will undertake some practical criticism. The idea is to resurrect the idea of good criticism which seems to have nearly died.

One example of just how poorly criticism is practiced these days is this one from NewMusicBox:

I spent this summer immersed in the music of Roomful of Teeth, a “vocal band” consisting of eight singers with a commitment to exploring the expressive potential of the human voice. I was doing research in order to better understand how and why composers were using what—at that point—I was describing as “polystylism.” I spent my time labeling non-Western classical elements in the group’s pieces, gathering information on the composers’ backgrounds and “non-classical” experience (like Wally Gunn’s time spent in a punk band), interviewing the composers about their opinions relating to this topic, and eventually observing the group’s rehearsals at MASS MoCA during their intensive annual summer residency. Some time into my research, I grew uncertain about the basis of my research question; as I continued to wonder what the varied stylistic elements in each composer’s pieces meant, I also began to question whether they really had to mean anything at all. What if the composers just wanted to write this way, without any interest in “polystylism” or what their use of different styles means? Maybe this music, and the music these composers are writing outside of Roomful of Teeth, has nothing to do with stylistic elements at all.

The writer Hannah Schiller, a young scholar, is "a senior in the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. Her research interests center around the current musical moment; she is particularly drawn to post-genre concepts and music emerging from classically trained musicians that is difficult to categorize." I have linked to this essay before. I think that her approach illustrates the huge gaps in the curriculum left by the excising of traditional aesthetics, as well as their replacement with psychological concepts and a kind of inchoate post-modern cultural theory.

Notice how musical specifics are carefully avoided, but instead we are always looking at the performers' commitment, the composers' background and experience, the meaning of stylistic elements and so on. Later on this is made more explicit:

Post-genre thinking seeks to move away from objective judgment of music towards a subjective reality, where the emphasis is no longer on whether a certain piece fits/does not fit a pre-conceptualized genre “bin.” Instead, the emphasis is on the individual intent of the composer. The individual is quite important to post-genre thinking. This framework focuses on viewing individual pieces separately from what other composers are creating as well as from preexisting expectations, allowing composers to write whatever it is they want to write.

The writer seems unaware of both the tools and limits of criticism so gets lost in a welter of psychological flotsam and jetsam. Beardsley showed in a very famous paper on "The Intentional Fallacy" the problem with that approach:

Beardsley is probably best known for his very first article in aesthetics. In “The Intentional Fallacy,” a paper co-written with William K. Wimsatt and published in 1946 (and widely re-printed, e.g., in Joseph Margolis, ed., Philosophy Looks at the Arts, 3rd edition, 1987), he argued against the neo-Romantic view that a work of art means what the artist says it means, or what he intends it to mean.

An artist's intentions are utterly irrelevant to the descriptive, interpretive, and evaluative properties of his work.

Which, if you think for a moment, makes perfect sense. Every time I sit down to write a piece, my intention is to write One of the Great Works of Western Music. Sadly, it never turns out to be the case. Only in an environment saturated with psychological explanations and bereft of aesthetics would we think otherwise.

Of course we view individual pieces separately and we avoid preexisting expectations and allow composers to write whatever they want. The assumption that the contrary is advocated by someone is just a Straw Man.

I hope this gives an idea of the kind of failed approach that seems to be common these days. What I want to do is outline an alternative by creating a criticism of a piece of music that follows what I consider to be a valid and reasonable approach. Now I have to figure out what would be a good piece to pick as an example! I think something contemporary would be the best. Any suggestions?

The Disappearance of the Negative Review

Once again, the Wall Street Journal comes up with an interesting article on the arts. This time "What Happened to the Negative Music Review?"

If you rely on reviews to decide what books to buy, movies to watch or restaurants to visit, you may have noticed something strange when it comes to pop music: Negative reviews have become extremely rare.

Between 2012 and 2016, Metacritic, a website that aggregates critics’ reviews for music, films, television and video-games, gave just eight out of 7,287 albums a “red” score—a designation that means reviews were “generally unfavorable” or worse.

Movies, by comparison, garner many more negatives: So far this year, Metacritic has given 39 out of 380 movies a red score. For albums, not one out of 787 albums aggregated thus far this year has received a red score.

