Kari Johnson & Robert Burke: ‘Unity’ Concert

M any things to be enthused about last night, regarding Kari Johnson’s and Robert Burke’s KCeMA performance at Unity Temple.

• Christopher Biggs – The Ends of Histories (piano, electronics, and video, 10-min)
  
• Peter Swendsen – Nothing that is not there and the Nothing that is (instrumented bass drum and electronics, 8.5-min)
  
• Jeff Herriott – Velvet Sink (piano and electronics, 13-min)
  
• João Pedro Oliveira – Liquid Bars (vibraphone and electronics, 12-min)
  
• Scott Blasco – Queen of Heaven (piano and electronics, 23-min)

C hristopher Biggs’s ‘The Ends of Histories’ for piano, digital video and audio represents ideas regarding how history must end—any history, all Histories—including religious ones, socio‐political ones, geological histories, all of them. A primary-color-heavy, apocalyptic video of watery scenes and splotches of color is displayed on a screen adjacent to pianist Kari Johnson. The high-contrast, posterized quality of the video’s color palette adds to the non-human, bichromatic wolf-vision, Terminator-vision, Predator-vision, insect-vision viewpoint of the camera/cameraperson. The piano part is full of sforzando emphases, a hyper-percussive quality that is meant to mate with the punctate, unforgiving synth and cosmically abject waveform-samples on the digital audio tracks. Ms. Johnson provided a spirited, empathetic reading, flawless.

T   he materials represent the following conceptions of the end of history: (1) a polarized religious End Time whereby everyone either ascends into a Pleasant World or descends into Fire—a prophetic, spiritual, transcendent End that has appeared in many forms throughout history and is currently represented by the idea that there will be some kind of cataclysm at the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012; (2) a sociopolitical End in which capitalist democracy supplants all other ideologies...; and (3) ‘scientific’ Ends... mass-extinctions.”
  — Christopher Biggs, composer.

P eter Swendsen’s ‘Nothing is not there and the Nothing that is’ for miked/instrumented bass drum and electronics draws its inspiration from violent forces of wind and weather. Forces of Nature are the architects of the sonic space and textures, and humans are compulsory respondents to natural events that are not of their choosing. The majority of the piece consists of canticle-like ‘verse-and-responsory’ segments, each about one minute in length. The human percussionist (Robert Burke) is entrained in Nature’s mesh (electronics, plus waveforms captured by mics—his own playing, digitally processed, delayed, pitch-bent, filtered, and replayed through monitors adjacent to him on-stage). The piece is written in such a way that the performer becomes progressively more mindful of the sonic consequences of each gesture, each mallet stroke, for what the future will become—and we in the audience experience this sense of the long-term impact that we have, on each other, on other species, and on the planet as a whole. Burke’s finesse with extended mallet techniques—including inducing aeroelastic drum-head vibrations with his hypothenar eminence and including wiping a stick fitted with a red silastic scrubber on the drum-head to evoke wild-animal growls and anguished roaring—were ‘Never-heard-anything-like-that-before!’ breathtaking.

A   long the coast, this collision is a constant negotiation: the land and sea changing back and forth; the clouds that hover near the shoreline. In the interior, however, wind and weather do not negotiate.”
  — Peter Swendsen, composer.

J oão Pedro Oliveira’s ‘Liquid Bars’ delivers sonic textures that marry live marimba/vibraphone with the electronically-processed signals from two large dynamic ribbon mics positioned at approximately mid-resonator-tube height on the left side and right side of the instrument. The electronically-processed sounds mutate spontaneously under software control, modulated by the mallet strikes. The increasingly complex polyphonies and polyrhythms are fascinating and unnerving—almost like interviewing a person whose acute psychiatric problems have landed the person in your Emergency Room in the wee hours of a Saturday night. The notion of ‘self’ is called into question, not only who the self or ‘selves’ are—the one(s) in front of you—but also whether the whole assumption that ‘who’ any of us are is stable and ascertainable is faulty. The composition has ketamine-like psychotropic properties. Gee, should FDA and DEA regulate this music as a Schedule II pharmaceutical? Powerful! Robert Burke’s 4-mallet technique is superb...

