Klarinet Archive - Posting 000950.txt from 2000/10

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Critics
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 13:25:18 -0400

My facetious posting may have misled some readers. It wasn't intended as a
condemnation of critics, since the part where I said that I'm a movie critic
myself was perfectly true, although, for the record, I don't actually have
fangs, sweat Napalm and live in a cesspool. As for the recombinant DNA from
serpents, warthogs and so forth, of course I was kidding. Really. Honest.
Kidding! (Heh heh heh....)

What I did mean to say sort of got buried under my purple prose,
unfortunately. I didn't want to shake-n-bake people who despise critics, but
I do think there's been a certain amount of knee-jerk expression of loathing.
I forget what pundit first said, "Nobody loves a critic," but it seems to me
that critics are stereotyped and ritually hated in much the same way as
lawyers and conductors.

Dan Leeson wrote,
> While what they say may be wrong, and is certainly may be
> hurtful, on occasion it is right on the money; i.e., it is useful
> information that enables the serious performer to learn from it, that
> is, if he or she wishes to do so.

That's an excellent description of criticism that measures up to professional
standards. I'm probably spoiled, because my local newspaper is _The
Washington Post_, which IMHO is one of the best newspapers in the USA. I
often disagree with the _Post's_ book, music and movie reviewers, but I
rarely see what I consider unprofessional or incompetent criticism there.

Ed Lacy wrote,
>>Here, ... [the critic] is often someone who studied writing
>>in college, and who therefore is supposed tohave a certain
>>amount of command of the language. As far as their musical
>>qualifications are concerned, they might have attended a few
>>concerts at some point in their distant past. There are also the
>>sports writers, who have no games to cover that night, who
>>might be assigned to review an orchestra concert. Then,
>>there are the college student interns, who are on the newspaper
>>staff for a period of a few weeks, and who are assigned to write
>>reviews as a part of their introduction to the various aspects of
>>the newspaper business.

Alas, not every paper measures up to the best. However, I did my first paid
reviewing as a high school intern on a small town's daily newspaper. Right
now, my nephew belongs to a similar program. IMHO this is the best possible
training for a critic. Critics have to learn how to criticize. I think
on-the-job training is the best way to learn the professionalism of writing
effectively while staying within the editor's word count and turning the
story in before the deadline. Setting up these pressures artificially, in a
classroom situation, just doesn't work, because the student knows there's
nothing at stake but a grade. The prospect of making a fool of oneself in
public (and having to leave the foolishness in the public record forever)
makes a far more effective electric prod. But an internship is only good
training if the *teacher* is a competent critic who closely supervises what
the students write; and, IMHO, the article should also carry a disclaimer
with the byline, stating that a student intern wrote the piece. Otherwise, I
agree with Ed, the results can be atrociously unfair to the artists.

As for sports reporters who try to write music criticism, yes, it happens,
especially on the smaller papers. I think it's better to publish a notice
that the concert occurred, rather than assign a review to someone unqualified
to write it. Qualification is crucial because there's no time to go do
homework *after* the concert, if the reporter has to meet the deadline for a
morning newspaper. The reporter needs to get the assignment early enough and
go into it knowing the subject well enough to do the homework (and some of
the writing, such as interview write-ups and biographical background about
the musician) in advance. If a concert ends at around 11:00 p.m. and the
presses roll with anything that's *typeset* by 1:00 a.m., the critic scurries
out of the auditorium, finds the quietest corner of the lobby, the hallway or
the restroom, whips out the cell phone and/or laptop and dictates the review
verbatim, straight to the desk. Sometimes there's time for a rewrite or
second thoughts later. Usually there's not. You get it right the first time
or you get it wrong for all time.

Nearly always, the editor has assigned a length for the piece. Unbeknownst
to the writer, breaking news may come in that sucks up space intended for the
review. With a deadline that tight, the copy editor *can't* stop to edit
thoughtfully, but simply lops off any excess words, a sentence or partial
sentence at a time, from the end forward, regardless of what the amputation
does to the sense of the article.

The _Washington Post_ tries to give reporters more reasonable deadlines by
allowing reviews of night events to run a full day later instead of next
morning, and will also work with a staffer on the length of the piece (as
I've heard from people who work there -- I don't, although I've been
published in _Book World_). When Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tim Page
headed the classical music criticism staff at the _Post_, readers could count
on competent coverage (whether or not we agreed with the opinions). Too bad
every daily can't afford a Tim Page on the staff. (He moved away, and now
writes only sporadically for the _Post_.) But things can go goofy even on a
top quality paper, and it's not always entirely the reviewer's fault.

Ed Lacy wrote,
>>It's not just that they are wrong, but rather that their
>>descriptions or assessments are so far off the mark that
>>they are nonsensical.

Yup. The _Post_ ran a piece last Wednesday, October 11, 2000, by Cecelia
Porter: "Imaginative Read on the Clarinet" (Style Section, p. C5, available
online at www.washingtonpost.com). It's a review of a recital by clarinetist
Esther Lamneck at the University of Maryland on Monday, October 9, 2000.
Note that Porter didn't have to run to the lobby and phone it in. She had
about 24 hours to write the piece. On a daily, that's generous. Porter
covered the basics: Lamneck performed works written during the last ten
years, and "paired the versatility of her instrument with a performance as
unrestrained in imagination as it was astounding in technique."

But get a load of this: "The clarinet's lowest register is midnight black
with a menacing quality that gets under your skin. As Debussy knew well, its
middle range floats in a sea of pale pastels, while its upper notes range
from a visceral incisiveness to quasi-shrieks." My first reaction was, "Dan
Leeson would croak!"

As I read on, I realized that Porter was struggling to describe music in
which *the composers themselves* had deliberately attempted to convey
synesthesia. For instance, "Lawrence Moss explains his 'Chiaroscuro' as a
study in 'opposing colors or techniques.'" Karl Juusela's composition is
titled, "Six Shades of Black on White," while "Per Norgard describes his
'Letters of Grass' as 'the wind's "writing" on grass-grown hills....'"
Porter had to play the cards she was dealt. She enjoyed the performance,
which (I'm guessing) is probably the reason she decided to buy into the
composers' terminology, instead of detaching from it and criticizing from on
high.

After reading that review, I don't know whether or not I would have enjoyed
the concert (which I didn't attend). Normally that's the most damning thing
I could say about a critic, but in this case, I'm not sure anybody else could
have handled this job much better than Porter, whom I consider a generally
competent reviewer. She reviewed a clarinetist and four new compositions,
unfamiliar to the readers, and also had to explain what a tarogato is
(Lamneck demonstrated one), in seven column inches. It's easy to utterly
condemn something in a few satirical phrases, but it's extremely difficult to
cover that amount of ground in that amount of space *if it's a favorable
review* where she wants to give information and reasons, instead of just
saying, "I liked it." Given the 24-hr. deadline, Ms. Porter's boss assigned
her to do the impossible. Better her than me....

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~
Gold's Law: A column about errors will contain errors.
~~~~~~~~~~~

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