Sounds & Fury

Stage Versus Film

(Note: This post has been edited for clarity as of 4:48 AM Eastern on 31 Dec.)
(Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:02 AM Eastern on 31 Dec. See below.)

I extend my thanks to playwright and weblogger George Hunka of Superfluities for his gracious compliance with my request to explain for the benefit of non-theater-goers such as myself who think live theater an anachronism why theater should survive as an art form. I thank him as well for his, "ACD, far from 'wooden-post ignorant,' knows exactly what is missing from American theater that keeps him from attending it...."

But as a matter of fact I don't know, beyond my compelling sense that, aesthetically considered (i.e., aesthetically as in the Joycean formulation), anything done live on stage in the theater can be better done in a film.

George uses as an analogue case for live theater versus film the difference between a live and recorded classical music performance, citing Glenn Gould's decision to give up live performance, and confine his performances to recordings only. George then goes on to say that Gould's recorded performances, especially of the Goldberg Variations (and here just a small correction: the 1955 recording was the "landmark" performance, not the 1981)

are prima facie different sorts of monsters than the same music performed by the same pianist in a live performance. Lacking especially is the Collective Other: the audience convening as physical community. The nature of aesthetic communion in a collective body of individuals meets a rather different need. It is the difference between communion offered as part of a Sunday church service and communion offered at the sickbed of a hospital-bound communicant.

While that's no doubt largely true, it rather misses the point as an analogue case, I think. A film of, say, Beckett's Godot (i.e., made as a film, not a filmed record of the stage play) is potentially, inherently and in itself, capable of producing a more convincing aesthetic product in terms of the play itself than the play presented live on stage (not the case in a recording of a piece of music versus a live performance of that same piece), and that capability has nothing whatsoever to do with "the Collective Other" which is a function of audience response alone, that same response experienced with film just as with live theater. My sense of the thing is that film is always potentially capable of producing the more successful and satisfactory product aesthetically in terms of the play itself because of the almost infinite control of all aspects of the realization of the text possible in film from largest stroke to smallest detail, something not possible on the stage. This is true even for the most perfectly technically crafted stage work which takes into full consideration all the limitations of the stage (I can think of no meaningful benefits; i.e., ones that are unique to the stage, and not available to film).

George concludes his post with:

We American theater workers won't get ACD back to the theater until we can give him a theater that he recognizes as a worthwhile aesthetic experience, an experience he can't get from a movie, a DVD or a television series.

So my question to George really distills down to: Of just what does that aesthetic (as opposed to the Joycean kinetic sensual) experience consist; an aesthetic experience provided by live theater and not provided by film in terms of the work itself? When film is an available alternative, what possible aesthetic justification can there be for producing a work live on the stage (i.e., aesthetic justification in terms of the realization of the work itself) other than to satisfy the sensual needs of those who get an adrenalin rush from the Bullfight Syndrome attendant all live performance of anything whatsoever, and who simply love the romance and very idea of live theater? (I omit as totally frivolous the attraction for some of occupying for a time the same physical space as big-name stars, or even just ordinary, real live actors.)

I can think of none.

---

Update (7:02 AM Eastern on 31 Dec): Weblogger John Shaw of Utopian Turtletop comments. My response to his comment is contained in the comments section attached to his post.

Graceless Schmuck

Or how politics and political ideology corrupt and sully everything they touch.

More On The Character Of Keys

Composer and weblogger Martin Suckling of Musica Transatlantica Blog takes well-argued issue with certain of my comments on the extra-musical character of keys. Writes Mr. Suckling:

I think that the extra-musical character of keys has very little to do with perfect pitch [as I implied it did in my above linked post] and a lot to do with how instruments themselves work. For example, whether or not you can tell they start on different pitches, a B-flat major scale on the violin sounds very different from an E-major scale for a whole range reasons. They interact with the instrument's natural resonances in different ways, they require the violinist to shift at different points in the scale, one is higher in relation to the instrument's range than the other and so has a shriller, more intense quality, and so on and so on. These considerations apply to all instruments and contribute to making some keys more "natural" and "friendly" on specific instruments than others - there's a reason why lots of guitar music is in E minor. If you transpose a piece to a different key, assuming you don't retune the instruments, the physical requirements for playing that piece are altered a great deal, and an element of this will be transmitted to the audience, whether or not they perceive the change in pitch.

