Phoning It In, But Not Literally

Remember, way back in June, when music critic Ramiro Burr of the San Antonio Express-News was caught, er, accused of using a ghost writer for about one-hundred stories and columns? Well yeah, he was literally phoning it in. Yet, out of the blue, apparently, for no reason, like a rising fog over yesterday’s battlefield, or a translucent typist suddenly appearing from underneath a rotting oak desk, there’s an “urban myth” that says critics write reviews they don’t actually attend. Go figure. This perception exists, sort of, maybe, sometimes, perhaps in urban settings, where there are more people to potentially disagree with their critic.

This negative perception is so prevalent that Portland’s Christopher Hyde feels compelled to dispel the myth.

Letters that disagree with the evaluation of a performance, or detect errors in its description, almost invariably ask the question: Was the reviewer actually there?

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Well, yes, I was there, even when I earnestly wished to be somewhere else.

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(What? The gag was obligatory, right?)

Okay. Now, while I’ve previously accused critics of phoning it in, I hope I’ve never been taken literally. Usually, I’m just highlighting overused phrases or words which are completely devoid of meaning. Let's make that clear.

However, to say that you sometimes don’t want to be reviewing something you aren’t particularly pleased with is absurd. How can you truly appreciate a fine Brunello di Montalcino without first gagging on some two-buck Chuck? Or Chernowin without Esa-Pekka? I would say there is always something valuable and interesting to be learned from bad performances. A sort of Yin and Yang thing, if not Karma. Besides, it's Portland not Bayreuth, after all.

Anyway, I’m glad you stayed, Chris, otherwise you’d be literally phoning it in, lending credence to the myth you’re trying to dispel. Hooray for ethics!

Oh, and be careful with the concealed weapons thing.
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Phoning It In, Again

I wasn’t familiar with Elgar’s Piano Quintet, Op. 84, until I spent a few minutes (only about fifteen) on the widetubenets, digging up all kinds of information. For instance, his Opus 84 was completed in 1919, but begun before his String Quartet, Opus 83. The piece that followed both of those was his beaten-dead, but famous, “warhorse,” the Cello Concerto, made famouser by preeminent recordings with Pablo Casals, Paul Tortelier, Jaqueline du Pré and Yo-Yo Ma. The quintet in A minor is the longest of Elgar’s chamber pieces, coming in at about 35 minutes long, and was composed at his home in Brinkwells, Sussex. Lady Alice Elgar suggested that the piece may be programmatic; she noted in her diary that the first movement may represent a group of trees in Flexham Park, near Brinkwells.

According to legend, these trees comprised the remains of Spanish monks who had engaged in sacrilegious ceremonies in the park. In correspondence, Elgar too had described the first movement as "ghostly stuff". Doubt has been cast on the legend, focusing on the lack of record of any Spanish religious settlement in the area. But this obscures the point that, whatever the factual basis for the legend (and what legend contains more than a grain of truth), Elgar appears again to have drawn his inspiration from the natural beauty of the area surrounding the cottage at Brinkwells.

Interestingly, Op. 84 was dedicated to music critic Ernest Newman, who wrote for many publications including the, then, Manchester Guardian, which is now, simply, the Guardian. He was also the author of the gargantuan, four-volume “The Life of Richard Wagner.” Unfortunately, the only writing sample I found is a paraphrase taken from a 1911 New York Times review:

The old argument averred that the writer of poetic or pictorial music is like the child who adds to his rude drawing of an animal the words: “This is a dog,” writes Ernest Newman in the London Nation.



















(Ernest Herman)

Fun stuff. I wonder if this viewpoint had anything to do with Elgar’s supposed “tree legend” program. A joke, perhaps?

I found nearly twenty recordings of the Quintet made within the past fifteen, or so, years, over at Amazon. I also found a number of recent performances, though not as many as, say, his Enigma Variations or the Cello Concerto.