L   et us imagine a Marimba who can produce sound... Let us imagine that the Performer and the Marimba would each have the possibility of dividing themselves into two or more instruments and performers—and imagine that all of these play against each other.”
  — João Pedro Oliveira, composer.

J eff Herriott’s ‘Velvet Sink’ is a piece that explores the possibilities of the piano through both extended performance techniques and the use of digital audio. I worry that technical obsolescence tends to make works like these short-lived. Several works realized on the IRCAM’s realtime audio processor 4X, for example, can no longer be performed, because the equipment and operating-system become obsolete so fast and cannot readily be ‘refactored’ and ported to new configurations that can render the same effects as the old ones. There are maintenance problems even with well-structured software. Pieces for ‘tape’ survive: the process of recording will always be ported to more recent technologies, such as CDs, DVDs, and hard disks. Here, though, Herriott’s Max/MSP scripts and Peak and ProTools elements are fairly portable and are likely to withstand the technology changes of this decade and the next. Kari Johnson gives tactile, delicate treatments of the keyboard passages. Repetitive eighth-note patterns, very insistent, have undulating up-down microtonal bends applied to them, until the patterns feel like waves, a gentle-swell aquatic envelope—the sonic surface is a kind of ‘minimalism-built-out-of-complexity’, sort of oxymoronic jumbo-shrimp. Then she stands up, reaches into the piano and begins plucking strings with fingertips and fingernails; hammering piano strings with percussion mallets; modifying the placements of rubber erasers between strings, prepared-piano-style—at times music-box-like, at times chime-like.

S   amples were recorded using both a baby grand and an out-of-tune piano-harp from a destroyed upright piano. Some of these sound snippets were then processed and patched to generate longer sound files that were, in turn, reconfigured with ProTools. Others, notably the plucked gestures in the third movement, sound in performance much as they did during the recording. Ultimately, a unique Max/MSP patch is used in performance to control the playback of the recorded material.”
  — Jeff Herriott, composer.

S cott Blasco’s (b'79) Queen of Heaven, composed for Ms. Johnson and premiered last night, consists of five movements, each conceived as [a religious—] icon, concerning itself with a single idea, turning it over and over, meditating on it from different angles. ‘Queen of Heaven’ is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, “a source of comfort and inspiration to Christians from the earliest years of their history,” in the composer’s words. Blasco’s composition, informed by his Master’s degree in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and degree in Composition and Music Theory from Calvin College, is a highly personal exegesis. The angels’ ‘greeting’ the Mother of God in the first movement conveys more of a confrontation—as in Awed and Struck Dumb—than a ‘greeting’. Sonority and terror appear linked in other of the movements as well, enough to cause most to have second-thoughts about the appeal of the Pearly Gates.

W   hen I write music, I’m not writing it ‘for me’ per se. I see it as holding out an olive branch to my audience, and offering praise by mirroring the Creator.”
  — Scott Blasco, composer.

K ari Johnson is a DMA student at UMKC Conservatory where she studies with John McIntyre. She holds bachelor’s degrees in Piano Performance and Piano Pedagogy from the University of Central Missouri, a master’s degree in Piano Performance from Bowling Green State University, and a master’s degree in Piano Pedagogy from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Ms. Johnson has won or placed in competitions throughout the Midwest, including the MTNA Steinway Young Artist Competitions in Missouri and Illinois and the Venetia Hall Concerto Competition. An active performer of new music and chamber music, Ms. Johnson’s recent performances include collaborative concerts at the University of Central Missouri and Pittsburg State University, UMKC’s “Carter and Messiaen at 100” festival, and the CMS Great Plains Chapter 2009 Regional Conference. In the coming year she will perform at the 2010 UCM New Music Festival and the 2010 SEAMUS National Conference.

