A light hearted discussion among critics about the
uninvited use of diminutives of people’s names led to some recollections of
rude names we have all been called as a consequence of our professional
activities. It was summed up by one of
our number suggesting that “it is a hard life being a critic”, to which, I am
sure, we all sagely agreed.
But is it?
True, finding outlets for criticism which are
respected, read and (most importantly) reimbursed is just about
impossible. Most of my critical work
today is submitted to the public free-of-charge, and I only continue to do it
to try and hold back the tide of ill-informed, partisan and barely-literate
ramblings from those who submit “customer reviews” or congratulate their
friends and heroes on YouTube. Yet I eagerly
jump at every chance to submit a piece of critical commentary when even the
tiniest amount of cash is on offer. Why
on earth would I do that if it was such “a hard life”?
All critics seem to have a story or two about being
called rude names, about being accused of not knowing what they are talking
about, and about their supreme ignorance in the field in which they purport to
have some specialist knowledge. Yet,
when I think back over 40 years as a professional music critic, I can recall
just three artists who have spewed invective over me for a review I have
written, one where an artist certainly should have done, and one bizarre
occasion where an entire band spewed voluminous hate mail at me for a review I
did not write on a concert I did not attend.
Of course, such invective from those who were not directly
involved is commonplace – people hate it when you prick the bubble of their
particular inflated opinions – and has only become more widespread (and
vicious) with the growth of social media outlets with their scope for spreading
anonymous anti-social poison. I, like
all critics, ignore such things as the incoherent ramblings of the criminally
insane; unless, of course, the writers have the guts and intelligence to append
their real names and contact details to their comments. This, though, is not something unique to
critics; anyone who utters an opinion in the public domain opens themselves up
to the violence of the anonymous imbeciles whose lives revolve around spreading
hatred.
Mostly, the critic receives nothing but praise and
respect from artists, even when the critic has done little to deserve it. The relationship between critic and artist is
necessarily fragile, but I have to say in my experience, artists make it easy
by being so generous in their acceptance of a critic’s opinions, even when
those opinions seem to contradict the artist’s own. What makes being a critic so worthwhile is
that generosity of spirit and willingness to engage in constructive dialogue which
the vast majority of artists possess.
Perhaps where that relationship has turned sour is as much the critic’s
fault as the artist’s. Let me give the
three examples in my experience; you can decide why the relationship broke
down. (I thought long and hard about whether
to name names; but in the end, since two of them are still alive, I decided to
spare blushes all round and call them A, B and C.)
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Stanley Sadie - editor of Musical Times |
A is a hugely popular and successful composer of
choral music. Back in the 1980s when I
was writing for The Musical Times I
reviewed a collection of his pieces and suggested that, while they were attractive
and eminently practical, there was a tendency for A to resort to stylized
formulae rather than risk adventurousness or genuine originality. My editor (the late Stanley Sadie) showed me
the response that was sent to him as a personal letter from A. It heaped abuse on me (“Who is this person?”,
“I’ve never heard of him”, “He does not know what he is talking about”, “Unless
you get rid of him I will instruct my publishers not to submit anything to your
so-called publication”…you get the gist), but Stanley thought it terribly
amusing and took no further action. I
have often reviewed A’s work since, nearly always positively, and have never
had any further correspondence from him.
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Christopher Pollard - Gramophone editor |
B is an organist who, in the early years of CD, produced
such a flurry of CDs that one seemed to land on my desk every month. I liked them all, but once in the pages of Gramophone I suggested that, with so
much varied repertory being recorded at such a phenomenal rate, B was “at risk
of falling into the routine” and of “allowing the desire to record outweigh the
quality of the music being recorded”. I
never said it did; I merely said that one felt that such problems were a hair’s
breadth away. My lovely editor back
then, Christopher Pollard, passed on to me a letter submitted from B for my
comments. B had written that he was so
appalled and offended that he had seriously considered suicide. My impertinent response was that it was nice
to think that my review “almost had a beneficial effect on the organ world”. Luckily this correspondence remained private
at the time.
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The Western Mail offices in Cardiff in the 1970s |
C was a hugely popular and famous jazz drummer who
appeared alongside a local Welsh band in the late 1970s when I was a general
arts reporter for the Western Mail. I was sent down from Cardiff to Swansea
to review the gig and in my piece I suggested that, in order to highlight C’s
contribution, the amplification was such that, coupled with his own extremely enthusiastic
drumming style, we heard C and just about nothing else. And more than that, one continued to hear C’s
drumming resounding in the ear drums for several hours after leaving the venue.
This ignited a response from C’s agent (C
having long since returned to the US) which pointed out that I “knew nothing
about jazz” and demanding a public apology and retraction. Large numbers of irate C fans also wrote in,
and I was called into the editor’s office, then occupied by a giant of man
called. Duncan Gardner. He offered me a
drink and, on hearing that I was contemplating moving to North Wales to take up
a part-time job as Sub-Organist at Bangor Cathedral, encouraged me to take it
telling me that, “just because you have kicked up a small hornet’s nest, you
don’t need to think that you are God’s gift to journalism”, but then offered me
a promotion to Senior Arts Correspondent in North Wales (actually the ONLY arts
person with the paper based in North Wales – and I ended up more as a general
journalist there). The brouhaha over C
eventually died down, but to this day have tended to fight shy of jazz
reviewing not because I don’t like it – in fact jazz is my favourite means of
musical relaxation – but because, as the C issue showed, jazz aficionados seem to
know intimate details of every jazz figure since the genre began, and I feel
very much out of my depth in specialist discussions on jazz. (Someone recently observed that while, in the
classical music world, people have become obsessed by juvenility, child
prodigies and a total lack of experience and previous exposure, in jazz,
respect is not earned by practitioners until they have been in the business for
decades and can point to a lifetime of experience in building their present
level of musical ability.)
I probably was too inexperienced to offer views which
would be seriously accepted by A, I was probably too involved in the organ
world to be seen as impartial by B, and I was obviously far too young and not
grounded enough in the world of jazz to have the respect of C’s agent.
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Arvo Part in more elevated company than mine |
Luckily Arvo Pärt probably never read the piece I
wrote in Organist’s Review that
suggested he was a “fraud” and was simply trying to fool us all with his “silly
Pari Intervallo”; and if he had, I
suspect he was then far too elevated (in every sense of the world) even to
deign to comment on the one critical opinion I regret having committed to print
more than any other.
But I have often wondered what prompted just about
every member of a Singapore wind band, and their conductor, to shower me with hate
mail (some of it threatening physical violence, and all of it unstinting in its
abusive content) after I wrote in this blog some comments about an (unnamed)
wind band I had seen in Hong Kong which performed bad music very badly indeed
under an extremely bad conductor. I can
only assume that the cap I had created for the Hong Kong group fitted the
Singaporeans so well they naturally assumed it was for them; apparently they
had given a concert in Singapore at around the same time as I had attended the
one in Hong Kong. I have, however, made
a personal vow never to review a performance by any wind band anywhere in the
world – just to be on the safe side.
It’s not a hard life being a critic, but it is an eternally
entertaining and absorbing one.
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