Sounds & Fury

The Role Of The Arts Critic In A Wired, Postmodern World

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 2:00 PM Eastern on 1 Aug. See below.]

Blogger, lawyer, and freelance writer Zach Carstensen of The Gathering Note — a fine classical music blog heretofore unknown to us but called to our attention via a post by Scott Spiegelberg of Musical Perceptions, and now added to our exclusive Culture Blogs listing on our left sidebar — has this to say about arts critics and arts criticism:

I am not a journalist by training but I have freelanced. I am a lawyer. I didn’t go to J school and I have never been a staff critic. What I know is arts journalism is changing and I think it is changing for the better. Arbiters of taste are becoming a thing of the past when the Internet and recorded music can help anyone become an expert on Brahms, Beethoven, or even someone like Conlon Nancarrow. There are more tools than ever for people to form opinions about the music they are hearing and the events they are going to and just as many ways to express an opinion about what they are hearing. Facebook and Twitter let Average Joes pan a performance or tout its virtues.

These changes might seem unsettling. For people who run magazines and newspapers it is probably as unsettling as the emergence of Napster was to the recorded music industry. I think these changes bother people because they diminish the power of the print media as an opinion maker.

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Arts organizations are nervous for completely different reasons. As magazines, newspapers, and critics disappear there are fewer mainstream publications telling them their performances are good. Ironically this hand wringing is occurring at the same time the explosion of social networking and other platforms has made it easier for their audience to comment on what they are hearing. This new type of commentary isn’t always good, but some of it is very good especially when compared to the Mad Lib concert reviews we have become accustomed to. Ultimately, shouldn’t the opinion of the audience matter more than someone who brands himself a critic?

In the world of the arts (as opposed to the world of popular culture), the answer to that question is, of course, a resounding No — that is, assuming the one who "brands himself a critic" has the education, training, experience, and expertise that would bestow upon him a right to that title. For arts organizations to look to and take in earnest the opinions of the arts world equivalent of the Common Man to assess how well they're doing artistically is a perfect prescription for artistic suicide. The arts world's Common Man may be entitled to an opinion, but it's entirely worthless to anyone but himself and his kind. To say the thing less generously, the arts world's Common Man is not entitled to an opinion beyond expressing that he liked or disliked whatever it is he heard and/or saw, and, given the source, we all know just how worthless that sort of judgment is except to the one declaring it.

Mr. Carstensen then muses,

I don’t believe critics will disappear, but their role will change. Someone has to shape the discourse. Maybe the role of the critic is one of a moderator; someone who might expound on a subject but never pretend to be the final word on a subject. Maybe a critic is someone who is interested in what other people have to say and is willing to provide a forum for them to express themselves. Maybe the critic is the conduit between the media that remain, the audience, and the musicians. What do you think the role of the critic should be?

And the answer to that question is that the role of a genuine arts critic (i.e., someone who has the education, training, experience, and expertise that would bestow upon him a right to that title) should and ought to be what it's been since Day One: to provide illumination for, and educate and generally enlighten the arts world's Common Man, and to provide aesthetically, technically, and historically well-informed critical feedback to arts organizations who have forever looked to well-informed critics to help them (the arts organizations) make clear-eyed assessments of their own artistic performance notwithstanding their perennial and de rigueur bitching and moaning about the uselessness of critics and what they have to say.

We fervently hope Mr. Carstensen is right in his expectation that arts critics (genuine arts critics, of course) will not disappear. They're a necessary element in and component of a culturally healthy and flourishing arts scene, for in their absence yawns the mosh pit.

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Update (2:00 PM Eastern on 1 Aug): Zach Carstensen responds by selectively quoting from and commenting on our above (he omits quoting or making any comment on or mention of what we had to say regarding the central issue to hand: the role of the arts critic), and in the process thoroughly misunderstands our point while unwittingly confirming it; viz., that the arts world's Common Man isn't qualified or competent to hold an opinion beyond expressing what they liked or didn't like about what they heard and/or saw (or will hear and/or see). None but a properly educated, trained, experienced, and expert arts critic is qualified and competent to express opinions beyond that and have those opinions worth something other than their worth to the one expressing them.

What's that we hear you saying? That's an outright elitist position to take?

