Alex Ross on Pierre Boulez: good reading
tomdeacon
the strength of your own opinions. It's always nice to know that other
smart people think as you do.
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/pierre_boulez.html
TD
Bob Lombard
"tomdeacon" <tomde...@mac.com> wrote in message
news:1167232242.4...@79g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
> For those interested in a sensible take on PB, this might help you
> have
> the strength of your own opinions. It's always nice to know that other
> smart people think as you do.
>
about as well as any I've read.
bl
Lurkalot
> the strength of your own opinions. It's always nice to know that other
> smart people think as you do.
Nice, but pointless. If you're interested in reality, rather than in merely
buttressing your own favourite illusions, then it's of considerably greater
value to know about all those 'smart people' who are *refusing* to think as
you do...
Mr M.
Bob Harper
Bruckner in his days as enfant terrible!), I wonder whether we will hear
from him Shostakovich (say, 4, 8, 10, or 15) or Sibelius (4, 6, or 7)?:)
Bob Harper
david...@aol.com
tomdeacon wrote:
> For those interested in a sensible take on PB, this might help you have
> the strength of your own opinions. It's always nice to know that other
> smart people think as you do.
Ross's article is ignorant nonsense from a reporter with a
Deacon-like mentality and a persecution complex. Far from proving that
Tom Deacon is one of the "smart people," Ross lets the Deacons of
the world off the hook, relieving them of the obligation to think.
Ross's piece presents a history of the evolution of Boulez's ideas
and career that is anything but accurate, and it's devoid of the
least bit of original thought. Gathering up the usual journalistic
clichés, it serves exactly one purpose: it allows the Deacons of the
world to indulge their prejudices without having to come to terms with
Boulez's style.
Ross's paranoia is easily demonstrated. Ross writes that, "in the
years following the Second World War," Boulez created "a climate of
intellectual fear." Assuming, improbably, that Boulez actually
wanted to create "a climate of intellectual fear," whatever that
means, where but down the rabbit hole in Wonderland would an unknown
25-year-old musician with no official position be capable of any such
thing? Of course, Ross isn't really paranoid, and this is simply
meaningless slander.
It's perfectly true that Boulez in his early 20's was capable of the
ruthlessly dismissive bon mot, and, being French, Boulez's mots are
all too quotable. Not that Boulez is obliged to be fair to any
composer by Ross's or Deacon's or anybody's else's standards,
but what Ross fails to acknowledge is that, in most cases, the isolated
mots he gathers together in forming his brief against Boulez are pulled
out of larger essays filled with balanced discussion of the victims of
the mots, not that Ross would know. In Boulez's early essays, the
source of virtually all the mots Ross hold against him, a young
composer in search of himself assesses the music of his predecessors
with a view to discovering what is viable about their styles and what
isn't. Every young artist necessarily makes the same kind of
assessments in forging his own style, and Ross would be shocked to
discover what Beethoven said about his teacher Haydn. Ross also fails
to mention Boulez's unambiguous early enthusiasm for the music of
Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Monteverdi, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and
Debussy: it wouldn't fit Ross's profile. The first essay in the
first anthology of Boulez's writing ever published is entitled "A
Time for J.S. Bach." Ross also fails to distinguish between Boulez
the 25-year-old author of the early essays and Boulez at any other age.
Not many people beyond the age of 30 would like to be held to every
opinion and attitude he or she expressed or exhibited at age 20, if
only because of the tone a 20-year-old is capable of. The tone of the
essay that Boulez wrote in the early 70's just after Stravinsky's
death is very different from the tone of the essay Boulez wrote in the
early 50's after Schoenberg's death.
Then there is Ross's rhetorical strategy. Is there nothing Boulez
cannot be blamed for? If Copland and Stravinsky wrote "serial"
music, it's Boulez's fault. If Boulez conducts "The Wooden
Prince" and Schoenberg's Pélleas, the "choices were strange."
If the Prince "is not Bartók at his best," that's Boulez's
fault. If Pelleas "threatens to drown in its own orchestration,"
that's Boulez's fault. (Please note that Mr. Ross is allowed to
criticize the masters: Boulez is not.)
Then there are Ross's descriptions of Boulez's style. Ross writes
that "[Boulez] set the profile of 'modern music' as it is
popularly conceived and as it is still widely practiced-a rapid
sequence of jabbing gestures, like the squigglings of a seismograph."
Whatever Ross thinks, this is not a description of Boulez's style.
It's a superficial impressionistic description of Boulez's surface
textures. Imagine for one moment a glib description of Mozart's
surface textures on the order of this description of Boulez's: it
would be equally worthless, equally devoid of meaningful content. It
wouldn't begin to address the nature of Mozart's style.
Here is Ross's other stab at style analysis: "Boulez's
instrumental writing, meanwhile, has settled into a familiar set of
mannerisms: a steady alternation of held notes and rapid figuration; a
heavy reliance on drones, trills, tremolos, and other effects of
filigree; a weakness for splashy percussion." Again, this is no more
than a vague and impressionistic description of Boulez's surfaces.
There isn't the least evidence that Ross has listened beneath the
surface of Boulez's music. Mozart, too, "settled into" "a
steady alternation of held notes and rapid figuration."
-david gable
tomdeacon
Lurkalot wrote:
> "tomdeacon" <tomde...@mac.com> wrote in message
> news:1167232242.4...@79g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
> > For those interested in a sensible take on PB, this might help you have
> > the strength of your own opinions. It's always nice to know that other
> > smart people think as you do.
>
> Nice, but pointless. If you're interested in reality
I'm not.
Reality has usually been oversold.
Fantasy is much nicer and far more comforting.
TD
jrs...@aol.com
david...@aol.com wrote:
>
> Then there are Ross's descriptions of Boulez's style. Ross writes
> that "[Boulez] set the profile of 'modern music' as it is
> popularly conceived....
There you have it. There is a widespread understanding these days that
popular criticism (the type that Alex Ross practices very well) is
about how things are "popularly conceived" not about thoroughly
researched viewpoints such as yours.
Criticism of the popular conception is always going to seem valid to
the masses, or to the uninformed because it is about popular strawmen
and popular reaction to popular strawment and stirring popular
sentiment.
Unfortunately, those of us who are not experts are unable to counter
such criticism with anything but skepticism.
You don't have to like Boulez or his music to see that. So thank you
for setting the record straight, for those of us who actually,
sometimes, hear great things in Boulez's music but have no idea how to
explain it.
--Jeff
jrs...@aol.com
Bob Harper wrote:
> Given his mellowing (imagine what M. Boulez would have said about
> Bruckner in his days as enfant terrible!), I wonder whether we will hear
> from him Shostakovich (say, 4, 8, 10, or 15) or Sibelius (4, 6, or 7)?:)
>
> Bob Harper
Now *that's* a "comforting fantasy"!
--Jeff
Bob Lombard
<jrs...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1167251384.9...@79g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
Well OK, but... what 'masses' care about Boulez, or even have heard of
him?
bl
jrs...@aol.com
The readers of the New Yorker?
For the record: I happen to think the critic in question is usually
very, very good, as a sensitive writer and listener. But this practice
of creating perceptions about perceptions is more of a pop sensibility
than I can take. At some point I look to the critic to actually talk
about reality as he sees it.
--Jeff
tomdeacon
I felt sure that a reminder of Ross' article would stir the blood in
your veins, David and sure enough it did.
Woke you out of your holiday slumber.
However, I think it's hardly much of a defense to attack the messenger
rather than the message. You can call me ignorant if you like -
actually I don't care, of course, and find it mildly amusing coming
from you - but it's such bad form to try to attack a critic - specially
one from the New Yorker magazine, which is known for checking facts,
quotes, etc., meticulously and who have hired some of the greatest
writers in the English language as contributors - when you put yourself
up as a critic. Really bad form. A bit like Rubinstein bitching about
Horowitz and vice versa. A no-no.
TD
tomdeacon
LOL!
TD
david...@aol.com
Bob Lombard wrote:
> Well OK, but... what 'masses' care about Boulez, or even have heard of
> him?
Why, Bob, you yourself have heard of Boulez. You once sent me a superb
transfer from LP to CD of Charles Rosen's recording of the 1st and 3rd
Boulez piano sonatas. If you want to hear some of the gorgeous
coloristic French music he's written in the last 35 years, just send me
E-mail.
-david gable
tomdeacon
Why, the mass readers of the New Yorker, that's who.
I love it.
The New Yorker readers are now representative of "the masses". I see
the original editor turning over in his grave.
TD
david...@aol.com
tomdeacon wrote:
> However, I think it's hardly much of a defense to attack the messenger
> rather than the message. You can call me ignorant if you like -
> actually I don't care, of course, and find it mildly amusing coming
> from you - but it's such bad form to try to attack a critic - specially
> one from the New Yorker magazine, which is known for checking facts,
> quotes, etc., meticulously
Ross's facts have NOT been checked, let alone meticulously, precisely
because it's "criticism" and not an article on, say, Bush's Iraq
policy. Nor have you addressed my remarks as I addressed Ross's. None
of what you write here has anything to do with what I actually wrote.
As for not attacking Ross simply because he writes for The New Yorker,
that's pure Deacon think. In Deacon's world view, if you record for
Philips, that automatically means you're a great pianist or conductor,
and, if you write for The New Yorker, that automatically means you're a
great writer. It's the Cadillac label on the car that does it for
Deacon, not how well it rides.
