David Hurwitz

[Mirror Image]

I should probably just go see if we have a composer discussion thread to hunt down other likely suspects...

Not that I care, personally, beyond deflating a rather over-inflated rhetorical question. I've heard of Reger, I'm aware of the general style of his music, and that can only be because others have mentioned his name and have been listening to him.

I suppose the best description I can use for Reger is "Brahms on steroids," but, of course, this is over-simplifying his style and certainly doesn't do the composer any justice.

[Brian]

I always maintained that a good critic should be able to convey preferences through the writing, even if it's the first thing you've read (although familiarity obviously helps). And as for disagreeing with a review - that's what I loved about Ebert, who taught me how to appreciate opinions differing from my own. A critics' job is not to say what you should be thinking, but what he / she thinks.

Yes! And yes, that's what I loved about Ebert too. He took a work on his own terms. He didn't give horror movies low ratings just because they're horror movies, for instance (as you shouldn't dismiss a composer for writing in a style that isn't yours).

This is what frustrates me about my other critic gig, at a local newspaper. Newspapers strongly believe that you should never mention "I" in an article, and shouldn't try to infuse a review with your personal tastes and POV. But authoritative pronouncements are - unless backed up by an impressive body of evidence - just personal opinions in sheep's clothing. Better to be honest, methinks, than to be aggrandizing.

[(poco) Sforzando]

The reason being simple. Composers evolve, go through "periods," change their styles. Imagine somebody reviewing Janacek when he was your age! Back in college, I learned this lesson very vividly when I wrote negatively about a guy's new student work for the school magazine, then went to his next concert and was so entranced I became a fan for life. (Damage was already done. Dude hates me.)

Similarly, Hans von Bülow wrote scathingly of Verdi's middle-period operas, but was so bowled over by Aida, Otello, and the Requiem that he wrote Verdi a breast-beating letter of apology.

This is the dilemma any would-be critic faces: it's easy enough to praise, but how to give negative criticism to someone you might actually encounter? Tone, perhaps, is everything. John Simon could be a very generous critic, but at his worst he gave into almost apoplectic personalized venom especially towards women he found unattractive. There is the story that an actress (Sylvia Miles) he treated viciously in a review came up to him in a restaurant and dropped a plate of spaghetti on his head.

[Karl Henning]

Yes! And yes, that's what I loved about Ebert too. He took a work on his own terms. He didn't give horror movies low ratings just because they're horror movies, for instance (as you shouldn't dismiss a composer for writing in a style that isn't yours).

This is what frustrates me about my other critic gig, at a local newspaper. Newspapers strongly believe that you should never mention "I" in an article, and shouldn't try to infuse a review with your personal tastes and POV. But authoritative pronouncements are - unless backed up by an impressive body of evidence - just personal opinions in sheep's clothing. Better to be honest, methinks, than to be aggrandizing.

A month ago I re-watched Aliens, and warmly appreciated Ebert's review:

. . . I admire both that he was entirely frank about how the pace and intensity wound him up ('But when I walked out of the theater, there were knots in my stomach from the film's roller-coaster ride of violence. This is not the kind of movie where it means anything to say you "enjoyed" it') yet he gave it 3-1/2 stars because it is so well made ('I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie:  It is a superb example of filmmaking craft.')

[(poco) Sforzando]

*shrug* So I'll write a positive review of the joke, and you'll right a negative one. And our readers will make of that what they will.

As to who listens to Reger today, I can't give you names and addresses but I'm quite certain they exist.

There are seven billion people in this world. Quite possibly some still listen to Reger. You will have to admit he is largely overlooked today. (Heads up for Reger fans: two works will be performed at NY's Carnegie Hall on March 17.)

[Mirror Image]

There are seven billion people in this world. Quite possibly some still listen to Reger. You will have to admit he is largely overlooked today. (Heads up for Reger fans: two works will be performed at NY's Carnegie Hall on March 17.)

Reger's Piano Concerto and Four Tone Poems after A. Böcklin are top-drawer and, for these works alone, you can count me as a fan of his music.

[mc ukrneal]

Movie reviews don't disappear, and can be consulted via newspaper web sites or anthologies of reviews such as Roger Ebert published. In fact Ebert wrote his Great Movies series (probably never completed at his death) largely to introduce younger viewers to the entire heritage of film that gets overshadowed because everyone's running to the latest thing at the local multiplex. For new releases we're all at the mercy of whichever films the distributors and theaters allow us to see; and there was a time not so long ago where once a film disappeared from the theaters, you'd never see it unless it popped up at an art house or late-night TV. But thanks to DVDs, BluRays, Hulu, Turner Classics, etc., access to the entire history of filmmaking is increasingly available to anyone with a personal player, computer, or TV set; and many film lovers, myself included, have acquired substantial numbers of beautifully restored films from companies such as the Criterion Collection. Ebert certainly had his flaws and limitations, but if he flags a film as a Great Movie, I'll certainly be looking to find it on Hulu or for a used DVD on Amazon.