But perhaps you wouldn't notice these differences "in isolation" [the condition I specified in my above linked post]. Perhaps, but then music doesn't exist in a vacuum.

I think Mr. Suckling may have a point.

RTWT here.

The Way It Should Be — Everywhere

Man-oh-man-oh-man! If every classical music critic had the classical music knowledge — substantive and of the biz — of this man, and possessed his ability to write with the engaging eloquence displayed in this review, classical music would be out of its short-of-audience doldrums in no time flat.

New OED CD-ROM

I yesterday received the hot-off-the-press, newly released CD-ROM version (v3.1) of the complete OED, Second Edition — i.e., the entire contents of all 20 print volumes of the OED (1989), plus its 1993 and 1997 Additions Series, plus draft entries from its new edition not yet in print — and eagerly installed it on my machine (Windows XP; it's not available for Fruit Machines).

Gads!, what a great reference work to have at one's fingertips with all its many sophisticated search functions, and with the capability for one to double-click on any word in any Windows application running on the computer, and immediately have that word's entry in the OED displayed for one's perusal (the OED must be running in the background for this function to work).

Is there any small downside to this information prodigy of the computer age? Why, yes, there is. I've never in my life encountered such a protected piece of software. In order to defend itself against unauthorized copying and use, not only does the software require annoyingly picky verification and registration on first installing and booting up, but every 90 days it requires you to re-verify, and re-register the software so that it knows it's still running on the same machine on which it was first installed. If that re-verification and re-registration fails, the software will refuse to boot the dictionary.

I've mixed feelings about that sort of protection. On one hand, it's a pain in the ass, and seems excessive. On the other, had I the investment Oxford University Press has in the OED, I'd damn well protect my property and profits by any means possible, and screw the occasional annoyance and inconvenience to the user.

What's that? How much does this gem of an electronic reference work cost? A mere $225 (street price; $295 list) against some $1500 for the print edition.

A bargain by anyone's standards.

The Character Of Keys

Weblogger and print arts journalist Terry Teachout of About Last Night has up a nifty post concerning a phenomenon which has forever been for me both of keen interest and a bugaboo: the extra-musical character of keys (the musical sort, that is). Writes Mr. Teachout:

I mentioned the other day that Dvorak’s String Sextet was written in “A major, that most divinely innocent of keys."

[...]

Since I experience the expressive qualities of keys as something like a cross between a color and an emotion, “hating” the key of E minor would be like hating, say, dark blue-green, a notion that strikes me as alien but not altogether absurd (one might well speak of "hating" fear, just as you might hate the taste of cauliflower). In any case, other musicians have had prejudices similar to that of Billy Joel: Sviatoslav Richter, the great Russian pianist, mentioned more than once in his diary that he disliked the key of F minor.

It’s probably worth mentioning that I had perfect pitch when I was a working musician, but that I lost it when I stopped playing an instrument regularly and fell out of touch with the physical materials of music-making. I still have perfect relative pitch, but my mental key center has sagged a half-step. Ask me to sing an A and I’ll sing an A-flat (unless I stop to think about it, in which case I’ll remember to transpose the note I hear in my head up a half-step to compensate). Nevertheless, the Dvorak String Sextet still sounds innocent to me.

I sometimes wonder whether lay listeners who lack this kind of perceptual sensitivity might possibly experience music in more or less the same way that an achromatically color-blind person (that is, someone who sees the world in black and white) experiences visual stimuli, at least when compared to someone like me. To be sure, I’m not a synaesthete: I don’t see specific colors when I hear specific sounds. I do, however, experience key signatures and harmonies in a way I take to be analogous to the perception of color, and because I have perfect relative pitch, this also means that I always “know where I am” when listening to a piece of tonal music.

Yeah. Go ahead. Rub it in. I don't possess perfect pitch (although I once did possess fairly well-developed relative pitch), and hate with an unquenchable hatred all who were born with this rare gift. (The Real Deal is genetic and a life-long possession once "programmed," not correlated in any way with innate musicality or musical gift, and can't be acquired although a useful simulacrum can be developed if one begins developing it early enough in life, and daily uses it. That simulacrum is really a highly developed version of relative pitch, and very much a use-it-or-lose-it deal as perfect pitch is not. Although perfect pitch can go "off pitch" by a precisely measurable degree later in life, it can always be "reprogrammed" to its original accuracy with but a little effort.)