-david gable
tomdeacon
david...@aol.com wrote:
> tomdeacon wrote:
>
> > However, I think it's hardly much of a defense to attack the messenger
> > rather than the message. You can call me ignorant if you like -
> > actually I don't care, of course, and find it mildly amusing coming
> > from you - but it's such bad form to try to attack a critic - specially
> > one from the New Yorker magazine, which is known for checking facts,
> > quotes, etc., meticulously
>
> Ross's facts have NOT been checked, let alone meticulously, precisely
> because it's "criticism" and not an article on, say, Bush's Iraq
> policy.
Perhaps you have never had your "facts checked" at the New Yorker. I
have. It took hours and hours. Every line is gone over with a fine
tooth-comb, even criticism. Indeed, the event involved an article by
Mr. Ross and everything he said was spot-on correct.
> Nor have you addressed my remarks as I addressed Ross's.
You simply impugned Ross as a kind of Ueber Tom Deacon.
Really, David, you should come up with better, you know.
> None of what you write here has anything to do with what I actually wrote.
Hmmmmm.
I disagree.
> As for not attacking Ross simply because he writes for The New Yorker,
> that's pure Deacon think.
Not something you were accused of. You were accused of utter stupidity
and ungraciousness for attacking a fellow critic.
It is really not my fault that he is where he is and you are where you
are, David. I don't know why you resent his position so much.
> In Deacon's world view, if you record for Philips, that automatically means you're a great pianist or conductor, and, if you write for The New Yorker, that automatically means you're a
> great writer.
No. Neither statement has ever been made by me, as you know. Or, if you
think it has, please give me the quote.
What it does mean is that if you record for Philips - well, not
Philips, as it was killed by Chris Roberts many years ago, but let's
just use it as an example - you join a label which has recorded the
likes of Claudio Arrau, Alfred Brendel, Bernard Haitink, Eduard van
Beinum, Riccardo Muti, Valery Gergiev, etc., etc., so that the chances
are you may be someone worth spending some time with.
Ditto for the New Yorker. If you write, you join a magazine which
publishes Mavis Gallant and Alice Munroe, among hundreds of others, so
we should perhaps pay attention to what you write.
> It's the Cadillac label on the car that does it for Deacon, not how well it rides.
Cadillacs haven't been worthy of that label since 1960, David. This
just shows what you know about brands. You might substitute Rolls Royce
if you want to get the message across.
TD
david...@aol.com
tomdeacon wrote:
> Cadillacs haven't been worthy of that label since 1960, David. This
> just shows what you know about brands. You might substitute Rolls Royce
> if you want to get the message across.
But I don't think of you as a Rolls, Tom. Nor were Mr. Ross's facts
checked.
-david gable
jrs...@aol.com
I'm sure the"facts" were checked. What wasn't necessarily checked was
the correspondence of impression to reality, of popular notion to
complete understanding.
These are not matters for a fact checker in a criticism like this, as
you point out.
Boulez said what he said; nobody else said things quite so nastily.
He's fair game to a critic. He deserves ridicule for what he said as a
youngster. Even if his full expression of thoughts is quite a bit more
complex than a few bon mots.
What the reader deserves, however, is more than a whipping boy for
Ross's particular view of how musical history ought to go. That is what
wasn't checked and can't be checked. That Boulez had quite a
fascinating repertoire and did it well, when he was younger. That the
aging Boulez's repertoire is now confining, the way many elder
musicians revisit a limited repertoire in their final years. (Boulez
still does quite a range of music, but his repertoire is undeniably
fixated on particular pieces and particular composers, for the most
part). This is not a sign of claustrophobia, this is a sign of wisdom.
He does what he wants to do.
Ross comes to the right conclusion--Boulez is worth hearing, he is
serious, he is quality through and through, and yes, he was ungenerous
as a youngster. The rest of the column is a gratuitous means of
propping up the supermarket aesthetic that critics these days tend to
love. Musical history tells a good story that way. What's a fact
checker to do with that?
--Jeff
tomdeacon
jrsn...@aol.com wrote:
>That Boulez had quite a fascinating repertoire and did it well, when he was younger.
Indeed. Fascinating.
It included the complete Liszt tone poems, which he conducted in the
first year of his tenure at the NYPhil.
That he should prefer these pieces to Sibelius 4 or Shostakovich 5 is
fair enough, of course, but it does sort of mark him as a man of
dubious if not completely unreliable taste.
Sibelius 4 is a symphony without which I, for one, am unprepared to
live my life. Whether I ever hear another Liszt tone poem is a matter
of supreme indifference to me. That PB should take a completely
opposite opinion is, to me, absolutely unfathomable, as it would be to
hundreds, nay thousands, of other musicians, I would imagine, a group
which would apparently not include our friend Mr. Gable, hitched, as he
is, to the Boulez wagon for good or ill.
TD
Eric Grunin
David,
I'm surprised this got you so excercised, especially since you
probably read this when it first appeared.
Ross's basic complaint is that Boulez wrote the music which he wanted
to hear, played the music he wanted to play, and tried his best to
convince others to follow his example using strong language. The only
problem, is seems, is that Ross doesn't share his taste; otherwise he
would be praising him with the same citations.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
jrs...@aol.com
>
> >That Boulez had quite a fascinating repertoire and did it well, when he was younger.
>
> Indeed. Fascinating.
>
> It included the complete Liszt tone poems, which he conducted in the
> first year of his tenure at the NYPhil.
>
> That he should prefer these pieces to Sibelius 4 or Shostakovich 5 is
> fair enough, of course, but it does sort of mark him as a man of
> dubious if not completely unreliable taste.
Like Furtwangler, who did Liszt but not Sibelius 4 or Shostakovich. Or
Rosbaud, who didn't leave us a Sibelius 4 but did some major Liszt. Or
Scherchen. Or Mengelberg. Or Haitink and Masur, all of whom recorded
Liszt but not Sibelius 4.
All men of dubious taste, of course.
Fascinating, indeed!
--Jeff
Bob Harper
(snip)
> Cadillacs haven't been worthy of that label since 1960, David. This
> just shows what you know about brands. You might substitute Rolls Royce
> if you want to get the message across.
>
> TD
>
You're apparently behind the times. Recent Cadillacs are quite worthy of
the name--maybe the most worthy ever built. To be sure, they aren't the
finned fantasies of the era of which you speak, but to call, say, the
STS-V 'unworthy' of the name betrays breathtaking ignorance. As Casey
Stengel famously said, 'You could look it up.'
Bob Harper
jrs...@aol.com
Well put. Besides, all that publicity as a bad boy, in the New
Yorker--a crowd that loves bon mots--undoubtedly won him a few new
fans.
--Jeff
Taffy Brendel
Unfathomable? That is of course why Boulez is genius and you are
not...you are not even close I would suggest.
>
> TD
Taffy
david...@aol.com
jrs...@aol.com wrote:
>
> I'm sure the"facts" were checked. What wasn't necessarily checked was
> the correspondence of impression to reality, of popular notion to
> complete understanding.
You really think that the New Yorker uses fact checkers for its music
reviews? They may have had an army of fact checkers at the ready when
Jeffrey Toobin wrote about Whitewater or the O.J. trial: it's
impossible for me to believe that concert reviewers drop their reviews
off with the fact checker before being printed.
-david gable
Philip Peters
> jrsn...@aol.com wrote:
>
>> That Boulez had quite a fascinating repertoire and did it well, when he was younger.
>
> Indeed. Fascinating.
>
> It included the complete Liszt tone poems, which he conducted in the
> first year of his tenure at the NYPhil.
>
> That he should prefer these pieces to Sibelius 4 or Shostakovich 5 is
> fair enough, of course, but it does sort of mark him as a man of
> dubious if not completely unreliable taste.
As Duchamp said: "The worst enemy of art is good taste".
Philip
>
makropulos
david...@aol.com wrote:
>
> You really think that the New Yorker uses fact checkers for its music
> reviews? They may have had an army of fact checkers at the ready when
> Jeffrey Toobin wrote about Whitewater or the O.J. trial: it's
> impossible for me to believe that concert reviewers drop their reviews
> off with the fact checker before being printed.
>
> -david gable
David - yes, they do. I was phoned about a year ago by one of the New
Yorker's fact checkers (who phoned from the US to the UK to confirm the
information - I was impressed). This was in connection with one of Alex
Ross' articles. In that particular case there was specific information
to verify - so perhaps it was a slightly different type of article from
the one in this thread's original post.
Larry Rinkel
TD: But it's such bad form to try to attack a critic - specially
one from the New Yorker magazine, which is known for checking facts. . . .
Ross: "Yet many composers were intimidated by this young man's
table-pounding certitude. Both Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky took up
twelve-tone writing immediately after encountering Boulez. Even the most
august composers were desperate to please him. [paragraph] Not since Wagner
had a composer played the bully to such effect."
I would like to know what kind of fact-checking went into this. Undoubtedly
Boulez despised Stravinsky's neoclassical works, culminating in The Rake's
Progress, which Boulez found ugly. But according to Stephen Walsh's new
biography (vol. 2), when Boulez and Stravinsky first met at a party given by
Virgil Thomson in late 1952, they got on famously, and there was no reason
to believe Stravinsky was aware of Boulez's attacks on his neo-classical
music (p. 298). Furthermore, Stravinsky had started working in the 12-tone
idiom earlier that year, having felt creatively exhausted on completing The
Rake (283), and it wasn't so much Boulez who influenced him in this
direction as Robert Craft, who aroused Stravinsky's interest in Schoenberg
and Webern following Schoenberg's death in 1951. But since Ross has an axe
to grind about Boulez, these facts aren't mentioned, and Craft's more
important role is ignored.
