Bad Advice

So. The Guardian UK is holding a young critic's competition (again).

Figure 1: Hard at work on a Stockhausen critique, a young critic thoughtfully selects the orange pencil to signify hope.

Well, first: I lied. The deadline for submissions has passed; the winners (and their work) have not been announced.

No, I'm not taking this opportunity to lambaste some poor teenager's prose. (You're the jerk for even thinking that.)

Figure 2: Navin R. Johnson

What, then, am I on about?

(Besides the delightfully absurd and annoying entry form.)

Hm.

Fancy yourself as a critic?

Doesn't matter; I entirely fail to qualify, as I am not under 18, British, or proximal to a time machine that'd let me get my entry in before last Friday.

(And no: I most certainly did not submit a fake entry. I can't believe you people would even think that.)

Think you've got what it takes to be a critic? Send us a review of between 300 and 350 words of an album, film or concert that inspires – or disappoints, or – annoys – you this summer.

M-dashes are on the what now?

We'll be judging the competition in eight different categories: film, pop, visual art, theatre, TV, classical music, dance and architecture.

Parsing these categories would be fun (architecture but not books? Pop is assumed to be music, but there's no "classical" category except music?), but ultimately not amusing enough to spend time and space on right now. So I'll go for the easy joke instead:

Y'all spelled "theater" wrong.

Figure 3: "Oh no, the sink's clogged! Call the plumbre!"

Our judges – who also include architect Will Alsop, choreographer Hofesh Shechter, and chair of Arts Council England Liz Forgan – will be looking for powerful, persuasive voices, with original opinions and a flair for expressing them. Each category will be judged in two age groups: under 14s and 14-18-year-olds.

That's fair enough, a solid all-around idea, and has some people from actual arts industries involved. What could possibly go wrong?

You should review something new or recent in your chosen category (though we'll make an exception for architecture, which can be new or old).

That's interesting: a new concert of old "classical" music counts as recent...but architecture is exempted. Again: really? Architecture? Not books?

[snip]

To enter, download an application form here...

They also had a contest for under-14-year-old form designers?

The deadline for entries is Friday 28 August 2009. You'll also find lots of useful information on the website here, including details of free and discounted events across the UK, a full list of this year's judges, last year's winning entries and top tips on writing a review from the Guardian's team of critics.

Good. Fine. Praiseworthy, even. It seems that...

Wait.

What was that last bit?

....top tips on writing a review from the Guardian's team of critics.

Ah. Better take a look at that, eh?

(I ask again: What could possibly go wrong? I mean, as long as they're "top" tips. Right?)

The judges offer their advice for all budding arts critics

Charles Hazlewood, conductor Judge in the classical music category

(Charles Hazlewood's website)

Critics sometimes forget that they wield immense power.

Figure 4: An arts critic relaxes after a day of hard work. (The small box in his left hand contains the souls of recently maligned musicians.)

When, as an artist, you get a good review, you feel as if you're walking on clouds. But when someone writes a really damning review, you feel as if someone has slit a hole in your guts and pulled out your entrails.

Good reviews make you feel good. Bad reviews, conversely, make you feel bad. It sounds radical, I know. But hey, who's the barber here?

A good critic is aware of this.

Probably?

They are knowledgeable, thoughtful, reflective, but also compassionate. They recognise the important difference between expressing reservations about something, or even disgust, and being poisonous for the sake of it.

Okay, good. This seems like an excellent thing to keep in mind when attempting criticism. It is not exactly prescriptive, however, and therefore does not qualify as advice (that is: "top tips on writing a review").

What's your "top tip," Maestro?

The biggest single piece of advice I would give to any young person interested in writing criticism is to base your writing entirely on how the art makes you feel.

Guh?...Wha!?

That may be the single worst piece of advice I've ever read. And I read Altas Shrugged.

Feel? What happened to "knowledgeable, thoughtful, and reflective" here? Certainly the experience of (for example) going to a concert is not to be ignored; nor is the [perceived] emotional content or affect of art. But basing "your writing entirely [emphasis mine] on how the art makes you feel" seems like an awful idea. Especially, perhaps, for a novice.

If you have no prior experience or advance knowledge of music by, say, Stockhausen, or Cage, or Bach or Mozart for that matter, you might have expectations that are far different from what you'll experience at a concert. Relying solely and ultimately on how you "felt" about it is not useful to the reader, except, perhaps, in the way that it might be interesting to send an aeronautical engineer to judge a dog show.