R obert Burke is also a DMA student at UMKC Conservatory. He has enjoyed an eclectic carrier performing, studying and teaching throughout Canada, The United States, Japan and Europe. He is originally from Alberta, Canada although for the last decade has hailed New Orleans as home. A strong advocate of new music, Mr. Burke has commissioned and performed countless solo percussion works in recital and held member ship in New Works Calgary, Syncronia (St. Louis) and Conundrum New Music Ensemble. He has also been a regular member of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, The Calgary Philharmonic and The Louisianna Philharmonic. As a drumset player, Mr. Burke has performed and toured with a remarkable number of recording artists in clubs and festivals throughout the United States and Europe, including Brian Lee, Johnny Sansone, Preston Hubbard, Frankie Ford, Cyril Neville, Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Peter Nero, Marvin Hamlish, and Robert Goulet. He holds degrees from University of Alberta and the University of Calgary and has served on the faculty of the University of Calgary, Mount Royal College, the University of Missouri-Columbia and Central Methodist College.

• Kansas City Electronic Music Alliance (KCeMA)
  
• Kari Johnson page at UMKC Conservatory
  
• Robert Burke contact
  
• Scott Blasco website
  
• João Pedro Oliveira website
  
• Christopher Biggs website
  
• Jeff Herriott website
  
• Peter Swendsen website
  
• Musser M75-Century vibraphone
  
• Musser M250-ConcertGrand marimba

Robert Johnson’s ‘PrairyErth’: Phobic Geographies, Non-Teleological Atmospherics

T  o cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.”
  —  Wendell Berry.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra gave the premiere of Robert Johnson’s ‘PrairyErth’ last Friday night, conducted by Paavo Järvi. The program notes are here. The Cincinnati Enquirer review of the premiere is here.

• The 7-minute tone poem is for full orchestra, but the orchestration conveys an intimacy that is characteristic of chamber music.
  
• The spatial acoustic effects (antiphonal, for example of a rainstorm crossing the prairie) resemble effects achieved in fixed-media electroacoustic compositions.

• ‘PrairyErth’ expounds a Time to Every Purpose or, better, a Time to No Purpose At All. It documents the beauty that can be found in insignificance and the aesthetics that inheres in a lack of discernable purpose. Inadvertently or deliberately, the piece is a persuasive argument against Creationism or Intelligent Design. ‘PrairyErth’ is an essay on ‘belief-desire’ (a philosophical theory that holds that an act is purposeful insofar as the agent has a desire in combination with a belief about how to satisfy it) vs. the causality and explanatory power of intentions. It questions whether anything in Nature can ever be said to have anthropomorphic purposes underlying the tableau of natural events. According to Robert Johnson, Nature simply Is.
  
• Space defines what human subjectivity can be. This is ‘atmospherics-in-where’, the ‘qualities-of-what-when’: Situatedness, context-boundness of the ‘who’.
  
• Criteria of attentiveness provide the aesthetic rationale for all the changes that occur in the course of a composition. ‘PrairyErth’ captures and holds our attention, like a thunderstorm.
  
• Instead of vague, vaporescent impressionism as, say, in some of Debussy, there is a freshness and inspiration in Johnson’s writing. He elevates his subject out of obscurity and creates a clarity and memorability—the writing captivates; it has impact.
  
• This new composition by Johnson constitutes an intensive topographical exploration, much like the one popularized by author William Least Heat-Moon with his book ‘PrairyErth: A Deep Map’. So-called ‘deep map’ works take the form of engaged documentary, and Johnson’s follows in this tradition. There is no question of the cleverness of the music, and of the craftsmanly excellence of its construction. But I was pulled up short by its ending in just 7 minutes. No ‘deep map’ documentary should end so soon. More than this, the long-scale structures of prairie—the remnants of glaciers; the meteorological pace of prairie phenomena and ethos—deserve and require at least 20. At 7 minutes, we are just beginning to sync with the hypermeter that Johnson has set up. We feel disappointed and cheated for the piece to end at 7 minutes.
  
