Page 160 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2024. Glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes ▪︎ Music Criticism – Yesterday and Today. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 7
P. 160
glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes | music criticism – yesterday and today
(I) Piqued by curiosity, I listened to a little of his op.9 no 2 and cou-
ldn’t get through it. Murder indeed!
(I) The rubato is particularly baffling.
(J) For public benefit, name the culprit to enable avoidance.
(K) I acquired a cd of Louis Lortie playing the Ballades intersper-
sed with a selection of Nocturnes plus the Barcarolle and Berceu-
se. I don’t think I will ever hear Chopin played better.
(K) I remember him at Leeds – wonderful player.
Example 1: Facebook discussion of a Chopin recital
While there is quite a bit of non-critical banter here, there is also some
serious assessment of the unnamed pianist’s playing style. Overall this is
not a review, of course, yet it still contains more informed judgement than
the nineteenth-century reviews we looked at above. Its mix of social ban-
ter/reporting and critical assessment is more personal, yet otherwise not
that far away from the Irish Times in 1860 (except, of course, that we wou-
ld hardly find a negative review there, as pointed out above). While these
comments were written as responses to individual statements (and thus not
primarily aiming for a large audience), everyone active on social media is
aware of the fact that hundreds or even thousands of people may read their
lines. Certainly the person who started this thread did so in order to reach
as large an audience among their friends as possible, and many friends of
friends may also get to see it. I see exchanges like this one so regularly that
it may be warranted to speak of a new, alternative and semi-public social
media reviewing scene.
My second example is a thread that developed on my own Facebook
feed between 13 and 23 January 2023 about Tár, a movie about the downfall
of an acclaimed female classical conductor played by Cate Blanchett. The
film triggered often heated discussions, particularly among “culture war-
riors”. My initial post is already an indirect response to some of the reac-
tions I had read in the feeds of Facebook friends. In this example I don’t an-
onymise my own contributions.
(Wolfgang Marx) Just coming back from watching “Tár”. Given that I
have read several quite diverse reviews and comments, here are three
aspects I found particularly interesting (spoiler alert!).
While Tár seems to “win” the Julliard scene at the beginning the rest of
the movie demonstrates in great detail that she herself is the best example
of the division of art and artist not really working, at least not while the
artist is still alive, or hasn’t been dead for a few centuries. She turns out
160
(I) Piqued by curiosity, I listened to a little of his op.9 no 2 and cou-
ldn’t get through it. Murder indeed!
(I) The rubato is particularly baffling.
(J) For public benefit, name the culprit to enable avoidance.
(K) I acquired a cd of Louis Lortie playing the Ballades intersper-
sed with a selection of Nocturnes plus the Barcarolle and Berceu-
se. I don’t think I will ever hear Chopin played better.
(K) I remember him at Leeds – wonderful player.
Example 1: Facebook discussion of a Chopin recital
While there is quite a bit of non-critical banter here, there is also some
serious assessment of the unnamed pianist’s playing style. Overall this is
not a review, of course, yet it still contains more informed judgement than
the nineteenth-century reviews we looked at above. Its mix of social ban-
ter/reporting and critical assessment is more personal, yet otherwise not
that far away from the Irish Times in 1860 (except, of course, that we wou-
ld hardly find a negative review there, as pointed out above). While these
comments were written as responses to individual statements (and thus not
primarily aiming for a large audience), everyone active on social media is
aware of the fact that hundreds or even thousands of people may read their
lines. Certainly the person who started this thread did so in order to reach
as large an audience among their friends as possible, and many friends of
friends may also get to see it. I see exchanges like this one so regularly that
it may be warranted to speak of a new, alternative and semi-public social
media reviewing scene.
My second example is a thread that developed on my own Facebook
feed between 13 and 23 January 2023 about Tár, a movie about the downfall
of an acclaimed female classical conductor played by Cate Blanchett. The
film triggered often heated discussions, particularly among “culture war-
riors”. My initial post is already an indirect response to some of the reac-
tions I had read in the feeds of Facebook friends. In this example I don’t an-
onymise my own contributions.
(Wolfgang Marx) Just coming back from watching “Tár”. Given that I
have read several quite diverse reviews and comments, here are three
aspects I found particularly interesting (spoiler alert!).
While Tár seems to “win” the Julliard scene at the beginning the rest of
the movie demonstrates in great detail that she herself is the best example
of the division of art and artist not really working, at least not while the
artist is still alive, or hasn’t been dead for a few centuries. She turns out
160