Figure 5: The aerodynamics are all messed up, and it doesn't seem to have any wings whatsoever. I seriously doubt they'll ever get it off the ground.

What is the justification for this nugget of wisdom, Maestro?

The paper or website that hires you to write a review does so because they trust your judgment and your instincts; they don't want the received view.

That's fair, and actually helpful. But it doesn't justify entirely basing your review on how you feel.

Although, in a way, isn't part of the critic's function exactly to present, or at least shape, the "perceived view"? We wouldn't even have a "perceived view" at all.

But that's not really the point.

It's natural to want to move in packs, and you see little cabals of critics at some events, teaming up to base their opinion on what the others think. That's the worst thing to do.

Okay; I agree with this, too. And it's important to think for yourself, and think about art on one's own. The operative word, I think, is think.

Trust your own gut instincts; be open to the response a piece of work evokes in you, and then don't worry about what anyone else has said, before or after.

This, also, sounds good, even mediating or qualifying the advice given above.

Again: we should under no circumstances ignore our response to art on an emotional level.

Again: I realize we're talking about a Young Critic's Competition.

That's why it's so important to emphasize thoughtfulness and contemplation in addition to, perhaps even above, feeling. Advising a teenager to go with their feelings--above all else-- is like two pounds of puke in a one-pound sack.*

Figure 6: A teenager.

"That concert was stupid! My dad won't let me get my nose pierced! You're stupid! I hate you!"

*Thanks to my childhood next-door neighbor for this colorful, and apt, colloquialism.

Gosh! Why Do People Hate Critics So Much?

Outstanding.

In a wonderfully misguided piece of come-on-we-all-know-I'm-right drivel, Joe Queenan (of the Guardian UK) asserts that he is the ultimate arbiter of taste, and, furthermore, speaks for everyone. For some unknown reason, he was presumably paid to pen and publish this pointless prattle:

Admit it, you're as bored as I am

Ha ha! Oh, and while I have a second: fuck you!

After 40 years and 1,500 concerts, Joe Queenan is finally ready to say the unsayable: new classical music is absolute torture - and its fans have no reason to be so smug

Well, good thing you decided to...make it your profession? Genius.

Furthermore, I am chagrined at having received, finally, my comeuppance. I know: how about you tell me what I think--maybe I'll thank you for it!

A few choice bits should suffice...

In New York, Philadelphia and Boston, concert-goers have learned to stay awake and applaud politely at compositions by Christopher Rouse and Tan Dun. But they do this only because these works tend to be short and not terribly atonal; because they know this is the last time in their lives they'll have to listen to them; and because the orchestra has signed a contract in blood guaranteeing that if everyone holds their nose and eats their vegetables, they'll be rewarded with a great dollop of Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn.

Well! That'll learn 'em for paying money to support orchestras that hate them. Also, every point supporting the argument is a baseless assertion. If it was supposed to be funny, well, I guess I found it a few notches below Hee Haw.

Figure 1: Wherein I compare the urbane witticisms of the Guardian critic to a show about idiots. Palin/Jindal 2012!

I reckon it'd be pointless to point out that there was a time when Brahms and Tchaikovsky were new, audiences resisted them, and there was speculation about whether this "new-for-new's-sake" music would ever make the canon. But never you mind that.

I have tried to come to terms with the demands of modern music. I am no lover of Renaissance Muzak, and own tons of records by Berg, Varèse, Webern, Rihm, Schnittke, Adès, Wuorinen, Crumb, Carter, and Babbitt: I consider myself to be the kind of listener contemporary composers would need to reach if they had any hope of achieving a breakthrough. So far, this has not happened, and I doubt that it will.

Those kids and their rock and/or roll music! Why, it'll never replace the dulcet tones of big band crooners! Furthermore, I've staked out my cultural place already, so why bother trying?

Also, having established that the critic owns lots of records of music he doesn't like is a bizarre rhetorical move. I guess it's supposed to show that he "knows of what he speaks" but translates as strange and incongruous. If my home is filled with cubist paintings, one might assume that I like cubist paintings. But no: I just have them all over my walls; really, I think they suck.

A certain market for demanding new music can always be found among brash young urbanites, but this audience is not large, nor well-heeled. Moreover, it is by no means certain that the affection for new work survives one's youth, when sonically grating music is mostly a way of antagonising older people. The central problem in writing music targeting hipsters is that even hipsters one day stop being hip, and get replaced by hipsters who want their own brand of annoying music.

Yeah, I believe that "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" was just as antagonizing to my great-grandfather as Melt Banana would be to my father.

