Underground Music — Literally!

NaBloPoMo Day 17!

I lived in New York City for four years, back in the ’90s (that’s in the last century! ). I did a number of things there — worked as 1) a church organist, 2) a research assistant for a music consulting firm, 3) an administrative assistant for a small investment bank (I spiced up that button-down environment with my artsy, bohemian cachet! ). Ate lots of great food. Lived in apartments with varying degrees of health- and building-code passability.

And of course, I rode the subway almost every day. You know how in TV shows and movies set in New York, the characters are always taking cabs? I suppose there are folks who really do that, but I did not breathe their rarefied air very often.

There are perks, though — most taxicabs don’t feature live music, but the subway does. I once stopped to listen to a steel drum player as I waited for my train, and when he noticed how intently I was watching, he invited me to try it for myself. That was cool! I think I figured out the beginning of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” before the train arrived!

But when I saw this article in the New York Times, it kinda threw me for a loop. Musicians playing on the street for tips is a familiar sight in big cities, and sometimes you’re technically supposed to have a permit for it, but I think many times it just set up and wail til the law shows up and chases you away. But it turns out that if you want to play in the subway, you have to audition. Apparently it’s been that way since 1985.

The most recent auditions were held a couple of weeks ago — in Grand Central Station, naturally! A group made up of music professionals and transit employees judged the aspiring buskers for 20 open spots on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s roster.

The online article features a video highlighting the procedings. Short clips from different auditions show a wide range musical styles, including an unaccompanied singer who seemed to be on the cusp of Broadway and opera — at least that’s what it sounded like to me as she sang Rogers and Hammerstein’s “If I Loved You” in a rather highfalutin manner.

Then there was a marimba player. A marimba player! Can you imagine lugging that thing down into the subway? It has wheels, but it weighs around 120 pounds! (A few subway stations have elevators, but it’s mostly stairs, stairs, stairs, with escalators at the larger stations and transfer points.)

The video profiles one of the auditioners in particular, singer-songwriter Joe Taylor. He was seen leaving his brownstone, loading his gear — which included not only a guitar but a big amp and other audio gear — into his car (you have to be crazy to drive in New York City, and I don’t know where he parked near Grand Central without paying a months’ rent ), then towing it into the audition space on a little wheeled luggage rack.

What I really mean to say here: it looked like a whole lotta no fun!

He had a smile on his face the whole time, though, as he spoke of how he was doing what he loved to do, and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Now that I think about it, I know exactly how he feels!

Several of the musicians interviewed in the article spoke of the immediacy of the connection with listeners that this venue provided, as opposed to the distance between stage and audience in a concert hall. But then, others mentioned how most subway riders are in a hurry to get where they’re going, and don’t take the time to stop and listen as they pass by. (Train delays that keep passengers standing on the platform longer must be a dream come true for the musicians! ). I’m curious as to whether the players really get regular listeners out of this — does anyone stop and ask then between songs: “Do you have a Myspace?” )

And then, there was a mention of the, um, interspecies nature of subway audiences — evidently, at off-peak hours, the music is “sometimes heard by more rats than people .” From my time as a frequent rider, I rememeber one station in particular, the 14th Street stop on the F train, where the rats — big as housecats — roamed the platform particularly boldly. :shudder:

I also wondered whether playing on the subway was a stepping stone to something bigger in terms of bookings. The director of the whole program puts it this way:

Sandra Bloodworth, director of Arts in Transit, the cultural arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said, “This isn’t a stepping stone to some other gig or a path to fame,” as a mariachi guitarist, a theremin player and a man with a modified electrified cello strapped to his chest played nearby. “This is the gig, this is fame, becoming one of our musicians.”

Wow — the big time! Who’da thunk it?

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Criticism: Possible Antidotes… and That’s Enough for Now!

NaBloPoMo Day 16!

At the end of the third installment in my series of reflections on criticism in musical academia, I left you with a quote from Shakespeare’s Sonnet LXV:

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?”

I came across this quote the other day in a post about musical responses to great tragedies: “Requiems,” by Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker.

Ross’ understanding of Shakespeare’s question (which, as he mentions, Wallace Stevens cited while writing about World War II) concerns the light-in-the-darkness function that musicians serve in the face of horrific events:

How, in other words, can artists respond to news that exceeds their most extravagant nightmares?”

Happily, we can, and do, respond in many ways, some of which he describes: impromptu group singing on the streets of New York in the dark days after both September 11th and the sinking of the Lusitania. Concerts organized in record time to comfort and commemorate. Music as a means to express what people are feeling when they aren’t sure how to express it themselves.

