... you lift up the barrel and find the music critics sticking to the bottom of it.
Need proof? Take this fine example from the music critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. There are many out there like it, so I am not picking on this reviewer in particular. Her review of a November SLSO performance featuring the works of Janacek, Mozart and Mahler, however, is an excellent example of how little many music critics regularly contribute to the field of classical music today.
Here's a snippet:
I always joked about musicology being the domain of so many failed performers. And reading reviews like this, I've got a good idea where those who failed at both performance and musicology ended up.
"Solidly Mitteleuropean?" "Thoroughly gemütlich?" "Life-affirming score?" "Undiluted pleasure?" "Caramel-hued sound?"
With all due respect to the writer, what the hell is any of this worth? What does caramel sound like? It's like when wine reviewers talk about a beverage having hints of cat's pee. Um, most of us aren't drinking or sniffing kitty urine much these days. Perhaps you could find a more relevant descriptor?
Can someone please tell me what there is to being a music critic now other than sitting at a desk, reading some program notes, scoring comp tickets from your employer to sweet concerts that other people pay good money to see, then going back to your laptop and stringing a bunch of five-dollar adjectives together into something that's supposed to pass for journalism?
I suppose the reason I object to reading reviews like this is that, fundamentally, I don't see the point in them. A symphony concert isn't the same thing as tonight's Bears/Vikings game. Absolutely nobody is itching to open tomorrow morning's paper to read what the armchair quarterbacks have to say about last night's show. Did the oboist nail the A? Did the soloist's dress match the mood of her concerto? Was the conductor in tails or some Nehru jacket that bears an uncanny resemblance to Joseph's coat of many colors?
Nobody cares. There's no need for an orchestral box score. Nobody's scouring the paper to see how the Oregon Symphony's oboe section did last night, wondering if that English Horn player is worth picking up off of waivers for their fantasy orchestra team.
The horn player had a bad night, you say? Yeah, that happens to all of us. It's one of the hazards of the job. Unlike music critics, we don't get a delete button and we don't have editors around to keep us from putting our foot in our mouth.
To my eyes, the problem with many contemporary music critics is that instead of writing music criticism, they're writing performance criticism. The review in question contributes nothing scholarly and barely anything educational in regard to the pieces performed. In doing so, it fails to seize an opportunity to contribute something of actual worth. Instead of educating people about the music, it educates people about a performance that nobody who wasn't there will ever get to see.
Most professionals I know, myself included, try not to read the reviews the same way we try not to stare at car accidents. But hey, we're human too. Sometimes it's hard to resist.
So I come bearing my simple request for all the world to read. I respectfully ask that no music critic ever say anything nice about me. My career will manage just fine without a biography that mentions how you think I have a "glowing and radiant tone that cascades through the hall" or "mellifluous slurs that run slowly and smoothly over the listener not unlike the creamy goodness that emerges from a chocolate fondue fountain."
In return, please try to look the other way when I paste a note on occasion. I'm not out to make a hash of things or to ruin your evening, I promise. But I'm a horn player and bad things will come out of my bell occasionally. Such is one's fate when they choose a career path that's slightly easier than tossing baseballs through LifeSavers.
But you would know of no such difficulties, since your job is about as hard as throwing a baseball in the ocean.
Need proof? Take this fine example from the music critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. There are many out there like it, so I am not picking on this reviewer in particular. Her review of a November SLSO performance featuring the works of Janacek, Mozart and Mahler, however, is an excellent example of how little many music critics regularly contribute to the field of classical music today.
Here's a snippet:
Those who say they want only "the classics" from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra should have been well-pleased with this weekend’s concerts at Powell Symphony Hall. The programming was all solidly Mitteleuropean, all tuneful and all thoroughly gemütlich...
The opener was – appropriately enough – the Suite from "The Cunning Little Vixen," by Czech composer Leos Janacek. Janacek’s charming opera is filled with colorfully orchestrated sounds of nature and Moravian folk music. Belohlavek and the orchestra gave this ultimately life-affirming score a solid, idiomatic reading...
Leonard has a beautiful, caramel-hued sound, absolutely even from top to bottom, with superb facility in the coloratura passages. Her singing in the Mozart carried conviction; her Mahler radiated childlike joy. It’s not an enormous voice, but it carried well. It was an undiluted pleasure to hear her in both works...
I always joked about musicology being the domain of so many failed performers. And reading reviews like this, I've got a good idea where those who failed at both performance and musicology ended up.
"Solidly Mitteleuropean?" "Thoroughly gemütlich?" "Life-affirming score?" "Undiluted pleasure?" "Caramel-hued sound?"
With all due respect to the writer, what the hell is any of this worth? What does caramel sound like? It's like when wine reviewers talk about a beverage having hints of cat's pee. Um, most of us aren't drinking or sniffing kitty urine much these days. Perhaps you could find a more relevant descriptor?
Can someone please tell me what there is to being a music critic now other than sitting at a desk, reading some program notes, scoring comp tickets from your employer to sweet concerts that other people pay good money to see, then going back to your laptop and stringing a bunch of five-dollar adjectives together into something that's supposed to pass for journalism?
I suppose the reason I object to reading reviews like this is that, fundamentally, I don't see the point in them. A symphony concert isn't the same thing as tonight's Bears/Vikings game. Absolutely nobody is itching to open tomorrow morning's paper to read what the armchair quarterbacks have to say about last night's show. Did the oboist nail the A? Did the soloist's dress match the mood of her concerto? Was the conductor in tails or some Nehru jacket that bears an uncanny resemblance to Joseph's coat of many colors?
