Elaine Meinel Supkis
I always disliked the music critic for the New York Times. When he was much younger and I was younger than Mr. Holland, I though of him as an old, crotchety fuddy-duddy. His taste in music made me ill and what he loved gave me, a fully trained musician/dancer, a migraine headache. The souless, harsh music he seemingly wants us to listen to annoys me so much, if I am writing or digging ditches, when it comes on, it causes me to make mistakes or wreck something. Anyway, he is back on the warpath going after people who are like Jackie Du Pre, a great, now long gone, cellist who all the critics hounded because she was so emotional. Blast them all to hell, I say. Give me more feelings. Yes...
When Histrionics Undermine the Music and the Pianist
BERNARD HOLLAND
Wandering from one television channel to the next the other day, I came across young people playing the piano. One man, bearded and a little hefty, rippled through a Beethoven sonata, sharing with the camera complicit smiles, exultant grimaces, gazes to the right and left, and a gentle swaying from side to side.The next, a young woman, sat down to Schumann, bending her back, lifting her head and gazing straight up. Maybe God was sitting in the rafters just above her, and she was using the opportunity to say hello. Both pianists were perfectly fluent. They kept time, played the right notes and sounded expressive when they were supposed to.
I had to turn away. I could listen, but I couldn’t watch. Two performers, four glazed eyes and four waving arms were too much for my stomach. And if someone with a lifelong love for the piano repertory has this kind of reaction, what about those coming to classical music from the outside? Think of the smart young people ready to believe, filled with curiosity and good thoughts, and imagine with what astonishment and amusement they must come away from such scenes.
Holland is getting both old and very grumpy. I know that my arthritis prevents me from dancing, ice skating or jumping off of mountains but I still do love, a lot, watching young people do all those things! They are so full of energy, life and a sense of humor and lord knows, we need humor! I spent years in music schools and nothing is more fun than to sit next to or under or behind a fine performer who is totally absorbed in his or her music or dance. Good grief, even Lucy would perch on Schoeder's piano when he was enfolded with in his Beethoven or Bach!
So let's look at Lang Lang who seems to irritate the old geezer, Holland, so much:
Lang Lang playing the most hysterically funny and amazing Liszt Hungarian rhapsodies on earth.
Here he is with his teacher explaining with great excitement how he visualizes a difficult Prokofiev piece...as a video game! My children appreciate this sort of thinking. They love classical music because they learned about it via Japanese anime and video games. With my guidance. I greatly approve of how Lang Lang enthusiastically approaches these daunting pieces.
Here is an old film of the beautiful, tragic Jacqueline du Pre playing the Saint-saens Concerto in A minor, the same piece I was doomed to play for my college cello recital. I could never match her in any way, only love her and when we learned she could no longer play due to her illness, we cried, all of us young women in the cello group, we wept for her.
The dried out seedless music critic in the mainstream media hammered on her mercilessly. When she fell apart, they were happy, those noxious little, heartless squibs. Pah. I despise them.
Classical music was nearly murdered by these critics and the 'we hate melodies and feelings,' composers and music instructors. Taking their cue from Schoenberg when he renounced his greatest works, Verklaerte Nacht and Gurrelieder, he descended into increasing despair and chaos until his compositions were very destructive and detached from any possible enjoyment.
I listen to classical music when I write. I move with the music, it moves my soul and helps the words flow in the brain as I keep pace with the pulse of the music. I like to enjoy music. And music is one of the Graces who live with Pegasus and they are the inspiration for artists who can fly to the heavens when thy are in the grip of the Dionysian forces where all the arts grip the entire mind, soul and body and all move to a greater force, one fed by wine and a drunken release of feeling, guided by the expression of higher sentiments for one can't dance, write poems, make music or any of the Arts unless one has strict training and works very, very hard. And then the 'release' can finally come!
Children must be very ernest while they draw pictures or try to pirouette or sing a simple song. But by the age of 15, one begins to master the arts so one can plug into the greater forces, the deeper, darker parts of the human psyche or soul. This is the hard road to real ecstasy. The Puritanical repression which has its pleasures, mostly intellectual, is a necessary counterweight to this release of pent up powers.
But it is a counterweight, not a rigid straight jacket that locks us out of the real life forces out in the real world. Sterile and cold as the moon at midnight, this isn't good enough for those of us who need the emotional charge that comes from ecstatic performances.
The people who hounded Jackie Du Pre nearly to her grave should be ashamed of themselves. But then, they hated Isadora Duncan, they hate all of us who like to throw ourselves into whatever we do. Fie on them, I say. If Mr. Holland hates all this, he can go hang. Excessive messes need to be made then he and grumble and complain and clean it all up afterwards. He can be the janitor at the Bacchus Saloon. I, on the other hand, plan to be one of the people drinking the blood red wine.
'tis so ironic how correct Ayn Rand was in her portrayal of the Ellsworth Tooheys of the world. The job of the critic is not to exault greatness but to make the audience think there is no difference between greatness and mediocrity. Not to announce the good but to praise the median, and the below median. To mock with faint praise when the good is too noticeable to demean directly. To uphold the communal and the tribal and to decry the individual and the ecstatic. Find a tenured critic anywhere who does not fit Mr. Holland's template.
In the deadtree media and the people's airwaves you cannot. Maybe somewhere on the web you might find a critic of dance or theatre or music or movies with a bit of the old love for magnificence but mostly the critics repeat the memes of the Tooheys because someday one of them will get to be the next Holland.
Posted by: CK | February 07, 2008 at 09:36 AM
Oh, thank you for this! I have wfmt www.wfmt.com streaming whenever I can.