Ooh, I said a dirty word. Did you miss it? I said “express.” Why is that dirty, you ask? Well, by way of an answer, here’s one more war story from the grad school trenches before I put that topic down for awhile. In certain music-academic circles, it’s considered rather uncouth to talk about music as a “language” that can “express” anything. A discussion about this came up one of my graduate seminars, and the points were made that music doesn’t have syntax as verbal language does; it doesn’t have the same precise powers of description and representation. Therefore, the typical associations we have with it must be culturally constructed.

Perhaps Igor Stravinsky started it in his 1936 autobiography, by provocatively and infamously stating:

Music is… essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention.

That quote perfectly encapsulates what bothered me about the seminar discussion: the general consensus (at least among those who were speaking up) that the idea of music as a language was quaint and slightly pitiable, since “everyone” knows it really isn’t. Now, there is a subdiscipline of musical scholarship known as music cognition — an interdisciplinary field actually, since it applies methodologies from other fields, such as neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics, to the study of music. In simpler terms, it addresses what happens in our brains when we’re involved in musical activities.

And that’s a rich and fascinating field of study, and if I can find the time to catch myself up on some current work in the field, I might be able to report on how it can provide some insight into why music is so powerful for so many of us.

However. Around the same time as this seminar discussion, I was performing as part of the UCSD Music Library’s’s outreach program run by my friend Scott Paulson. He and I performed together as the Geisel Library Toy Piano Duo. I played the toy piano — there are many models of toy pianos out there, but the best ones, in my opinion, are the miniature baby grands that will forever conjure in my mind images of Schroeder from Peanuts — and Scott played a variety of full-size, miniature, and novelty instruments, including baritone sax, concertina, nose whistle, and — regular readers may have already guessed — theremin.

We toured Southern California, performing at libraries, schools, and anywhere else we were asked. Our audiences often consisted of kids, but the adults in attendance seemed to dig us the most. One of our best numbers was an arrangement of “The Swan” from Saint-Saëns‘ Carnival of the Animals, for toy piano and English horn. It was a bit preposterous, me playing the accompaniment to this soaring melody on a tiny piano, seated on a tiny bench on the floor.

But the thing is, when we played it, people cried. They cried. Now, you can sit around a seminar table all you want, talking about music-as-not-a-language and sniffing at the culturally constructed meanings we learn to associate with it. Come to think of it, it’s not clear to me why cultural constructs are devalued — isn’t that the job of culture, to create and curate the shared meaning of a group? Does that make it less real? Maybe in the lab, but not where the rubber meets the road, in front of an audience.

So, Stravinsky notwithstanding (great as his music is, he was a bit of a B.S. artist in his words — syntax only takes you so far), when it comes to how music functions for a listener, I think I’ll apply what one of my blogging acquaintances describes as the birders’ rule: “If there is a discrepancy between the book and the bird, believe the bird.”

As a corollary to Alex Ross’ explication of the Shakespeare quotation I began with, I would add another, more workaday sense: along with helping us cope with extraordinary tragedy, music can also serve as a noble antidote to the petty, grasping, contentious side of human nature that can wear us down bit by bit, like the death of a thousand cuts. I think it’s ironic that when we study music at the highest levels, we seem to become desensitized to the power of its beauty, as we focus so narrowly on our quest to be right about it. We humans certainly have a knack for getting our priorities screwed up!

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A Musical Interlude

NaBloPoMo Day 15!

The conclusion to my little series on criticism continues to brew, so I thought in the meantime I’d post some Actual Music. Have you ever heard the quote, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”? I think I had first heard it attributed to Laurie Anderson, but apparently it’s one of those things that have several alleged sources — here’s a rundown. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of my musical idols is in the running!

Here’s a piece I wrote and performed when I was in the thick of coursework in my Ph.D. program. I was torn between, among other things, highfalutin academic ideals on the one hand, and my own slightly quirky notions of beauty on the other. I was also tired of being so dang serious all the time, so I decided to have a little fun (the fun part comes toward the end, so, if I may beg your indulgence be sure to listen to the whole thing! )

It’s called “Second Thoughts.” Enjoy!

Search Me! (A Bit of Organ Curiosity!)

NaBloPoMo Day 14!

Woo hoo! Miss Music Nerd officially passed the 5000-hit mark a coupla weeks ago, and is now closing in on 6000! So I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who has stumbled upon my little corner of cyberspace. I hope you’ll keep coming back, and tell your friends!