As for Copland, John Rockwell wrote in 1989 that "Over the last two decades,
Mr. Copland's output has dwindled; most critics would argue that his last
major score was ''Inscape'' of 1967. As early as 1949, when Mr. Copland met
Pierre Boulez in Paris, there were distinct signs of insecurity about the
younger generation and its grim, dissonant ways. By the 1960's, Copland
premieres were no longer the events they had once been, and Leonard
Bernstein especially - who was and remains Mr. Copland's loyal friend and
perhaps most persuasive champion - seemed oddly eager to portray him as
creatively exhausted and abandoned."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/14/specials/copland-since1943.html
This sounds like someone depressed, but not necessarily "desperate to
please" a "bully" and start writing imitations of Polyphonie X. In fact
Copland's output following this initial meeting included such well-known
tonal works as the Twelve Dickinson Poems (1950), Old American Songs (1952),
and The Tender Land (1954), pieces hardly calculated to please Boulez. And
though Copland turned to 12-tone writing in works like the Piano Fantasy,
Connotations, and Inscape, he was no slave to Boulezianism. Here is what he
himself wrote concerning his Piano Fantasy of 1957. (I use double asterisks
to isolate the passages most relevant here, to show "desperate" Copland was
to please a young firebrand like Boulez who summarily rejected composers who
failed to embraced serialism.)
"The musical framework of the entire Piano Fantasy derives from a sequence
of ten different tones of the chromatic scale. To these are subsequently
joined the unused two tones of the scale, treated throughout as a kind of
cadential interval. ** (In fact, a good case could be made for the view that
the over-all tonal orientation is that of E major.) Thus, inherent in the
materials are elements able to be associated with the twelve-tone method and
with music tonally conceived. **
"To describe a composer as a twelve-toner these days is much too vague. Too
many composers in too many countries have been making too varied a use of
dodecaphonic techniques to justify so simple a label. ** My own Fantasy, for
example, is by no means rigorously controlled twelve-tone music, but it does
make liberal use of devices associated with that technique. **
As I see it, twelve-tonism is nothing more than an angle of vision. Like
fugal treatment, it is a stimulus that enlivens musical thinking, especially
when applied to a series of tones that lend themselves to that treatment. It
is a method, not a style; and therefore it solves no problems of musical
expressivity."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/14/specials/copland-fantasy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
10/20/57
So far from jumping on the Boulez bandwagon, both Stravinsky and Copland
remained true to their inner selves, while at the same time they absorbed
what they could use from the newer dodecaphonic language.
Oh. Excuse the "bad form."
Ian Pace
makropulos wrote:
Why then, in his dreadful article about music in *Germany* (
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/theodor_adorno.html ), did no-one
notice that three of the younger figures he especially singles out as
signifying all that's wrong (Georg Friedrich Haas, Johannes Maria Staud
and Olga Neuwirth) are actually all Austrian?
Ian
Ian Pace
makropulos wrote:
Why then, in his dreadful article about music in *Germany* (
TareeDawg
>
> jrsn...@aol.com wrote:
>
>>That Boulez had quite a fascinating repertoire and did it well, when he
>>was younger.
>
> Indeed. Fascinating.
>
> It included the complete Liszt tone poems, which he conducted in the
> first year of his tenure at the NYPhil.
I see no reason why Boulez should be held to any sort of account for doing
the Liszt tone poems. There are plenty of interpreters who have been eager
enough to jump on the Shosty 5th bandwagon. As for the Sibelius 4th (and I
agree with you about its status), maybe Boulez felt he should leave it to
better hands.
Not difficult to understand at all really, with those who have ears. The
Liszt tone poems have been sadly neglected. They needed some attention. But
then, they never were meant for those who don't really "listen" to music.
Just hitch another ride on another Shosty blockbuster, and then from a cosy
Western situation, claim it isn't Russian enough. Gotta larf really at some
people. All full of bullshite.
Ray H
Taree, NSW
david...@aol.com
of why it is so maddening to discuss anything with Tom Deacon. It's
always difficult to determine to what extent Tom's posts are
motivated by sheer malice and to what extent they're the innocent
products of muddled thinking. I can't imagine anybody but Tom coming
to the conclusion that the Liszt tone poems form part of Boulez's
core repertory, and I doubt that Tom himself has actually come to that
conclusion. It suits his purposes to make the claim.
Liszt was a very influential composer without whose experiments, failed
or otherwise, in chromaticism, texture, piano sonority, and form the
music of Wagner, Debussy, Ravel, Busoni, Richard Strauss, and
Schönberg might have been very different. Liszt was also a gifted
composer much of whose piano music has never disappeared from the
standard repertory. He occupies a certain position in music history
regardless of what Tom, Boulez, or I thinks of his music. As Music
Director in New York and London, Boulez pursued the policy of
programming, not only the best known warhorses by the best known
composers, but exploring lesser known works by the same composers. The
fact that Boulez thought it would be interesting to trot out all of the
Liszt tone poems during one single season in New York and see what's
actually there is hardly something to be held against him. No doubt it
was also great fun to play them all once, which hardly makes Tom's
case. But if you're trying to prove that Boulez is Darth Vader or
Don Corleone or simply lacking in the refined taste of a Tom Deacon you
have to seize on the isolated fact that will help you make your case
and build your fantasies on it, which is exactly what Tom has done.
Any way you slice it, Liszt, unlike any number of other composers
including Berlioz, Schumann, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, Berg, Ravel,
Stravinsky, and Bartók, is not a composer whom Boulez has been
regularly performing throughout his professional career. As for the
composer Boulez performed most often with the New York Philharmonic, it
was Mozart. (One season Boulez wanted to do a concert performance of
Busoni's Faust in New York, but management balked at the expense:
Boulez was surveying Faust and music that season, and the Faust's of
Schumann and Berlioz and Mahler's 8th were also in the works.)
-david gable
makropulos
Is that an article in The New Yorker or a post on Alex Ross' own blog?
(it looks like the latter, in which case it's not going to be
susecptible to New Yorker fact-checking.
david...@aol.com
makropulos wrote:
> David - yes, they do. I was phoned about a year ago by one of the New
> Yorker's fact checkers (who phoned from the US to the UK to confirm the
> information - I was impressed). This was in connection with one of Alex
> Ross' articles. In that particular case there was specific information
> to verify - so perhaps it was a slightly different type of article from
> the one in this thread's original post.
YOUR word I'll take for it, M. Makropulos, but, as you yourself
suggest, there are facts and there are facts. I find it difficult to
believe that The New Yorker's fact checkers traced every single
quotation attributed to Boulez in Ross's article back to a verifiable
source. (It would be virtually impossible to do.) Fact checkers are
able to verify that X did Y on date Z when it's part of the historical
record. Potentially actionable claims most often involve statements
attributed to public figures, and fact checkers are used to verify the
existence of bona fide references for them. Did the New Yorker's fact
checkers check this "fact"?: "Boulez created a climate of intellectual
fear." How do you verify vague and non-specific paranoid fantasies?
And what about the selective marshalling of facts and
misrepresentations within the vague sort of narrative Ross supplies? A
statement doesn't have to be an out and out lie to be a
misrepresentation.
-david gable
makropulos
Absolutely - there are facts and there are facts, as you say. In the
specific case where the New Yorker contacted me it was to verify some
fairly obscure information about one particular part of the article -
and as you say the facts in question were of the date/place/name
variety, not what we might consider unverifiable opinions.
Incidentally - I don't buy for a second the idea that the young PB,
tearaway that he doubtless was, even wanted - let alone attempted - to
create "a climate of fear". What's more when he did upset his elders
(e.g. the incident after the first performance of three movements from
"Turangalîla" in Paris in 1948, before the complete premiere in
Boston) he was soon forgiven by Messiaen. Outspoken - of course - he
was a young and brilliant man full of original ideas and forming his
own opinions. But "fear"? Certainly not as I see it.
Larry Rinkel
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1167250542.4...@f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
but what Ross fails to acknowledge is that, in most cases, the isolated
mots he gathers together in forming his brief against Boulez are pulled
out of larger essays filled with balanced discussion of the victims of
the mots
Case in point:
Ross: [according to Boulez] Berg suffered from "bad taste," Ravel from
"affectation."
Some of what Boulez also wrote in his first essay on Berg from Notes of an
Apprenticeship, pp. 235-241:
"It may be replied that a real difference, nonetheless, is established
between the fabricators of patented lyricism and Berg -- by such fine points
as [examples given]."
"I have allowed myself to criticize Berg because I place him far above all
the Gribouilles who believe and call themselves dodecaphonists." [Gribouille
was the stage name of a French cabaret singer.]
And later in the same book:
"After Wozzeck, Berg turned back to chamber music, composing two of his
masterpieces." (316)
"As purely instrumental writing, the Lyric Suite is one of the greatest
masterworks." (317)
"Wozzeck, the Kammerkonzert, and the Lyric Suite are capital data in the
evolution of Berg and the history of music. These works are properties of
first importance in the domains to which they belong." (325)
"This work [Der Wein] is not in Berg's best vein and bears the stigmata of
bad taste and preciosity." (331)
"From a study of Berg's oeuvre one can eaily deduce that he was one of the
most significant composers of his era . . . . an irreplaceable value in the
musical domain of our epoch." (332-33).