The writer, Neil Shah, makes an attempt to analyze what is going on:

A recent album by Radiohead was excessively praised by critics, notes freelance critic Joseph Schafer. “A Moon Shaped Pool,” which includes old songs that the band had performed but had not previously recorded, appeared on many year-end lists. “The band’s first album in five years was half a B-sides collection and half boring,” Mr. Schafer says, who didn’t review the album. “This record was lazy, why didn’t people call the band out?” Radiohead declined to comment.

“It can sometimes feel like there’s less of an appetite for [serious] criticism, or the culture has decided it’s unimportant,” says Amanda Petrusich, an assistant professor at New York University who teaches music writing and contributes to the New Yorker. “It makes [criticism] feel like just an extension of public relations.”

I've talked about this here on the Music Salon a lot. Trends in social and mass media tend to favor the stars:

Meanwhile, megastars like Drake, armed with huge social-media followings, can generate publicity themselves; there’s little upside to giving interviews or forwarding advance copies to critics. Some artists—Beyoncé and her sister Solange, for example—have taken to interviewing each other. 

Sure, in a context where music is really just entertainment, serious criticism is simply out of place. Negativity strikes the wrong note and doesn't help to increase sales! The lack of negative reviews is a reflection of the tectonic shift in music from the profound to the trivial. This is taking place not only in the pop world but also in the classical world. Here, have a look at this Deutsche Grammophon commercial (they call it a "trailer") for a new Yuja Wang album:

Now That's Entertainment!

I think that there are some underlying cultural trends that feed into this. For one thing, as I have been saying lately, the lack of aesthetics gives critics no tools or techniques to base their criticism on. In a context where everyone believes that taste is completely subjective and relative, just what does a music critic offer? After all, your judgment is just as good as his, right? My series of posts on aesthetics is an attempt to restore the place of aesthetics, but hey, a whole lot of other people are going to have to pitch in! The other trend that is eliminating critical judgment is commercialization. Music as a serious art form is being largely replaced by music as a shallow entertainment. To me, this is even more worrying than the disappearance of aesthetics (though I suspect these two things are linked). So if music is just another cultural "product" then talk about it either furthers the sale of the product or it doesn't.

One argument that is sometimes used is the argument from consumer protection. Just as a restaurant review can caution you from patronizing a particular restaurant due to quality or health issues, so, it is proposed, a capable music reviewer can steer you away from wasting your money on crap. This is the implied rationale in this excerpt from the WSJ article:

Music fans can try out new albums on streaming services such as YouTube or Spotify, so often music critics aren’t as necessary as consumer guides. In the age of Twitter , Amazon.com and review aggregators, individual reviews by elite critics may matter less.

But this fails to identify one important historical function of music critics: the introduction of new important artists to the public, as Robert Schumann did when he wrote about Chopin in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Another important function was to develop and shape public taste as critics like George Bernard Shaw illustrate:

Shaw's collected musical criticism, published in three volumes, runs to more than 2,700 pages.[248] It covers the British musical scene from 1876 to 1950, but the core of the collection dates from his six years as music critic of The Star and The World in the late 1880s and early 1890s. In his view music criticism should be interesting to everyone rather than just the musical élite, and he wrote for the non-specialist, avoiding technical jargon—"Mesopotamian words like 'the dominant of D major'".[n 27] He was fiercely partisan in his columns, promoting the music of Wagner and decrying that of Brahms and those British composers such as Stanford and Parry whom he saw as Brahmsian.[67][250] He campaigned against the prevailing fashion for performances of Handel oratorios with huge amateur choirs and inflated orchestration, calling for "a chorus of twenty capable artists".[251] He railed against opera productions unrealistically staged or sung in languages the audience did not speak.[252]

--from the Wikipedia article

Bernard Shaw was working in a different context where his goal was to open out the world of high musical art to a wider public, hence his avoidance of technical vocabulary. The task today is rather different, I think. It is more to perhaps reintroduce the distinctions between art and entertainment. I'm not sure I have the answer, though.

I think that the tell-tale clue in the next to last quote above are the words "elite critics." Anything "elite" is anathema because it is probably racist, sexist and post-colonial! Our little infatuation with social justice continues to exact a heavy price, I'm afraid.