But those Ebert reviews are very detailed and go into quite depth (which was typical of most of his reviews). Most music reviews these days are not like that, nor do they explain what they see as a flaw (or advantage) - they just state it and move on. The New York Times reviewers have also typically gone into quite high detail to explain why they give the review they do, just another example.

Perhaps an example would work better. I went to musicweb and picked the first review I came upon that was negative in the summary, this one: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2016/Jan/Mattheson_keyboard_OC1837.htm. Look at paragraph 2, where the reviewer writes:

Comparison with Bach is inevitable for such a collection, but my hopes of finding something to rival The Art of Fugue were alas not realised. Mattheson himself is said to have appreciated J.S. Bach's skill, but he left his name out of an otherwise compendious "Grundlager einer Ehren-Pforte" that includes 149 biographies of other composers. A case is made for Mattheson's apparent rejection of "richly ornamented baroque magniloquence" and apparent "premonitions of romanticism", but to my ears we have here a composer who was no doubt reasonably skilled and highly knowledgeable, but couldn't quite hack it in comparison with Bach and wanted no part in elevating his contemporary's name over his own. There are entertaining aspects to these pieces, but you can either argue that they are the creations of a "free spirit" or someone who couldn't quite land on the kind of musical sweet-spot that delivers music satisfying at every level and in ways that defy period and style.

What exactly does this tell us? We're being told this music 'doesn't work'. Why? Well, we don't know really. There is no explanation. We're told that in comparison to Bach, he isn't as skillful. Well, that cover pretty much all of Bach's contemporaries excluding a small handful (perhaps). And would you go into a new piece of a less known composer with the expectation that it would rival one of the greatest pieces ever written? I mean, that seems to me a setup for failure.

Further, the reviewer writes:

There are indeed some fascinating pieces which would reward study, though for what reasons will be for the listener to decide. The Corrente on track 6 caught my ear for its strange tonality, a winding path that changes from one bar to the next but always somehow finds its way back to the root. It's nice to think of this as forward-thinking exploration, but for myself I can't get around a general lack of sophistication or finish that would elevate such things into works that would work in a wider context. One can imagine many of Bach's pieces as useful with orchestra or any kind of instrumental combination, but Mattheson's stubbornly resist a life beyond the keyboard. The Sonata is one of Mattheson's earliest works but doesn't out-Handel Handel by a long way. While I'm all for breaking with convention this strikes me as worthy of study in how not to write a sonata.

So now he's being dumped on, because the music doesn't adapt as well to other instruments/instrumentation beyond the instrument for which the music is written, which seems a bit silly to me. And we're told this is not the way to write a sonata, but we're not told where he went wrong. Incidentally, it seems at least one of Mattheson's pieces WAS adapted for instruments other than the one it was written for, though it was not initially the keyboard in the case I am aware of. I wonder if the reviewer knows that.

So I don't like this type of composer bashing. If you read the last paragraph, you find out the musician did Mattheson no favors and bungled the music, which makes you wonder if a different musician would have had a completely different result (assuming we accept this as fact). Maybe you don't agree with me, but I hope I am a little clearer as to what I find frustrating in music reviewing today.

Whether you liked Ebert or not, he KNEW film, the processes and techniques of making film, and the history of film (in quite high detail).

[(poco) Sforzando]

Yes! And yes, that's what I loved about Ebert too. He took a work on his own terms. He didn't give horror movies low ratings just because they're horror movies, for instance (as you shouldn't dismiss a composer for writing in a style that isn't yours).

This is what frustrates me about my other critic gig, at a local newspaper. Newspapers strongly believe that you should never mention "I" in an article, and shouldn't try to infuse a review with your personal tastes and POV. But authoritative pronouncements are - unless backed up by an impressive body of evidence - just personal opinions in sheep's clothing. Better to be honest, methinks, than to be aggrandizing.

Depends on the newspaper, I suspect. I just finished reading "On Conan Doyle" by Pulitzer winner Michael Dirda of the Washington Post (slight name-dropping: we were friendly when I studied at Oberlin in the late 60s, but I never kept up with him), and his criticism is always highly personal, always reflective not only of his tastes but of the circumstances which led him to discover any work he writes about. Mike's criticism takes on a uniquely relaxed and engaging quality as a result. I think some of these old strictures about never using the personal pronoun are starting to relax, and you see this even in the NY Times.