I always comforted myself for that lack of gift by reminding myself, and often, that Leonard Bernstein lacked the gift as well, as did — mirabile dictu! — no less than Richard Wagner himself, if one can believe such a thing. As if to compensate me for my lack, Providence granted me an extremely sensitive sense of pitch accuracy (I can hear a difference of as little as 1 cent — 1/100 of a tempered semitone — in pitch, and a 3-cents difference is annoying beyond endurance), and a curious and unexplainable visualizing sense of musical structure (on hearing even the most complicated new piece for but a second time, and with no recourse to the score, I can automatically visualize as a sort of quasi-picture its internal form with no effort made to do so even though I may not know even so much as the technical name of the form(s) I'm visualizing).

To those of us deprived of perfect pitch, all tempered scales sound exactly alike when played in isolation (but not, I hasten to add, the modes of those scales which sound markedly different, and are immediately identifiable), and a piece transposed from one key to another, and played in isolation (i.e., with no proximate reference to the original key) sounds exactly like the piece played in its original key, or any other key, for that matter.

Oh!, to just once be able to hear those tempered key differences, and experience their different extra-musical characters!

Breathtaking

Don't ask. Don't hesitate. Just click here now, right now, and be sure to click through once you're there, after having managed to catch your breath.

The Emperor of Ice Cream

(Note: This post has been edited as of 4:54 AM Eastern on 14 Dec, to correct a prior omission, and for clarity.)

At a suggestion of mine, weblogger Aaron Haspel of God Of The Machine some time ago took a crack at an analysis of Wallace Stevens's cryptic poem, The Emperor of Ice Cream. Unlike Aaron, I'm no student of poetry, and in point of fact have a fairly well entrenched aversion to much of it, especially the postmodern sort, most of which of my experience is little more than ordinary (as in pedestrian) prose masquerading on the page as poetry by being printed in short lines, and broken up into arbitrary "stanzas."

Such, however, is not the case with Steven's superb and enigmatic Emperor, and my lack of qualification notwithstanding, I'd like to take issue with Aaron's reading of the poem, and with part of his method of analysis.

First, the text of the poem in full:

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

My disagreement with Aaron's method is on a general point of approach to poetic analysis. Aaron recommends "pillaging the poet's life and work, should it prove useful," and then declares, "Here [i.e., with this poem] it does."

But as this poem is a genuine work of art, such an approach is not only not useful, but can lead the reader to a central misunderstanding as it did, in my opinion, Aaron, which misunderstanding will, I think, become apparent at the conclusion of this brief examination. More generally, such an approach is always a cardinal error in the analysis of any genuine work of art. Such an approach is rarely if ever enlightening, and often times positively misleading, as in this case. As I've several times elsewhere on this weblog asserted, genuine works of art are always self-contained in the sense that they contain within themselves everything necessary for their understanding, even when alluding or pointing to something outside themselves to convey or capture meaning.

And so it is with Emperor.

To continue with Aaron's reading, he next — again putting into practice his analytic method, and guided by its finding that "Stevens was a wealthy and cultivated man" — declares his objection to what he sees as Stevens's use of "imperative tense."

[T]he poem is snobbish: Stevens invites the reader to sneer at the characters of the poem as from a hill. It is written entirely in the imperative, except for the last line of each stanza, to some unspecified hearer. Imperative tense, used this way, enforces distance: when the boxing announcer says "Let's get ready to ruuuumble!" you can be sure that you (or he) won't be doing any rumbling, personally. Stevens takes special pains to remove himself, and his reader, from the scene, the better to hold his nose.

"Imperative tense"? But there is no imperative tense here. Rather, the entire poem employs the rhetorical device of exhortative apostrophe, giving the work a compelling force, weight, and urgency it would otherwise lack. The rhetoric is elevated, but is absent so much as a trace of "snobbish[ness]" or nose-holding.

And what for Aaron is the poem's central meaning? Still following his analytic method, Aaron concludes:

[Stevens] knew Key West well, which is probably where this poem takes place, since ice-cream was commonly served at funerals. His poetry has a single theme: hedonism. For Stevens all is illusion but immediate sensation. "Let be be finale of seem" means "Abandon all effort to give meaning to existence, and take what comfort you can from the roiling life around you. [...] The Emperor of Ice-Cream essentially inverts ars longa, vita brevis, the embroidered sheet being literally too short to serve even as a proper shroud. Vita, if we translate it loosely as animal vitality, is what lasts. Truth resides with the wenches, the muscular roller, the big cigars, and the concupiscent curds. In the idiom of the seventh line, be trumps seem. "The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. "

Well, perhaps. It's not at all unreasonable.