I've always been rather fond of the skillful critical demolition. One of my favorite passages in Kingsley Amis' novel Lucky Jim was the one where he praises a fellow boarding house guest by remarking on his ability to silently look around at his surroundings with an air of utter dismissal and contempt. Yes, I'm afraid we have been underrating the power, not to mention the entertainment value, of ridicule and negative criticism. I used to do the occasional post devoted to what I called "catty micro-reviews", perhaps I should do some more. Here is a sample.

"Cheerless, senseless and overproduced"

Here is my favorite review of the week: Various artists: Re:works Piano review – tiring, tedious and boring:

The most callous kind of crossover saps the integrity of both forms being crossed. Decca – once a stamp of prestige, now part of the Universal label group cashing in on the trend for insipid “neo-classical” – releases the next in its Re:Works series with this grim chillout collection of electronic remixes. Cheerless, senseless and overproduced, it smothers the remaining life out of Pachelbel’s Canon, weirdly straitjackets Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and trashes the maverick surrealist stasis of Satie’s Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. It’s not new, it is tiring, it is very boring.

After that you really need a taste of it. This is their version of a Gymnopédie by Erik Satie that manages to not only spit on the original but also on the little crossover licks that infest it. Is it possible for music to make you a better person? Perhaps not. But this seems evidence that some musical performances can make you stupider and shallower than you were before.

P. M. vs G. M.

My post about the Tommasini column yesterday generated a lot of comments which inspire me to another post. I think the most absurd sentence in the Tommasini piece was this:

“Eleanor Rigby,” I’d argue, is just as profound as Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony.

That is just the kind of absurdity that we children of the 60s have been indoctrinated to accept without question. It reminds me of the silliest thing my professor said in Philosophy 101. We were talking about time and he said, with a completely straight face, that whereas humans perceive time as a linear continuum, for dolphins it is an expanding spiral! Honestly, how would anyone know!?!?

So, Mr. Tommasini, let's hear your argument. Resolved that "Eleanor Rigby" is just as profound as Mahler's "Resurrection Symphony." I shall have to provide his arguments myself as he has not bothered to give them.

First of all, some criteria. Let's say that a piece of music might strive for profundity in five dimensions: "message", intensity, innovation, complexity and unity. I am not going to provide the arguments for why I have chosen these--some of them reflect categories argued for in Beardsley's book on aesthetics and the first one, "message", I chose simply because both the works under consideration have a sung text.

Let's take the text first. Eleanor Rigby, with lyrics mostly by Paul McCartney, has this text:

"Eleanor Rigby"

Ah, look at all the lonely people

Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been

Lives in a dream

Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door

Who is it for?

All the lonely people

Where do they all come from?

All the lonely people

Where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear

No one comes near

Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there

What does he care?

All the lonely people

Where do they all come from?

All the lonely people

Where do they all belong?

Ah, look at all the lonely people

Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name

Nobody came

Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave

No one was saved

All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people)

Where do they all come from?

All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people)

Where do they all belong?

This is a pretty fair picture of English working class life at a certain moment in time and on a level considerably higher than the usual popular music lyrics. Is it profound? Relatively so, I suppose, but not compared to, for example, the poetry of English contemporary Philip Larkin whose most famous verse goes like this:

This Be The Verse

BY PHILIP LARKIN

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

What about the text to the Mahler symphony? To save a bit of space, I'm going to link to the Wikipedia article on the symphony which has the original German and English translation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._2_(Mahler)#Fourth_movement

The Mahler text might be seen as both elegiac and prophetic if you see it as being both a tribute to European civilisation and a harbinger of the First World War, a kind of civilisational suicide attempt. The McCartney lyric gives an evocative depiction of the alienation of the post-WWII English working class, drifting in a kind of limbo with the loss of empire and the diminishing of their horizons. Depending on how you view things historically, you might argue that either text is more "profound" than the other. Perhaps, as the McCartney lyric focuses on a specific social group at a specific moment in time it is less universal than the Mahler lyric, which deals with the themes of death and resurrection.

