Clever, Clever

Music theorist and weblogger Scott Spiegelberg writes:

Uh oh, ACD is going to be upset. Alex Ross used technical language in describing the opening of Mozart's Magic Flute. This combination of technical savvy and elegant expression is why my students have all preferred Alex's New Yorker reviews to those of Midgette, Tommasini, Gann, Kindelsperger, et al. (Nick Kindelsperger writes music reviews for the student newspaper here.) Yes, the Magic Flute is an opera, so ACD might excuse such language as it can be used to illuminate the drama. Except, Alex does not link this description to any of the dramatic themes of the opera, treating the overture as a separate and absolute piece of music.

My, my. How clever of Scott to pick up on Alex's post only after Alex majorly revised the post's text. In the original text of that post (which, unhappily, I didn't think to make copy of), Alex's central, and, in fact, entire point was precisely to relate and tie all that technical jargon to matters dramatic, emotional, and philosophic in the overture and within Zauberflöte. With all due respect to Alex (and as readers of this weblog are aware, as far as I'm concerned the respect due is considerable), before he revised his text, what he had to say about those three introductory chords (not five; the upbeats don't count in this particular business) and how they function dramatically, emotionally, and philosophically within the overture, and within Zauberflöte itself, was quite lovely and quite illuminating, which is not to say I agreed wholly with Alex's analysis, or that I didn't find some of his points a bit of a stretch. In the revised text, however — the text Scott felt moved to comment on — Alex's priorly illuminating technical language is now nothing more than your typical, standard, musicological gibberish, and says nothing whatsoever useful or illuminating about the music or Zauberflöte, except, perhaps, to academics, specialists, and specialist wannabes. (And, yes, I was able to follow that technical language with perfect understanding. It ain't rocket science, y'know.)

So, with apologies, Alex, and with respect, I must say you really ought to have left the central substance of that original text intact. Defensible or not, on-target or not, as the ideas of your original analysis may have been, they were the very things that made the post illuminating and worthwhile reading.