You betcherass it is. It's also an ineluctable truth of the real world.

Chaconne

Here's an interesting virtuoso-side-by-side comparison.

In time-period order:

Menhuin
Heifetz
Milstein
Perlman
Hahn

Comments are open for a week.

A Remarkably Expressive...

Take a look at this remarkably expressive...What?

Is it a painting or a photo? We would have sworn it was a painting, perhaps by Edward Hopper, but we're informed that it's indeed a photo — a photo taken using a non-state-of-the-art, 1.3 megapixel Nokia camera phone by actor and published photographer Joel Grey, and included in his recent book, 1.3 – Images from My Phone.

We're suitably impressed.

(Our thanks to WNYC Culturist blogger Benjamen Walker for the image and the link.)

"It's A Hit!"

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:50 PM Eastern on 27 Jul. See below.]

The Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout, the librettist for the new opera, The Letter, by composer Paul Moravec which had its world premiere at the Santa Fe Opera last night, has up on his blog a marvelous account of the event from his personal, immediately-after-the-fact viewpoint that is well worth your time reading.

Sample:

Ninety-five minutes after [lead soprano] Pat[ricia] Racette fired the six pistol shots that set The Letter in motion, the orchestra blasted out a climactic E-minor chord and the stage went black. A fraction of a second later, the audience burst into loud applause. I looked at my wife [Hilary] for the first time and kissed her. My brother and sister-in-law, who were seated to her left, said something I couldn't quite catch. Then I saw Paul [Moravec] getting to his feet. The two of us had been told before the show to head for the stage door as soon as the performance was over, so I gave Hilary's hand a quick squeeze, stood up, and started backstage. Just before I got to the stage door I ran into Brad Woolbright, the Santa Fe Opera's artistic administrator, a man who under normal circumstances is almost alarmingly cool and self-contained. Tonight his face was lit up like a Christmas tree. "They like it! It's a hit!" he said, then hugged me.

RTWT here.

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Update (1:50 PM Eastern on 27 Jul): Anne Midgette on The Letter.

Ouch!

Is Classical Music Trying To Be Fashionable?

Here's an interesting piece by Andrew Clark, chief classical music critic for the Financial Times:

There is a lot of noise in classical music today. It’s not the noise we associate with the louder forms of pop and rock. Nor is it the noise of percussive or electronic effects that have become a significant part of the classical composer’s armoury over the past 50 years.

It’s a different kind of noise — call it “noises off” — that, in the eyes and ears of hard-core classical aficionados, is threatening to drown the music. It’s the sound of classical music trying to be fashionable, relevant to the internet generation.

RTWT here.

Huh?

[Note: This post has been updated (3) as of 5:22 PM Eastern on 23 Jul. See below.]

The German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, interviewed Stephan Moesch, "an expert on Wagner and the editor-in-chief of Opernwelt (World of Opera), a prominent German trade journal", concerning the future direction of the Bayreuther Festspiele under the new co-directorship of half-sisters Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier. A virtual cigar to anyone who can make sense of the following response from Herr Moesch:

I would like to see Wagner's compositional legacy play a greater role — that his works are not only staged differently, but that they also reflect the context in which Wagner lived and worked and are confronted with new ways of listening.

The Comments Section of this post is opened for a week for your convenience.

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Update (3:27 PM Eastern on 23 Jul): The so-far two comments on this post have mysteriously stopped displaying although both are still intact. The TypePad techies have been notified of the problem, and we're waiting for their response.

Stay tuned.

Update 2 (3:49 PM Eastern on 23 Jul): The two comments have spontaneously reappeared and are now displaying as per normal. No idea what the problem was.

Update 3 (5:22 PM Eastern on 23 Jul): TypePad tech informs us that the problem was that "TypePad released an update to TypePad earlier today which resulted in the comments not displaying on your posts. We rolled back the release, and the comments are now displaying without error."

The Arts Critic's Prime Directive

In an article written for the Los Angeles Times, Terry Teachout, drama critic for The Wall Street Journal who writes about himself and his work on his blog About Last Night, thinks there's some truth to the dictum, "Those who cannot do, review":

Critics don't get much respect. (Pause here for raucous laughter.) If you doubt it, look up the word "critic" in any book of quotations and see what you find.

