Monday, February 09, 2015

Found in an Old Magazine

Although the mindset sounds like it could be from the 1930s (or earlier), the magazine this appeared in was published in the middle of 1999.


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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Found in which old magazine?

9/2/15 1:04 PM
Elaine Fine said...

American Record Guide

9/2/15 2:21 PM
Anonymous said...

Aside from posting the article and stating its "mindset" was from an earlier era, I don't see the point, per se. Is there a "canon" of Western art music? Sure. But counting skin color and gender seems a specious game, more akin to the purveyors of approved art versus "entartete Kunst" or the strictures of Soviet Socialist Realism. What was, was, and I for one don't care whether Bach was white, the Amati family were Italian, or Beethoven had testicles. Apparently there are people who do, but I cannot find any enthusiasm for such musicological perspective. The strange remark about Alma Mahler suggests an earlier exchange between the "1930" era editor in the 1990s and another voice, as yet unknown. But politics played an enormous and sadly negative part in European and Russian history in the 20th century, to the detriment of Europe and Russia. So tell the tales of those who fled from fear to fame and made music in Hollywood, as to the smuggled scores and other art from the USSR of that time. Perhaps we need be cautious about finding too much politics sullying our musical assumptions, lest the become merely political and sociological assumptions about music. Or am I missing something here?

9/2/15 3:51 PM
Elaine Fine said...

I admit that I posted it as a justification for no longer writing for a publication that has at its helm a person who freely espouses such views.

9/2/15 6:53 PM
Michael Leddy said...

First-rate talents not appreciated in their own time: in poetry, Emily Dickinson and David Schubert, the latter still largely unknown. Countless artists and composers and musicians and writers are far less appreciated than they might be.

Or maybe Dickinson isn’t first-rate?

9/2/15 7:02 PM
Anonymous said...

The issue of music criticism is interesting, and I have had my own two-bit war with some critics, one in particular. Hans Keller's sharp-sided remarks about music criticism suggest that this relatively new career was generally self-promotion. What is sure is that, unlike poetry as Dickinson and Schubert were mentioned in a response, or the general opera Omnia of the Western canon have survived even being unknown or forgotten. One might recall the rehabilitation of many works we now think of as respected in their time and therefore consistently respected, but which required being revisited after a time. Among the deceased white males, the subject of a silly article from American Record Guide, as represented in recent posts here are Ms. Fine's librettist, Howard Zinn, teacher Julius Baker, and writer Henry Miller. I mention these only to show how, like Dickinson's first-rate work as an example, can live on and prosper. What will probably not prosper is all the musicology which wants to think of music as something else, maybe a production line for the business analysts, or polemical fist for the political theorists. But what is assured is that as artists, we must merely persevere in the face of all those trends which would tear at us to make something of themselves. Ms. Fine, you've done an interesting service by looking back as some of your criticism in a reasonable and critical manner. Perhaps today there is just too much criticism and too little striving to be the best in music an art that we can be? Emily Dickinson's model is exemplary, for she wrote and was an artist for almost no audience at all, until her posthumous publication. Today that is less necessary, as your YouTube "Four Pieces" demonstrates. From the solitary act of composing to publication to performance and recording is all accomplished in a lifetime. Truly amazing, and one requiring no "record guide" nor critical approval to become so. Would it not be lovely to imagine far more competent performances and far less incompetent reviews? Now as an old teacher used to challenge me: Go write something. All best.

10/2/15 1:32 AM

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