But let's now do some abandoning of our own by abandoning Aaron's method altogether, and letting the poem speak for itself entirely.

The first thing that arrests one's attention is the striking duality embodied in the poem's two-stanza totality; the duality of Eros and Thanatos, of Life and Death, existentially (and psychoanalytically) considered. The unrestrained libidinous exuberance of lines 1-3 of the first stanza:

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

in resonant and polar opposition to the ashen morbidity of lines 4-6 of the second:

And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.

And then the homely details of ordinary life and custom at this homely and ordinary wake: of the living in lines 4-6 of the first stanza:

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

and of the dead in lines 1-3 of the second:

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once

And then the kickers; first, in the closing two lines of the first stanza:

Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

and last, in the closing two lines of the second:

Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

both of which closing couplets refer to the same thing.

Nowhere can be heard anything "snobbish" in any of this. It's all rather a fundamentally human, even humane, celebration of life itself; elevated in its rhetoric, but very much down to earth in its sentiment.

So, what, then, centrally is this enigmatic poem about, and what is it telling us when permitted to speak for itself unencumbered by any consideration of its author's history, which history is always irrelevant to a genuine work of art?

We're at a wake. But despite what a wake is (the "seems"), it's not death — which is an ending — that should be our concern, the poem appears to be saying, but the Will to the here and now (the "be," which is always a beginning); the here and now of vital, superabundant, ongoing life with its "concupiscent curds", which Will should always be "the finale of [every] seems," even a seems such as this, and on which Will the "lamp" (i.e., the sun; emblematic of life, and negator of death) should "affix its beam," so that we may the more radiantly behold that Will is truly "the only emperor...the emperor of ice cream," which is to say the life force itself in all its rich and overflowing concupiscent yumminess.

As I've said, a celebration of life, and a roadmap out of the darkness.

Or something like that.

Advice For Composers

Composer and weblogger Frederic Himebaugh of The Fredösphere has some advice for composers:

• My friend Dave (a fellow amateur composer) and I like to talk about what we call the Masterpiece Syndrome. He and I are always dreaming of writing that one bold, visionary piece of music that will make the whole world fall to its knees in awe. What an inspiration killer. It makes an artist extremely peevish. Under its spell, I sit at the piano, staring at the keys for minutes, then finally play a single note. "F-sharp," I sigh, "what a cliché!"

• The Kwest for Komplexity is a disease closely related to the Masterpiece Syndrome. Whenever I find myself thinking "...and then here I will put two minutes of really sophisticated, really complicated stuff that will be real impressive..." I know I'm in trouble. What will follow is an hour of throwing notes at the computer monitor to see which ones stick, followed in turn by a playback session that reveals a big shapeless blob of soulless nonsense. Heed this warning: do not compose this way. It is a waste of time.

All "New Music" composers take note.

RTWT here.

Tch, Tch, Tch

Former literature professor and weblogger Daniel Green of The Reading Experience is on the warpath (or as much on the warpath as a former academic is capable) against the sub rosa or stealth conservative bias he perceives in the links provided by that indispensable, daily updated online index to online articles for the brainy, Arts & Letters Daily (which title Dr. Green, um, cleverly parodies in the title of his post: "Farts and Fetters — Daily").

Concludes Dr. Green:

The Arts & Letters Daily worldview seems to perceive all truly contrarian opinions and practices, whether in politics or art and literature, as the collective expressions of radical leftists and dippy postmodernists. They are approached not usually with outright scorn but with mock surprise (Can you believe these people?) and unconcealed sarcasm. Usually they are conflated, as if political dissidents and artists were all members of the same infernal club, always conspiring to undermine Western values and American hegemony.

What's that? You mean to say they're not? (The preceding question directed at both the above conclusions.)

RTWT here.