And, um, not to get all cyberstalker on y’all, but I sometimes get a kick out of looking at the search terms and phrases that bring people here. Vee have vays of tracking these things, you see — but don’t worry, it’s fairly anonymous — search terms aren’t paired with IP addresses… yet!

Anyway, back in March after I posted about the technicologically specialized and supercute shoes I wear to play the organ pedals, a few search showed up in the stats that had to do with playing the organ pedals. Specifically, women playing the pedals. More specifically, women playing organ pedals barefoot. It seems there’s a whole world of fetishism out there that I was completely unaware of!

Suddenly, I felt a bit like a musical Carrie Bradshaw. I couldn’t help wondering:

BTW, if there are any newspaper editors out there looking for a columnist, I’m available!

(p.s. — I personally am looking forward to the release of this movie. Mock me all you want, I don’t care! )

Now, if you’re interested, you can search around on YouTube for other videos relating to this topic. I’m not here to judge. But I did the Google search myself, just to see if there was something more, um, directly musical going on here than I was aware of.

Turns out, there is a jazz organist who’s famous for playing barefoot. Her name is Rhoda Scott, and she’ll rock your world. You can hear some audio clips at her official website — click on “Discography.” Meanwhile, here’s a groovy video:

I’m really impressed with her pedaling; she doesn’t just play a simple root-of-each-chord thing — she plays a bona fide walking bass line. And she does it with one foot, while the other foot works the expression pedal (which controls the dynamics of what her hands are playing). On a church organ, you have both feet available for playing complex bass lines, so it’s a little easier (well, maybe it’s more accurate to say that it gives composers an excuse to write harder organ parts! )

So there you go. You learn from me, I learn from you. It’s a good deal!

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Criticism: It Sucks! (part the third)

NaBloPoMo Day 13!

I left off yesterday discussing my utopian vision for a better world. Or, at least my fervent hope that human interaction isn’t by definition doomed to devolve into nitpicking one-upmanship, and that we just might be capable of more. I have just a few more thoughts on the topic for now.

If we want to keep from endlessly reenacting primal dominance rituals, first we need to be aware that that’s part of what’s going on. A few handy terms might be helpful in that regard.

I mentioned the zero sum game before, and I mention it again because a) it’s a particular pet peeve of mine and 2) it dovetails nicely with another concept I want to mention.

I participate in a few different online discussion sites, where impolite topics like politics and religion are discussed. Time and time again, I’ve seen someone identify a certain idea/cause/topic/issue as something important, and, as reliably as a Swiss train, someone else will pop up and say, “Yeah, but what about this other idea/cause/topic/issue, huh? Why don’t you care about THAT?” Here’s a silly example: Let’s say I decide to volunteer in a soup kitchen, and I see that good things are being done there and I want to spread the word about it, so I start talking about it, and my enthusiasm for it is so great that somebody else can’t stand that so much energy might be going to something outside their control, so they get all huffy and say, “That’s just great, but what are you doing to pressure the auto industry to increase fuel efficiency in cars? Nothing? Just as I thought! You don’t caaaaare!”

Of course, I DO care about fuel efficiency, and even if I didn’t, that shouldn’t stop my hypothetical compadre from working on the issue. Hunger and fuel economy aren’t engaged in a chess match.

But I see people acting as if life were a zero sum game quite often, and I think it’s related to what’s called a scarcity mentality. If you’re wondering, by the way, what any of this has to do with music, here we go:

Another fun activity you get to do in grad school is go to lectures by visiting scholars. The quality of these events varies widely. Sometimes they’re life-changingly great. Sometimes they make me think there must’ve been an epidemic of severe insomnia in the academic world at some point, and these events were devised as part of the treatment plan. One type that comes to mind at the moment is the successful-yet-curmudgeonly éminence grise who comes to share his (or possibly her, but mostly his, in my experience) wisdom with the assembled students, but also to inform us that the field of music is deteriorating, the resources and support for it are drying up, and it’s only gonna get worse. Fantastic news to those of us who have decided to throw ourselves into years of advanced musical training, while those of our friends from undergrad who aren’t masochistic lunatics are out in the working world, contributing the maximum in matchable funds to their 401k plans.

It’s bollocks, of course. The death of classical music has been reported on repeatedly during the past 100 years or more. (Here’s an in-depth article on the topic by another of my former professors. Aren’t I just the little name-dropper? ) If classical music took on human form, it would quote Mark Twain. And I find it hard to understand why folks who’ve had long careers, who have found success, would cling to such a “glass half-full — of poison” mentality.

