Few, at least amongst those with a healthy
interest in classical music, should now dispute the view that Internet
music journalism offers a viable, and serious, alternative to the declining
‘art’ of newspaper criticism. This is particularly so in the field of
concert reviews where the quality of criticism emanating from UK broadsheets
is at best variable and at worst based on unintelligibly slack writing.
The most recent example of this is a review of Jonathan Powell’s performance
of Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum, the opening recital of
this autumn’s PLG series on the South Bank. Turn to The Guardian
and you are faced with a review that spends 90% of its time telling
us about the composer and the reviewer’s own distaste for the music;
finding the 10% that comments on the performance can often seem like
trying to find a needle in a haystack (even in a review so characteristically
brief as the one published.)
This is by no means an exception. The Guardian,
which fields a somewhat younger team of reviewers than the ones from
its rival London broadsheets, can often find itself out of its depth.
Lieder recitals often seem to be reviewed by critics too young to be
able to make the invaluable distinction between performances of the
present and performances of the past;
it is inconceivable to think that any of
them might have been to the Schubertiade; some seemingly cannot read
music, or determine the accuracy of spoken (sung) language. What they
base comparison on is anyone’s guess. Yet, reviews are penned in the
belief that what we are reading is an opinion of substance. It is not.
It is more often an over-exposure to sentiment rather than to fact that
leads these reviews to lack the clarity and stature – even the conviction
– of the best writing in the genre. The Internet features this amply,
of course – but at least the space provided for the review gives an
opportunity to meld the sentiment with the factual. But this really
isn’t the case in the broadsheets: amid psycho-babble and indiscriminate
repetition of programme notes an opinion is rarely forthcoming (precisely
because valuable space has been taken up with irrelevant nonsense),
and, if it is, it is given with such scant attention to the detail of
performance that one wonders what purpose it serves. No wonder performers
– singers, conductors, pianists and so on - hold the ‘profession’ in
such low esteem.
But perhaps I’m being too harsh. Part of this
may be due to a lack of specialisation (something which I suppose the
Internet can afford to nurture with its reviewers, even occasionally
indulge) but the very fact a reviewer does comment on a performance
they were, in retrospect, ill-equipped to comment on does leave them
open to valid criticism and exposure of their own limitations. It is
all very well to write with efficiency and knowledge about Lieder, but
perhaps not on Bel Canto when the published result shows little empathy
or understanding of that particular genre.
The Guardian is not alone in this, of course
(and the above observations are not necessarily specific to that paper).
The Times, The Telegraph,
and to a lesser extent The Independent,
where reviews are largely thoughtful and discriminate (though long out
of date by the time they appear), are guilty of similar critical failures.
Look to Europe – and especially La Libération, Die Welt, Wiener
Zeitung – and to the United States –
notably the New York Times – and
the current dearth in critical opinion does seem to be a peculiarly
English one. The only British newspaper to approach the continental
level of music criticism is the Financial Times –
and even then it is the reviews from its overseas correspondents which
balances out the indiscipline of its native English critics.
Yet, this is to tell only half the story. A Spectator
article earlier this year levelled criticism at Internet sites for the
shallowness of their writing. The author had a point, even if he had
blindingly failed to look closer to home at the limitations of print
journalism (including his own.) But in substance, Internet journalism
can be as bad, if not necessarily worse, than what we read at the breakfast
table or on our journeys to work. One Internet site’s blanket coverage
of this year’s Proms was note-worthy for a clutch of reviews that were
both uncritical and poorly written – and ultimately, weakly edited (and
I have every sympathy – sometimes editors do receive reviews which are
beyond rescue.) There might have been a greater preparedness in the
reviews to discuss the performances - and that was often the case compared
with the normal dross of the broadsheets - but it is questionable that
even the most barely literate of those reviews would have made it into
the second division of newspapers (though, one should say that they
were a better read than the Mail on Sunday’s efforts which reminded
one of a burlesque, florid musings uncomfortably close to Mills &
Boon – a kind of journalism for which people actually get paid – and
handsomely.)
It is this precarious balance – between the sometimes
mundane and the sometimes revelatory – that makes Internet reviews at
present a far from satisfactory substitute for broadsheets (at least
that is partly what a press officer will tell you when looking for a
byline to sell tickets – though many, of course, are happy privately
to admit that a growing gulf exists between the two formats with the
Internet providing vastly superior standards of criticism on the back
of declining standards elsewhere.) Too randomly good, too randomly mediocre,
they don’t yet offer a higher level of contrast with the broadsheets
to make them indispensable reading – and indispensably quotable - and
with those now available on the Internet daily it is a cheek by jowl
contrast that is very easy to make. But look hard enough and you will
find better reviews in the hidden corners of the Internet that reflect
more valuably the truer sense of an event and an occasion.
Why is this the case? In part (and always a good
scapegoat) it is down to a failure by successive governments to address
the issue of arts funding that has largely left orchestras and opera
houses so deplete of resources that
sterility has set in; both seem largely
to be preserved in a kind of formaldehyde that encourages them to dispense
with the new and the original in favour of the safe and the old. If
we live in a society where the overweening culture of thought is to
denigrate the arts to the backwaters we cannot expect music criticism
to reflect anything other than that failure. There is only cynicism
and negativity, one lack of imagination spawning another. One suspects
that the current spate of ‘Rattle Baiting’, in itself a growing and
unnecessary blood sport, has less to do with his perceived artistic
failures (just how many London critics, I wonder, have heard Rattle
conduct Suk’s Asrael so glowingly with the BPO, an artists ‘right of
reply’ if I have ever heard one in recent years) and more to do with
the fact that he has taken his talents to Berlin, a city which takes
its music seriously as we in London do not. British critics are unforgiving
of any talent, let alone of one who deserts a sinking ship for the safety
of a lifeboat elsewhere.
Yet, ignoring the funding issues one must also
blame the businessmen/managers who steer the orchestras and opera houses,
almost purposely, into choppy waters. Safe programmes – of which there
are now so many any editor must find it difficult to choose which he
wants a review of – no longer offer the comfort of capacity houses,
the main reason they are offered in the first place. Lacklustre programmes,
under unimaginative conductors, offer little critical challenge, at
least in London (though look elsewhere and the situation is slightly
different – in October, for example, the BBCPO
will be performing Mieczyslaw Karlowicz's
Revival Symphony (1903) and in November Oramo will be airing two complex
scores by John Foulds – and those are simply representative examples.)
An anodyne review might well be a reflection of this inherent ‘boredom’
(and what critic hasn’t dozed off during another run-of-the-mill Beethoven
performance) – though that, in itself, is not a valid excuse for the
vapid journalism we read. The only salvation for music criticism is
a complete overhaul of what needs to be and what should be reviewed.
Only through that can a writer regain a sense of perspective, a sense
of newness in what was once a valuable critical art. Whether in the
end that does anything to change concert programmes is anyone’s guess.
But as someone perceptively pointed out on a Sorabji
newsgroup, in comment on The Guardian’s Powell review, the less
a writer knows about a work the less intelligently he is able to comment
on it, covering up a lack of intelligence with ‘bluster and nonsense’;
or, as someone else recently said to me ‘with a lack of sophistication’.
It is a universal truth that can nowadays be applied almost daily to
the reviews we read, and not just in the newspapers. It is this struggle
that confronts critics and which this editor will address in part two
of this editorial.
Marc Bridle
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