Pretty Piece

Here's a pretty piece on Glenn Gould which ends:

In the last interview Gould gave — republished in The Glenn Gould Reader — he comprehensively rubbished the early Romantic repertoire. "I have always felt that the whole centre core of the piano repertoire is a colossal waste of time ... This generalization includes Chopin, Liszt, Schumann ... I don't think any of the early Romantic composers knew how to write for the piano ... The music of that era is full of empty theatrical gestures, full of exhibitionism, and it has a worldly, hedonistic quality that simply turns me off."

Yes, that negates just about everything poor old [pianist, Alfred] Brendel stands for. But for others, it represents the most bracing provocation from the ultimate aesthete. Long live Glenn Gould; long may he continue to provoke.

To all of which I can only say, Amen!

Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse

Some time ago, having gone without sleep all night, and unable to fall asleep the following day, I went surfing desperately through the few TV channels left me (my cable company finally caught on that, through an oversight on their part, they were providing me way more channels than I was paying for) trying to find something, anything, at least halfway not idiotic to pass the time, and perhaps lull me to sleep. And — mirabile dictu! — I happened onto the opening (on PBS) of Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse, a superb, Oscar-nominated (1997), almost-two-hour-long 1996 documentary film, then unknown to me, tracing the career of the celebrated New York City Ballet prima ballerina, and narrated on-camera by the then 51-year-old Miss Farrell herself.

Even though she was 51 and afflicted with arthritis (most prominently apparent in her hands), one's attention was arrested immediately by the still beautiful face, and by an astonishingly lithe, tall, and elegantly willowy figure that would lead one instantly to conclude that this woman could be nothing other than a ballerina even were one totally ignorant of just who Suzanne Farrell might be.

And what a story she has to tell! In a manner almost brutally frank, Miss Farrell begins by leading the viewer through her first days as tomboy Roberta Sue Ficker, born 1945 in Cincinnati, where she began ballet studies at age twelve at the city's Conservatory of Music, and there showed such precocity in her development she was accepted, in 1960 at age fifteen, at the legendary George Balanchine's School of American Ballet. A year later, at Balanchine's own invitation, she joined him at the New York City Ballet where, after just two years, and through one of those classic storybook accidents, she replaced the then reigning prima ballerina, who had become incapacitated by virtue of becoming pregnant, in the prima role in the new, and never-before-performed Stravinsky-Balanchine ballet, Movements for Piano and Orchestra.

The rest, as they say, is history.

And quite a remarkable history it turned out to be, too. At this remove, one is almost tempted to say it was surely a case of life imitating art so uncannily does it seem to parallel in certain telling respects the story told in that now-classic 1948 epic British film on the ballet life, The Red Shoes. But this story is, if anything, even more engrossing, and Miss Farrell's affecting, and at times painful, narration detailing her involvement, romantic and professional, with Balanchine is extended and made richer and more vivid by the candid commentary of several other of the leading players, most of them dancers themselves, as well as by a generous measure of archival film footage of a number of rehearsals with Balanchine himself (he died in 1983), and of actual performances.

If this stunning documentary ever plays at a PBS station near you, ink it into your day's schedule. Or better yet, if you've the equipment, buy the VHS or DVD (the boxing for both the VHS and DVD editions erroneously indicates 1990 as the date of the film, but the film is copyrighted 1996). It will provide you two of the most worthwhile hours you'll ever spend in front of the tube even if, like me, you've no particular affection for, or even interest in, the ballet, and are largely ignorant of its aesthetic and technical peculiarities.

What We Have Here Is Failure To Communicate

Professional harpist and weblogger Helen Radice of Twang Twang Twang makes thoughtful comment on the exchange between weblogger and New Yorker music critic Alex Ross and myself on the matter of what is and what is not the proper function of the classical music critic in our present and future culture (although, unless she intended it, I do wish she'd chosen a less double-entendre-loaded metaphor to describe it).

Thoughtful as Ms. Radice's post is, it betrays several rather fundamental misunderstandings of what I wrote. Writes Ms. Radice:

Alex consistently advocates widely-referential writing, "finding a language that intrigues both...an actual audience and a potential audience...[for] classical music." ACD grinds no axe against comprehensible language, but prefers a narrower approach better to persuade "a marketplace already resolutely hostile to such fundamentally and, more to the point, unchangeably elite enterprises."

[...]

[I]f, as ACD decrees, you should not refer to other art forms when you write about classical music, and you should only write about classical music if that is your no.1 and only specialism, what about the elements of other art forms that make up the music - drama in opera, text in a song, narrative in a tone-poem?