But Ross acknowledges nothing more than the allusions to "bad taste."
jrs...@aol.com
Look again at the top of the blog page. It's clearly the old review
published in the magazine when the LSO was in New York with Boulez.
The moose dredged this up out of the muck to draw David out of his
holiday reveries.
--Jeff
jrs...@aol.com
Larry Rinkel wrote:
..a lot of very sensible things about Boulez. If only the original
poster in this thread had the sense to think this way.
I just want to point out, about fact-checking in particular
> Ross: "Yet many composers were intimidated by this young man's
> table-pounding certitude. Both Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky took up
> twelve-tone writing immediately after encountering Boulez. Even the most
> august composers were desperate to please him. [paragraph] Not since Wagner
> had a composer played the bully to such effect."
>
> I would like to know what kind of fact-checking went into this.
One can verify that Copland and Stravinsky took up 12-tone writing
immediately after encountering Boulez. But that's a fact of timing, not
a fact of cause and effect, though the implication is there, it is not
actually stated as a causal relationship. So a fact checker should have
checked the timing but might not have checked the causal relationship
unless he was a very energetic checker with tons of time on his hands.
Not all fact checkers have that kind of time anymore.
Now, "desperate to please him"? What kind of source would lead to that
conclusion? Therein lies an error of fact checking, not to mention
writing. And to leave out Craft...well, that is the writer's license,
but again it confirms an axe is grinding, but few checkers would have
caught that. In the old days, maybe...
--Jeff
Larry Rinkel
news:1167281135.9...@f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
But the issue goes beyond fact-checking, JR. One would expect a writer of
Ross's experience to know his musical history. And the central importance of
the Stravinsky-Craft relationship in the development of Stravinsky's later
style is not exactly obscure. Ross is distorting the facts of musical
history as part of his effort to discredit Boulez.
TareeDawg
news:1167256049.5...@n51g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> Bob Lombard wrote:
>
>> Well OK, but... what 'masses' care about Boulez, or even have heard of
>> him?
>
> Why, Bob, you yourself have heard of Boulez. You once sent me a superb
> transfer from LP to CD of Charles Rosen's recording of the 1st and 3rd
> Boulez piano sonatas. If you want to hear some of the gorgeous
> coloristic French music he's written in the last 35 years, just send me
> E-mail.
As someone who has recently complained bitterly about people not responding
to your invitations, I'd like to help rectify the situation. I'd like to
hear some of this attractive, gorgeous French music, prepared lovingly by a
Boulez expert.
You could even turn me into a fan. Who knows?
Ray H
Taree, NSW
jrs...@aol.com
I agree. I'm just saying that fact checking goes so far. I never quite
understand why people here have such high regard for fact-checkers, as
if every journalistic mistake is a fact checking mistake. As if
magazines fact check anymore.
The truth is, authors mess up, and very few publishers have the money
to support really thorough fact checking departments anymore. The money
just isn't there for that kind of back up.
Some authors rely heavily on editors, but ultimately it's the author's
responsibility to get it right and the editor's luck if the fact
checkers, in their haste, catch the mistakes. I have no doubt, based on
Ross's tastes in music, that the distortion is a matter of convenience.
Whether or not he simply doesn't know the history deeply enough or
deliberately ignores it, the sources you mention are easy to find (I
have seen them myself, so it's gotta be easy!).
--Jeff
david...@aol.com
jrs...@aol.com wrote:
[Depressing facts about fact checking snipped]
> I have no doubt, based on
> Ross's tastes in music, that the distortion is a matter of convenience.
> Whether or not he simply doesn't know the history deeply enough or
> deliberately ignores it, the sources you mention are easy to find (I
> have seen them myself, so it's gotta be easy!).
Ross could easily have tracked down the New Yorker profile of Boulez by
Peter Heyworth published while Boulez was in New York. Or he could
have read any of numerous well informed columns on Boulez by his two
predecessors at The New Yorker, Andrew Porter and Paul Griffiths.
Surely his editors could have supplied him with any or all of the
above. Porter is also readily available in anthologies of his New
Yorker criticism. Griffiths has written a tiny little book on Boulez.
Whatever Ross didn't want to know, he didn't want to know.
-david gable
jrs...@aol.com
Feel free to check my facts about fact checking. :-)
--Jeff
david...@aol.com
Larry Rinkel writes:
>But according to Stephen Walsh's new biography (vol. 2), when Boulez and Stravinsky first
> met at a party given by Virgil Thomson in late 1952, they got on famously, and there was no
> reason to believe Stravinsky was aware of Boulez's attacks on his neo-classical music (p. 298).
This meeting is reported in several places, including Peter Heyworth's
New Yorker profile of Boulez. Craft discusses it in a piece
anthologized in the first published anthology of Craft essays,
Prejudices in Disguise. Heyworth innocently assumes that Stravinksky
was aware of Boulez's attacks on his neoclassical music when the two
composers met at Thomson's party. Craft insists that Stravinsky didn't
know and wouldn't have stayed at the party if he had. What lends
Walsh's and Craft's versions of the story credence is Stravinsky's
reaction in the 1960's when he finally saw what Boulez had written
about his neoclassical music when an anthology of Boulez's essays was
published for the first time: his attitude toward Boulez immediately
cooled, and the relationship between them was never quite the same
again.
Speaking of unchecked "facts," Ross is also mistaken about the scope of
Boulez's distaste for Stravinsky's neoclassical music: Boulez has
always had a healthy respect for Symphony of Psalms, and, Ross to the
contrary, a blanket disapproval of Stravinsky's neoclassicism does not
explain whatever problems exist with Boulez's DG recording of the piece
(which is not only dull but includes a bad edit, if I remember
correctly). No question that the Stravinsky who interests Boulez most
is the composer of Firebird, Rossignol, Petrushka, Rite of Spring, Les
noces, Zvezdoliki, the Japanese Lyrics, Renard, etc: the whole Russian
period through the Symphonies of Wind Instruments written when Debussy
died, in fact.
-david gable
Larry Rinkel
"Larry Rinkel" <L...@optunderline.net> wrote in message
news:QDFkh.95$Jr2...@newsfe10.lga...
>
>
> "The musical framework of the entire Piano Fantasy derives from a sequence
> of ten different tones of the chromatic scale. To these are subsequently
> joined the unused two tones of the scale, treated throughout as a kind of
> cadential interval. ** (In fact, a good case could be made for the view
> that the over-all tonal orientation is that of E major.) Thus, inherent in
> the materials are elements able to be associated with the twelve-tone
> method and with music tonally conceived. **
>
>
is if anything precisely the kind of thing Boulez would (and did) attack -
for example, in his comments on Berg's use of a Bach chorale in the violin
concerto.
tomdeacon
Quite.
And I presume you know for a fact that Furtwangler, Rosbaud and
Mengelberg or Haitink or Masur have never performed any of the music in
question?
My, you do seem knowledgeable.
What crap!
TD
tomdeacon
I know full well all about the V, Bob. It's a souped up Corvette from
what I have been able to glean from looking at it and reading about it.
Cadillac used to be a kind of "pimp-mobile" found on the poorer streets
of Detroit. But back in the fifties it really was something, as you
know full well. You're as old as I am, you see.
TD
tomdeacon
You should find out more about the New Yorker before making such
statements, David. They only serve to make you look naive. Not a good
thing.
TD
tomdeacon
Larry Rinkel wrote:
> Oh. Excuse the "bad form."
Never.
You're just "de trop".
TD
tomdeacon
By birth or extraction?
Have you seen their passports?
And does it really matter? German. Austrian. Hitler occupied that place
anyway.
TD
tomdeacon
david...@aol.com wrote:
> Deacon's post on Boulez and the Liszt tone poems is a classic example
> of why it is so maddening to discuss anything with Tom Deacon. It's
> always difficult to determine to what extent Tom's posts are
> motivated by sheer malice and to what extent they're the innocent
> products of muddled thinking.
Does that not make me simply fascinating, David? I feel so flattered.
> I can't imagine anybody but Tom coming
> to the conclusion that the Liszt tone poems form part of Boulez's
> core repertory, and I doubt that Tom himself has actually come to that
> conclusion. It suits his purposes to make the claim.
I was not the one who programmed them. It was PB. In his FIRST season!
ALL of them.
Furthermore did I say anything about "core" repertoire? I am only
talking about taste here, David.
> Liszt was a very influential composer without whose experiments, failed
> or otherwise, in chromaticism, texture, piano sonority, and form the
> music of Wagner, Debussy, Ravel, Busoni, Richard Strauss, and
> Schönberg might have been very different. Liszt was also a gifted
> composer much of whose piano music has never disappeared from the
> standard repertory. He occupies a certain position in music history
> regardless of what Tom, Boulez, or I thinks of his music.
I love Liszt's music. But his tone poems are mostly shit! Moreover I am
not the first to think so.