Nobody cares. There's no need for an orchestral box score. Nobody's scouring the paper to see how the Oregon Symphony's oboe section did last night, wondering if that English Horn player is worth picking up off of waivers for their fantasy orchestra team.
The horn player had a bad night, you say? Yeah, that happens to all of us. It's one of the hazards of the job. Unlike music critics, we don't get a delete button and we don't have editors around to keep us from putting our foot in our mouth.
To my eyes, the problem with many contemporary music critics is that instead of writing music criticism, they're writing performance criticism. The review in question contributes nothing scholarly and barely anything educational in regard to the pieces performed. In doing so, it fails to seize an opportunity to contribute something of actual worth. Instead of educating people about the music, it educates people about a performance that nobody who wasn't there will ever get to see.
Most professionals I know, myself included, try not to read the reviews the same way we try not to stare at car accidents. But hey, we're human too. Sometimes it's hard to resist.
So I come bearing my simple request for all the world to read. I respectfully ask that no music critic ever say anything nice about me. My career will manage just fine without a biography that mentions how you think I have a "glowing and radiant tone that cascades through the hall" or "mellifluous slurs that run slowly and smoothly over the listener not unlike the creamy goodness that emerges from a chocolate fondue fountain."
In return, please try to look the other way when I paste a note on occasion. I'm not out to make a hash of things or to ruin your evening, I promise. But I'm a horn player and bad things will come out of my bell occasionally. Such is one's fate when they choose a career path that's slightly easier than tossing baseballs through LifeSavers.
But you would know of no such difficulties, since your job is about as hard as throwing a baseball in the ocean.
4 Comments:
Nobody's scouring the paper to see how the Oregon Symphony's oboe section did last night, wondering if that English Horn player is worth picking up off of waivers for their fantasy orchestra team.
I'd stay away from that oboe section if I were you; my scouting report says their embouchure starts to soften up if you keep hammering them with sixteenth notes.
Then again, I also think Caramel sounds like delicious.
I see your point about music reviews, and how it's not that helpful to write a review of a single performance when - to the participant - the next night's show will be subtlely different. Speaking on the half of plebians everywhere, most of us aren't likely to catch the changes.
Also, what's some reviewer out in St. Louis going to say about source material which can often date back to the reniassance that's going to resonate with you? "I think Mozart really over-plays the stacatto in the 3rd movement. We get it, already." ??
It's not like a movie review, where the end product remains static. The source material is the control...unless someone is altering the sheet music on the fly. Performance is the variable.
Man, I hate to go to Wikipedia for a definition of "Music Criticism" but I'm lazy:
"Music criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of music. Modern music criticism is often informed by music theory investigation of the many diverse elements of a music, including the development and methodology for analyzing, hearing, understanding, and composing music."
Historically, back before people had thousands of entertainment options, composers were a bigger deal, and consequently, there was more to say about their new works. Music criticism was, in essence, an extension of musicology. Now, we have three centuries of dead white guys to play, and it's harder for new music to get its place at the table.
So I agree with your analysis that the music is the control. However, there's lots to be said about the control. I would also agree that much of what is to be said about Mozart has been said already. It's also not likely to be said by the modern music critic, who often lacks a thorough background in musicology and is rarely if ever an accomplished performer.
To put it in football terms, imagine if you turned on FOX NFL Sunday to see KiJana Carter, Danny Wuerffel, and Don Majkowski in the studio. That's sort of where mainstream classical music criticism is at.
The usual complaint is that, positive or negative, many classical reviewers are part-time hacks who don't have the authority or background to speak credibly.
The reviewer speaks of the tempos in the Mozart being "generally good" and how Mahler's fourth symphony is "filled with his usual musical eclecticism." She says the conductor has a "good feel" for the Mahler but never elaborates on what that might mean. These are just empty phrases designed to shield her inability (or perhaps just her failure) to actually discuss the music.
I guess if I ran a newspaper, I would ask "what is so newsworthy in this column that I should run it?" Frankly, as a musician, I'd rather see nothing written about the concert than see this written about it.
The reviewer for the Dallas Morning News usually writes interesting comments and includes some musical content (history or theory or performance practice discussion) in his comments.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/columnists/scantrell/vitindex.html
His name is Scott Cantrell.
Check him out.
Bill in Dallas
Thanks Bill. I'm sure I've probably read Scott's work before in a casual sense, but it was helpful sit down right now and look at 10 or 12 of his more recent submissions.
To clarify, my point here wasn't to lambast all music critics. I think Scott is a good example of someone who works to keep the review focused on the music and not on the personalities involved. I think that's what music criticism should be.
Any fourth-grader can go to a concert and say "oh, the clarinet squeaked here" or "the trumpet player missed a high note there." Critics at bigger papers generally seem to get this and work to focus on the forest. It's at smaller papers that you see a lot of people who don't write about the forest but just write about the trees.
The music is bigger than the sum of its parts. If performance criticism is levied in the context of evaluating the music, that's fine. I think the reviewer in question has an unfortunate habit of focusing on the merits and demerits of individual contributions outside the realm of the music itself.
The American public is generally ignorant when it comes to classical music, and music critics are perhaps the only individuals given visible space in print in which to change that. So why not use that space primarily to educate and to generate interest in the genre instead of using it as a virtual scorecard for last night's show?
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