Figure 2: Melt Banana. Here is a youtube link for you. [Warning: Noise. Well, okay; Japanese post-punk noise weirdness.]

The assertion that Lizst, gangsta rap, and Terry Riley are all merely assults on the establishment that are not even remotely "really" liked even and/or especially by their fans (or even creators!) is shallow, unsubstantiated, and borderline criminally stupid.

But lo! A counterpoint piece. Here is a measured response with less indignant swearing:

Tom Service, Guardian UK: Why Joe Queenan is wroing about new classical music

That's better; much better. However, if this was a dualistic attempt by the Guardian at a point/counterpoint set of opposing opinion/review pieces, it sucked.

Why not just get an American sportswriter to opine about how boring soccer is? [It's not.--ed.]

[UPDATE/EDIT!:

Well, it seems like this is a year old, and I already addressed it, sort of.

Shows you what my memory's like, I guess.

Regardless, and in deference to netiquette, I'll leave it be.]

Details

I found this article interesting from a number of perspectives. First, the reviewer has a theater background, and later branched into opera (and thusly music criticism), and I think that this comes out in his writing. Second, it comes from the normally unimpeachable Guardian UK, and is quite brief. Third, the names of iconic pieces are...iconic.

Also, the Northern Sinfonia is in Newcastle, UK.

Figure 1: Figure 1 is unrelated, yet delicious.

The Northern Sinfonia began its 50th-anniversary season with...

With something cool and memorable, I hope.

a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies,

Wow, really. Came up with that in a brainstorming session, no doubt.

and now concludes it by compressing the 20th century into a week.

Mm, mm-hm. Better than not at all, for sure, but that hundred years of stuff certainly merits less total concert time than Beethoven symphonies, which are starved for attention.

Dreams and Ceremonies,...

This title reflects the survey of 20th century music? It could easily be a festival of Romantic music. Well, shit, or Baroque music, for that matter.

Dreams and Ceremonies, which surveys the period 1906-2006, is the kind of wildly ambitious scheme at which music director Thomas Zehetmair excels.

Good, good. Although programming music that was, more or less, recently composed should hardly count as a scheme. Was jamming all of the 20th century into a week the ambitious scheme, or stretching it out to fill a week's worth of concerts?

Still, nothing seems to frighten audiences away faster than 20th-century music.

And nothing, absolutely nothing, is more awesome than taking a sentence in your three-paragraph write-up to remind people that they don't, won't, can't, and shouldn't like it. For fuck's sake, can we cut that out?

The second concert began with an apologetic plea for those present to huddle closer towards the front.

Ha ha! It's funny because they paid money to go to a concert of unlistenable avant-garde crap! Hilarious. What a bunch of maroons.

Bah. What about it, then?

A pleasing performance of Dumbarton Oaks...

Figure 2: The gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, Georgetown

A pleasing performance of Dumbarton Oaks proves Stravinsky's backward glances towards the baroque are no more intimidating than a Brandenburg Concerto;

This is a bizarre, if evocative, construction. Stravinsky's potentially intimidating (?) "glances"

Figure 3: A glance from Stravinsky. Are you intimidated? I dunno, I think I could take him.

...are tempered somehow, since...he's glancing at Bach's Brandenburgs (on which the piece was based)? Are the Brandenburg Concertos often held up as an example of non-intimidating music? Or the Baroque as a whole? This characterization confuses me. However, this performance "proves" (!) that his glances are actually quite harmless.

...the same can hardly be said for Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time,

Figure 4: Olivier Messiaen writing down what birds say.

which is among the most harrowing experiences you can have in a concert hall.

I'd be lying if I said that the Quartet is a fancy-free, happy-go-lucky piece of fluff, but it's hardly the most gruesome stuff out there. It also seems to me that things other than music can be experienced in a concert hall.

Figure 5: Ruins of a concert hall in Weisbaden, Germany after WWII.

The original audience was the composer's fellow detainees in a German PoW camp, and the gravid tempos of the 50-minute piece almost defy the musicians to maintain a pulse.

So...it had some "pacing problems," to borrow some theater-jargon?

The highlight is the plaintive aria for unaccompanied clarinet, here breathtakingly executed by Christopher Richards.

Fine. But the best is yet to come.

John Cage's notorious 4'3"...

D'oh! I had to look twice to make sure. This is of course not correct. Which happens; it does. It's a bit of a major blunder considering the uniqueness of the title, and the piece, which is (arguably, of course) Cage's most iconic work, and possibly deserves some hyperbolic title like Most Important Piece of the Last 100 Years. Arguably. But still.

