Guilty on One Charge of Puffery and One Charge of Lying under Oath

Let it be said that when you write something like this:

Never let it be said that S.F. Classical Music Examiner goes in for puff pieces.

...I’ll assume the opposite.

Now, to be clear, the Wictionary dictionary, as do all of the other dictionaries, defines “puff piece” as...

A journalistic form of puffery; an article or story of exaggerated praise that often ignores or downplays opposing viewpoints of evidence to the contrary.

The San Francisco Classical Music Examiner? Never going in for puff pieces? Yeah right!

Modern critics typically speak of traditional programming as focusing on those "basic 50 pieces", to paraphrase Virgil Thomson.

That is, if Virgil Thompson is a modern critic: he died in 1989, but stopped writing critiques for the New York Herald Tribune in 1954 [1951?]).

Nobody denies that those works continue to deserve an honored place on concert programs; they're classics for a reason. But what, exactly, constitutes "innovation"?

You see where he’s going with this? He’s going to define “innovation,” then he’s going to “insert ensemble here.” But first, a misstep.

More often than not, "innovative" is little more than a code word for "programming contemporary music." As such, ensembles boasting of their "innovative" programs have little to brag about, really...

But, no. That’s wrong. They brag about being innovative, because most ensembles don’t regularly play new music. The opposite used to be the case, as our author pointed out earlier. However, it’s no longer true. So bragging about being innovative is only comparative to their contemporaries, dummy.

So what can we identify as real innovation in the early 21st century?

Those gigantic, meaty italics are all Scott Fogelsong’s, not mine.

I propose San Francisco's New Century Chamber Orchestra as an exemplar of the modern ensemble that avoids both dry rot and cliché, while at the same time recognizes that innovation cannot thrive without a solid foundation.

Wikipedia offers this definition of puffery:

Puffery as a legal term refers to promotional statements and claims that express subjective rather than objective views, such that no reasonable person would take literally.

But I digress, Scott. How are they innovative, again?

[...] the New Century [Chamber Orchestra] enjoys a perspective that recognizes the worth of the traditional canon, yet enriches that repertory by reaching out and over those arbitrary boundaries between contemporary, traditional, classical, world, and popular music.

So, schlocky eclecticism equals innovative?

So, for example, Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (standard rep if ever there were) will be paired with Bernard Herrmann's famed score for Psycho for the May 2009 program of night music, called "Shadows and Light", while a December program partners Bach with holiday music from around the globe.

But that sounds like my high school orchestra and chorus—challenge the kids to expand their horizons and give the parents something to enjoy.

As Monroe [the NCCO executive director] puts it: "they are coming to be challenged, and they are also coming to be pleased."

Just in case you forgot, dear reader, we’re talking about unsubstantiated praise. The NNCO is being praised for being “real” innovators, while my high school music program was just as daring. Italics mine.

All of this marvelous creative thinking doesn't guarantee the NCCO a slam-dunk, alas.

And they’re not all that creative, either.

For one thing, our economy is running a bit shakily at present. For another, the New Century isn't the only imaginative ensemble in this Bay Area of ours, a place with a long-standing tradition of subverting tradition.

So they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, innovative. Go figure.

But I, for one, will be astonished if this forthcoming season turns out to be anything less than a grand success.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someday Wikipedia has an entry for “puffer,” one who engages in puffery, with a picture of Scott Fogelsong in the upper right-hand corner.
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This is not a Poisonous Spider

No schmaltzy introduction; let’s just get to it—Scott Foglesong’s post in the San Francisco Classical Music Examiner Blog (?).

I was having a schmooz with a good friend/colleague (who happens to be a well-known composer) not too long ago, and our conversation turned to the recent passing on of a vastly influential American composer, whom I shall identify as Joe Schmoe. My colleague had an idea about the proper obsequies for our departed American giant.

A warm-hearted commemoration is always a good outlet for grief.

His proposal: we organize a comprehensive festival in which every single work by Joe Schmoe is performed after intensive, careful rehearsal by first-rate artists. Every last jot and tittle gets played to the nines. At festival's close, we lead the audience out into a wide field, with the entire collection of Joe Schmoe music — published and in manuscript — in tow.

And there we burn it.

Seems like I saw this before, in a movie. An ancient Greek king is reassured by his Persian conquerers that they'll erase his memory from this world after he's dead, and they'll start by killing his children.

Thus we've done our duty: we've played it all very well. But that's the end, finis, kaput, pfffffffft.

I can well imagine any number of readers grinning and thinking: "Ooh, great idea!" and assembling a mental list of composers whose output would be immeasurably improved by such treatment. Others might contemplate the purchase of a poisonous spider to mail off to me as a birthday present. (Even if I'm just reporting somebody else's idea.)

Like my title suggests, this post is not a poisonous spider, but...

A lot of folks are irreparably damaged by certain trends in 20th century music, in which sophisticated organizational techniques produced music that reminds one of the sounds wafting up from medieval torture chambers.

Scott, since you are a theorist, you should know better than anyone that organizational techniques are merely ways of limiting the materials. There is nothing inherently aesthetically bad about them in a vacuum. Thus, it would be more proper, then, to plainly say that “some 20th century music reminds one of the sounds wafting up from medieval torture chambers,” making sure to eliminate the bit about the techniques producing music, which is silly, because composers produce music and sometimes they employ organizational techniques. I mean, I could say that, “Beethoven’s fugues—fugue is an organizational technique—his fugues remind me of a Cro-Magnon's brain fart.” But, I couldn’t say that, “fugues, by their very nature, remind me of a Cro-Magnon's brain fart,” because it’s what was done with and within the fugal organization that determines its quality. See the difference?

