writing reviews

[calimac]

Don't have much to say about a concert of Boccherini and Arriaga except what I put in the review. If either of these names elicit a "who?" from you, you shall be enlightened on the history of Spanish music. In fact, if you saw a certain popular film from a couple years ago, you will have heard some Boccherini. All is explained.

I never know in advance how my public writing is going to go. I rarely write real first drafts: I usually produce a preliminary final draft, and revision consists of infinite polishing with the verbal equivalent of fine-grained sandpaper. This time, though, I got up the morning after the concert and threw 750 words of useless blither at the computer. It gave me my structure and main points, though, and two days later I tore it apart and came up with an 1150-word piece I'm pretty pleased with.

One nice thing about writing about obscure corners of the symphonic repertoire is that I can write more about the music than the performance. It's harder to do that about better-known music without repeating what's been said many times before. Worse still are meaningless biographical nuggets about famous composers. If I have to listen to KDFC tell us once more that Brahms was secretly in love with Clara Schumann, I shall emit a high-pitched whirr.

Meanwhile, I've also written up summaries of the books I found last week at UCB for the Years' Work in Tolkien Studies article. Last year's article was 12,000 words. So far I have 350 words on this year's. It's a start.

Now I'm reading a second Christians' guide to Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, et al (borrowed via ILL from the library of the college where sartorias's husband teaches) to go along with the one I already read. They have similar positive views of Tolkien, rather overemphasizing the Christian elements in his work, as if Middle-earth were C.S. Lewis's Narnia. This is standard among such writers now, and one gets almost used to it. But I'd like to get the authors in a room and watch them fight over Harry Potter. One author says Dumbledore shows the Christian virtues of forgiveness and restraint; the other authors are infuriated at the way he lets Harry get away with lying and cheating. All in how you look at it, I suppose.

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I worked with a fellow named Mike A. at the University of Houston Physics Department. He was big into classical music, and I liked getting his opinions on things, because they were knowledgeable and passionate. He detested -- probably still detests -- Boccherini, as the embodiment of all that is trivial in music. It was always fun when the radio would play one of Luigi's pieces, because Mike would heap scorn all over it. Happy days.

My favorite comment on another matter you mention was from "PDQ Bach On The Air," when Professor Pete announces that "We played that piece at the request of Clara W., and she'd like to dedicate it to Bob and John."