Now back to ol' Roger for a moment: early on I thought he was something of a horse's ass on that TV show, and Siskel seemed to have the upper hand intellectually. Perhaps the obese appearance and glasses aided in that impression, though I'm no one to talk when it comes to the avoirdupois department. But I found Ebert far more compelling when I started reading his reviews of the Great Movies. I doubt he finished the series; films like Wild Strawberries and North by Northwest are conspicuously absent, and he never wrote about Rossellini. Like Michael Dirda, however (who also loves all good writing, and not just "high art"), Ebert would never disdain a film like Star Wars, giving it four stars for being good of its kind, while at the same time he could appreciate the nuances of Ozu, Bergman, Antonioni, and Truffaut among many others. This lack of snobbery earned the venom of John Simon (who wrote a cowardly posthumous piece of vituperation on his personal blog), Simon being an exquisite who disdained anything smacking of the popular. However, if one looks at Simon's list of his dozen favorite films, you'll find every one of them also on Ebert's Great Movies list.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Reger's Piano Concerto and Four Tone Poems after A. Böcklin are top-drawer and, for these works alone, you can count me as a fan of his music.

I will hunt down the CDs for each of these. Thanks.

[mc ukrneal]

Depends on the newspaper, I suspect. I just finished reading "On Conan Doyle" by Pulitzer winner Michael Dirda of the Washington Post (slight name-dropping: we were friendly when I studied at Oberlin in the late 60s, but I never kept up with him), and his criticism is always highly personal, always reflective not only of his tastes but of the circumstances which led him to discover any work he writes about. Mike's criticism takes on a uniquely relaxed and engaging quality as a result. I think some of these old strictures about never using the personal pronoun are starting to relax, and you see this even in the NY Times.

Now back to ol' Roger for a moment: early on I thought he was something of a horse's ass on that TV show, and Siskel seemed to have the upper hand intellectually. Perhaps the obese appearance and glasses aided in that impression, though I'm no one to talk when it comes to the avoirdupois department. But I found Ebert far more compelling when I started reading his reviews of the Great Movies. I doubt he finished the series; films like Wild Strawberries and North by Northwest are conspicuously absent, and he never wrote about Rossellini. Like Michael Dirda, however (who also loves all good writing, and not just "high art"), Ebert would never disdain a film like Star Wars, giving it four stars for being good of its kind, while at the same time he could appreciate the nuances of Ozu, Bergman, Antonioni, and Truffaut among many others. This lack of snobbery earned the venom of John Simon (who wrote a cowardly posthumous piece of vituperation on his personal blog), Simon being an exquisite who disdained anything smacking of the popular. However, if one looks at Simon's list of his dozen favorite films, you'll find every one of them also on Ebert's Great Movies list.

Interesting. I always felt that Ebert was the superior in this regard, but it isn't critical to the discussion. The thing that used to frustrate me about Siskel was that the things he didn't like about a film were often because something didn't happen in the film the way he wanted it to. Ebert, on the other hand, reviewed what happened. I'm simplifying, but that is basically the idea. You don't get that in music reviewing much though.

[Brian]

I will hunt down the CDs for each of these. Thanks.

Am listening to the piano concerto right now. It is really a slavish imitation of the Brahms First Concerto, although I'll admit the slow movement is quite beautiful. There's an interesting anti-virtuosic vein to the piano writing throughout (or more properly, anti-showing-off).

I'll try to listen to a bunch of Reger today and post a roundup in his composer thread.

Depends on the newspaper, I suspect. I just finished reading "On Conan Doyle" by Pulitzer winner Michael Dirda of the Washington Post (slight name-dropping: we were friendly when I studied at Oberlin in the late 60s, but I never kept up with him), and his criticism is always highly personal, always reflective not only of his tastes but of the circumstances which led him to discover any work he writes about. Mike's criticism takes on a uniquely relaxed and engaging quality as a result. I think some of these old strictures about never using the personal pronoun are starting to relax, and you see this even in the NY Times.

Depends, also, on whether the critic has "made it". Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer winner; NY Times voices like Ben Brantley, Janet Maslin, and A.O. Scott are very well-known in their fields by now. As a freelancer, I am still to some extent just some random guy, and my tastes/peculiarities do require more introduction.

