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musical update
Oct. 13th, 2009 09:09 amFor those who took exception to my description as "worthless crap" a recent composition, I see that the Chronicle's reviewer didn't like it either. "aimless and overextended ... meandering ... impossibly dated" He also says it "begins arrestingly," which I'll go along with as far as the first string thunk when they enter and despoil the Gesualdo recording. For one moment I had hopes that something interesting might be added. But after that it went downhill, rapidly.
So far as I can tell from the review, the reviewer did not interrogate the Symphony press office nor the conductor to determine what the piece was doing on the program. He just reviewed the music.
The reason I have the courage to stick my musical opinions out in public is exemplified here: I keep finding them shared by more qualified observers. There is no absolute right or wrong in aesthetic judgment, and equally qualified critics might praise this work, but there is such a thing as cranks whose opinions have no relevance to anything outside their own heads, and I would not have entered the reviewing business had I not been satisfied that I have, at least in this field of music, a real sense of taste.
So far as I can tell from the review, the reviewer did not interrogate the Symphony press office nor the conductor to determine what the piece was doing on the program. He just reviewed the music.
The reason I have the courage to stick my musical opinions out in public is exemplified here: I keep finding them shared by more qualified observers. There is no absolute right or wrong in aesthetic judgment, and equally qualified critics might praise this work, but there is such a thing as cranks whose opinions have no relevance to anything outside their own heads, and I would not have entered the reviewing business had I not been satisfied that I have, at least in this field of music, a real sense of taste.