• Like William Least Heat-Moon’s ‘PrairyErth’, Johnson’s piece evokes angst—it portrays a deep existential unease. Our hold here is tenuous, vulnerable. Possibly, we don’t really ‘belong’ here at all. Any presumption to human ‘mastery’ over this primeval landscape is delusional. It will out-last us, out-last humankind. ‘PrairyErth’ is a dream foretelling humanity’s eventual, inevitable extinction.

I  believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.”
  —  Werner Herzog, ‘Grizzly Man’, 2006.

• Like William Least Heat-Moon in ‘PrairyErth’, Johnson is here a bricoleur of consummate skill who conjures surreal events and ambiguous textures. Heat-Moon writes of a feminist rancher in the Flint Hills of Chase County, Kansas; of a farm couple swept away by a tornado; of abolitionists who perversely wanted black slaves to be free but not equal. He meditates on fence posts, Indian arrowheads and the nesting habits of pack rats. Johnson’s collage likewise has a happenstantial feel, an ambivalent tonality that Johnson half-disavows. The development of Johnson’s themes is watercolorist-reportorial, as though he were a passive observer bearing witness to the power of Nature via Joan Foth-style ‘wet-in-wet’ brush technic.
  
• Nature is devoid of sympathy. The 7-minute scene has a reality far in excess of Johnson’s staged account. Sentimentalism is fatal, Johnson tells us.

T  o make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee—
One clover, and a bee,
  And reverie.
The reverie alone will do,
If bees are few.”
  —  Emily Dickinson.

• Bachelard G. Poetics of Space. Beacon, 1976.
  
• Blesser B, Salter L-R. Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?: Experiencing Aural Architecture. MIT, 2005.
  
• Davidson J. Phobic Geographies: The Phenomenology and Spatiality of Identity. Ashgate, 2003.
  
• Gelfand J. A season finale worth waiting for. Cincinnati Enquirer 03-MAY-2008.
  
• Least Heat-Moon W. PrairyErth (A Deep Map): An Epic History of the Tallgrass Prairie Country. Mariner, 1999.
  
• Reuter S. Narrating Social Order: Agoraphobia and the Politics of Classification. Univ Toronto, 2007.
  
• Riley M. Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment: Attention, Wonder and Astonishment. Ashgate, 2004.
  
• Schueler G. Reasons and Purposes: Human Rationality and the Teleological Explanation of Action. Oxford Univ, 2003.
  
• Shands K. Embracing Space: Spatial Metaphors in Feminist Discourse. Greenwood, 1999.

GoldStarEvents: Successfully Vying for Thinly-Spread Attentions of Young Market Segments

W  e have to have a [reduced] price that is behavior-changing.”
  —  Jim McCarthy, CEO, GoldStar Events.

CMT: More diverse classical music marketing matters more than ever in a crowded market filled with competing leisure activities and ever more cultural product. Because classical music doesn’t fit the demands of the construction of the culture of youth and fashion, it’s inevitably marginalized in a culture that’s obsessed with youth and fashion. So what’s a presenter to do, to sustain or improve revenue? GoldStar is clearly one good, rational answer. It’s been reasonably successful for presenters in 8 U.S. metropolitan markets for about 3 years now . . .

The feeling of danger is a fact to be reckoned with. The problem is perhaps less economic or demographic than it is cultural, less a question of the music’s survival than of its role. The days when listening to classical music could feel like an integral part of cultural life are long gone. One reason why is the loss of a credible way to maintain that people ought to listen to this music, that the music is something that should not be missed. Our growing reluctance or inability to impose prescriptive ‘shoulds’ has obscured the power of the ‘should’ that says, ‘Don’t deprive yourself of this pleasure.’ . . . There is nothing anymore that one just has to hear.”
  —  Lawrence Kramer, 2007.