As Music
> Director in New York and London, Boulez pursued the policy of
> programming, not only the best known warhorses by the best known
> composers, but exploring lesser known works by the same composers. The
> fact that Boulez thought it would be interesting to trot out all of the
> Liszt tone poems during one single season in New York and see what's
> actually there is hardly something to be held against him. No doubt it
> was also great fun to play them all once, which hardly makes Tom's
> case. But if you're trying to prove that Boulez is Darth Vader or
> Don Corleone or simply lacking in the refined taste of a Tom Deacon you
> have to seize on the isolated fact that will help you make your case
> and build your fantasies on it, which is exactly what Tom has done.
>
> Any way you slice it, Liszt, unlike any number of other composers
> including Berlioz, Schumann, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, Berg, Ravel,
> Stravinsky, and Bartók, is not a composer whom Boulez has been
> regularly performing throughout his professional career. As for the
> composer Boulez performed most often with the New York Philharmonic, it
> was Mozart. (One season Boulez wanted to do a concert performance of
> Busoni's Faust in New York, but management balked at the expense:
> Boulez was surveying Faust and music that season, and the Faust's of
> Schumann and Berlioz and Mahler's 8th were also in the works.)
I hope this means that a recording of the Faust Symphony is not in the
planning stages, David.
What a relief!
TD
tomdeacon
jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> The moose dredged this up out of the muck to draw David out of his
> holiday reveries.
Whatever my reasons - and you'll never know, of course - the result has
been delicious.
Actually, I kind of think that David - not a New Yorker kind of reader,
I would say - never saw this article before.
TD
tomdeacon
Larry Rinkel wrote:
> But the issue goes beyond fact-checking, JR. One would expect a writer of
> Ross's experience to know his musical history. And the central importance of
> the Stravinsky-Craft relationship in the development of Stravinsky's later
> style is not exactly obscure. Ross is distorting the facts of musical
> history as part of his effort to discredit Boulez.
If you want "fair and balanced", I suggest you consult Fox News.
If you expect an opinion piece to marshall evidence for the opposite
side, you're just naive.
Mind you, I have sensed a tremendous degree of that around here of
late.
TD
makropulos
tomdeacon wrote:
> Actually, I kind of think that David - not a New Yorker kind of reader,
> I would say - never saw this article before.
>
> TD
Care to tell us what you think "a New Yorker kind of reader" is? And be
sure to check your facts first.
Larry
>
> If you want "fair and balanced", I suggest you consult Fox News.
>
If you think Fox News is fair and balanced, you're just as naive as
those you so accuse.
tomdeacon wrote:
>
> If you expect an opinion piece to marshall evidence for the opposite
> side, you're just naive.
Right. So when the supposed facts are exposed as bogus, the article can
now be justified as an "opinion piece," where accurate reporting of the
facts doesn't matter at all. Love it.
Bob Harper
(snip)
> Cadillac used to be a kind of "pimp-mobile" found on the poorer streets
> of Detroit. But back in the fifties it really was something, as you
> know full well. You're as old as I am, you see.
>
> TD
>
Well, not quite *that* old, though I'm not too far behind.
I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean by saying the Caddy 'really
was something' in the Fifties, but not today. More individual, in terms
of parts, perhaps. All manufacturers have rationalized parts supplies
over the last 20 years. But 'something' in the sense of being of higher
quality? Not a chance. More prestigious? Maybe. A car one was more happy
to be driven in than to drive? Almost certainly. But then while I'm old,
I prefer to drive my own cars.
Bob Harper
Steve de Mena
The XLR is the souped up Corvette (with a
Northstar engine). I think Cadillac has rebuilt
their reputation, but it is a redefined reputation
that is appealing to younger folks. The Escalade,
for example, is *the* SUV for the hip-hop crowd.
Steve
tomdeacon
Larry wrote:
> tomdeacon wrote:
> >
> > If you want "fair and balanced", I suggest you consult Fox News.
> >
>
> If you think Fox News is fair and balanced, you're just as naive as
> those you so accuse.
Please look up "irony" in the dictionary.
> tomdeacon wrote:
> >
> > If you expect an opinion piece to marshall evidence for the opposite
> > side, you're just naive.
>
> Right. So when the supposed facts are exposed as bogus,
They weren't, of course.
> the article can now be justified as an "opinion piece," where accurate reporting of the
> facts doesn't matter at all. Love it.
Thought you would.
Or was that ironic?
TD
tomdeacon
Well, certainly not you. You don't live on the right continent for
starters.
Secondly, I doubt you have a pied a terre in Soho, a summer house in
Fire Island, and a residence in the Hamptons, either.
You probably don't know who Alice Munro is, of course. Or Seymour
Hersch.
Stick with The Spectator.
TD
tomdeacon
Steve de Mena wrote:
> The XLR is the souped up Corvette (with a
> Northstar engine). I think Cadillac has rebuilt
> their reputation, but it is a redefined reputation
> that is appealing to younger folks. The Escalade,
> for example, is *the* SUV for the hip-hop crowd.
Well, certainly not for me, then.
I am not black, don't wear baggy trousers, don't talk in rhyming
couplets, or carry a loaded pistol in the glove compartment of my car.
Cadillac, shmadillac! They trashed that brand decades ago. Steve's
right.
TD
makropulos
But what about the ones you *do* like? Bloated gas-guzzling
monstrosities with fins, like the late 1950s Eldorado. All style, no
substance...
tomdeacon
If you had ever SEEN a 1959 Eldorado, let alone driven in one, you
would not be capable of uttering such garbage.
TD
makropulos
Of course I've seen one - I don't offer opinions on things I've not
heard or seen.
tomdeacon
When and where?
TD
makropulos
Most recently about three months ago at the Car Museum in Hershey, PA.
They have a 1959 Eldorado Biarritz in salmon pink. Next question.
Bob Harper
for its time. Technology, while exerting a negative effect on automotive
individuality, has made cars safer, faster, more economical, and more
reliable than in generations past. That's simply the reality of things.
If you had ever seen the museum exhibit entitled 'The Art of the
Motorcycle' (I saw it at the Guggenheim in Bilbao in May 2000), you
would understand.
Bob Harper
makropulos
Sounds like a great exhibit.
Incidentally, I do like some Cadillacs from the very early 50s (things
like the Series 62 convertible from about 1951/2), but not behemoths
like the Eldorado.
jrs...@aol.com
Larry wrote:
> moose wrote:
> >
> > If you want "fair and balanced", I suggest you consult Fox News.
> >
>
> If you think Fox News is fair and balanced, you're just as naive as
> those you so accuse.
>
>
> >
> > If you expect an opinion piece to marshall evidence for the opposite
> > side, you're just naive.
>
> Right. So when the supposed facts are exposed as bogus, the article can
> now be justified as an "opinion piece," where accurate reporting of the
> facts doesn't matter at all. Love it.
Now, Larry, you can fully expect the other side of this discussion to
pipe in with a categorical denial that the facts have been exposed as
bogus.
Oops. I see that he's already done that. Oh well. What did you expect?
That he would actually read what you wrote?
--Jeff
jrs...@aol.com
That's nice.
>
> What crap!
That describes your postings perfectly.
Please read more carefully. And do your own homework.
--Jeff
david...@aol.com
tomdeacon wrote:
> Actually, I kind of think that David - not a New Yorker kind of reader,
> I would say - never saw this article before.
The music criticism in the New York Review is much better. There the
writers on music have included Virgil Thomson, Igor Stravinsky, Pierre
Boulez, Joseph Kerman, and Philip Gossett, although their principal
writers on music are Robert Craft and Charles Rosen.
-david gable
david...@aol.com
makropulos wrote:
> Care to tell us what you think "a New Yorker kind of reader" is? And be
> sure to check your facts first.
M. Makropulos, this is yet another instance of Tom's "designer label"
mentality. He's a "New Yorker reader" and a "Philips listener" and a
"Mercedes driver."
-david gable
tomdeacon
makropulos wrote:
> Most recently about three months ago at the Car Museum in Hershey, PA.
> They have a 1959 Eldorado Biarritz in salmon pink. Next question.
Bad colour.
Check it out in black.
TD
tomdeacon
Well, we won't go into what Virgil Thomson wrote for, will we, David.
The New York Review of Books is fine, if very wordy.
But there are all those snotty intellectuals writing for it. You know
the ones: full of "bons mots"!
I prefer Mr. Ross, who comes to the right conclusion and is not
confused by the "facts" concerning PB, just guided by his good taste.
TD
tomdeacon
Wrong again, David. And haven't listened to a Philips CD in years.
Don't have to.
I rarely, if ever, read the New Yorker. But I did happen upon Mr.
Ross's blog and with a little searching came upon the PB article.
Naturally, I lept with joy! Made my Christmas!
You are right, however, that I drive an MB. Six years old and counting.
TD
Larry Rinkel
news:1167320407....@h40g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Larry Rinkel wrote:
>
>> Oh. Excuse the "bad form."
>
> Never.
>
> You're just "de trop".
>
> TD
>
I realize that "R" was a typo and you were just alluding to the Cole Porter
song:
"You're de top!
You're de Coliseum.
You're de top!
You're de Louvre Museum.
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss
You're a Bendel bonnet,
A Shakespeare's sonnet,
You're Mickey Mouse."
John_H...@msn.com
tomdeacon wrote:
> david...@aol.com wrote:
> > tomdeacon wrote:
> > > For those interested in a sensible take on PB, this might help you have
> > > the strength of your own opinions. It's always nice to know that other
> > > smart people think as you do.