And so:

John Cage's notorious 4'3" was given additional drama by plunging the auditorium into darkness.

Probably not the first time, but a decent enough idea nonetheless.

Pianist Kate Thompson refused to be put off by an outbreak of giggles among the audience.

One would hope that's the least of things she was prepared to endure.

But though the random, ambient sound is supposed to be the point,

It is?!

...it's still reminiscent of the silent observance before football matches, where you're hoping some idiot won't spoil it before the ref blows his whistle.

Ooh, yeah...or, you know, get the name wrong.

Figure 6: Pianist David Tudor performing Cage's 4'33".

!naidrauG ,aY tA kcaB thgiR

The eight-lane road that wends its way to the Oakland McAfee Coliseum is, this rainy Wednesday evening, crowded with studded leather jackets and extensive makeup. Tonight sees the concertizing of KISS, and the seats of the California venue is flooded with drunks, their voices ringing clear and crisp across the stadium. I stand there in my slacks and sports jacket, flapping my broken umbrella, and gulp.

For years now, the nation's various rock venues have been making strenuous efforts to attract a more diverse audience - with specialty foods, cheap to expensive tickets, outdoorshows, cinematic screenings, "simulcasts," club nights, cult artists, a presence on Facebook and YouTube, and even ticket offers in the Chronicle. It does seem to be working: KISS concert attendance figures are up 80,000 on last year; 48% of patrons are newcomers; more than 22,000 students are registered for the company's stand-by ticket scheme; and 385,000 people download the podcast each month.

But can they make me want to come back? I am, surely, exactly the sort of person they are trying to tempt. I spend much of my time listening to music and attending gigs. I will happily spend vast sums on merchandise. Yet stadium rock has always seemed a raucus and smelly land, set far away across a sea of elitism. I have had little desire to visit it and I have always bridled at the notion that rock is considered a more accessible art form than classical. Sod your anthems, I thought, I'll stick with Fischer-Dieskau singing: "Im wunder schönen Monat Mai."

Accordingly, I have attended the one of these concerts just once, over a decade ago. It did little to encourage me. Yet some things have intrigued me: the bursts of pyrotechnics during the encores; the fact that when I interviewed the great Gene Simmons, he raved about new stage setups. So tonight, sitting in the puke-covered seats of the Coliseum, listening to the banal riffs heave and huff, I try to keep an open mind.

Although it is performed in English, there are no surtitles for when the singing grows incomprehensible, and there is an extravagant set, full of amplifiers and intricate lighting, which will hopefully prove compelling should one's mind begin to stray. Which it does. Repeatedly. The problems are various: I don't really care for the singing, all the fah-diddly-dahing smothers the musicality. I find it extremely annoying that they keep repeating everything; a singer will reiterate precisely what he has already said in the most tedious fashion. On top of it all, it's rather warm. I reach the first set change feeling decidedly drowsy.

Everyone rushes to the concession stand where they serve cheap beer and I am suddenly surrounded by umpteen leather-clad, middle-aged men shoving their way in front of me. I can't recall the last time I encountered such rudeness. Not even in the city's most dog-eared classical venues do you find such uncouth behavior. For a small fortune, I eventually procure a “Bud” and some nachos, and stand in the corner contemplating how objectionable everyone is. I think of my friends, somewhere across town watching a new staging of The Rake’s Progress and feel tearful.

My heart lifts when I discover that the second set is generally shorter than the first. Back in my seat, feeling more buoyant, I wonder what I make of Poison (the first band), and conclude that, while it looks spectacular, it is actually very dreary while, musically speaking, I like it slightly less than Toby Kieth. After the requisite “I Want to Rock and Roll All Night,” I am off across town to meet my friends at the usual little bar where there is better beer and plenty of quiet air to speak.

The next evening I return for the Rolling Stones, this time with a friend. "It's the worst place in the world!" I tell him. He, however, is enthusiastic, because he wants to hear the famous "Satisfaction." I tell him he has three long, pitchless hours before him and his zeal evaporates. Again, it looks gorgeous and the music is quite raucous. It is undoubtedly more engaging than the Kiss, but my mind still wanders. "Why do they need to repeat everything?" my friend whispers. "Exactly." I reply. "They could get the whole thing done a lot faster if they just said it once." We quell the boredom by surreptitiously eating an orange. At the intermission, we head to the concession stand. "Weren't you here last night?" the barman says. "Yes," I sigh. "Dear God," says a woman. "I don't think I could do two nights in a row."