DSM: Yes. I like your point about youth and fashion, by the way. I don’t believe anybody’s chamber music programming is overtly elitist. But, in general, it’s not fashion-generating or fashion-responsive. Most chamber music performers don’t have the financial wherewithal to be fashionistas! But, more than clothing or other surface elements, chamber music is, with the exception of Kronos and a handful of others, not transgressive enough to capture the imagination of the under-40’s. The idea of transgression, of breaking rules, is as important in classical music as it is in popular music. But in classical music, it’s essentially an inward, musical matter, while in popular music it is mostly an outward, performative, public display. Classical music infrequently shows outwardly transgressive moments. But inwardly, within the discourse of a string quartet, say, it’s frequently based on the idea of transgressing its own formal boundaries, of breaking prior conventions, of radically recasting its materials and methods. It just isn’t packaged with physical transgressions on the surface, which would be essential for pop cross-over—the daring costumes of Sophie Mütter notwithstanding.

If you [classical music presenters] want to keep your doors open in the 21st century, you’d better scrap the cultural entitlement mentality that has long dominated the marketing of the Arts in America and start trying out new business models that make sense to postmodern audiences. When it comes to the fine arts, young people want what they want when they want it—and if they can’t get it, they’ll go see a movie instead.”
  —  Terry Teachout, 2007.

CMT: Remember, too, that classical music is generally made as art but serves the function of entertainment. And, for many people, the discretionary spending is limited and is already committed to other activities. So classical music on the whole tries to market itself as art, but, by doing so, it becomes progressively more and more expensive and more and more elitist—inadvertently elitist; backhandedly elitist. GoldStar Events reverses this. Goldstar Events puts classical music and chamber music events back into the realm of ‘entertainment’ and prices the events at 50% or less of the full-price ticket. Transgressive or not, it suddenly becomes more affordable. And the internet-based social-networking and push-marketing enables GoldStar members to be notified of just those events that they have interest in. It’s not a panacea, but GoldStar’s “rush” tickets are one way for chamber music presenters to build audiences and market diversity. Ticket-drop and ‘buzz’! More butts in seats!

C   lassical music ... is no less concerned with individuality, radical difference, and expansive energy [than popular music], but it does not restrict these qualities to the image of a merely physical youthfulness.”
  —  Julian Johnson, p. 45.

• GoldStar Events website
  
• Furchgott R. Nights Out in New York Just Got Cheaper. NY Times, 15-NOV-2006. [1MB pdf]
  
• Teachout T. What Young Audiences Want. Wall Street Journal, 23-JUN-2007, P16.
  
• DeNora T. After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology. Cambridge Univ, 2003.
  
• Johnson J. Who Needs Classical Music? : Cultural Choice and Musical Value. Oxford Univ, 2002.
  
• Kramer L. Why Classical Music Still Matters. Univ California, 2007.
  
• Saariaho K. From the Grammar of Dreams. (Ondine, 2001.)

What’s the Story: Blogging Classical Music Criticism as Narrative

Much chamber music refuses to satisfy the function of creating a mood. Its frequent shifts make it bad mood music and very bad background music. And its cultivated autonomy resists the listener making of the music what she/he will. It lacks what, in Baroque music, is called a ‘unity of affect’. Julian Johnson maintains that it is this feature—the discursive aspect of classical music in general and chamber music in particular—that makes it attractive primarily to audiences who know that that is what such music does, that is how it works, and that is what they want. By contrast, people who are unprepared for the discourse, or who do not like an ‘active’ authorly/composerly stance, or who do not wish to engage music as conversation or exert the effort and attention to apprehend what is being said—are unlikely to enjoy or be deeply excited by this music.”
  — Julian Johnson, Who Needs Classical Music? p. 35

DSM: I love the Julian Johnson statement above and also this one: “In some ways, [chamber music] is comparable to a rather involved novel or a film. If you skip a few chapters or leave the theater for awhile, you will lose the plot or narrative thread.”