> >
> > Ross's article is ignorant nonsense from a reporter with a
> > Deacon-like mentality and a persecution complex. Far from proving that
> > Tom Deacon is one of the "smart people," Ross lets the Deacons of
> > the world off the hook, relieving them of the obligation to think.
> > Ross's piece presents a history of the evolution of Boulez's ideas
> > and career that is anything but accurate, and it's devoid of the
> > least bit of original thought. Gathering up the usual journalistic
> > clichés, it serves exactly one purpose: it allows the Deacons of the
> > world to indulge their prejudices without having to come to terms with
> > Boulez's style.
> >
> > Ross's paranoia is easily demonstrated. Ross writes that, "in the
> > years following the Second World War," Boulez created "a climate of
> > intellectual fear." Assuming, improbably, that Boulez actually
> > wanted to create "a climate of intellectual fear," whatever that
> > means, where but down the rabbit hole in Wonderland would an unknown
> > 25-year-old musician with no official position be capable of any such
> > thing? Of course, Ross isn't really paranoid, and this is simply
> > meaningless slander.
> >
> > It's perfectly true that Boulez in his early 20's was capable of the
> > ruthlessly dismissive bon mot, and, being French, Boulez's mots are
> > all too quotable. Not that Boulez is obliged to be fair to any
> > composer by Ross's or Deacon's or anybody's else's standards,
> > but what Ross fails to acknowledge is that, in most cases, the isolated
> > mots he gathers together in forming his brief against Boulez are pulled
> > out of larger essays filled with balanced discussion of the victims of
> > the mots, not that Ross would know. In Boulez's early essays, the
> > source of virtually all the mots Ross hold against him, a young
> > composer in search of himself assesses the music of his predecessors
> > with a view to discovering what is viable about their styles and what
> > isn't. Every young artist necessarily makes the same kind of
> > assessments in forging his own style, and Ross would be shocked to
> > discover what Beethoven said about his teacher Haydn. Ross also fails
> > to mention Boulez's unambiguous early enthusiasm for the music of
> > Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Monteverdi, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and
> > Debussy: it wouldn't fit Ross's profile. The first essay in the
> > first anthology of Boulez's writing ever published is entitled "A
> > Time for J.S. Bach." Ross also fails to distinguish between Boulez
> > the 25-year-old author of the early essays and Boulez at any other age.
> > Not many people beyond the age of 30 would like to be held to every
> > opinion and attitude he or she expressed or exhibited at age 20, if
> > only because of the tone a 20-year-old is capable of. The tone of the
> > essay that Boulez wrote in the early 70's just after Stravinsky's
> > death is very different from the tone of the essay Boulez wrote in the
> > early 50's after Schoenberg's death.
> >
> > Then there is Ross's rhetorical strategy. Is there nothing Boulez
> > cannot be blamed for? If Copland and Stravinsky wrote "serial"
> > music, it's Boulez's fault. If Boulez conducts "The Wooden
> > Prince" and Schoenberg's Pélleas, the "choices were strange."
> > If the Prince "is not Bartók at his best," that's Boulez's
> > fault. If Pelleas "threatens to drown in its own orchestration,"
> > that's Boulez's fault. (Please note that Mr. Ross is allowed to
> > criticize the masters: Boulez is not.)
> >
> > Then there are Ross's descriptions of Boulez's style. Ross writes
> > that "[Boulez] set the profile of 'modern music' as it is
> > popularly conceived and as it is still widely practiced-a rapid
> > sequence of jabbing gestures, like the squigglings of a seismograph."
> > Whatever Ross thinks, this is not a description of Boulez's style.
> > It's a superficial impressionistic description of Boulez's surface
> > textures. Imagine for one moment a glib description of Mozart's
> > surface textures on the order of this description of Boulez's: it
> > would be equally worthless, equally devoid of meaningful content. It
> > wouldn't begin to address the nature of Mozart's style.
> >
> > Here is Ross's other stab at style analysis: "Boulez's
> > instrumental writing, meanwhile, has settled into a familiar set of
> > mannerisms: a steady alternation of held notes and rapid figuration; a
> > heavy reliance on drones, trills, tremolos, and other effects of
> > filigree; a weakness for splashy percussion." Again, this is no more
> > than a vague and impressionistic description of Boulez's surfaces.
> > There isn't the least evidence that Ross has listened beneath the
> > surface of Boulez's music. Mozart, too, "settled into" "a
> > steady alternation of held notes and rapid figuration."
>
> I felt sure that a reminder of Ross' article would stir the blood in
> your veins, David and sure enough it did.
>
> Woke you out of your holiday slumber.
>
> However, I think it's hardly much of a defense to attack the messenger
> rather than the message. You can call me ignorant if you like -
> actually I don't care, of course, and find it mildly amusing coming
> from you - but it's such bad form to try to attack a critic - specially
> one from the New Yorker magazine, which is known for checking facts,
> quotes, etc., meticulously and who have hired some of the greatest
> writers in the English language as contributors - when you put yourself
> up as a critic. Really bad form. A bit like Rubinstein bitching about
> Horowitz and vice versa. A no-no.
>
> TD
Mr Deacon on this topic you are do not know what you're talking about.
I've subscribed to the New Yorker for over 35 years and you may
RECALL that years ago a British woman took over the editorship of the
magazine - that's when the magazine went downhill (thank God, she
left). Articles were cut by 9/10 and the magazine became a journal for
people with short attention spans (somewhat like what happened to
Scientific American) [I could check my complete cds of the New Yorker -
I do know about 20 years ago there was a "New York Profile" on Boulez
that was complete and well written]. Now length does not imply quality
(as in Bruckner, Mahler, Wagner, et al) but at least by posting Ross'
puffery hopefully most of the people on this list will get a icon of
his style (and the accompanying lack of content) Mr Ross is a
"classical music wannabe" - he secretly loves rock and roll and pop
music (if you've been reading him over time). The New Yorker lost a
real music critic when the British critic Andrew Porter left.
Whatever your past is, whatever you did in life, you are sadly
misinformed. Hauser
TareeDawg
news:Gd6dnbPImv0wjgnY...@comcast.com...
> Well, 'makropoulos' overstates, but so do you. It was a fine automobile
> for its time. Technology, while exerting a negative effect on automotive
> individuality, has made cars safer, faster, more economical, and more
> reliable than in generations past. That's simply the reality of things.
How are the Lincoln Continentals doing these days Bob? I drove one of those
monsters around while working in your country. Crap road feel - in fact I
think they sort of floated. But they were comfy. Circa 1978.
Ray H
Taree, NSW
TareeDawg
news:1167323550.9...@79g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
> tomdeacon wrote:
>>
>> If you want "fair and balanced", I suggest you consult Fox News.
>>
>
> If you think Fox News is fair and balanced, you're just as naive as
> those you so accuse.
He doesn't. Nobody does. It is a fairly standard Fox News joke. Indeed,
Hannity and O'Reilly are nightly proof of standard Fox News propagandist
fodder. Assuming one wants to turn Fox on and be amused by it all.
Ray H
Taree, NSW
Larry Rinkel
The indefagitable Mr. Gable has through the years posted discussions of
several prominent composers who do not share Mr. Ross's "right conclusion,"
and who are just guided by their own "bad taste" concerning Boulez's music.
I turn the microphone over to Mr. Gable now:
---
David G: "I am prejudiced in Thomson's favor by his tireless advocacy of
Boulez's music. (As early as the late 1940's, Thomson regarded Boulez as
"the most talented of the Paris under-25's," saying of Boulez's early
Sonatine for flute and piano that it "just sounds like out-of-tune Ravel."
In the mid-60's, Thomson wrote an article on Boulez's career--then primarily
the career of a composer--entitled "The Genius Figure," expressing
enthusiasm for Pli selon pli [1962] but complaining that most of Boulez's
post-Pli music had "come out small.")
- July 7, 2004
And let us not forget that the francophile Rorem is enthusiastic about
Boulez's music itself, which, Rorem would insist, "continues to flow in the
stream of French impressionism."
That student of Nadia Boulanger and archetypical Franco-American
neoclassicist, Aaron Copland, had little use for Schoenberg but loved
Boulez's music.
- Nov 1, 2006
But Copland wasn't talking about Boulez, whose music he admired very early
on,
in part because it showed that you could do something utterly French with an
"atonal" language. Poulenc and Milhaud were equally enthusiastic. As for
Virgil Thomson, he hailed Boulez as "the most talented of the Paris
under-25's"
in the late 40's, claiming that Boulez's early Sonatine for Flute and Piano
sounded "like out-of-tune Ravel." In the 60's Thomson wrote a passionate
defense of Boulez's music entitled "The Genius Figure" for The New York
Review
of Books. Stravinsky's early interest in Boulez is of a piece with the
enthusiasm of these other Francophone and Franco-American composers.
Then there's Ned Rorem, who hated both Boulez and his music in the 50's.
He's
gradually come around as a result of Boulez's later music. According to
Rorem,
Eclat/Mutliples (1970) "flows in the continuing stream of impressionism, but
don't tell HIM [Boulez] that." As for the late works, pieces written since
1980 like Repons, ...explosante/fixe..., and Sur incises, he has written of
their extreme gorgeousness and sensuality. (I can't remember Rorem's clever
apothegm about the later music, unfortunately.)
- May 3, 2003
--
Thank you, David Gable. And so - do Thomson, Rorem, Copland, Stravinsky,
Poulenc, and Milhaud also exhibit "bad taste" in their enthusiasm for
Boulez's music? Do performers like Charles Rosen and Maurizio Pollini
exhibit "bad taste" in championing Boulez's music as well?