Or maybe it’s not hard to understand. Maybe they feel the need to defend their slice of the pie from a horde of young upstarts in fashionably-tattered clothing. “I’ve got mine — back off, sonny!”

As an aside, I’d like to say something that’s really pretty obvious: these human dynamics I’m talking about are by no means confined to the music world, or to academia. They just take on a particularly high tone there, is all. But since I mentioned online forums, I’d just like to take this moment to say that examples of the “you’ve gotta be wrong so I can be right” dynamic can be found in these virtual communities in almost embarrassing abundance. At one point I had the urge to post an expository essay on the cerulean tint of the celestial regions as seen from the earth during daylight hours, just to see what the opposing arguments would be, and how short a time it would take for them to appear. ‘Twould be worth making popcorn for, I think.

But at least I could expect some intelligent thought on the subject if I posted in the right place. Sadly, you don’t have to look very far to find rampant idiocy infesting this wonderful series of tubes we call the internets. I mean, I guess it was a good idea to start adding comments sections to every online newspaper and website and youtube video; it’s democracy, right? Free speech! I’m all for it! But do you ever read any of that stuff? I do sometimes, and it’s like spelunking through the underground river of toxic ectoplasm that was discovered to be the source of rudeness among New Yorkers in Ghostbusters II. Every once in awhile you’ll find something insightful, or cleverly funny — as opposed to unintentionally funny. You can sometimes find kernels of corn in cow patties, too, but why would you want to do that kind of search?

[Note: I know that the above analysis only applies to some sectors of the internet, not all. And I encourage you to comment here, as I know that this particular corner of cyberspace would never descend to that level! ]

When I get fed up with the dark, slimy side of human nature, I tend to ask, along with my buddy Bill,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?”

I’ll tackle that in the (blessed!) conclusion to this series!

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Criticism: It Sucks! (part 2)

NaBloPoMo Day 12!

Meeemmmm’ries!

When I was a fresh-faced, eager young grad student in the first term of my Ph.D. composition program, I took a seminar in the Critical Studies division of my university’s music department. (That’s an updated term for an updated type of musicology, btw.) Even though I wasn’t a musicologist myself, I always believed in being well-rounded and intellectually stimulated. Besides, the seminar topic concerned drawing connections between critical theory and one’s own creative identity, so it seemed to have a practically applicable side for a composer. The reading was tough — I was not accustomed to the writing style prevalent in the field of critical theory — but I knew that the professor was brilliant, not to mention my fellow students, and I enthusiastically looked forward to learning from them.

Sadly, a rather toxic dynamic developed around the seminar table. Many of the students were already fairly widely-read in the discipline — great, right? maybe they could decipher some of those paragraph-long, syllable-larded sentences that worked so well at curing insomnia in us newbies — the problem was, they weren’t interested so much in illuminating the material itself as they were in making it crystal clear at every class meeting that they knew much more about it than you did. Yes, you. And you, and you, and you over there, too. And woe unto any of you should your opinion differ from that of these budding schoolyard bullies scholars. Some of the lowest points in the course occurred when the critical theory component of the course topic (relatively objective) got its signals crossed with the creative identity part (relatively subjective), resulting in fruitless, apples-to-giraffes pseudo-debates. Only marginally better were moments when the more subjectively-inclined among us shared some meaningful experience formative to our creative identities, to which the response was a resounding

*crickets*

So I’m sorry to say that I didn’t learn a whole lot in the course; it’s awfully difficult to learn anything new when so much of your mental energy is devoted to maintaining the illusion that you already know everything. A friend and I instituted a ritual of repairing to a café after each class meeting to process, vent and detox from the latest dysfunctional spectacle, while during the class meetings themselves, we sat in the back snickering and throwing spitballs (well, not really, but we wanted to SO BAD! ).

A few more incidents from the Academic Discourse Hall of Shame:

• During a discussion of the influence of jazz on film music in a film-scoring class, I watched 2 students bicker (for a minute or two but it felt like an eternity) over the exact release date of Miles Davis‘ seminal record Birth of the Cool — this was in the days before most anyone in the room could have looked up the date by accessing the internet with their cell phone. At the time, I was too shy to say, “Why don’t you take it outside, guys?” so I just sat by rolling my eyes so hard I nearly hurt myself. (For those of you keeping score at home, the release date is June 1950. Don’t say you didn’t learn anything here today! :P)
• Early in the term during a music history seminar, my fellow students and I took turns presenting ideas-in-progress for research topics. I talked about my interest in settings of the Requiem Mass, particularly the Dies Irae section, and I expressed curiosity about whether the religious beliefs (or lack thereof) of various Requiem composers influenced how they set the text. LORD AND HOWDY, my classmates reacted as if I had set up a revival tent and forced them into it with a cattle prod! One smart fella in particular took me to task for failing to apply the Scientific Method to my analysis of the music. At the next class meeting, another joker presented me with a religious tract of the sort that anyone who hangs out on a university campus is liable to be handed, saying, “Here, I thought you’d like this.” Ha ha, very funny.