CMT: Almost all chamber music is structured along discursive lines. This has to do with its use of harmony and musical forms and phrasing—long-range developments that are analogous to literary narrative. The sonata is, in many ways, comparable to the novel. The plot and meaning are impossible to ‘get’ if details are missed. In chamber music, more than in symphonic music, the conciseness is tremendous. This puts an even greater demand on the listener—more concentration and understanding are needed, or else the listener feels like a child observing an elegant conversation among grown-ups—an attractive conversation that she/he can’t comprehend or participate in.

DSM: This is partly what limits audience growth. Chamber music developed with an aesthetic and social context that required focused attention.

CMT: But our attention needn’t be ‘rapt’. I’m not arguing for the correctness of a certain approach to chamber music, or of the necessity of one kind of listening over another. Rather, I’m suggesting that discursive music is unlikely to serve its natural functions if it’s approached non-discursively. Besides, it’s unlikely to be very meaningful if approached as if it had some unity of affect that it doesn’t have. It will disappoint the listener/reader if the listener/reader expects it to contain one simple, unambiguous, unchallenging thought. It’ll disappoint the listener/reader if she/he is wanting to experience the music passively or distractedly.

DSM: Well, program notes and critics’ reviews and bloggers’ posts ought to guide the listener, stimulate the reader. Even this blog! Each post is a memento of one of our conversations, each one we hope may have some value to readers—especially the bulletized lists of links/resources that we gather together at the bottom of each one. But the conceit of a ‘conversation’ is an unusual format for criticism or program notes, don’t you think?

CMT: Maybe so. But, to me, it’s natural—entirely consonant with the discursive/conversational nature of chamber music.

DSM: And it’s entirely consistent with the ad hoc, extemporaneous, serious-amateur, non-specialist, “thrown” character of our own dialogues. There’s no doubt we could instead construct most of our posts here as essays.

CMT: But that’d be bogus. We’re just talking—we’re not laboring over manuscripts here! Soi-disant…

DSM: The RILM Manual of Style is a wonderful resource. It counters the typical eurocentric perspective—with diversity and sensitivity to a variety of cultural views and linguistic approaches. It counters the ‘relevancy-obsessed,’ dumbed-down populism of the typical American perspective—with honest excitement decorated by just enough erudition to explain what the excitement is about. In other words, it’s the epitome of the elegant, civil tradition of good music journalism. Well worth having—even the impromptu music blogger should have a copy I think, not just the professional music critic or journalist!


CMT: Nice to be reminded of what we should aspire to, even if our tendencies are to the ‘raw’ or still bleeding, rather than things that are ‘cooked’.

DSM: Controversial or exotic drum-beating, instead of well-settled exposition. And nobody would think me capable of being elegant!

CMT: A critic’s value is not determined by whether he/she’s right or wrong but whether he/she’s a good read. That’s one reason Martin Bernheimer is one of my favorite classical music writers. His review of Fabio Biondi conducting an obscure Scarlatti oratorio below was the sort of classical-music writing I like.

DSM: Despite Bernheimer’s high-brow taste for fine music-making, which irritates those who think that preserving the classical music audience must involve dumbing things down or focusing only on the familiar composers and works, his stylish prose has the common touch. He could easily write mandarin criticism. But he is a paragon of simplicity, clarity and vigor. Against all those who complain that serious music has lost its audience, I claim that serious music critics themselves are as much to blame as anyone else. Bored readers aren’t about to storm the concert halls or buy subscription season tickets.

