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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for December 10, 2003

TT: Possibly not belaboring the obvious

December 10, 2003 by Terry Teachout

I guess I should have said so earlier, but…the quotations appearing in my “Almanac” posts may or may not reflect the opinions of OGIC and/or myself. Sometimes.


Is that sufficiently unclear?

TT: Home alone

December 10, 2003 by Terry Teachout

I’m still getting mail about “A Shift in Time,” the posting in which I discussed the decline of the movie theater.


Here are three more letters that caught my eye:


  • “Movies will still be made if the only way to see them is on DVDs, but classical music is different. Chamber music groups (and big symphony orchestras, too) need audiences. Many groups make their living by touring; some record, others don’t. Their live repertoire is always greater than their recorded repertoire. Long-lived quartets or trios get their particular sound by playing together again and again, and you wouldn’t have that kind of signature sound from ad hoc quartets gathered together just to record the late Beethoven cycle….I think that watching movies alone is a loss, too. I love Netflix and tinker endlessly with my queue, and it’s great to snuggle up with your beloved or kids and watch a movie on a rainy night. But I can still remember going to see particular movies at the Orson Welles Theater and the Brattle Street Cinema in Cambridge thirty years ago with a bunch of friends. One doesn’t remember viewing DVDs in the same way–one remembers the movie itself and the fact that one has seen it, but not much else about the circumstances. There’s a communal aspect to art that you’re not accounting for. Reading has always been solitary, and the meditative, lost-in-an-armchair quality is part of the reading life. Blogging and emails and cyperspace are sort of in between–you’re both alone and connected though in a phantom way. But music is different. I wouldn’t imagine saying this to the author of

  • TT: Almanac

    December 10, 2003 by Terry Teachout

    “Men who are accustomed over a long series of years to supposing that whatever can somehow be squared with the law is right–or if not right then allowable–are not useful members of society; and when they reach positions of power in the state they are noxious. They are people for whom ethics can be summed up by the collected statutes.”


    Patrick O’Brian, The Reverse of the Medal

    TT: Marching orders

    December 10, 2003 by Terry Teachout

    I haven’t mentioned this for ages, so I will: please tell your friends about “About Last Night.” We don’t advertise. We don’t send out mass e-mailings. We rely on links, and on you. Each and every time you send our URL to a potential reader, the law of unforeseen consequences has a fresh chance to kick in.


    If you read this site, tell somebody about it. If you have a blog of your own, mention us. The easy-to-remember address is www.terryteachout.com. Spread the word…often.

    TT: The mixture as before

    December 10, 2003 by Terry Teachout

    Take a look at the story in this morning New York Times about who–if anybody–will replace Lorin Maazel as music director of the New York Philharmonic:

    When he was selected in 2001, Mr. Maazel was assumed to be a one-term appointment. He was 70, and concerns about an aging audience prompted calls for a less traditional leader. But his appointment also represented the new power of the orchestra’s musicians, who had pushed for Mr. Maazel, having played under him as a visiting conductor. Many orchestra members continue to say they are content under his baton.

    The quotes are revealing. The orchestra’s board invited several Philharmonic players to give their opinions of Maazel. One compared him to Kurt Masur, the orchestra’s previous music director:

    “He’s such a welcome relief after the tremendous abuse we took before,” said Eric Bartlett, a cellist. He said Mr. Masur had operated on “the assumption that every musician was trying not to play well and had to be terrorized into doing their best.” He added, “That assumption wore everybody down.”

    Another, concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, said, “If we have no one to replace Maazel, we just can’t let him go. I just don’t think we’re in a rush to replace someone as brilliant as Mr. Maazel….He’s respectful and thorough, and he doesn’t waste time.” And to critics in the media who claim that Maazel’s programming is “too conservative,” Dicterow replies, “New York audiences like to hear their Beethoven. If we played only contemporary music, we’d only have a quarter of an audience, and pretty soon we wouldn’t have an orchestra.”


    This story virtually speaks for itself, but I should add one footnote for readers with short memories: Kurt Masur took a demoralized, undisciplined orchestra and turned it into the virtuoso ensemble it had been in years past. He didn’t do that by being respectful and efficient–he did it by tyrannizing a bunch of temperamental players notorious for their bad behavior. (It’s no accident that the Philharmonic long ago acquired the nickname “Murder, Inc.” for its treatment of weak and incompetent conductors.)


    As for the rest, I’ll simply direct you to my earlier post on the future of the classical concert (see below). For my part, I don’t think Lorin Maazel is a very interesting or significant conductor, but in a way that’s the least important thing about him. What really matters is that the Philharmonic itself clearly believes it can continue to do business as usual, indefinitely. Perhaps it can. The Philharmonic is, after all, America’s flagship orchestra, located in a city big and rich enough to keep it afloat no matter what it does or doesn’t do. But how many other American orchestras can say the same thing? Damned few–which is why so many are either floundering or folding.

    TT: Words to the wise

    December 10, 2003 by Terry Teachout

    If The Wall Street Journal posted free links to its arts coverage (hint, hint), I’d tell you to take a look at “Suzanne Farrell Gets Her Revenge,” Robert Greskovic’s review of Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s recent week-long run in Washington. Since it doesn’t, I’ll tell you instead to go out and buy a copy of this morning’s paper. Greskovic’s review is the most important piece about ballet you’ll read this month, including anything I might happen to write. Here’s a brief excerpt:

    Since 1999, as part of a project of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Ms. Farrell has been selecting and preparing dancers, and staging ballets, primarily those of Balanchine. The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, a season-to-season group of dancers that currently numbers 34, has just completed an amibitous nine-week U.S. tour with a weeklong, two-program all-Balanchine season at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Ehater….When the leader starting from scratch is as up to trailblazing as Ms. Farrell has proven herself to be, empires can be built. SFB is on the move, and the Balanchine centenary is happily just the time to keep the momentum building.

    Don’t miss this one.

    Terry Teachout

    Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

    About

    About “About Last Night”

    This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

    About My Plays and Opera Libretti

    Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

    About My Podcast

    Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

    About My Books

    My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

    The Long Goodbye

    To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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