Critiquing the Critic: The Don Rosenberg Ordeal

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that we agree that music criticism (and arts criticism, in general) is, in itself, an art. Certainly it takes a measure of creativity to mold “It stinks” into:

While we are enjoying the delight of so much science and melody, and eagerly anticipating its continuance, on a sudden, like the fleeting pleasures of life, or the spirited young adventurer, who would fly from ease and comfort at home to the inhospitable shores of New Zealand or Lake Ontario, we are snatched away from such eloquent music, to crude, wild and extraneous harmonies…(Review of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, London, 1825—See Nicolas Slonimsky: Lexicon of Musical Invective, 44).

While we might chuckle at the historic evaluation of a Beethovenian masterpiece as “crude”, there is certainly no question that the reviewer is engaging in the act of music criticism. The critique is an expression of opinion---in the above example we learn, in addition to Beethoven’s Ninth, the writer is also not disposed toward the shores of New Zealand.

All of this is my opening salvo to, what I hope, is a springboard for further discussion and dialogue surrounding the Donald Rosenberg case. I will offer several links in this piece to people who have been covering this conflict from the beginning, but will give a quick snapshot from the New Yorker for those who may not be familiar with the case:

The Cleveland Plain Dealer created a scandal when it demoted its staff classical-music critic, Donald Rosenberg, to general arts-reporter status because of his overwhelmingly negative reviews of the Cleveland Orchestra-specifically its conductor, Franz Welser-Möst. Now Rosenberg is suing the conductor, the Plain Dealer, the orchestra, and specific staff members of both organizations, detailing a conspiracy in which the orchestra put massive pressure on the newspaper.”[1]

In a nutshell, the lawsuit happened, and Mr. Rosenberg lost. Read Anne Midgette's (Washington Post) take here. In an engaging and all-too-brief TweetChat last night, Peter Friedman (law professor at Case Western Reserve) commented on the frivolity of the lawsuit from a legal standpoint. The chat, conducted on the social networking site Twitter, formally featured Friedman, Tim Smith (classical music critic at the Baltimore Sun), and Janice Harayda (novelist and editor of One-Minute Book Reviews). Several other “tweeps,” including this writer, also chimed in. The discussion can be tracked/read on Twitter using the hashtag #DonR. Friedman has admirably covered the legal issues, or lack thereof, and has offered his opinions on the aforementioned at his blog.

While I tentatively concur, given my admitted lack of legal expertise, that Mr. Rosenberg did not have legal grounds to file suit against the Cleveland Orchestra and Plain Dealer, I do think the larger issue bears examination by anyone interested in arts criticism, either from the reader’s perspective, the writer’s perspective, or that of a performing organization. Mr. Rosenberg does indeed have the “right” to criticize Maestro Franz Welser-Möst’s conducting. The Cleveland Orchestra also has the “right” not to like it. No one questions the “right” to have opinions, or at least, I hope not. But what happens when your occupation is defined by your ability to give your opinion?

Let’s remove the sense of “art” from criticism and look at it as a bare bones employment issue. WANTED: Music Critic JOB DESCRIPTION: To give subjective and ‘informed’ evaluations of music and the performances thereof. This is an over-simplification, I realize. I also don’t know what the Cleveland Plain-Dealer’s job description looked like. But my point is this (and it has been made by others as well): Is the success of a critic based solely on giving good reviews? Certainly, if a critic seems to have an unreasonable axe to grind with a specific performer or organization, it might then be best to divide the criticism responsibilities, as Tim Smith suggested in the TweetChat last night: “I hate to second-guess an editor, but SG [Susan Goldberg] could have gone all Solomon and divvied up Franz reviews between Don and Zack [Lewis].” Barry Johnson, who has also blogged about the situation, offered another suggestion: “You could even [arrange] live encounters (Ali v. Frazier) and employed recordings of various versions of the music,” implying that even negative criticism can provide an opportunity to enlarge engagement with the arts.