Now let's move on to the dimension of intensity. In its context, popular music in the 1960s, Eleanor Rigby certainly has an almost unique expressive intensity, likely matched only by two other McCartney songs with string accompaniment: Yesterday and She's Leaving Home. In all three of these songs, George Martin, the Beatles' long-time musically-trained producer, created the arrangements for Paul, who did not read music. Paul apparently sang some melodic lines to him. I suspect that Mr. Tommasini chose Eleanor Rigby over the other two because it has a more appealing social message. Musically it is nice, but perhaps not of great significance. The harmony throughout is a simple alternation between E minor and C major (with an occasional passing harmony). The final harmony is E minor. The harmony is really non-functional therefore and would be analyzed like this:

i - VI - i - VI - i - VI etc.

Not what you would call terribly intense harmonically. Here are the first two pages of the score:

The Mahler symphony has an interesting harmonic ambiguity as well: it tends to hover between the two areas of E flat and C minor, which share the key signature of three flats. Title page says C minor. Here are the first two pages:

Being as this is the introduction to the first movement of a piece about an hour and a half long, and it is late Romantic, this is probably one of the least active areas, harmonically. But there are a few interesting things going on. For one thing, there is a dominant pedal: G. The other parts present different ideas against this: the turn figure at the beginning which is sequenced upward, the dotted motif dropping an octave. By measure 8 we have a hint at a modulation to the dominant suggested by the F sharp. But the modulation does not materialize, instead we have a brief suggestion of the key of E flat major before returning to the dotted motif, but this time on G instead of C. Then there is a descending melodic sequence in the bass. Finally, at the end of this excerpt, we have a new theme moving from C through the outline of a D minor triad to C again.

Motivically there is as much going on in the McCartney song as there is in the first two pages of the Mahler, but bear in mind that the Mahler score has another 200 pages to go, the McCartney just two more and we have already seen all the material in the first two pages.

I don't think I really need to continue this exercise do I? The plain truth is that as soon as you start to do any serious evaluation of the two pieces the overwhelming impression is that the McCartney is a rather nice two minute pop song, creatively excellent within the parameters of its genre, while the Mahler is a huge artwork of considerable complexity and requiring great instrumental and vocal forces, not to mention long-term intense concentration on the part of the audience. To compare them is absurd. It is not a case of comparing apples to oranges, it is more like comparing the economic clout of Andorra to that of the European Union.

What is really seriously troubling is that the music critic for the New York Times can say something so absurd publicly and only be called out by relatively few readers in the comment section. This is probably attributable to the fact that few people these days know much about music or music history or theory.

Tommasini is Wrong if...

A commentator alerts me to a piece by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times on Trump's comment on the symphony. I appreciate the heads up as I quit reading the NY Times back when snarky political commentary started creeping into the Travel and Food sections. I have already talked about Trump's defence of civilization in his speech in Warsaw in a couple of posts, but let's see what Mr. Tommasini has to say:

During one riff, Mr. Trump extolled the richness, history and, indeed, the superiority of Western culture. “We write symphonies,” he proudly proclaimed, as if to prove his point.

Many commentators seized on the line as a clue to the president’s thinking, his “white-nationalist dog-whistling,” as Jonathan Capehart, a columnist at The Washington Post, bluntly put it.

But the president’s smug invocation of the Western symphonic heritage also pressed a sore spot for me as a music critic. Nothing impedes the appreciation of classical music — and keeps potential listeners away — more than the perception that it is an elitist art form, that composers throughout history, and their aficionados today, uniformly consider it the greatest, loftiest and most ingenious kind of music. Few classical music fans, in my experience, argue that the Western symphonic repertory stands apart from or atop music of other cultures, or other types of Western music.

It must be a terribly awkward position to be in, to have one's career devoted to the critical appreciation of classical music but to have one's soul riven by doubt as to its quality:

“Eleanor Rigby,” I’d argue, is just as profound as Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony. But the Mahler, scored for large orchestra, chorus and two vocal soloists, is a whole lot longer, lasting more than 80 minutes. You have to have a penchant for hearing large-scale structures unfold over relatively long periods to appreciate classical music, though this can be an acquired skill.

It’s this large-scale quality, the sheer dimension of expression that the master composers strove for, that makes classical music different. This doesn’t mean it’s superior.

What would make it superior, one wonders? Better choreography?