My objection was not in the least directed at a classical music critic using "widely-referential writing" in his critical writings on classical music. I'm in fact all for that sort of critical writing on the arts, classical music very much included, as, when well-informed and trenchantly employed, such widely-referential writing can only enrich critical commentary. What I took exception to was a classical music critic writing on other musics exclusive of classical music in his regular column — i.e., regularly devoting his column at times to critical writing on pop music, or rock music, or hip-hop, etc., etc., etc. It's my contention that a classical music critic's regular column should at all times be a column devoted to classical music, not a column to be shared with critical writings on other musics. Taking that exception is not at all the same thing as taking exception to "widely-referential writing" in critical writings on classical music, of which sort of writing, I repeat, I'm all in favor.

On another matter, Ms. Radice writes:

As with good written style, you need an opinion, but you also need reasons. And I would say that to denote classical music as the highest form of music, point [as does ACD], is not an argument. The music doesn't back it up. Eleanor Rigby is no less sad than Mahler 10, and you can analyse both pieces using classical techniques. [...] I can't trace ACD's line where classical music becomes better than the rest.

"The music doesn't back it up"(!)? That, and the rest of the above coming from a classical musician is, to say the very least, nothing short of utterly dismaying. "Eleanor Rigby" (one of my favorite pop tunes, BTW) being "no less sad than Mahler 10" is a measure of nothing vis-à-vis this matter. Bypassing that a comparison of "Eleanor Rigby" with, say, Schubert's "Death and The Maiden" (the song, not the nicknamed quartet) would have been far more appropriate, "Eleanor Rigby", sad as it is, is musically, poetically, and aesthetically simpleminded compared with Mahler #10 (or with "Death and The Maiden", for that matter), albeit far more complex than 99% of pop tunes. As I've elsewhere remarked, "[A hallmark of] genuine art, whatever its medium, [is that it] always possesses secrets, and gives them up slowly, little by little, only to the most searching and probing eye or ear, the greatest works seemingly having an almost limitless store which are never divulged entirely no matter how long and deep the searching and probing." Musically, poetically, and aesthetically, "Eleanor Rigby" harbors few secrets, and what secrets it does harbor are grasped after only a hearing or two, if not immediately. The same is by no stretch the case with Mahler #10 — or with "Death and The Maiden" — both of which, musically, poetically, and aesthetically, harbor tantalizing secrets whose depths may never be fully plumbed.

In short, and with all due respect to Ms. Radice, the comparison is a perfectly risible one. "Eleanor Rigby" can no more be compared musically, poetically, and aesthetically with Mahler #10 (or "Death and The Maiden") than can "the proverbial apples and oranges be compared, delectable-wise, on the delectability continuum of things-that-one-can-eat-that-grow-on-trees," as I've also elsewhere remarked.

And finally, there are these two little items:

ACD refutes Alex's suggestion of a "horse race with Beethoven or Charlie Parker out in front", but he has yet to define his "one instantiation of music that alone is capable of subsuming and transfiguring all of music's other instantiations." Which one? Beethoven 5? The Radetsky March?

and

ACD bleakly retorts: "one cannot define anything as 'worth loving'." I find his conclusion a bit hard to understand, but I do know this. If you perform music without love, it is just sound, just noise. It has nothing to say.

In answer to the first, my suggestion to Ms. Radice is that she read again what I wrote. The "one instantiation of music that alone is capable of subsuming and transfiguring all of music's other instantiations" is classical music itself, not an instance of classical music. And to the second, Ms. Radice would find what I wrote less hard to understand if she would again read it — in its immediate context this time.

The Classical Music Critic Of The Future

(Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 3:38 AM Eastern on 6 Dec. See below.)

Regular readers of this weblog know that the classical music writings of Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, are a special favorite of mine. Part of the reason why can be gleaned from this sampling of his remarks made at a recent conference of classical music critics held at Columbia University titled, "Shifting Ears: A Symposium on the Present State and Future of Classical Music Criticism" (an article on the conference may be read here):

• We're all fighters in a strange guerrilla war in which the object is not to defeat an enemy but to win a place at the table. This doesn't mean you give up objectivity and become a PR agent for the business. It means, instead, that you write with more urgency, more immediacy. The writing itself becomes crucial. Language is our secret weapon.