So, just why do people go to these mega-rock stadium concerts? As far as I can see, it's too long, the music, singing and pyrotechnics never work together, and it is staggeringly self-indulgent, like sitting through the most noodly Carlos Santana guitar solo, only for Chris Rea to appear and go through it all again, with Mark Knopfler joining in for good measure. I think people must attend these things in the same way they introduce roughage to their diet - because they ought to, rather than because they want to.

Later that month, I catch a train to Santa Barbara for the rock festival, to see what’s left of Metallica, and the remnants of a once punk Red Hot Chili Peppers. Santa Barbara is a gorgeous place and the crowd far less annoying. I have been listening to Kill ‘Em All repeatedly, to accustom myself to the style of singing. It seems to be paying off: I enjoy Metallica far more than I expect. The Chili Peppers, though, is a struggle. It's the watered-down aspect, but rendered more politically with nods to terrorism and latter-day dictators.

When they’re on stage, it's lovely, but whenever Flea starts lamenting about everything, I just want him to stop moaning. It doesn't help that Anthony Kiedis, in the style of his hair and the way he dips his head when he sings, puts me in mind of Princess Diana being interviewed by Martin Bashir. Still, as the production feels considerably more am-dram than anything at the Coliseum, it makes me like it more.

Next is a trip back up to Golden Gate Park, a little jewel of the rock world. It is raining the day my friend and I visit in jeans and T-shirts. Fine gray mist is sweeping across the lawn where the picnickers are dressed in all their rock-wear. The rain rather puts a dampener on what is meant to be a splendid day out to the park, with a bit of rock’n’roll on the side. We are here to see a Beatles cover band. The Beatles are one of my favorite groups, so I'm actually excited.

Anything but well-played, it is sung in English, Latin, Spanish and Yoruba. I want to like this, really I do, but everything I love about the Beatles - their ripeness, their deliciousness - has been stripped away. It makes me very sad.

At the first intermission, we spill out into the grounds to drink champagne. The sense of occasion here at Golden Gate Park, the casualness, the tofu burgers and the strolls through the luscious grounds, make it feel like a county fair. My feelings towards the audience here are more benign. There is one exception: the woman who glares at us as the photographer takes my picture on the lawn. "That's so not San Francisco!" she hisses. I have a profound desire to spit in her hair.

It is not just incidents like this that will keep me from returning to rock’n’roll. It is the fact that I just cannot find a friend in this music. I can see it is fun. I can tell they are infectious, but it stirs nothing in my belly, conjures nothing in my heart. It carries for me none of the fire, the spine-tingling, stomach-flipping, bone-chilling lifeblood of classical music.

Back at Golden Gate Park, the rain is falling hard. With the applause still ringing, we dash to the taxi. "Get us out of here!" I tell the driver as he takes us to the BART station. "As fast as you can!" On the train home, we secretly swig cheap rosé straight from the bottle and eat dry-roasted peanuts, letting the rock ballads fade into the distance...

-

Screw that. Send me to a fucking rock concert and see what I write!
-

Thunder Stolen by Brits

Crud. I was going to blog about this:

Admit it, you're as bored as I am

from the Guardian UK. But they let one of their own beat me to it:

Why Joe Queenan is wrong about new classical music

Damn! So much snark and righteous indignation wasted.

Ah, well, perhaps next time. And by "perhaps" I mean "definitely".

Please go read both links. The arguments are fascinating.

Oh, and shame on you, Joe Queenan. You're not helping.

Bizarro World: England!

Why, what do you think would happen if some enterprising, clever publication (The Guardian UK) sent their arts critics to review sport [British sic] and their sport critics to review arts?

This.

Scroll down to the fourth one, the golf writer Lawrence Donegan on a Brahms concert he attended.

The prose is great, and he totally didn't get it, or like it, which is fine. Refreshing, in fact.

The problem, at least to my cloth ears, is the music. Brahms' Piano Concerto No1 in D minor, the centrepiece of an evening devoted to the composer, has come to be seen as a masterpiece. But as it is longer than three minutes and not as immediately catchy as, say, Be My Baby by the Ronettes, it failed to hold my attention.

Awesome. Conclusion?

[The Pianist-ed.] Yefim Bronfman is a genius, no doubt, but he didn't write his own script - Brahms did - and the ending hasn't changed in the last 150 years, and won't for another 150. Tiger Woods, on the other hand, writes a new concerto every day, each one better than the last.

What an analogy. Go Guardian!