H.L. Mencken's New Dictionary of Quotations is full of zinger after zinger, most of which revolve around a single theme: Those who cannot do, review. I especially like this sulfurous couplet by John Dryden: "They who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write / Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite."

Is that true? Not really — yet there's some truth in it, especially when it comes to my particular line of work.

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Many critics have managed to write well about the arts while keeping their creative maidenheads intact. But most of the best ones ... have had at least some professional experience in at least one of the art forms about which they write.

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[H]ands-on experience also gives critics a proper respect for what Wilfrid Sheed calls "the simple miracle of getting the curtain up every night." It's hard to sing Violetta in La Traviata or play the Stage Manager in Our Town. It's scary to go out in front of a thousand people and put yourself on the line. Unless you know what it takes to do that night after night — not just in theory but in your blood and bones — your criticism is likely to be more idealistic than realistic.

But isn't it an essential part of an arts critic's professional responsibility and obligation to measure a performance or an artwork against an ideal; an ideal formed by the critic's extensive study of and experience in the domain(s) which he covers; study and experience as a student and observer, not as a performer or creative participant? It seems to us that a critic who knows from his own attempts "what it takes" from a performer's or creator's standpoint is subtly handicapped in making clear-eyed and bias-free critical assessments as those assessments are certain to be colored by the experience of his own attempts which, more likely than not, are not at all reflective of the experience of those genuinely gifted performers and creators who pursue their art precisely because of that genuine gift no matter the generousness of the gift.

In any case, while empathy with and an understanding of performers and creators and their efforts formed and provoked by a critic's own performing and creative efforts surely have their place, that place ought never to establish itself as an element of a critic's critical assessment of a performance or artwork. All that ought to concern the arts critic in that regard is the finished product regardless of the circumstances of its making or what did or didn't go into that making (which matters the critic should feel free to treat separately if he finds them of sufficient interest in their own right), and how it measures up when measured against the critic's deeply informed ideal of what that performance or artwork ought to or could have been.

This, it seems to us, is the arts critic's Prime Directive, and the extent to which the critic disregards that directive a measure of the worthlessness of his critical judgments.

Give That Author A Big Hand

Time Out London's classical music editor, Jonathan Lennie, has some spot-on words for that most obnoxious of classical music concert audience members: the early and otherwise inappropriate clapper.

You know who you are: the one who insists on applauding at every opportunity and the clear winner of that solo competition to be the first to clap the moment a piece is over. Now, I’m not averse to audience members showing their appreciation, but this isn’t about the music or the performers, is it? It is all about you – showing off your apparent expertise, reflected by your knowledge of exactly when a work has ended, while others demure [sic], lacking your certainty.

It’s good you have such knowledge, but don’t you realise that the music is not over when the conductor places the last down-beat? There is a silence that concludes the experience, both musically and emotionally.

RTWT here.

End Of An Unbroken Era

[Note: This post has been updated (3) as of 1:03 PM Eastern on 24 Jul. See below.]

The threatened strike of stagehands at the fabled Bayreuther Festspiele, first made public a couple weeks ago, is the first publicly visible sign that the Festspiele — from its inception always a special event on a number of fronts — is on its way to becoming just another opera venue, its position as a jewel in the crown of German cultural and nationalistic pride notwithstanding, and marks as well the end of an unbroken era that stretches from Wagner himself straight through the stewardship of his two grandsons, Wieland and Wolfgang. The Festspiele will coast for another few seasons or so on its storied history and on its German cultural and nationalistic significance (for Germans), eventually becoming...what?

Only The Shadow knows.

Sad — and certain to be a meaningful cultural loss to the world of the arts generally, and the world of opera in particular.

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Update (1:23 PM Eastern on 14 Jul): After the breakdown of negotiations, the strike is on reports Spiegel Online.

Update 2 (1:15 PM Eastern on 15 Jul): Deutsche Welle is now reporting that a new round of negotiations is scheduled for 22 July, and that union executive Hans Kraft has declared that, "It looks as though the strike has been averted. I am confident we'll be able to reach agreement."

Update 3 (1:03 PM Eastern on 24 Jul): Agreement has been reached, and the opening of the 2009 Bayreuther Festspiele on 25 July will go on as scheduled.