• Classical music has an actual audience and a potential audience. I try to write with both fanatical and unconverted readers in mind. The trick is in finding a language that intrigues both.

• If the big orchestra is playing the same repertory ad nauseam, I don't have to complain ad nauseam. Instead, I can seek out youth orchestras, new-music ensembles, chamber groups playing in inner-city schools. Critics can take the lead in showing where music should go.

• There is nothing shameful in unchecked enthusiasm. If I walk out dancing on air, I say it in the review, even if my colleagues smirk.

Altogether the way the thing ought to be done (and to which list of do's I might myself add, the deft wielding of the stiletto when called for); all of it, it should go without saying but unhappily can't, in the hands of one who, like Mr. Ross, really knows his classical music in depth, and who can expound on the music's historical aspects and technical peculiarities when necessary or clarifying with civilian-comprehensible lucidity.

But then there's this reported by the author of the above linked article:

The symposium wound up with a dialogue between Ross and Justin Davidson of Newsday that attempted to define the classical music critic of the future. They agreed on one thing: the critic of the future will be eclectic, as demonstrated, perhaps, in their own work. Along with his classical music columns, Ross has written about Bob Dylan, Radiohead and Björk for The New Yorker. At Newsday, Davidson reviews not only classical music but also architecture; he has written on such disparate topics as guns in America and changing definitions of masculinity.

I cannot but see this as a damagingly and colossally wrongheaded way of thinking. Few things could be more calculatedly devised to diffuse rather than underline the importance both of classical music and classical music criticism than that classical music critics should be "eclectic" (in the above sense of the term) in what they regularly write about (as opposed to their personal, private-time interests, or to their writings in occasional, non-classical-music, non-column specialty pieces).

I don't dispute that the case may be that if the classical music critic of the future wants to stay in business he'll of necessity have to be eclectic (again, in the above sense of the term) in his writings. The temper of the times and our present culture unhappily would seem to demand it of him if he wants to be read by a large enough segment of the population to justify his being paid an at least living wage by his employers. But let's not confuse the two matters, please. What's good for the working classical music critic is not necessarily good for classical music generally, and a classical music critic being eclectic in his regular column writings on music most certainly is not.

For overriding example, such an eclectic approach tends, by inescapable implication, to place classical music in the position of being just one of many musics, which postmodern notion is, of course, patently absurd. As I've elsewhere on this weblog noted, classical music is not "merely 'one of [music's many] streams' [as another, ostensibly classical music critic put it], but music's very apotheosis; the one instantiation of music that alone is capable of subsuming and transfiguring all of music's other instantiations."

That's not a classical music fanatic's wild-eyed rant, nor is it the rant of a cultural snob. It's a demonstrable, objective fact. There was a time not long past when acknowledgement of that fact was implicit in the music section of the arts pages of almost all mainstream publications. When the term music was used alone it meant always classical music, all other musics requiring an identifying qualification (e.g., rock music, folk music, pop music, etc.). Today, the opposite is the normative case. It's classical music that always requires the identifying qualification.

For a classical music critic to even by implication suggest, in an attempt to make it appear more accessible, that classical music is other than what I've above described it to be is to do classical music further, even irreparable, harm in the present cultural marketplace; a marketplace already resolutely hostile to such fundamentally and, more to the point, unchangeably elite enterprises. I put it to you that's not something the dedicated and conscientious classical music critic of the future ought to be contributing to, or play any part in.

Declaring unequivocally what the classical music critic of the future should not be or do is, of course, the easy part. Declaring what he ought to be and do and still be able to remain in business is the hard part, and something about which I've no practical suggestions to make because not professionally involved in the field, and therefore unable to assess the viability of, or even identify, any existing alternatives. But alternatives to being eclectic (once again, in the above sense of the term) there must be, for if there are not, classical music and classical music criticism as vital, thriving parts of our cultural life are doomed to go the way of the dodo.

---

Update (4:24 AM Eastern on 3 Dec): Alex Ross responds. I would only point out to Mr. Ross that nothing I wrote suggested engaging in a "horse race with Beethoven or Charlie Parker out in front." What I suggested was that in order to be effective, and do classical music the justice it deserves, a classical music critic ought to be just that in his regular column writing, and leave regular critical writing on other music genres and sundry other fields to other specialist critics in their own regular columns.