What Mr. Tommasini and many of his colleagues seem to have are some deep-seated neuroses about art, history and certain words. As an important part of their role is to educate and shape taste, even though they might deny it, this makes it difficult for them to say good things about classical music. It is long and requires focus, therefore more difficult to appreciate than, say, Eleanor Rigby. So if it does not offer a depth of aesthetic experience commensurate with the greater challenge, then why bother? Why indeed!

I think the problem is that the intellectual elite of our day, which certainly must include Mr. Tommasini, have instilled in them a certain ideology that commits them to a profound guilt about Western Civilization. Part of this is an egalitarian ethos that erases all standards of taste and quality. This is an unquestioned assumption that, if you sincerely hold it, causes you to say that Eleanor Rigby is just as profound as Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. Or, my favorite example, that Justin Bieber is just as profound as Bach. Lady Gaga and Franz Schubert. Hey, we could go on all day. This, by the way, is what we in the philosophy biz call a "reductio ad absurdum."

Here is another manifestation of the ethos:

Few classical music fans, in my experience, argue that the Western symphonic repertory stands apart from or atop music of other cultures, or other types of Western music.

But with just three words Mr. Trump buttressed this unfortunate perception. Did he mean that Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony is simply greater than, say, an Indian sitar master playing a classic raga? Or an exhilarating Indonesian gamelan ensemble?

Well, few classical music fans that are as deeply indoctrinated as Mr. Tommasini, certainly. But whenever I see judgments like this I strongly suspect that the author of them knows very little about North Indian music nor Javanese gamelan. There is a fundamental difference between the way those musics are composed and performed and the Western tradition in music which takes on very different and much more profound aesthetic challenges. Frankly, the doctrine of multiculturalism is pretty much a lie.

Leaving that outrageous statement for you to ponder, let's listen to Eleanor Rigby and, ok, Mahler:

What do you think?

Dispensable Music Critics

I got a very interesting comment on a recent post that I thought deserved its own post. The post was The Thin Edge of a Critical Wedge which you should read first. Here is the relevant paragraph:

Unfortunately most of the cultural trends these days exclude the notion of objective criticism of the arts entirely, so the first task might well be to explain to everyone just how and why arts criticism is important and necessary.

And here is the Anonymous comment:

“so the first task might well be to explain to everyone just how and why arts criticism is important and necessary.”

This has been discussed recently at Amazon’s classical forums. I tend to agree with this post arguing that criticism is superseded now that audiences have access to more information than the venerated critics of old ever did. To whit:

“Criticism was, in its heyday of the postwar 1950s, an elite class of followers explaining, perhaps arbitrating, culture to the rest of us. Today, few need it. 21st century people have the same access to just about everything as critics. Anyone with the Internet and a computer or tablet can locate as much culture as any critic and learn to make judgments themselves.”

I count a couple of professional classical music critics among my friends, and one thing that’s always struck me is that my record collection is much larger than theirs, thanks in part to most classical recordings now being readily available at no cost through internet filesharing. Back when music cost money, a critic might have helped one choose what to spend one’s limited funds on, but now that it’s all free, I can just download it all.

 There are a whole lot of comments at the link, pro, con and otherwise. I think that this is an interesting variation on a critique of criticism that might be summarized as "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" which is interpreted to mean that anyone's aesthetic perception is as good as anyone else's, or, aesthetics is relative. The interesting new element is the access pretty well everyone has (at least in modern, first world nations) to virtually every piece of music there is. This was not true a hundred and more years ago when it took critics like Robert Schumann to introduce audiences to newcomers like Chopin. What remains the same, however, is the dispute over the objectivity of aesthetics and the utility of criticism.

Yes, you can "just download it all" though if the "all" means all classical music that is going to take a while. You don't even have to download it though, you can just listen to it on YouTube or stream it on a number of commercial services. But while this may cost you very little or nothing in terms of money, there are very significant costs in terms of time!

I yield place to no-one in my distrust of so-called "experts". I have often commented that some of the supposed friends and supporters of classical music are really our worst enemies. And we have just seem a mammoth demonstration of just how far wrong the assembled hoards of intellectuals, media personalities, newspapers of record, journalists, celebrities and pundits can be. But despite all this, the thoughts of those who really are experienced, educated and possessing of finely-tuned sensibilities are as valuable as ever. Perhaps more so.