CMT: And, instead of regressing to ever-less-challenging familiar works, audience growth might more likely be achieved by enabling the hearing and understanding of less-celebrated pieces, be they old or new ones. Make the experience of classical music into—more than anything!—an exciting process of discovery! You’re selling the experience, not a ‘product’! The effect you want is for the attendees to be so engaged in the narrative and in the experience that they spontaneously comment about it in ordinary conversations with their friends. “What did you do last night?” “I heard X performing Y! It was incredible!”

Alessandro Scarlatti’s ultra-obscure ‘Oratorio per la Santissima trinitàhas’ been something of an obsession - a magnificent obsession, if you will - for some time with Fabio Biondi. The enterprising Baroque specialist from Palermo, primarily a violinist but an able conductor too, exhumed this musical musing on the Most Holy Trinity two years ago in Spain. On Thursday night, 288 years after the Neapolitan premiere, he mustered a performance heralded as the first in the US. The stylish ensemble on duty was Europa Galante, founded by Biondi in 1990. The suitably intimate locale was Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and the no doubt grateful host was the Mostly Mozart festival. Biondi claims that ‘talking about Santissima trinità is rather like walking about an archaeological site without knowing what the objects sticking up through the earth actually are.’ The identity of the hack librettist is a mystery, and only one manuscript score has survived. The musical manoeuvres, in many ways advanced for 1715, seem more operatic than ecclesiastical. Although the structure relies on period formulas, much of the execution is imaginative. Five vocal soloists - personifying faith, theology, infidelity, time and divine love - discuss the nature of the Trinity in recitatives, arias and duets that vacillate between narrative simplicity and expressive virtuosity. The tiny accompanying ensemble, strings plus elaborate continuo, is essentially subservient, occasionally dominant. The climactic gesture takes the form of an astonishing quintet. Biondi led a superbly propulsive, exquisitely nuanced performance with little fuss, fiddle in hand. Enrico Onofri, the tenor entrusted with the arguments of infidelity, suffered a bit of interpretive affectation, but his colleagues turned out to be musical and dramatic paragons. Marta Almajano sang the soprano lines sweetly, with flexibility and point. Laura Polverelli and Sonia Prina exulted in the light and shade of contrasting mezzo-soprano assignments, while Roberto Abbondanza brought dark authority to the basso foundation. This was a night of revelations.”
   — Martin Bernheimer, Financial Times, 11-AUG-2003

DSM: Amazing what can be done in 300 words! Excellent example!
. . . You know, earlier this month, I tried something that I had never done before. Normally, I make notes during a performance, and refer to them as I anticipate our next meeting or phone call. But note-taking is a distraction—it gets in the way of listening. So for the Pomerium performance, I decided not to take notes and see if that affected my experience of the music and my sense of it—my recollections about it, and how they figured in our conversation afterwards. My little experiment led my mind to wander to the architecture and singers’ faces—the performance was excellent for the same reasons I probably would’ve recorded had I been taking notes—but I doubt that I would’ve attended to the elements of physical performance in the way that I did.

CMT: One reason I like Martin Bernheimer of the Financial Times is that he’s vehemently opposed to the pompous, paternalistic idea of the critic as a cultural ‘educator’: “The critic shouldn’t be a salesman. I’ve always had a problem with being [simultaneously a – ] drum-beater and consumer guide. When the critic has to play both roles, I think there’s a problem.” Bernheimer lets the chips fall in exactly the way you’re referring to when you describe your experiment during the Pomerium performance.

DSM: The ‘educator’ stance is not just a pretentious position; it’s a loser’s position. It implies defeating a nameless, faceless enemy. And the opponent is in fact the reader who’s not a fan. Why should that reader read such a thing!? What you’re better advised to do with your comments is to win a place at the reader’s damned table! This doesn’t mean you give up objectivity or become a PR agent for the business or dumb things down so the reader feels comfy. It means, instead, that you write with more urgency, more immediacy. The writing is—and always will be—crucial. You’ve got to matter to people!