Lastly, there is only one video of Op. 84 on YouTube, only about four minutes of the 13-minute first movement, Moderato-Allegro. It’s a really cool-sounding clip. I wish there was more, because the piece seemed cool as well. But, if you’re interested, there are many available recordings to download at iTunes, or Naxos.

Pow! Only fifteen minutes of research. One quarter of an hour. The piece is...how long again? 35 minutes? My research took half, half the time that it would have taken to listen to the piece.

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Now consider this:

The evening ended with a big-boned, big-hearted performance of Elgar's Piano Quintet, with Judith Gordon as the sensitive guest pianist. This unusually textured three-movement work is somewhat of a rarity on concert programs, but these players were equal to its demands, both in its surging stormy passages and its many moments of swelling, sighing lyricism.

1) “Unusually textured?” How was it unusual? Did you listen to it? I only heard four minutes, but couldn’t find one unusual texture. Maybe the problem is in our contradictory definitions of what constitutes an unusual texture. Mind you, by 1919, I am also used to this, and this and this and this and this and this. To what unusual textures were you referring?

2) I would like to rephrase your “but” phrase: “...but these players were equal to its demanding surging stormy passages and its demanding moments of swelling, sighing lyricism.” I just wanted to highlight that you’re emphasizing that the piece was demanding and that the performers handled themselves well. But here’s my problem: Did “stormy passages” and “swelling, sighing lyricism” describe the piece adequately? Hmmm. Sounds like you phoned it in on that one. I mean, your descriptors could apply to practically any piece ever (see above and below “this and this and this and this and this and this”).

The work was completed just after World War I, yet there is something poignant in the way the music seems to cling to an older tradition of 19th-century Romantic chamber music, as if the world that tradition described could live forever, as if it had not already disappeared.

I know that this was your impression, but...the tradition had already disappeared? In 1919? To the contrary: this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. That’s why it was sad? Come on. You’re better than this.

Sorry, but you phoned it in! No question about it. I found a ton of pertinent, fun information about Op. 84 in only fifteen minutes. How long did you spend with it? The time it takes to pop some microwave popcorn? Since it was the last piece on the long program, did you just...leave? Were you tired? Long drive home? Were you fed up with the “Beat L.A.” chants during intermission? Was your nose bleeding? Did you simply not like the piece and didn’t want to investigate it further? That’s something you usually do well. What happened, man?
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Phoning It In: A Who's Who and What's What

Unsurprisingly, we weren’t invited to the party in Denver this week. But on the bright side, being all by my lonesome gives me an opportunity to explain one of my pet peeves in great, long, drawn-out, excruciating, saddle-sore inducing, “telling” detail. No one will be safe! And I will have my revenge!



















Okay, I’ll admit that I often scribble-up a number of these posts rather quickly. Not because I think I have the Midas touch, writing perfect, crystalline exercises of logic that no mortal can shatter. Instead, it’s because I would like to trick myself into thinking that I’m working under the pressure of a deadline.

Why?

It’s all too easy to forget that our dear critics burn the midnight oil, racing from the concert hall to the computer—in some cases, to the Selectric typewriter—just to get the review in on time, often with only a few hours to wittily opine, with a cup of coffee in hand and an ancient dictionary by their side. If that’s not enough, there’s this quirky little blog that’ll tear ‘em a new one if they say the wrong things. Scary, I know.

Sometimes, however, I think that critics just can’t resist the lure of sleep after a long day, despite their desire to write beautiful, lasting prose. Sometimes you have to give in and reset. So they shut it down, wrap it up, phone it in.

What do I mean?

Of course, there’s the Urban Dictionary’s definition:

phone it in: Perform an act in a perfunctory, uncommitted fashion, as if it didn’t matter.

But our definition requires a little more detailed explanation, because phoning it in can take many forms. Take for example Daniel Ginsberg’s little poopcicle:

[Steadiness] gives the reading a granitic strength that firmly places beautiful passages into a sweeping architecture.

WTF? Was that really necessary? Did that add anything to the discussion? What the hell is sweeping architecture? And how does steadiness firmly place passages in said architecture?