Now back to ol' Roger for a moment: early on I thought he was something of a horse's ass on that TV show, and Siskel seemed to have the upper hand intellectually. Perhaps the obese appearance and glasses aided in that impression, though I'm no one to talk when it comes to the avoirdupois department. But I found Ebert far more compelling when I started reading his reviews of the Great Movies. I doubt he finished the series; films like Wild Strawberries and North by Northwest are conspicuously absent, and he never wrote about Rossellini. Like Michael Dirda, however (who also loves all good writing, and not just "high art"), Ebert would never disdain a film like Star Wars, giving it four stars for being good of its kind, while at the same time he could appreciate the nuances of Ozu, Bergman, Antonioni, and Truffaut among many others. This lack of snobbery earned the venom of John Simon (who wrote a cowardly posthumous piece of vituperation on his personal blog), Simon being an exquisite who disdained anything smacking of the popular. However, if one looks at Simon's list of his dozen favorite films, you'll find every one of them also on Ebert's Great Movies list.

"The avoirdupois department" has to go into the GMG Hall of Fame for great turns of phrase. But mostly I'm quoting this for the opportunity to quote Ebert's original 1977 review of a certain well-known movie:

"Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them. Star Wars works like that."

P.S. Maybe my young age contributes to my love of Ebert - never saw the TV show and only ever knew him through the writing archives.

[(poco) Sforzando]

But those Ebert reviews are very detailed and go into quite depth (which was typical of most of his reviews). Most music reviews these days are not like that, nor do they explain what they see as a flaw (or advantage) - they just state it and move on. The New York Times reviewers have also typically gone into quite high detail to explain why they give the review they do, just another example.

Depends on the venue the critic publishes in. Film critics like John Simon and Pauline Kael were given almost unlimited space to develop their reviews. To restate in case you didn't see my post, the problem with music criticism is that to make a case, one needs to go into analytical detail that is often beyond the technical training of many listeners. I think I could make a case, for instance, for why Dittersdorf is inferior to Mozart, but it would require technical phraseology and, ideally, musical examples. I wonder too at times about the musical knowledge of some critics. Several years ago I heard Boulez conduct Dérive II in NY, and the Times reviewer several times referred to an oboe, when in fact no oboe was present and the instrument used was an English horn. I emailed the performer the next day, who wrote back: "Make you wonder, doesn't it?"

[mc ukrneal]

Depends on the venue the critic publishes in. Film critics like John Simon and Pauline Kael were given almost unlimited space to develop their reviews. To restate in case you didn't see my post, the problem with music criticism is that to make a case, one needs to go into analytical detail that is often beyond the technical training of many listeners. I think I could make a case, for instance, for why Dittersdorf is inferior to Mozart, but it would require technical phraseology and, ideally, musical examples. I wonder too at times about the musical knowledge of some critics. Several years ago I heard Boulez conduct Dérive II in NY, and the Times reviewer several times referred to an oboe, when in fact no oboe was present and the instrument used was an English horn. I emailed the performer the next day, who wrote back: "Make you wonder, doesn't it?"

I agree for the most part. Funny story too (otherwise, I'd have to cry).

[(poco) Sforzando]

Am listening to the piano concerto right now. It is really a slavish imitation of the Brahms First Concerto, although I'll admit the slow movement is quite beautiful. There's an interesting anti-virtuosic vein to the piano writing throughout (or more properly, anti-showing-off).

I'll try to listen to a bunch of Reger today and post a roundup in his composer thread.

Ha! funny, I checked the shelves and there are four Reger CDs, including the Böcklin Tone Poems and some chamber music, but not the PF concerto (which I think Serkin played). So I have a new project which both Brian and I can write about, and then you can all print our reviews and retire to the smallest room in your house.

[(poco) Sforzando]

P.S. Maybe my young age contributes to my love of Ebert - never saw the TV show and only ever knew him through the writing archives.

YouTube, Brian, YouTube. It's funny at times to watch Siskel and Ebert going at it, but even funnier to watch the clip where Ebert is debating John Simon on the merits of Star Wars. As with presidential debates, I suppose it tells a lot about you which side you think wins.

[Karl Henning]

YouTube, Brian, YouTube. It's funny at times to watch Siskel and Ebert going at it, but even funnier to watch the clip where Ebert is debating John Simon on the merits of Star Wars. As with presidential debates, I suppose it tells a lot about you which side you think wins.

Link us up, dude!

[Brian]

So I have a new project which both Brian and I can write about, and then you can all print our reviews and retire to the smallest room in your house.

[kishnevi]

Ha! funny, I checked the shelves and there are four Reger CDs, including the Böcklin Tone Poems and some chamber music, but not the PF concerto (which I think Serkin played). So I have a new project which both Brian and I can write about, and then you can all print our reviews and retire to the smallest room in your house.

Actually, it has been a while since I last listened to the PC, but I remember liking it on its own merits.

[North Star]

https://www.youtube.com/v/Ky9-eIlHzAE

[Karl Henning]

https://www.youtube.com/v/Ky9-eIlHzAE

Thanks!