An Eye-Popping Regieoper Walküre Act III Opening

If you're determined to do Regieoper Wagner, you might as well throw all restraint to the winds and let it all, um, hang out. Here's a suggestion for a Regieoper Act III Walküre opening guaranteed to make arts headlines worldwide.

Oh, and fair warning: NSFW.

A Few Brief Thoughts On Intellectual Property Rights

We find it extremely odd, not to say perplexing, that those who wouldn't think of questioning the concept of exclusive ownership of real property (your land, your house, your car, etc.) think nothing of questioning, even condemning, the concept of exclusive ownership of intellectual property.

And just what is intellectual property? For the purpose of this thumbnail commentary we narrowly define intellectual property as, "literary and artistic creations, such as books, music, paintings and sculptures, films and technology-based works such as computer programs" as well as "performances of performing artists, phonograms, and broadcasts" and the like.* Intellectual property is protected by copyright law which body of law grants the original creator(s) of intellectual property exclusive rights to his (their) creation's use, and prohibits its use by others without the express permission of its creator(s).

While one could with some justice make an argument against the exclusive ownership of land (all land on Earth existed prior to any life forms inhabiting Earth, and therefore one could take the position that since land was not the creation of any individual or group of individuals, any claims to ownership of any portion of that land is strictly arbitrary; a product of physical conquest or mutually agreed upon social and legal contract), no such argument can be made against the exclusive ownership of intellectual property as, without exception, all intellectual property is the product of either an individual or several individuals, and therefore, almost by definition, is his (their) sole and exclusive property to do with as he (they) best see(s) fit. The protection of that fundamental right is embodied in copyright law, but there exist several lacuna and errors of reasoning in the legal definition of that protection, and that's where the problems begin. We will here address but two of these problems, for all others derive from them, and those two problems concern the duration and nature of the protection afforded by copyright.

First, the duration.

For what period of time should copyright protection be granted the creators of intellectual property? As the law now stands, that period of protection is arbitrary, and can be changed at will by the vote of the legislative body responsible for its establishment. In the U.S., that means the Congress of the United States of America.

But clearly, something is badly awry here. There should be nothing arbitrary about that period of protection. It ought to be granted the original creators of intellectual property for as long as they can benefit by their creations' use, which is to say, for as long as they live (the current term of protection is for the life of the creator(s) plus 70 years for which additional period there is no legitimate justification) which, so far as we've gone, is no different from the period of protection granted owners of real property by civil law.

But here the similarity between real and intellectual property begins to break down, which brings us to the nature of the protection which ought to be granted the creators of intellectual property.

Ownership of real property and its associated rights can be passed on by bequest from generation to generation, or be sold outright to second parties in perpetuity, theirs to do with as they see fit. Clearly, this is not in the best interests of anyone other than those to whom ownership is transferred either by bequest or outright sale, and that won't do at all in the case of intellectual property as the argument (and a very good one it is, too) can be made that such an arrangement works ultimately to the cultural impoverishment of society as a whole, which, unless one is a doctrinaire communist or extreme-left socialist, is not true in the case of real property.

Manifestly, something different needs to come into play here in the case of intellectual property, and one of the things that needs to come into play is some sort of restriction on the bequest or sale of ownership by the original creators, and the only restriction that makes sense is that such bequest or sale of ownership ought to be expressly and categorically prohibited. One might object that prohibiting the bequest or sale of ownership to second parties is denying the original creators of intellectual property one of the benefits of their creations' use which goes against the above stated principle that those original creators ought to be able to do with their creations whatever will most benefit them during their lifetimes.

Not so. Such a prohibition does not in any way restrict the original creators from bequeathing or selling the rights to the exclusive use of their creations to second parties during their lifetimes with the stipulation that upon their deaths ownership of those creations passes automatically into the public domain for the free use of anyone, thereby working to the cultural benefit of society as a whole as it rightly ought to.

Corporate entities will not like this idea one bit, but corporate entities should be given no consideration whatsoever in the matter as no corporate entity has ever created anything that qualifies as intellectual property within our narrow definition of the term (as separate and distinct from trademark qualified creations which are protected under trademark, not copyright, law), their internal (as opposed to purchased from outsiders) intellectual property created by one or more of their employees who, as creators, may, by contract, be obligated to sell for a nominal fee (say, one dollar) to the corporations that employ them the exclusive rights to the use of those creations for the duration of their (the creators') lives, after which time ownership of the creations reverts to the public domain.