Composers who visited audiences with such onslaughts deserve to be held properly accountable...

So should Beethoven and his fugues. Bad music is not a specific phenomenon of the 20th century.

...safe in their academic ivory towers they turned a deaf ear to the protests of performers and listeners alike...

Like Beethoven toward the end of his life. (It’s funny that his late string quartets are so wildly celebrated today, even though their initial reception was, well, very cold. How long did it take for them to be accepted into the repertoire, again? I forget.)

...and [they] cast a blind eye on their ever-dwindling audience numbers. Our Joe Schmoe guy was one such composer.

Well, Scott, you didn’t paint a beautiful picture of Joe Schmoe. Though, he reminds me a little of Beethoven.

But the baby tends to get thrown out with the bathwater. Once you decide that all composers writing after about 1945 don't have a doggone thing to offer, then you close your ears to the possibilities of hearing something truly worthwhile from a contemporary writer.

Now that’s beautiful. I couldn’t have said it any better. In fact, in our five months of dialog, this is exactly one of the major points we’ve been trying to get across: a critic’s preconceptions can negatively affect a review's fairness. And for this reason, reviews often sound malicious, stupid or whatever, which is why we like to poke fun at them.

Don’t get me wrong, though. We love our critics. We think that they serve valuable functions in the performing arts community, not the least of which as cultural associate professors. Sometimes, however, we think that the level of discourse could be higher. In many cases, we see a proclivity toward the irrational dismissal of most twentieth-century music, based on the preconception that, as you point out, nothing after 1945, or maybe even 1911, has “a doggone thing to offer.”

So, cheers, Scott.

But, I digress.

This past week the San Francisco Symphony performed Magnus Lindberg's Seht die Sonne, a beautiful and fascinating piece of music from a compelling modern Finnish composer. At least I was enthralled by it, anyway. But I heard two fellows nearby chatting during the break, agreeing that the Lindberg sounded like the orchestra tuning up for half an hour.

Well, no, it didn't, not at all. But I can understand the reaction.

Me too. Unfamiliarity, to a large degree, and inaccessibility, to a smaller degree, turns people off. I would liken that to the first time someone reads Shakespeare (for me that was in fifth grade)—it takes a while to become accustomed to that particular style of prose.

Morton Feldman eloquently put it like this (Give My Regards to Eighth Street, page 209 ):

Music seems to be understood best by its proximity to other music that is more familiar. We do not hear what we hear...only what we remember.

I’m not suggesting that repeated listening is the answer; to the contrary, some things are physically, i.e., cognitively, impossible to process. (I’ve only met two people who possess the ability to hear wrong notes in, say, Elliott Carter’s Clarinet Concerto. Very few can do that.) But, it seems, that one flocks to what one already knows and away from the unfamiliar. So, yes, I understand that reaction.

The modern world has produced an appalling amount of sonic hokum.

Yes, but...Scott?! Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott. Why? Oh, why?

We were doing so well. Let me reiterate: Bad or nonsensical music is not exclusive to the 20th century.

And, just so I get this right, based on what you wrote above, by “hokum” I assume you’re referring to music utilizing sophisticated organizational principles. Right? I sure hope not (cross my fingers).

This week the SF Symphony plays Mi-Parti by Witold Lutoslawski, a major European composer who died in 1994 and whose career spans the era from WWII onwards. To be sure it might be very easy to toss Lutoslawski into the same bin as a lot of hardcore academic avant-garde composers: he did employ some of those buzzword modernist techniques such as serialism (ordering pitches in predetermined patterns), aleatoric music (composer-controlled improvisation) and atonality (i.e., writing without a definite tonal center that provides the center of gravity for a work.)

(skeptically) Okay.

But Lutoslawski was not any kind of technical formalist...

(rubs eyes in saddened disbelief)

You said...he DID use some of these “formalist” techniques. Why the flip-flop? Unless...well, what was he, if not a technical formalist?

...he was a musician, a composer of exquisite sensibility who created soundscapes of breathtaking beauty and interest. [Italics mine]

So great...using sophisticated organizational techniques and being a musician is mutually exclusive? Awesome (see above).

His goals were always musical, never technical; he used whatever tools seemed appropriate for the task at hand.

But...but...

Schoenberg’s goal was no less than musical, right?
Xenakis’ goal was no less than musical.
Ligeti’s goal was no less than musical.
Cage’s goal was no less than musical.
Composer A’s goal was no less than musical.
Composer B’s goal was no less than musical.
Composer C’s goal was no less than musical.
Composer D’s goal was no less than musical.
Composer E’s goal was no less than musical.
Composer n’s goal was no less than musical.

By excluding from your “something truly worthwhile” pantheon those composers who utilized “sophisticated organizational techniques,” you closed your ears, threw the baby out with the bathwater. You contradicted yourself. You attended your composer friend’s music-burning party.

Remember: a critic’s preconceptions, or misconceptions, can negatively affect a review’s fairness. And for this reason, reviews often sound malicious, stupid or whatever, which is why we like to poke fun at them. Thus, I give you this non-poisonous spider—non-poisonous, because this review's merely near-sighted.
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