• I had a solo cello piece performed on a student concert, and a fellow grad student (and friend, let me just say) explained to me in a sincere, concerned voice that my piece did not contain its own internal critique. That was the first I’d heard that internal critique was something to aspire to; it comes quite naturally to me in life, but one of the reasons I love composing is that, if I’m doing it right, it gives me a welcome vacation from that whole scene. Intra-musical critique? Thanks, but no thanks. I mean, it’s the sort of thing that can be effective if it arises naturally and isn’t taken too seriously. Nothing wrong with poking fun at oneself. But to earnestly seek it out like some sort of musical mortification of the flesh? Come on, the pay already sucks as it is, let’s not rub it in!

That reminds me: My composition professor Jorge Liderman once said, “You don’t have to put blood into every note.” Words to live by, I believe!

Anyway… what’s my point here, other than sour grapes, you might ask?

Well, as I said the other day, the theme I see running through this is a need to be right, made corrosive by a corresponding need for others to be wrong. This may be a bit of behavioral residue left over from the times when being wrong meant getting eaten by saber-tooth tigers. Here’s a revolutionary idea, though: what if you could just be right, without the sharp chiaroscuro contrast of those around you being wrong? What if everyone could just do their own thing and have it be okay? Yeah, you can say I’m a dreamer. I don’t think I’m the only one. But we humans, funny and sad as we are, go around acting like life is a zero sum game. Who says? What if there doesn’t have to be one loser for every winner? Like the song says, “I want a name when I lose.”

Heh, and it used to be that name was “Nerd.” Look how far we’ve advanced already!

Just for the heck of it:

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Coming Attractions

NaBloPoMo Day 11!

Another quick post, while the follow-up to yesterday percolates…

It’s hard to believe it, but it’s been nearly a year since McDoc and I arrived in Detroit. One of the first things we discovered after arriving here was a music festival put on by the Detroit Symphony called 8 Days in June. It was a very exciting and ambitious series, and we’re looking forward to this year’s version.

On of the pieces I’m especially looking forward to hearing is the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen. For many reasons, but for now I’ll just mention that the piece features an early electronic instrument called the ondes Martenot, which is sort of a cousin to the Theremin. And regular readers might know why that’s of interest to me!

Criticism: It Sucks! (part 1)

NaBloPoMo Day 10!

The other day, I started to relate how a bit of procrastinatory online reading had lain some new track for my train of thought (at times, my train of thought travels more like a pinball!). Well, maybe not completely new — these readings brought up a set of thoughts and ideas that have been swirling around in my brain for a long time now, and that I have often explored in conversation, but not in writing. No time like the present to get them down on paper up on-screen!

Here’s a little preview of where we’re headed:

Swipe your paw at Mr. Readmore to get all the juicy details!

Alla Breve

NaBloPoMo Day 9!

I have to be content with a placeholder post today, because McDoc and I have planned an impromptu outing this afternoon/evening. Quality time is scarce for medical types, so I have to carpe doctor when I can!

Thoughts are a-brewin’ about musical academia and its malcontents — a topic which I know brings everyone to the edge of their seat! So stay tuned!

Meanwhile, have a musical lolcat:

More later!

The Ecstasy and the Criticism (Wherein my Bubble is Burst)

NaBloPoMo Day 8!

I didn’t expect that committing myself to a month of daily blogging would send me off on a nostalgia trip (for one thing, I’m uncomfortable with the notion that I’m old enough to be capable of nostalgia ). But the discussion of my Bartók String Quartet Watershed Moment brought up the memory of what has to be one of my top ten classical concert-going experiences of all time.