The ramifications of this (and other similar cases) are frightening in an age where arts criticism is being cut from publications at an alarming rate. One point that did not get addressed in last night’s chat was the fact that the publisher of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer sits on the Board of the Cleveland Orchestra. This brings us to the next wrinkle: conflict of interest.

I am “connected” to multiple organizations in Boston: two conservatories, a chorus, and a handful of others in a less-direct way. I am sensitive to the conflict-of-interest issue, and I decline opportunities to review certain concerts because of it. However, the Boston-Musical Intelligencer, for which I write, and which has received initial support from the Harvard Musical Association, is ostensibly far more “connected” to myriad music organizations in the greater Boston area. I would venture less than six degrees of separation between most of the large organizations and our editor, Robert Levin. Does this mean we should avoid negative reviews of these organizations? Should we not review them at all? The Intelligencer’s goal, as stated on the website, is: “to review as many as possible, especially those deemed most important and unjustly neglected by our editors. Our reviewers are to be drawn from Boston’s most distinguished musicians and musical academics under the leadership of Robert Levin.” As with most journalistic publications, the editors make the decisions about what should be covered—no surprises there. That is the right of the publication. But does a publication have the right to control the nature of the reviews?

Don Rosenberg was not alone in his dislike of Franz Welser-Möst’s musical leadership. Two letters to the Editor of the CPD supported Rosenberg’s general assessment of Welser-Möst, claiming “When he conducts, the performances are below dull and boring on the classical music scale of excellence” and “[Welser-Möst] gave Debussy's "Iberia" an uninteresting, perfunctory, metronomic performance. He's out of synch when conducting the music of Debussy and Ravel.”[2] Rosenberg’s criticism, to be sure, was unflinching in its dislike of Welser-Möst’s “non-interventionist” approach in a review of a 2007 performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony:

When [Welser-Möst] wasn't pressing the orchestra toward ear-shattering harshness, [he] dropped dynamics to a whisper that sapped the music of all character. Even the serenity of the second movement was compromised as the ensemble toiled to maintain rhythmic unity. The third-movement Scherzo held no terror, and it was treated so rigidly that the marvelous trumpets had little space to sing.”[3]

I fail to see unsubstantiated invective in this particular review, although I do admit I am not a regular reader of Mr. Rosenberg’s work. It does lack any sugar-coating, that is for certain, but Rosenberg has also made sure to make his own expectations clear: “serenity” in the second movement and “terror” in the third.

Listening to music is such an extraordinary endeavor precisely because it can be such a contrasting experience for two different listeners. Music criticism, whether it is an art or a task, is not objective. If that were the case, the world would only need one über-critic to meet all our needs, and that would be that. A good review isn’t one with which you necessarily agree, but one that presents both an opinion and the subjective background for that opinion. Ostensibly, in the case of a professional music critic, the critic’s credentials testify to their own subjective background as well as their qualifications for the job. But the critic cannot give voice to the same sorts of artistic evaluation that so freely flows in letters to the editors, blog posts and comments, if he/she is going to be subject to “re-assignment” (or worse) over negative reviews. That is, in effect, impeding the ability of the critic to do his/her job.

So, we must decide, for ourselves, and as a supposedly “cultured” society, whether or not arts criticism is a valuable endeavor and component of the arts. The over-arching problem of politicization of the arts is a topic too large for this article, but I am aware that it lurks in the background, threatening to squash all my ideological naivete. If, as I wrote in the TweetChat last night, all we expect are “pandering, fluffy reviews,” then I think we are headed to a sorry place in our cultural history, where music performance and appreciation thereof will become the work of automatons whose ears receive musical input that is merely thrust back out, bypassing the heart and soul completely.

---

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2008/12/cleveland-orche-1.html (accessed 10 August 2010)

[2] See letters by William Farragher and Roger Gilruth http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2007/11/rosenberg_is_right_about_cleve.html (accessed 10 August 2010).