Steve de Mena
makropulos
I'm quite capable of seeing beyond the colour (which thanks to Steve's
nice photo post I note was actually called "woodrose"). Some of us can
do that, you see. Try getting below the surface some time - you'll be
surprised what you might find there.
Ian Pace
tomdeacon wrote:
> Ian Pace wrote:
> >
> > Why then, in his dreadful article about music in *Germany* (
> > http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/theodor_adorno.html ), did no-one
> > notice that three of the younger figures he especially singles out as
> > signifying all that's wrong (Georg Friedrich Haas, Johannes Maria Staud
> > and Olga Neuwirth) are actually all Austrian?
>
> By birth or extraction?
All three born and brought up in Austria; Haas and Neuwirth still
resident there, I think. Staud currently lives in London, just as of
the last few years. And all most prominently played in Austria
(Neuwirth and Staud are the two most prominent young composers there).
>
> Have you seen their passports?
>
> And does it really matter? German. Austrian.
Germany and Austria are very different countries, especially in the
post-1945 era (in particular, the process of Vergangensheitbewaeltigung
(coming to terms with the past) was vastly different in the Federal
Republic of Germany (ultimately passing into Unified Germany) and the
Second Republic of Austria - the latter managing to portray itself as a
victim)). And the music of all three composers is very different from
that of their German equivalents.
> Hitler occupied that place anyway.
So Hitler is to be the source on countries and cultures? The Anschluss
lasted 7 years. Otherwise, Austria has been an independent nation since
the end of World War One and the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. During the 1945-1990 period (when all these composers grew up),
Austria was a neutral country, neither a member of the EU (only joining
in 1995) nor NATO (it still isn't), quite unlike the Federal Republic
of Germany.
Ian
david...@aol.com
John_H...@msn.com wrote:
> I do know about 20 years ago there was a "New York Profile" on Boulez
> that was complete and well written].
Yes, by Klemperer biographer Peter Heyworth. Heyworth's profile was
also reprinted, slightly revised, in a collection of essays on Boulez
entitled Pierre Boulez: A Symposium (edited by William Glock (Eulenburg
Books, London, 1986). Charles Rosen's essay on the piano music is in
the same volume.
-david gable
Bob Harper
one you drove ca. 1978. That was a pretty bad period for 'luxury' cars,
not least in terms of handling. I remember a delicious description in
Car & Driver of the mid-70s Thunderbird (a bloated monstrosity if ever
there was one): 'looks like a pregnant bathtub and handles like a
landlocked whale.'
Bob Harper
jrs...@aol.com
Ian Pace wrote:
> makropulos wrote:
>
> > david...@aol.com wrote:
> > >
> > > You really think that the New Yorker uses fact checkers for its music
> > > reviews? They may have had an army of fact checkers at the ready when
> > > Jeffrey Toobin wrote about Whitewater or the O.J. trial: it's
> > > impossible for me to believe that concert reviewers drop their reviews
> > > off with the fact checker before being printed.
> > >
> > > -david gable
> >
> > David - yes, they do. I was phoned about a year ago by one of the New
> > Yorker's fact checkers (who phoned from the US to the UK to confirm the
> > information - I was impressed). This was in connection with one of Alex
> > Ross' articles. In that particular case there was specific information
> > to verify - so perhaps it was a slightly different type of article from
> > the one in this thread's original post.
>
> Why then, in his dreadful article about music in *Germany* (
> http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/theodor_adorno.html ), did no-one
> notice that three of the younger figures he especially singles out as
> signifying all that's wrong (Georg Friedrich Haas, Johannes Maria Staud
> and Olga Neuwirth) are actually all Austrian?
>
Interesting you should mention Staud, about whom I know next to
nothing. The Vienna Philharmonic broadcast series included a piece of
his for cello and orchestra--a riff on Mozart for the 250th
celebrations. It was the first piece of his I've heard, and I wasn't
too surprised to hear a few of the Salzburg audience were booing at the
end. He took a nice little fragment of Wolfgang's and then over the
next 17 minutes proceeded to show us why only a few stalwarts take
contemporary music seriously. The comparison to Mozart's sublime
simplicity and elegance was not flattering. However, of course, there
was more to the music than that, and it actually was not particularly
hard on the ear. It even sounded rather original. But I'm sure the
audience took home a depressing message of some sort.
For the moment I find Neuwirth and Haas more to my taste, but I've
heard only a bit of their music.
--Jeff
jrs...@aol.com
More importantly, the accent, religion, food, landscape, longstanding
ties of proximity to people to the east and south...there are many
differences to shape a distinct nation.
--Jeff
jrs...@aol.com
Wayne Reimer wrote:
> > In article <1167346940.2...@i12g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, John_H...@msn.com says...
> >
> <...>
> > > TD
> > Mr Deacon on this topic you are do not know what you're talking about.
> > I've subscribed to the New Yorker for over 35 years and you may
> > RECALL that years ago a British woman took over the editorship of the
> > magazine - that's when the magazine went downhill (thank God, she
> > left). Articles were cut by 9/10 and the magazine became a journal for
> > people with short attention spans (somewhat like what happened to
> > Scientific American) [I could check my complete cds of the New Yorker -
> > I do know about 20 years ago there was a "New York Profile" on Boulez
> > that was complete and well written]. Now length does not imply quality
> > (as in Bruckner, Mahler, Wagner, et al) but at least by posting Ross'
> > puffery hopefully most of the people on this list will get a icon of
> > his style (and the accompanying lack of content) Mr Ross is a
> > "classical music wannabe" - he secretly loves rock and roll and pop
> > music (if you've been reading him over time). The New Yorker lost a
> > real music critic when the British critic Andrew Porter left.
> > Whatever your past is, whatever you did in life, you are sadly
> > misinformed. Hauser
> >
> >
> that you know about it? Secondly, you seem to be implying some kind of
> mutual exclusivity of that sort of music vs. classical. If that's
> true, just consider this: Boulez conducted an album of rocker Frank
> Zappa's classical music wannabe stuff.
>
> wr
The references to pop (in fact the whole pop frame of reference) are
the great frustrations and joys of Alex Ross's writing (please don't
say "Ross" so much...when we're talking the New Yorker "Ross" means
Harold Ross doesn't it?). My conclusion is that AR is a young guy
trying to reconcile his typical American pop upbringing with his mental
and emotional acuity for complicated things like Beethoven and Brahms.
A lot of us spring chickens are in a similar boat--rejected by our
culture but determined to justify ourselves anyway. That's why he is
one of the better critics of his day, in this country. And yes, despite
all the errors and misconceptions of the Boulez column, he is worth
reading. It's just too bad that AR found solace in a sort of populist
stance vis a vis contemporary music. Again, he's not alone. My local
newspaper critic has a very similar stance and, not coincidentally, is
of the same generation.
--Jeff
tomdeacon
Perhaps it is titled "The True Believer's Pierre Boulez"?
TD
david...@aol.com
tomdeacon wrote:
> > Heyworth's profile was
> > also reprinted, slightly revised, in a collection of essays on Boulez
> > entitled Pierre Boulez: A Symposium (edited by William Glock (Eulenburg
> > Books, London, 1986). Charles Rosen's essay on the piano music is in
> > the same volume.
>
> Perhaps it is titled "The True Believer's Pierre Boulez"?
Yes, of course. The best criticism of the arts is always written by
the people who know it best and feel most passionate about it.
Baudelaire wrote about "the passion necessary for a critic to be
exact." But in making this little ad hominem attack -- and that's all
it is -- you're seriously mistaken to this extent: experiencing a
passion for Boulez's music is not like subscribing to a religion with a
code of mysterious rules into which one is indocrinated. It's the
result of a passion for his music, which is exactly like the passion
for any other music. The true believer in Boulez's music is like the
true believer in Mozart's music. You can't understand a passion for
Boulez's music, you can only imagine that it's a fraud, and you flail
about for an explanation other than the obvious and actual one.
-david gable
jrs...@aol.com
It is interesting isn't it, that passion alone does not guarantee
exactness? Passion is a necessary condition for criticism though...for
most writing outside of work memos and computer manuals. Actually, I
think there are plenty of manual writers who approach the task with
passion, so maybe passion is a necessary condition for all writing. It
certainly is a precondition for 90% of what passes for criticism in our
saloon here.
If I'm not mistaken, though, a passion for Boulez is often formed by
the desire to figure out why he is so maddening at first hearing.
Passionate hatred often turns into the most fervent reverence.
--Jeff
david...@aol.com
jrs...@aol.com wrote:
> If I'm not mistaken, though, a passion for Boulez is often formed by
> the desire to figure out why he is so maddening at first hearing.
> Passionate hatred often turns into the most fervent reverence.
In my case, with any artwork I'm always curious what makes it tick.
Tom Deacon dismissed Peter Heyworth and Charles Rosen as "true
believers." In responding to him, I wanted to point out the absurdity
of announcing the discovery that the contributors to a volume of essays
on Boulez are precisely those people who actually like his music.
-david gable
tomdeacon
david...@aol.com wrote:
> tomdeacon wrote:
>
>
> > > Heyworth's profile was
> > > also reprinted, slightly revised, in a collection of essays on Boulez
> > > entitled Pierre Boulez: A Symposium (edited by William Glock (Eulenburg
> > > Books, London, 1986). Charles Rosen's essay on the piano music is in
> > > the same volume.