On December 3, 1995 in New York City’s Avery Fisher Hall, the Emerson String Quartet performed all six Bartók quartets in a single afternoon. It was a little over 50 years since the composer’s death; the Emersons had given a similar performance at Alice Tully Hall in 1981, to mark the centennial of his birth. [1]

It was a mind-blowing experience. Over 2 1/2 hours of music, with two intermissions… Now, if you’re an opera fan, 2 1/2 hours isn’t that big a deal — it’s not unusual for an opera to stretch to 4 or 5. But the in the case of the Bartók quartets, you’re talking about 2 1/2 incredibly intense hours; no scene changes, no downtime — the brief pauses between movements allow you to catch your breath, but that’s about it. It was kind of like eating a multiple-course meal where every course consisted of dark chocolate — no whipped cream or plain vanilla cookies to dilute the extreme richness. (What’s not to like? )

Actually, chocolate metaphors notwithstanding, I really can’t adequately put into words what this concert was like for me; I can merely talk around it. I can say that at the end of the 4th quartet, I was literally speechless. I had been on the edge of my seat during the last movement, and when it ended, I sank back, simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated. While most of the audience got up to stretch their legs during the intermission that followed, I stayed in my seat, limp as a rag doll. My friend who attended the concert with me concurred.

Now, when I first sat down to write today, I wasn’t sure if an account of going to an amazing concert 12 years ago ( ) would really make a compelling blog post — I mean, great concerts happen all the time, right? So before I got down to business, I spent a little time procrastinating doing some online reading, letting various ideas percolate in my head. I came across a few items that relate to the topic at hand, and also open up some interesting tangents. (It has been my experience so far that when I sit down to blog, I invariably end up going on a journey that takes me somewhere I couldn’t have predicted, and thus far it has always been a pleasant — or at least productive — surprise. The only downside is that it can be a major time sink, but I think it’s well-established by now that that’s what the internet is for! )

I couldn’t remember the exact date of that concert, so I searched for a review, and my trusty New York Times did not disappoint. Until I actually read the review, that is, and discovered that what I remember as a transporting, mountain-top experience had “raised nagging questions” for the reviewer:

Did it matter, for example, that the Emerson players… could have given a tighter, more alert performance of the magnificent Fourth Quartet if they had approached the work fresh rather than after an arduous trek through the first three quartets?… Did it matter that the audience dwindled markedly before the Fifth and Sixth Quartets?… Did the music suffer? …some of the works were in fact diminished for the moment, their individual movements seeming part of an increasingly indistinguishable stream.

Did it matter that the reviewer completely missed the point, and, in our humble opinion, could stand to increase the amount of fiber in his diet?

I know, I know — he was just doing his job. But it makes me wonder 1) just what the purpose of arts criticism is, and 2) whether that purpose is adequately served in practice.

It’s a pet peeve of mine that the activity called criticism — in its journalistic and scholarly context — seems so often to consist of pointing out what’s wrong with something. (And then proceeding to expound at length upon why it’s wrong, in a well-researched yet self-congratulatory manner, using as many 5-dollar words as possible. ) That may align with the common definition of the word critical: “inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily,” [2] but not with the sense of criticism itself as “the act or art of analyzing and evaluating or judging the quality of a literary or artistic work, musical performance, art exhibit, dramatic production, etc.” [3]

At the risk of being Pollyanna-ish and uncool, I would submit that “evaluating or judging the quality of a literary or artistic work” can (and should) include talking about what’s right about it as well as (or maybe even instead of — I can dream!) what’s wrong. Scoff if you like; I feel have enough experience wearing black and drinking lattes to say whatever I want.

Besides, what is also integral to criticism, I believe, is having some modicum of sensitivity to the context and intent of what you’re evaluating. If I were reporting on a runner’s performance in a marathon, it would be not only tactless but also patently lunkheaded to observe that she was breathing hard and had gotten a little bit sweaty. I wish that, rather than pointing out minute lapses in the performers’ stamina, the reviewer had been willing to sincerely take on just what the Emersons were asking of the audience — which was, in my opinion, that we experience this monumental body of music in a visceral way — going along for the ride and being willing to be with wherever it took us — rather than whining petulantly about the uncomfortable seats and when are we gonna stop for lunch?

Tune in tomorrow, when I’ll tilt at a couple more musicological windmills.

Oh, P.S: Not that I’d ever even try to pretend to be unbiased about any of this, but I just want to confess here and now that I always thought the Emerson’s violist, Lawrence Dutton, was pretty cute. Though not as cute as McDoc, of course!

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Thanks — you make the world a better place!

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[1] James R. Oestreich, “Music Review: Bartok, All In a Hard Day’s Work,” New York Times, December 6, 1995.

[2] critical, Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/critical (accessed: May 08, 2008).

[3] criticism, Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/criticism (accessed: May 08, 2008).