I saw Ivo Pogorelich about three years ago. You talk about unconventional - - - but so inspiring!
He played three of the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, and there were sparks flying off the keys. Also Beethoven Opus 111 sonata No. 32 in c minor - I swear he was riffing the themes. It was so great.
We hunger for geniuses and their vision! This reactionary bullshit - about kids playing Schumann - real scary, that - - - ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz........
Posted by: D. F. Facti | February 07, 2008 at 10:50 AM
I see Fluff is hard at work.
Posted by: ArthurCorgi | February 07, 2008 at 10:53 AM
I don't think it counts as a grimace, but it would appear that Willard Romney has blinked. Blinked and put his campaign on hiatus. Three remain: McCain, Huckabee and Paul. I expect there will be no more Republican debates, too disconcerting.
Posted by: CK | February 07, 2008 at 12:55 PM
Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain
((----- Copy & Paste - W/O The Line Breaks -----))
http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com
/cin_mccain_lost_five_u.htm
Navy pilot John Sidney McCain III should have never been allowed to graduate from the U.S. Navy flight school. He was a below average student and a lousy pilot. Had his father and grandfather not been famous four star U.S. Navy admirals, McCain III would have never been allowed in the cockpit of a military aircraft.
His father John S. "Junior" McCain was commander of U.S. forces in Europe later becoming commander of American forces in Vietnam while McCain III was being held prisoner of war. McCain III's grandfather John S. McCain, Sr. commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.
During his relative short stunt on flight status, McCain III lost five U.S. Navy aircraft, four in accidents and one in combat.
Robert Timberg, author of The Nightingale's Song, a book about Annapolis graduates and their tours in Vietnam, wrote that McCain "learned to fly at Pensacola, though his performance was below par, at best good enough to get by. He liked flying, but didn't love it."
McCain III lost jet number one in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay while practicing landings. He was knocked unconscious by the impact coming to as the plane settled to the bottom.
McCain's second crash occurred while he was deployed in the Mediterranean. "Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula," Timberg wrote, "he took out some power lines [reminiscent of the 1998 incident in which a Marine Corps jet sliced through the cables of a gondola at an Italian ski resort, killing 20] which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral."
McCain's third crash three occurred when he was returning from flying a Navy trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game.
Timberg reported that McCain radioed, "I've got a flameout" and went through standard relight procedures three times before ejecting at one thousand feet. McCain landed on a deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of trees.
McCain's fourth aircraft loss occurred July 29, 1967, soon after he was assigned to the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk pilot. While seated in the cockpit of his aircraft waiting his turn for takeoff, an accidently fired rocket slammed into McCain's plane. He escaped from the burning aircraft, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and threatened to sink the ship.
McCain's fifth loss happened during his 23rd mission over North Vietnam on Oct. 26, 1967, when McCain's A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. McCain ejected from the plane breaking both arms and a leg in the process and subsequently parachuted into Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi.
After being drug from the lake, a mob gathered around McCain, spit on him, kicked him and stripped him of his clothing. He was bayoneted in his left foot and his shoulder crushed by a rifle butt. He was then transported to the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.
After being periodically slapped around for "three or four days" by his captors who wanted military information, McCain called for an officer on his fourth day of captivity. He told the officer, "O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital." -U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 1973 article written by former POW John McCain.
"Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I [McCain] did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant." Page 193-194, Faith of My Fathers by John McCain.
When the communist learned that McCain's father was Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., the soon-to-be commander of all U.S. Forces in the Pacific, he was rushed to Gai Lam military hospital (U.S. government documents), a medical facility normally unavailable for U.S. POWs.
Posted by: blues | February 07, 2008 at 02:12 PM
Fluff wanted to have me show his ecstatic response to the music I was watching, Arthur. You know how cats are the classic critics. Dogs are all enthusiasm. All you have to say is, 'Bones!' and they go nuts.
Posted by: Elaine Supkis | February 07, 2008 at 05:04 PM
I'm three fathoms into my "blood red wine" and love my classical music and classic movies. Nothing today can compare! Air on the G. Love it! Glad your having some fun, we all need it!
Posted by: CEO Nutcracker | February 07, 2008 at 05:20 PM
Romney is out of the race! OHHH PUUUU!
Posted by: CEO Nutcracker | February 07, 2008 at 05:22 PM
We had thunder and lightning all last night. I came out next morning to see what was going on, and the chickadees were mating in the big bushy evergreen outside my door. They get very "brave" when they do that, so they pretended to not even see me. Brazen little fuckers.
Posted by: blues | February 07, 2008 at 05:45 PM
At least their having fun, the little fuckers!
Posted by: CEO Nutcracker | February 07, 2008 at 09:09 PM
A reader asked me to post this poem he wrote:
Elaine,
Having taken violin lessons for 12 years, I can symphatize with you. Down with critics!
Thought you might like one of the poems from my collection:
Critics
The critics say that it was bad,
Or maybe say that it was good,
But I don't see it either way;
It can only be what it could.
There can't be titles hung on it
By myriad voices from afar;
Thing are just what they must be;
Opinions can't change what they are.
So why concern ourselves with it,
Be it books or art or plays;
A thing's a thing unto itself,
And what it is, is what it stays.
So when I'm tempted to point out
How often that he sang off key,
I try to find the truth conveyed,
And let the music's magic be.
Posted by: Elaine Supkis | February 08, 2008 at 12:19 AM
Um, Blues, Chickadees think they rule the earth. Except for cats. Cats, they don't like. They also don't like barking dogs. But if it is raining cats and dogs, the cats and dogs stay inside. So the Chickadees can resume rule of the earth. :)
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