[3] Donald Rosenberg, Review of Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall, October 11, 2007. (Posted 12 October 2007). http://blog.cleveland.com/reviews/2007/10/cleveland_orchestra_welsermost.html (accessed 10 August 2010)

Note: A slightly revised/edited version of this post has been published at the Boston Musical Intelligencer

Bostonians v. WGBH/WCRB

On Tuesday night, I served as a respondent for the forum on the future of Classical Music radio in Boston. Organized by the Boston Musical Intelligencer, the forum saw an audience of roughly 400 people in Old South Church in Copley Square, some of whom arrived an hour early to “get a good seat.” The main attraction was billed as a panel comprised of broadcast journalist Chris Lydon; the fiery announcer and former general manager of WCRB, Dave MacNeill; music critic emeritus for the Boston Globe, Richard Dyer; and John Voci, general manager of WGBH radio. The gavel-wielder was none other than former Massachusetts Senate president and current president of the University of Massachusetts, William Bulger.

Long before questions were posed from the audience, the room was vibrating with the anger, frustration, and sense of injustice felt by a great many Bostonians who felt their music had been “taken away” by WGBH’s latest business decisions, most notably the cancellation of the Friday afternoon broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the move of all classical programming to 99.5 WCRB, recently acquired by WGBH.

My question for Mr. Voci, which received encouraging applause, was in regard to a rumored 75-page document in WGBH’s possession, full of listener comments regarding the recent changes. I asked what percentage of those comments were positive, and to my surprise, Mr. Voci replied that he had not seen it. I was assigned this question by the BMInt and was originally uncomfortable asking a question about a document only rumored to exist. But now I’m glad the question was asked because it opened the door for two more: 1) if the document does exist, why HASN’T Mr. Voci, as general manager, seen it? And 2) if the document doesn’t exist, WHY NOT? As one audience member opined, there needs to be a better feedback mechanism on the WCRB and WGBH websites. Facebook pages, while a crucial and important venue for commentary, are exclusionary to a good portion of GBH/CRB listeners whose internet involvement may be limited and who don’t wish to join Facebook in order to comment. We know that people have written comments on their donation cards and I’d be willing to bet some people have even written…*gasp*…letters! “Listener-supported radio” needs to have…well, listener support. So, it does seem that the comments from said listeners would be the primary resource for assessing that level of support, much more so than the spurious Arbitron ratings.

After asking my question, I sat back and watched and listened. Unlike many of those present, I’m a fairly recent transplant to Boston. I don’t listen to the radio much as I don’t drive very often and I listen to music for a living (class prep, program notes, pre-concert lectures), which leaves very little time to tune in to the radio. But I lived in a place for ten years where Vivaldi and Massenet’s "Meditation from Thaïs" (two of Tuesday night's audience’s favorite signifiers of mediocrity in programming) were popular programming choices for the local classical music radio station. In that city, relative populations aside, it would be hard for me to imagine that 40 people would have shown up to “defend” classical music radio, much less 400. Chris Lydon did attempt to drive home the point that Boston is a “wildly interesting” place, culturally and intellectually, and that “we should demand the best from our public institutions.” And on Tuesday night, those demands were made, with varying levels of eloquence, but almost uniform sincerity. That those demands were not MET on the spot, should come as no surprise. But a gathering of 400 people is hard to ignore.

From some of the comments I’ve read at various other fora, I gather there was definitely a wide range of expectations for the evening. Laments that the hour and a half event “solved nothing” seem to me to have missed the greater point. Some Bostonians, armed with the heritage of the Boston Tea Party, expected too much (from Mr. Voci, in particular). While I am not interested in defending the actions of WGBH, Mr. Voci behaved exactly in the manner I expected. He is but one person in an organization—he responded to questions with businesslike diplomacy, dutifully took notes, and made no promises. What many of these commenters fail to see is that the evening was not really meant to be about Mr. Voci or any of the other panelists. Nor was it about the reviewers from the Intelligencer who served as respondents. It was in fact about the four hundred people who filled the seats of that church.

