Yes, John, alternative points of view are a good thing. And medieval
music has not been completely ruined by critics with an agenda. But
lutenists, especially in the US, aren't plugged into the ultra-snarky
world of choral music, where everyone has an opinion and will lavish it
upon you in great depth and crying 'uncle' does no good. Lutenists
today are mostly drawn from the ranks of the classical guitar world,
where the focus is on technique and the qualities of different
instruments. In the broader context, a convincing interpretation of
16th century music has to involve an understanding of collision of
vocal and instrumental music, otherwise we miss the target that our
best composers had in there sights - and their ears.
There is a problem however when choral singers define the parameters of
the discussion of how old music should be performed. Many choral
singers think of the lute as a really poor excuse for an organ because
they can't hear the darn thing and, when they do hear it, it just makes
rattly noises. We who occupy the sound world of the lute are much more
attuned to subtlety and we owe it to the choral mafia to say 'shut up
and listen' now and then.
Actually, people did have a thing or two to say about Berlioz. Check
out Slonimsky's _Lexicon of Musical Invective_ for some amusing musical
criticism.
RA
> Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 08:08:36 +0000
> To: [email protected]
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: [LUTE] Re: Saturday quotes
>
> The way it's described here, it sounds like a vast conspiracy to
> discredit instrumental medieval music. If so, let's be thankful it
was
> one perpetrated by tweedy music critics for a very serious magazine
> with a limited readership, which I suppose is why Sequentia, the
Boston
> Camerata, Ensemble PAN, Ensemble Alcatraz, the Dufay Collective,
> Ensemble Unicorn and many, many others have since done wonderful, if
> sometimes a little weird, work and instrumental students at early
music
> programs still spend at least a semester hawanging on musty old
> hurdy-gurdies, vielles and gothic harps, struggling through Ars
> Subtilior music while their singer friends mispronounce old French or
> fail to get the rhythms of Landini ballate. To think it might all
have
> been brought to nought, but thank goodness we mostly rely on critics
> for nice quotes to put in our press packets, grouse a little bit when
> they savage us, and otherwise view most of them as grumpy eunuchs.
> Regarding the ethics of music criticism, I'd be interested to see if
we
> could have a bit more conflict of interest and get more serious
> musicians, hopefully better writers than I, to write criticism, and
if
> it would make the field more vibrant. Nobody faults Schumann or
> Berlioz, two of the most readable critics of the nineteenth century,
> for their conflicts of interest, do they? Schumann had it right about
> Chopin and Brahms, huh?
> > Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 12:35:21 -0800
> > To: [email protected]
> > From: [email protected]
> > Subject: [LUTE] Re: Saturday quotes
> >
> >
> > On Feb 5, 2012, at 8:29 AM, Ron Andrico wrote:
> >
> > > While I am also a great admirer of Page's work, I am a little
> incensed
> > > that a reviewer admits to deliberately panning commercial
> recordings
> > > with the intent to advance one point of view. Ethics?
> >
> > Would you be incensed by a reviewer who panned Herbert von
Karajan's
> recordings of Bach because the critic's "one point of view" was that
> Bach should be played with attention to historical performance
> practice? Or a reviewer who admitted that in the 1970's he had
> deliberately conveyed the message to buy the period-instrument
> recordings of Bach's cantatas by Harnoncourt and Leonhardt and "leave
> the rest" (modern-instrument performances by Richter and Rilling and
> whoever)?
> >
> > Or, closer to home on this list, is it wrong for a critic to opine
> that lute recordings on instruments built like modern guitars are not
> the ones to buy?
> >
> > Critics are paid to convey information and make judgments. If a
> critic writing for a publication about early music has reached a
> conclusion that voices-only performance is "correct," and that any
> instruments make it as wrong as Karajan's Brandenburgs, it isn't
> unethical for that viewpoint to inform his writing--indeed, how could
> he possibly put it aside and pretend he didn't think the performances
> with instruments are historically wrong (just as you might conclude,
if
> the instruments were saxophones)? You might find his viewpoint wrong
or
> overly limited, and maybe you're right. But it isn't unethical for a
> critic to approach his work with his own ideas.
> >
> > The potential ethical problems stem from the small-world nature of
> the early music community, where the prominent performers and
scholars
> all know each other, and cronyism, or the reverse, is always a
problem.
> When I was review editor for the LSA quarterly, I told some folks
(all
> of them on this list, I think) that there were ethical problems
because
> they were performers writing about other performers or publishers
> writing about other publishers ("competition" in common parlance),
> making for inherent conflict of interest. I don't think anyone had
ever
> brought it up before, and while the (soon-to-be former) reviewers
> themselves seemed to understand, or at least accepted, my insistence
on
> avoiding systemic conflict of interest, the responses I got from the
> LSA officialdom was much the same response I would have gotten if I'd
> said only Martians could write reviews for the Q. And maybe they were
> right: perhaps if the community is small enough, you have to put up
> with conflic!
> > t of interest if you want a pool of reviewers.
> > --
> >
> > To get on or off this list see list information at
> > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>
> --
>
--