> >
> > Perhaps it is titled "The True Believer's Pierre Boulez"?
>
> Yes, of course. The best criticism of the arts is always written by
> the people who know it best and feel most passionate about it.
If it takes a "true believer" to appreciate art, the art is simply no
good, David.
> Baudelaire wrote about "the passion necessary for a critic to be
> exact." But in making this little ad hominem attack -- and that's all
> it is
Who is the "hominem" I was attacking?
I am, in fact, attacking the very concept of "friends" of the composer
proselytizing on his behalf and passing their remarks off as
"criticism".
It isn't.
It's hagiography.
-- you're seriously mistaken to this extent: experiencing a
> passion for Boulez's music is not like subscribing to a religion with a
> code of mysterious rules into which one is indocrinated. It's the
> result of a passion for his music, which is exactly like the passion
> for any other music. The true believer in Boulez's music is like the
> true believer in Mozart's music. You can't understand a passion for
> Boulez's music, you can only imagine that it's a fraud, and you flail
> about for an explanation other than the obvious and actual one.
I have never claimed that it is fraudulent. Don't put words in my
mouth, David. I say enough myself without you having to embroider on
them. And I think my words are extremely clear.
Of course I understand that some people are "passionate" about PB's
music. You are so, for one. But I regard that passion as either a
passing fancy or some kind of curious phenomenon, perhaps an
affliction, indeed, which has struck unexpectedly certain people,
ruining their sense of taste and balance in life.
Boulez's music is simply unnecessary.
To put Mozart side by side with Boulez is, of course, quite ludicrous.
TD
tomdeacon
david...@aol.com wrote:
> jrs...@aol.com wrote:
>
>
> > If I'm not mistaken, though, a passion for Boulez is often formed by
> > the desire to figure out why he is so maddening at first hearing.
> > Passionate hatred often turns into the most fervent reverence.
>
>
> In my case, with any artwork I'm always curious what makes it tick.
>
> Tom Deacon dismissed Peter Heyworth and Charles Rosen as "true
> believers."
Wrong.
I described them as such. Do you disagree? If so, simply say so. But I
don't think you do. The description was spot on.
You, however, dismissed my description. Falsely, of course.
> In responding to him, I wanted to point out the absurdity
> of announcing the discovery that the contributors to a volume of essays
> on Boulez are precisely those people who actually like his music.
Sounds a bit like Fox News (fair and balanced) describing the views of
a staunch Republican.
EGAD!!!
Spare us this kind of musical, or political, Kaffeeklatsch.
TD
makropulos
> david...@aol.com wrote:
> > tomdeacon wrote:
> >
> >
> > > > Heyworth's profile was
> > > > also reprinted, slightly revised, in a collection of essays on Boulez
> > > > entitled Pierre Boulez: A Symposium (edited by William Glock (Eulenburg
> > > > Books, London, 1986). Charles Rosen's essay on the piano music is in
> > > > the same volume.
> > >
> > > Perhaps it is titled "The True Believer's Pierre Boulez"?
> >
> > Yes, of course. The best criticism of the arts is always written by
> > the people who know it best and feel most passionate about it.
>
> If it takes a "true believer" to appreciate art, the art is simply no
> good, David.
No and again No. It's thanks to just such devotion that several
composers have come to be rediscovered. Mendelssohn's revivals of J.S.
Bach come to mind.
>
> > Baudelaire wrote about "the passion necessary for a critic to be
> > exact." But in making this little ad hominem attack -- and that's all
> > it is
>
> Who is the "hominem" I was attacking?
>
> I am, in fact, attacking the very concept of "friends" of the composer
> proselytizing on his behalf and passing their remarks off as
> "criticism".
>
> It isn't.
>
> It's hagiography.
>
Most studies of composers and performers are written by people who
admire their subjects. I don't know whether you've written a
full-length book. If you have, you'll know how much effort it takes.
That amount of effort is hardly going to be spent writing and
researching a composer or performer one finds uninteresting. However,
there is a world of difference between an enthusiastic, well-researched
and interesting biography written by a specialist or group of
specialists, and hagiography. Responsible scholars don't put their
subjects on pedestals. Why do you assume that Charles Rosen and others
were "prozeletyzing"? I can only assume it's because you either haven't
read what they wrote, or you couldn't understand it.
>
> I have never claimed that it is fraudulent. Don't put words in my
> mouth, David. I say enough myself without you having to embroider on
> them. And I think my words are extremely clear.
No. They are extremely plentiful. Not clear, not insightful, but the
rambling verbiage of a blinkered dilettante.
>
> Of course I understand that some people are "passionate" about PB's
> music. You are so, for one. But I regard that passion as either a
> passing fancy or some kind of curious phenomenon, perhaps an
> affliction, indeed, which has struck unexpectedly certain people,
> ruining their sense of taste and balance in life.
That's because you happen neither to like nor to understand Boulez's
music. When will you realise that others don't and won't see it the
same way as you? Loving music isn't a disease.
>
> Boulez's music is simply unnecessary.
Nonsense - but ill-informed comments as fatuous as that are
unnecessary.
>
> To put Mozart side by side with Boulez is, of course, quite ludicrous.
>
Not in this context. They are both composers.
david...@aol.com
tomdeacon wrote:
> I described [two writers on Boulez] as [true believers]. Do you disagree?
You resort to the term "true believer" because of the negative
connotations of the term. By using the term, you intend to depict the
admirer of Boulez's music as a different kind of creature from the
admirer of anybody else's music. But a passion for Boulez's music is
no different from a passion for anybody else's music. No special form
of "true belief" is required. Rosen, for example, has written about a
considerable number of painters, writers, and composers. His writings
on Boulez are not a special "true believer's" exception. His approach
to Boulez is no different from his approach to any other composer.
> To put Mozart side by side with Boulez is, of course, quite ludicrous.
Whether or not it's ludicrous, you aren't in a position to know. The
only explanation you can come up with to explain an enthusiasm for
Boulez's music is that the enthusiasts are "true believers," in
other words, deviants from normal healthy forms of enthusiasm. That
argues that you haven't come to terms with Boulez's music as music,
in which case you are no more entitled to an opinion of it than I'm
entitled to an opinion of, say, string theory or poetry in Chinese.
What admirers of Boulez's music do tire of is absurd debates at the
level of this one, arguments with people who, knowing nothing about the
music itself, make irrelevant a priori arguments against appreciating
it.
-david gable
JohnGavin
Some people are willing to go out on a limb if they directly experience
or truly realize the value in an artistic effort. Others form opinions
consciously or subconsciously based on consensus opinion - it's a sort
of pack mentality - safety in numbers - they feel empowered because
many others have arrived at their conclusions before they decided to
mount the bandwagon. The way to verify whether or not this is true is
to notice whether their arguments sound all-too-familiar - if you
repeatedly experience deja-vu - having read similar opinions elsewhere
-- the repeated lifting of adjectives, phrases, and sometimes complete
sentences. Once you realize what you're dealing with, it's probably
best to quietly leave the discussion - there's no winning with these
people - primarily because they completely lack the ability to see
themselves the way others see them.
TareeDawg
news:1167427050....@n51g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> No and again No. It's thanks to just such devotion that several
> composers have come to be rediscovered. Mendelssohn's revivals of J.S.
> Bach come to mind.
Which illustrates precisely 19th century fads and fashions and tastes
precisely. That Mendelssohn should "have" to resurrect a composer as
magnificent as Bach, while other pieces of hack-work were adored to the
skies, says it all about the early to mid 19th century for me. Thank the
Good Lord for Berlioz. Light years ahead of his time.
Ray H
Taree, NSW
makropulos
Mendelssohn didn't *have" to do it - he chose to do it because he was
wildly enthusiastic about the music. But yes, it should never have
needed rediscovering. Blaming the early 19th century for that is a bit
harsh - apart from a few devoted admirers, Bach had already been
enjoying neglect for the second half of the 18th century as well.
And yes, by all means let's hear it for Berlioz.
david...@aol.com
probably best to quietly leave the discussion - there's no winning with
these people - primarily because they completely lack the ability to
see themselves the way others see them."
John,
I rarely receive E-mail as a result of threads at rmcr, but there's
been a little avalanche in the wake of this one. A couple of people
wrote asking me to recommend good points of entry for listeners new to
Boulez, but most of the E-mail warns me against falling for Mr. Deacon
when he waves the red flag in front of the bull.
One person writes that:
"Everyone knows [Deacon enjoys baiting you], and at this point, the
baiting says more about Deacon than it does you."
Another person writes:
"Hey David: I sat down to read your post with a heavy heart. I was
expecting to write you to urge you not to respond to Deacon's trolling
in the future because he's mainly trying to get your goat."
Yet another person writes:
"It's precisely because of vicious, sociopathic scum like Deacon
that I refuse to have anything further to do with rmcr. Unfortunately
this is the problem with non-moderated message boards: knowing they
have no one to answer to, all the cowardly shits like [name deleted]
and [name deleted] come out of the woodwork to vent their hostility
(generally pseudonymously) towards anyone they can bully or
victimize."
Perhaps I should make a New Years resolution to ignore Mr. Deacon. On
the other hand, his baiting elicited interesting posts from Larry,
Jeff, and M. Makropulos.
-david gable