As we said, corporate entities will not like this idea one bit.

There's then the collateral question of the doctrine of Fair Use; i.e., the legal use of certain portions of copyrighted intellectual property without permission from or payment to the property's creators.

But that's a question fraught with manifold complications of its own the addressing of which is the subject for another commentary.

* Definitions taken from WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization).

For The Benefit Of Those Who Track S&F Via Feed Readers

A clarifying update has been made to this S&F post.

Proud To Be An American This July 4th

We Americans have special reason to be proud this July 4th as we, by democratic process, have elected as our president a genuine modern-day philosopher who, in the words of Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle Review and literary critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, has shown himself to be our "philosopher in chief" as well as our chief executive.

The first part of Obama's Cairo teach-in combined the best of rhetoric and philosophy. In the shrewd tradition of Isocrates and Aristotle, the president softened up his audience in Cairo University's ornate auditorium by quoting the Koran and dispensing rich praise. He related how Islamic culture had given us "the order of algebra, our magnetic compass and tools of navigation, our mastery of pens and printing, our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed."

[...]

[H]e imparted rules for philosophical discourse: "We must say openly the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be sustained effort to listen to each other, to learn from each other, to respect one another, and to seek common ground." At its core, his teaching was ethical and political, using the intellectual tools of logic to illuminate hypocrisy and contradiction: "None of us should tolerate these extremists," he said. "They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths — but more than any other, they have killed Muslims. Their actions are irreconcilable with the right of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam. The holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind."

Without weighing the pros and cons of American egalitarianism, Obama simply affirmed that "a woman who is denied an education is denied equality." Countering Machiavelli without mentioning Madison, he spoke straight to the prince: "You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party." Weaving the ethical, political, and pragmatic together, Obama told Palestinians that if they forswear violence and take the high road, à la Gandhi and King, they will get their state.

RTWT here.

(Our thanks to the always indispensable Arts & Letters Daily for the link.)

Featured Past Post #81 (Administrative Note)

It's that Wagner time of year again (the 2009 Bayreuther Festspiele opens 25 July with a revival of the 2005 Peter Schneider production of Tristan), and so, as we do each year at this time, we've put up on our right sidebar as our Featured Past Post our April 2005 post, Elegy, the content of which is even more valid today than when we first wrote it. The state of affairs it outlines is bleak, but, sadly, an honest — and accurate — assessment nevertheless.

Is It For Real, Or Is It Clever Skewering?

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 11:13 AM Eastern on 6 Jul. See below.]

We were not in the least surprised that Tom Service, the intellectually and musically challenged classical music critic for The Guardian, took in earnest and swallowed whole the content of the new website, Musoc.org. It is, after all, no more than we would have expected of him.

When, however, an intellectually sharp and musically savvy classical music critic such as Anne Midgette, chief classical music critic for The Washington Post, does the same, we begin to wonder about our own assessment of Musoc.org's intent. With its cleverly shaped and ambiguously parodic treatment of the classical-pop cultural wars in the domain of music, it seems to us that the site's content (presumably a multi-author effort none of the authors of which are identified or credited by name, and might in fact be the work of a single individual) is giving point to the at-bottom silliness of the argument(s) by its ultimate reductio ad absurdum, categorical treatment of the matter (see, for instance, this FAQ, and this page of Definitions).

But, then, perhaps it's just our unwillingness to accept that any serious championing of classical music could, in absolute dead earnest, be that woodenheadedly and mindlessly categorical in its zeal to champion the genre. It's, after all, not only entirely unnecessary, but works against the very thing it purports to champion.

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Update (11:13 AM Eastern on 6 Jul): It's come to our notice that in several quarters Musoc.org's position on pop versus classical music has been seen as essentially similar to our own. It should be needless to say (but apparently isn't) that beyond our general sympathy with Musoc.org's central idea, there's very little similarity between Musoc.org's position and ours as should have been made clear from the content of the above post. Our position is perhaps best expressed in a 2003 S&F piece entitled, "A Call For A Return To Hierarchal Sobriety", which piece we recommend to your attention.