discovered by Terry Teachout

[calimac]

TT is an arts critic whose work I often read. (He does a fine music column, mostly on classical, for Commentary magazine, which I browse through in the library occasionally as it's not consistently on the non-subscription web.) Years ago he wrote an article on Allen Drury (also not available free), and yesterday on his blog he revisited the topic, linking to my Advise and Consent page as evidence that he's not the only nostalgia buff for it out there.

A little further back, in the course of a long post, he mentions the deaths of James Brown and Daniel Pinkham in the same breath, and, like me, considers himself far more personally affected by the latter.

In other cantankerous critical reading: So I've Heard, a new collection of columns by the LA Weekly's venerable Alan Rich. I desultorily collect books of columns by classical music critics, and have done so since long before I became one myself. This book makes enjoyable reading for those of us inclined in that direction, and while I disagree with many of his opinions (he's much fonder of old-hat ultra-modernism than I am), one of his most controversial opinions - or at least he says it got him a lot of hostile mail - I entirely agree with: Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat is as boring a piece as he ever wrote.

Comments

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to turn Teachout's cultural quiz into a JavaScript toy, ala the Unitarian Jhiad naming tool.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I read not only Advise and Consent, but hte whole five-book series, which kept getting worse. I must have ahd an amazing bullshit tolerance in those days.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've read A&C maybe six or eight times, once purely to make a list of all the senators in it. So this is a book I enjoy.

Yet, I've never been able to finish any of the sequels.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Daniel Pinkham died??? I had not known this, and am sorry to learn of it. I'm only really familiar with one of his works, the Christmas Cantata (mentioned by Teachout), which has as wonderful a setting of "Gloria in excelsis Deo" as I have ever heard. The fact that he also wrote music for "Make Way for Ducklings" (which I had not known until I followed some links about him) makes him even more meritorious in my eyes. May his soul find eternal joy and peace.

As for James Brown, my only feeling (I am sorry to say) is relief that there will never more be any tiresome articles about his getting into trouble with the law yet again. Musically, he had no impact whatsoever on my life. And so naturally, the Billboard website, as useless a resource to classical music lovers as there can be while still claiming to represent the state of the industry, is giving him the full treatment. Usually when a rock/pop/r&b icon dies, they run three articles: the actual obit, an story about how sad his friends are, and an accounting of who is gathering for the funeral. For Brown thus far there have been five, if you count the one about how his girlfriend has been shut out of their shared home.