Whatever it was he was trying to say, it failed; it meant nothing. Thus, he phoned it in.

Or take for instance, Richard Scheinin’s non sequitor:

Sometimes each note was delivered cleanly, like a pushpin.

Huh? Pushpins are delivered cleanly? Pushpins? Then again, it’s not terrible. But he goes on to say even less:

Sometimes Bach's flourishes, which have a metallic ring on the harpsichord, landed like ripples in a pond [...].

Ripples land? On ponds? So do Bach's flourishes? What?

Similes can be powerful tools, but, here, Richard’s imagery failed hard. His is a kind of Dada criticism. Meaning has exited the building.

What about Edward Ortiz on Morton Feldman and his...impossible paintbrush?

It's akin to Jackson Pollock putting away his drippy paintbrushes for a set of standard brushes made for painting within rigid outlines.

What on Earth are “drippy paintbrushes?” Perhaps he meant, “dripping paintbrushes,” instead? Or a paint-dripping stick, or other objects Pollock regularly utilized when painting? But rigid outlines? Feldman composed by numbers? Sorry. Nope. Wrong.

And then there’s Tyler Zimmer:

There were countless moments during Fantastique when the orchestra sounded at its best, not in small part due to Slatkin, who is finishing his penultimate year as music adviser with the Nashville Symphony.

It’s hard not to picture Tyler in the audience with his pencil and notepad frantically making tick-marks every time the orchestra “sounded at its best.” Only, he failed, because he couldn’t count them all.

And also Andrew Drukenbrod:

This music is going to hurt, but you will be the better for it, like watching "Schindler's List."

Wow! Now that’s positive criticism coupled with over-baked imagery! Sheesh.

Check this one out. It’s from the Seattle Times:



(cricket, cricket, cricket)...



Whew. That was fun! Wasn't it?



















Then there’s Paul Horsley from the Kansas City Star:

Among details I might quibble with were the upward-arpeggiated chords in the finale, which sounded more like broken chords than melodic line.

Um...unless I’m missing something, aren’t upward-arpeggiated chords synonymous with broken chords?

Or how about the ever-popular prefabricated stock-sentence:

The rest of the program was devoted to [enter composer here]’s [adj.] [piece], where the orchestra’s playing was [adj.] and [adj.], and the solos were [adj.] and [adj.].

Oh, and by the way, the final adjective was the ever-empty “interesting.” Again, just more examples of “phoning it in.”

And...(drumroll)...David Partick Stearns on Tchaikovsky:

Harmonic dissonances made intrusions more pointed than usual, almost like a depressive episode, establishing a darker undertone that never quite left and giving the music a dimension that suggested this piece is, in its way, the equal of his symphonies.

To reword: Unusually pointed intrusions, made by harmonic dissonances, suggested...??? That the piece was better than it actually was? I don’t get it. Kostka and Payne never covered that, did they?

And...(bigger drumroll)...here’s Matthew Guerrieri:

The elegiac fourth movement is built around the piano, collecting rhapsodic fragments into resonant clouds casting shadows over allusions to the previous movements.

Well, I take this one back. Sorry. Matthew is doing the opposite of phoning it in. In fact, this little nugget is quite complex, forcing me to cast reverse-shadows of metaphoric doubt over rhapsodic insinuations of the previous “phoning it in-ers.” So...nevermind. My apologies.

But, then there’s this:

The Mass is written for five choirs, and its most telling moments come from the composer's manipulation of their separate sounds.

That very well may be true. However, what was the significance of these moments? How did the composer manipulate “their separate sounds?”

I mean, I could say that “this meta-critique is significant.” But without telling you how it is significant, I’d be phoning it in, calling it a day, giving up. Without explaining my definition of “phoning it in,” I’d be lazy. Thus, I’d be phoning it in. If I made up long, drawn-out generalizations that didn’t say anything only to fill out my word count, I’d be phoning it in. If I simply made things up because they sounded good, I’d...



















Have fun in Denver!

(thanks to Chris at Chris's Invincible Super-Blog for the pics)
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