There is great cause for concern here because the issues at hand are indicative of a growing trend in dismissing classical music from the cultural scene. Unlike painting, sculpture and many of the visual arts, music is not static art. Classical music radio is a museum of ever-changing and completely temporal exhibits…it should never be satisfied with a limited permanent collection. Unlike the Louvre, which has the luxury of having people come to it in order to see the Mona Lisa, classical music radio must bring its museum to the people. As an FM broadcaster, WGBH has signed on to that mode of transport. Telling people to listen in HD, or to use the internet, or to buy new stereo equipment, is tantamount to blocking off the ramps and stairways to the museum and asking folks to rappel through the skylights. If WGBH had started an internet radio station in addition to current offerings, this would be a completely different situation. But the fact of the matter is that people feel robbed. Bruce Mittman, president of Mittcom, and member of WGBH Coporate Executive Council, used the word “offload” in referring to moving the classical music programming to 99.5, going on to say that the move would “make the station [WGBH] more pure.” (1) If purity is what we are after in the way we establish cultural and artistic legacies, then the situation is more dire than I imagine.

What Tuesday night’s forum DID accomplish, is that WGBH has been put on notice. People ARE listening and watching. I’m an optimist so I’d like to believe that there will be more changes to come that will put this situation back on track, and I’m even willing to wait a bit. I don’t envy WGBH one bit. Arbitrating aesthetics is awfully difficult. There are a great many people whose idea of good classical music IS Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, Meditation from Thais, etc and they shouldn’t be excluded from this conversation either. I’m sure many who sat in the church would be aghast at my personal idea of “good” classical music (which is why the internet is my listening source of choice). But what WGBH must realize is that IS the task before them. It isn’t just about business decisions…art never is. As a business, WGBH made a decision. How much that decision will compromise the organization’s role as a guardian of culture will be measured in the coming months.

(1) Greater Boston, September 21, 2009

READ/HEAR/SEE MORE (Links included below represent a variety of opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of this blogger :-)):

• Greater Boston (Wednesday, January 6, 2010) segment on Tuesday night's event, including conversation with John Voci, Bettina Norton (Boston Musical Intelligencer), and Richard Dyer
• WGBH/WCRB go the way of WNYC/WQXR (Doc Searls Blog)
• "Dead Blogging the 'GBH Classical Radio Rumpus" (Campaign Outsider)
• Various thoughts by 'Romy the Cat' and friends (Good Sound Club)
  

New Hat!

I've now joined the reviewing "staff" at the Boston Musical Intelligencer. I've long admired their goal "to list every classical music concert in greater Boston." They also "intend to review as many as possible, especially those deemed most important and unjustly neglected by our editors."

I'm not sure what constitutes an "important" classical music concert, but neglected ones are not hard to find. Music criticism is fast becoming a lost art, with budget cuts at major papers. As musicologists, this should be cause for great concern because it is the critics who really end up being the chroniclers of concert life (if such a thing exists). Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective is a humorous read and supplement to any music history course, but it also provides some invaluable snapshots of reception history, context, and occasionally the music itself (!) I am not advocating invective as a norm, of course (in fact I hope the occasion that warrants it is rare), but when it comes to art and music, in particular, it cannot be separated from the aesthetic viewpoint (errant or otherwise). As a musicologist, it is easy enough to be critical of music on a recording, or by a composer long since dead. But I'd like to encourage my colleagues to get out there---put the book down, go to a concert---keep this tradition alive. Blog about the concerts you go to. Start your version of the Boston Musical Intelligencer in your own city. And really, it all comes down to basic economics ( a course in which I received the worst grade of my college career, incidentally)--supply and DEMAND. It doesn't have to be the BSO, or the LA or NY Phil. I bet you've got a community chorus in your area that worked long and hard on some amazing repertoire and could really use some constructive feedback. It is the subtext of many a choral song: anyone out there? Are you listening?

And speaking of choruses, a shameless plug for my own: Spectrum Singers. 30th Anniversary. 30 years, yes...in Boston. We've got an amazing concert coming up on November 21st. I'd really like for you to be there. Bach Magnificat, Schutz's Deutsches Magnificat, the third and sixth cantatas of Bach's Christmas Oratorio with orchestra members from Emmanuel Music. I've got discounted tickets. Leave a comment and I'll find you!