SEX AND MUSIC ...
posted by James Reel
... don’t mix, says Terry Teachout. One’s a distraction from the other. I agree. If you’re attending to both simultaneously, one of the two elements has to be pretty bad.
... don’t mix, says Terry Teachout. One’s a distraction from the other. I agree. If you’re attending to both simultaneously, one of the two elements has to be pretty bad.
An example of not thinking at a daily newspaper: The Star carries a story about a decision not to tear down a library building because of its architectural significance, and accompanies it with a photo of people browsing in the stacks. That shot could have been taken at any library in town. Readers, I think, would rather see what the library’s architecture looks like, since that’s the subject of the article. But Star photo and design editors have a history of wanting to tell their own story, regardless of what those pesky words are about.
Remember that recently released Knight Foundation Magic of Music final report that stirred a lot of comment when people interpreted it as a declaration that everything orchestras were doing to build new audiences was wrong? Well, Drew McManus has gone to the trouble of actually reading the report, and he’s provided a thoughtful analysis of the elements that bewitch and bewilder him. Take a look.
Last night, driving home from a party, I turned on the radio, heard the opening orchestra-only section of Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, and groaned in anticipation of what would come. I dislike narrated music because the narrators are almost always monotonous, even if they’re professional actors. (For more on my aversion to being read to, click here.) Lincoln Portrait, especially, brings out the worst in narrators. Henry Fonda’s recording with the composer conducting is typical: flat and absolutely devoid of passion or real understanding of the text. What a surprise and delight, then, to hear F. Murray Abraham last night on the New York Philharmonic broadcast, delivering the text like a true believer.
I suspect F. Murray Abraham read the text better than Father Abraham himself. Lincoln’s voice was described by those who heard it as shrill, squeaking, piping and unpleasant. (For accounts, go here, then go here and scroll to the bottom.) Even his supporters disliked his voice. We’ll have to trust the earwitness descriptions, for no recording of Lincoln’s voice has turned up, although he is rumored to have recorded a wax cylinder in 1863. The power of Lincoln’s oratory rested in the words themselves, their imagery taken from the Bible, their cadences from Shakespeare.
American presidents since Lincoln, it seems to me, have been poor orators badly served by dull speechwriters. (Kennedy’s speechwriters were the major exception; they stole rhythms from Lincoln. Clinton’s speechwriters stole from Kennedy’s, but by then the cadences were too diluted and diminished to have much effect, particularly when delivered so blandly.) Teddy Roosevelt could be a fiery orator in front of a crowd (you can hear some of his lower-key campaign speeches here), but his delivery was very much a thing of the 19th century, and would seem mannered if attempted today. Still, that’s no excuse for the robotic monotony that has afflicted most presidential addresses during my lifetime, from Eisenhower’s corporate blandness through the drowsiness of several Southerners to the utter disaster that is George W. Bush as a public speaker; he pauses after every three words, as if trying to sound out the next three before moving on. (And is it really so hard to pronounce “nu-cle-ar” correctly?) Whatever their politics have been, our recent presidents have shared one gross defect: a lack of music in their speech.
Over the holiday weekend, several bloggers I read happened to take up, one way or another, questions regarding how classical music is different from popular music, and whether or not this is a good thing. Greg Sandow, whose mission as a blogger is to fret over the decline of the classical audience without demonizing pop culture, notes that you can’t reduce the difference between classical and pop to creativity versus formula. I suspect this post is what inspired Sandow’s principle nemesis, AC Douglas of Sounds and Fury, to re-post something he’d written long ago on the pop/classical dichotomy. It’s worth repeating the gist of it:
Well, there's surely nothing amiss or to be sneered at about a work whose perceived hallmark characteristic is its aspiration to be merely widely accessible here-and-now entertaining, and I don't mean to suggest there is. All I'm suggesting is that, as there can be no meaningful aesthetic continuum connecting such works with works whose perceived hallmark characteristic is their aspiration to transcendence, we drop the pernicious postmodern fiction that works of both realms occupy the same hierarchy of aesthetic value, differing only in their details. Such a view serves simply to demean and devalue the works of both realms by denying them the defining virtues peculiar to each.You’ll find the full post here. Meanwhile, on a related topic, oboist Patricia Mitchell isn’t happy with percussionist Evelyn Glennie’s call to make classical concerts more like pop shows. Writes Patty:
In short, what I'm suggesting is a return to the hierarchal sobriety that was largely the norm in the pre-postmodern world; a frank admission of the separateness of the hierarchies of aesthetic value of the realms of high and popular culture, and an acceptance of the clear aesthetic distinction between the artifacts inhabiting each.
I just don't like comparing what we do to what a pop star does. We don't do pop music. Big whoop. We aren't going to appeal to everyone. And I doubt we will ever have a crowd cheering and standing and flicking their lighters (or whatever it is they do) while we play. I can live with that. I don't look down on a great rock performer, but I don't want to become one. That's not what we do.You’ll find her full post here. Because I basically agree with what these two bloggers have written, with only a couple of reservations (I don’t really trust quasi-religious concepts like “transcendence,” but I’m sympathetic to what Douglas is trying to say), I’ll add nothing.
Sure, I want to introduce "my" kind of music to more people. Sure, I'm excited when someone new joins the "classical" music crowd. But I'm just not all that into trying to turn what we do into pop music.
We have a shortage of relief announcers here at KUAT-FM, or at least a shortage of relief announcers willing to work on holidays, when we full-timers could actually use some relief. Hey, my first two shifts as a relief announcer here in 1976 were Christmas Eve and Christmas afternoon; that’s the sort of scheduling you sign up for when you’re a fill-in employee. But these days we just can’t seem to find qualified people who’ll take the undesirable shifts. So afternoon guy David Harrington and I are putting in some extra hours over the Thanksgiving break, in exchange for either money or comp time to be taken at a later date.
Unlike David, I managed to get Thanksgiving Day itself off, but I agreed, besides working today, which is a university holiday, to come in Sunday morning as well. Then I had a brilliant idea: Why not record the entire shift ahead of time, and have it played back automatically, the way we do the concert programs in the evening? All the music and my announcements will be stored in hour-long chunks on a computer hard drive, and the computer will be programmed to play the various elements back on a particular schedule. I had to take a crash course in modern computerized audio editing—I haven’t done this sort of thing since the days of razor blades and splicing tape—but the process isn’t difficult, once you get the blasted permissions to save the blasted files where they belong. Ah, computer security; access would probably have been easier if I were a hacker rather than a staffer.
Anyway, if you hear me when you wake up on Sunday morning, don’t panic and think that it’s Monday already. And don’t bother to call me here at KUAT, because I won’t be here, even though my voice will be. If you have a question about the music, wait until the next guy comes in at 11. Enjoy the weekend; I plan to.
James Reel's cranky consideration of the fine arts and public radio in Tucson and beyond.