As to G. B. Shaw, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Wagner as examples of those who wrote classical music criticism but who were "writer[s] who...encompass[ed] more than one realm," and therefore are examples of those "whose words will resonate longest" by virtue of that fact, I can only respond: red herring and non sequitur, and for obvious reasons. Nothing I suggested finds objectionable or would bar such first-rate artists in other high culture fields writing classical music criticism on the side as did those men, today or in future. But, then, that speaks not at all to the problem at hand, does it.

As to the case generally, first, it's problematic, to say the least, that "[t]he writer who can encompass more than one realm is the one whose words will resonate longest," although it's more likely to be true than not that the words of such a one will be read by more people, albeit of diffuse makeup. What's also more likely to be true than not, however, and for good reason, is that the words of such a one will never carry as great a weight or as great an authority in each realm as they would were they written by one devoted to that realm alone. I suggest that's a lousy tradeoff when the stakes are as high as they are in the matter at issue.

Update (3:38 AM Eastern on 6 Dec): Helen Radice makes comment, to which comment(s) I reply here.

The Great Defender

I recently found myself in the curious-for-me position of encouraging publicly a fellow member of a classical music list to which I sometimes contribute to give Schoenberg's "atonal" monodrama Erwartung another several listens before giving up on it as impossible to listen to because it "makes no musical sense." Wrote A.C. Douglas, that great defender of the atonal:

Far be it from my intent to come across sounding like a defender of the atonal, but if I may offer a suggestion...

While it's true that most (or, rather, most of my experience) atonal compositions are largely incoherent, self-indulgent crap musically, Erwartung is not among them. Schoenberg's hugely difficult Freudian monodrama (I know it's hugely difficult musically even though I've never seen the score) is instead richly powerful and darkly beautiful if deeply disturbing (what else?; it's Freudian, after all).

Much as appreciating and understanding a mature-period Wagner music-drama requires a considerable and only-with-effort-achieved mental paradigm shift for one whose sole and long-time experience of opera is of the Italian-form sort, so Erwartung requires a considerable and only-with-effort-achieved mental paradigm shift for one whose sole and long-time experience is of ordinary tonal music. The essential mental trick is an abandoning of one's musical expectations (N.P.I.).

By that I mean an abandoning of one's natural and largely culturally-determined musical expectations of, at some point or points, finding "safety" and release in tensionless tonic resolution(s), and an abandoning as well of one's expectations in the ordering of musical progression both of the melodic and harmonic sort; that subconscious (but not unconscious) feeling that one knows or can sort of "predict" measure-by-measure what's coming next. Those musical expectations are tough to dump overboard, and it requires a huge effort of will to accomplish, but unless accomplished will make any work not traditionally tonal forever inaccessible. Doubtless, this is no great loss, generally speaking, but in the case of a work such as Erwartung it's a loss of not inconsiderable dimension.

That apologia of mine brought immediate expressions of dismay from other members of the list who were by now expecting (again, N.P.I.), if inured to, my trashing of any music not essentially triad-grounded. My answer to them is, Erwartung, although often described as atonal, is nothing of the sort. The music may read as atonal on the page (as mentioned above, I've never seen the score, so can't vouch for that), and be analyzed as atonal by musicologists, but how the page reads doesn't count ultimately, nor do the opinions of musicologists. What counts — the only thing that counts — is how the music sounds, and in that respect Erwartung lacks the distinguishing hallmark of all truly atonal music of my experience: viz., it all sounds like musical gibberish. Erwartung sounds nothing like musical gibberish at any time, and careful listening will reveal that its musical "glue" — the at-bottom thing that makes it coherent musically — is that a tonic, or more correctly, tonics, are everywhere implied. The music may never land securely or restfully on any of those tonics, but that's beside the point, the point being that Erwartung doesn't sound atonal because it's not. It's polytonal; you know, like Bach or Wagner, only way, way more extreme.

One might be tempted to argue that the only reason Erwartung may not sound like musical gibberish is because of the logic imposed on the whole by the text of the sung vocal line. To anyone reckless enough to attempt such an argument my response would be to suggest to him that he mentally replace the sung vocal line with a trumpet, and hear the work through in that fashion. He'll quickly come to realize that Erwartung remains musically coherent sans any text at all. And that's because it's an at-bottom (poly)tonal work presenting itself as its disreputable atonal cousin only to the careless listener.

(I really love defending this work. It makes me feel so..., so... modern.)