CMT: Don’t you get tired of going to the same concert over and over again? Beethoven, Schubert, the Appassionata being played a little bit differently?

DSM: Well, yes. Oh, each year there’re the next crop of fresh young faces—there’re more layers of discovery and appreciation in a familiar opus than we’ll ever know. But, yes, I do wish we had the chance to hear more under-played older works and more new and experimental music. And if some new music and experiments turn out badly, then it’s a music critic’s or a blogger’s job to say so!

CMT: Several years ago Joseph Horowitz, author of Classical Music in America, concluded that the critic’s role is inherently one of advocacy. He charted criticism’s shift from focusing on composition to focusing on performance. Horowitz argued that the culture of performance—which came to the fore with the celebrity of Arturo Toscanini—sidelined critics, not to mention composers, and reduced reviews to little more than bland descriptions and quibbling. He called for a return to a time when the critic was “an organizer, a doer” on behalf of classical music.

DSM: Classical music has an actual audience and a potential audience. The way we talk to each other, it’s clear that we have both fanatical and unconverted readers in mind. The trick is in finding a language that intrigues both.

CMT: The probability that a concert will be exceptionally good doesn’t necessarily justify writing about it. The question is: What’s the story?

DSM: Criticism needs to get outside itself. Movie reviews aren’t just about acting and cinematography. Music reviews should be about more than just notes. And critics can take the lead in showing where music should go.

CMT: There’s nothing shameful in enthusiasm. If I’m thrilled, I tell you about it, even if somebody reading this might smirk. If I’m disappointed or incensed, I tell you about that, too!

• Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM), course on writing program notes. [1MB pdf]
  
• Born G, Hesmondhalgh D, eds. Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Univ California, 2000.
  
• Brown G, Yule G. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge Univ, 1983.
  
• Cowdery J, ed. How to Write About Music. Répertoire Internationale de Littérature Musicale (RILM), 2001.
  
• Cumming N. The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification. Indiana Univ, 2001.
  
• Fairclough N. Analysing Discourse. Routledge, 2003.
  
• Gee JP. Introduction to Discourse Analysis. Routledge, 2005.
  
• Georgakopoulou A, Goutsos D. Discourse Analysis: An Introduction. Edinburgh Univ, 1997.
  
• Hatten RS. Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. Indiana Univ, 2004.
  
• Haverkate H. Deictic categories as mitigating devices. Pragmatics 1992; 2: 502-522.
  
• Hooper G. The Discourse of Musicology. Ashgate, 2006.
  
• Julian Johnson webpage at Oxford
  
• Johnson J. Webern and the Transformation of Nature. Cambridge Univ, 2006.
  
• Johnson J. Who Needs Classical Music?: Cultural Choice and Musical Value. Oxford Univ, 2002.
  
• Lanser SS. The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction. Princeton Univ, 1982.
  
• Nattiez J-J. Music and Discourse. Princeton Univ, 1990.
  
• Schiffrin D, Tannen D, Ehernberger-Hamilton H, eds. Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell, 2003.
  
• Slonimsky N. Lexicon of Musical Invective. Norton, 2000.
  
• Spitzer M. Metaphor and Musical Thought. Univ Chicago, 2003.
  
• Stein D, ed. Cooperating with Written Texts: The Pragmatics and Comprehension of Written Texts. Berlin and New York: Mouton De Gruyter, 1992.
  
• Thompson G, Thetela P. The sound of one hand clapping: The management of interaction in written discourse. Text 1995;15: 103-127.
  
• Van Leeuwen T. Representing social action. Discourse & Society 1995; 6: 81-106.
  
• Wales K. A Dictionary of Stylistics. Longmans, 1989.
  
• Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA).
  
• Mandarin Design dropcaps CSS tutorial
  
• ChamberMusicToday, The Good Critic: Ecce Cor Meum, 18-NOV-2006.
  
• ChamberMusicToday, Daily Papers' Classical Coverage, 25-SEP-2006.