musical update
Oct. 13th, 2009 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacFor 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.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 10:01 pm (UTC)- Worthless crap (you), for the reasons Kosman cited
- Dated, etc. Joshua Kosman and another friend of mine were essentially in agreement. The friend, who doesn't know all that much Renaissance music, was fascinated by the Gesualdo section; he also cited a John Zorn piece recorded by the Kronos in the 80s as evidence of the Dean being dated.
- Still another friend liked the Dean a great deal and did not hear it as dated.
Wish I'd heard it!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 11:06 pm (UTC)