Don't even call it "criticism" if the word offends you. Just call it "writing about music". This is a difficult task, but one I find very fulfilling and so apparently do rather a large number of readers and commentators on this blog.

What criticism really offers, when it is well done, is a process and means of selection. Frankly, no-one has time to listen to everything. If a critic or writer I trust points me to a particular composer or performer that is worth my time, I am grateful. There is an astounding amount of music that is probably best avoided, so counsel as to which is also valuable. Not to deny the importance of everyone's individual judgment. But I think that there is nothing wrong with learning from people who really have something to say and penetrating observations to share.

One phenomenon that is probably not marked enough is the decline in culture generally which we can see if we compare Donald Francis Tovey's essays on musical analysis, originally written as program notes, with recent books on music by people like David Hurwitz. Perhaps the last gasp of really serious writing on music for the general public was Richard Taruskin's monumental Oxford History of Western Music and we are not likely to see something like it anytime soon.

Music recordings and information about music are more available than ever before. Real knowledge and wisdom about music is perhaps rarer than ever.

Let's have some Chopin for an envoi. This is Grigory Sokolov playing the Preludes, op. 28 in a concert in Salzburg in 2008:

The Thin Edge of a Critical Wedge

The theatre critic at The Guardian, Michael Billington, has a piece up about the oddly vague dangers of subsidizing arts criticism: A subsidised critic is the thin end of a dangerous wedge. The piece takes its departure from a New York Times story about a consortium of non-profit groups who are going to help pay the salary of an arts critic. Let's quote from that item:

As media coverage of classical music continues a decades-long diminuendo across the United States, The Boston Globe is trying something new: On Monday it announced a pilot program in which a consortium of nonprofit groups would help it pay for a critic.

The groups — the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation — will help The Globe pay for Zoë Madonna to be a music critic at the newspaper for 10 months, beginning on Monday. The consortium said that the Globe would retain complete editorial control over her assignments and her work.

The arrangement, which could expand to other papers if it is successful, is seen as a potential way to halt the erosion of classical music criticism in America, where many magazines and newspapers no longer employ classical critics and, increasingly, no longer review classical music. The situation has been something of a vicious cycle: If the trend began because general interest in classical music was shrinking, many arts groups now fear that the disappearance of media coverage is hastening that decline.

Well that's clear enough, plus extra points for the musical metaphor in paragraph one. So what is Mr. Billington's objection? It is rather an odd one, actually:

...the dangers of extending the idea of altruistic giving to critics are obvious. In the specific case of Boston, the San Francisco Conservatory has a roster of distinguished alumni and the Getty Foundation supports many musical institutions. It is perfectly possible that Ms Madonna may find herself reviewing work by the products of both organisations. I know nothing of Ms Madonna but I am perfectly sure she will jealously guard her integrity. The danger, in such a situation, is not that the critic will give a soft ride to her fellow beneficiaries, it is more likely that she will be unduly rigorous in order to display her independence. 

I say odd because all the recent examples I can recall are ones where a music critic was actually fired for doing his job after complaints from the arts organizations that his critiques were too critical, not supportive enough. In the most blatant recent example, the editors sided with the arts groups and happily spiked the review.

It seems to me that the editorial control is as much a problem as arts groups that expect nothing but puff-pieces and boosterism. I probably have more trust that a consortium of non-profit groups would actually let the critic do his job than I do that the newspaper editors would. Every day we see examples of the most horrendous bias and propaganda emanating from all the mass media.

Unfortunately most of the cultural trends these days exclude the notion of objective criticism of the arts entirely, so the first task might well be to explain to everyone just how and why arts criticism is important and necessary.

Let's have a listen to some music for inspiration. This is the late Schubert Quintet in C major. This is a cello quintet, meaning that it for a string quartet with an extra cello. The other kind of string quintet is the kind Mozart wrote for, with an extra viola. I have two very different performances for you. The first is an all-star lineup from Prades in 1952 with Isaac Stern, violin-Alexander Schneider, violin-Milton Katims, viola-Pablo Casals, cello and Paul Tortelier, cello:

The other performance is by the young Canadian Afiara Quartet joined by Joel Krosnick on cello. There is an introduction and the performance starts at the 8:20 mark: