WORTHWHILE?

posted by James Reel

    Oboist-blogger Pattricia Mitchell is going through one of her periodic periods of doubt, wondering what she’s doing in the music biz. I suppose nearly every professional musician, except the most arrogant, has similar doubts from time to time, no matter how well the career is going. (Sometimes the most successful musicians have the greatest doubts, because the pressure is greater, the schedule often more intense.) During her musings, Patty has run across a comment by someone else about how difficult it can be for musicians to “accomplish anything worthwhile.” Our oboist asks, among other things:

    And is the writer suggesting that all musicians really care about accomplishing something worthwhile? I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but I honestly think I want to play music because I love it, and because I happen to be good at it. (And, ideally, I want to "glorify God and enjoy him forever" and music seems to be the way that works well for that purpose, but that desire is often shoved into the background, and being honest I have to admit that.) The fact that it is also worthwhile and, I hope, enriches other people's lives is a great thing. I would love to think that I'm in it for the good of humanity. But I have to be honest and say I doubt that is truly the case. Sad, but true.
    And while music is, I believe, worthwhile, in some ways it's a really a most wonderful "necessary unnecessary". …
    Am I saying music (not just classical, but anything) is entirely unnecessary? … See, here's the thing: I wouldn't want to live without music. I think the world would be a heck of a lot poorer without music. I think that people who are struggling and weary and worn are encouraged by music. I think people who are sad and heartbroken grieve through music. I think people who are in a celebratory mood or at a joy-filled occasion celebrate with music. Mommies and daddies all over the world sing to their babies. Children sing songs as they play alone, and sing as they skip rope and play other games. Teens seem unable to let go of music; it is nearly like food. And movies? Movies are scarier because of music. Kleenex is pulled out more often because of music. Funny scenes are funnier much of the time. Tense scenes are definitely more tense. (When I'm too scared or stressed because of a scene I'm watching on the tube I turn down the sound. Things are usually much less intense that way.)
    But if music were banned, we wouldn't die. Not physically. Emotionally, sure. Spiritually, possibly.

    She makes sense. As I’ve said before, people exaggerate the benefits of music and the other arts. If music were really so uplifting and improving, nobody who listens to classical music would be a jerk. You can read the rest of Patty’s post here.

MORE ON THE TSO WEB SITE

posted by James Reel

    Speaking of the Tucson Symphony, Drew McManus e-mailed me a few details of the very low score he awarded the orchestra’s Web site in his annual survey: “Tucson dropped quite a bit from last year, due mostly to a number of incomplete pages, bad links, lack of secure transaction notices, and lack of contact information for staff members. In both years, they've lost a number of points for not having upcoming concerts clearly listed on the home page and having a very convoluted search feature to find concerts. However, the purpose of the review is to allow orchestras a frame of reference with regard to basic design aspects that allow them to improve upon what they currently have. Regardless of budget size, any orchestra can follow some basic parameters to successfully design an effective website.”
    You’ll find a little chart detailing these point penalties by going here and scrolling down to the Tucson Symphony link.

CHAMPION JACKIE DUPREE

posted by James Reel

    In today’s Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Symphony concertmaster Stephen Moeckel declares his favorite dead musician to be “Jacqueline Dupree.” I assume Moeckel knows who he’s talking about, even if the reporter doesn’t. Hint to arts reporters who are out of their depth: If you haven’t heard of someone, even someone you should have heard of long before you got your assignment, double-check the name before you make a fool of yourself in print.

BAD CALL

posted by James Reel

    Responding to my post linking to explanations of radio and TV call letters, soon-to-depart KUAT-FM announcer Michael Dauphinais says, “I heard a story once about KNTU, named after North Texas State University. Seems that the school's name was later changed to University of North Texas … but for obvious reasons, the old call letters remained.”
    Reminds me of that probably apocryphal old story about the proposed Sam Houston Institute of Technology …

REVIEWING 101

posted by James Reel

    Critic Greg Sandow, in preparation for a Juilliard course he teaches on music criticism, has posted an outline of what constitutes a solid review. I heartily agree with his points, and I commend the outline not only to students but also to working critics who just don’t get it.
    You can find my own facetious guide to faking a classical-music review, inspired not by theory but by what I actually see practiced, here.

NYRB

posted by James Reel

    New York Magazine has an article about the history, and purportedly the future, of the New York Review of Books, the publication that has been rubbing ink onto the fingers of left-leaning American intellectuals since 1963. James Atlas’ article provides a nice account of where NYRB has been, with vivid if compact portraits of its three founders, but it’s rather helpless at forecasting what will happen now that longtime co-editor Barbara Epstein is gone (she died in June). Surviving editor Robert Silvers claims that everything will continue just as it has, and nobody dares to suggest that it may be time for change.
    Atlas quotes Philip Nobile’s description of the magazine: “a literary magazine on the British nineteenth-century model, which would mix politics and literature in a tough but gentlemanly fashion.” This has been the magazine’s steady strength, as well as its chronic weakness.
    I was an enthusiastic reader of the NYRB in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but I finally gave up on the publication about 10 years ago. I finally realized how unbearably clubby it really was—its detractors call it “The New York Review of Each Other’s Books”—and how irrelevant its anglophilic tendencies were to my own interests. It seemed that every issue would contain another long article about Henry James (who is more popular among British critics and scholars than American readers), another pointless and clumsily written piece by James Fenton, another “review” by some English armchair critic that amounted merely to a detailed plot summary of the novel at hand, including spoilers galore, and never a single word of analysis or context. Then there were the endless articles about what a genius Hannah Arendt had been, and how right-wingers were screwing up Israel, or displays of how knowledgable John Updike was about obscure American visual art. Even the once wickedly but subtly witty David Levine caricatures were becoming dull. And I grew increasingly furious every time I happened upon curious comma-less constructions involving the word “not” (“The cat was black not white”), and the ridiculous Britishism “take a decision” (from whom do you take it?).
    Surely Robert Silvers doesn’t care in the least that I no longer read his magazine. But he, and especially the successors he seems in no hurry to appoint, should care about my reasons for not reading it if the New York Review of Books is to be anything more than a fusty vehicle for scholarly-press ads.