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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for November 22, 2019

Turning a list into a book

November 22, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I write about a new book by Rob Kapilow whose subject is American popular song. Here’s an excerpt.

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The “listicle,” a name used by writers and editors to refer to a piece that consists mainly or entirely of a list—the five best restaurants in New York, the 10 scariest movies of the ’70s, the 25 greatest plays of the 20thcentury—has become in recent years a staple of contemporary cultural journalism. It’s easy to see why: Listicles can be thrown together without excessive effort and are famously effective as clickbait. Precisely for that reason, though, they tend not to have much staying power, nor does the genre typically translate well into book form.

That said, there are exceptions to all journalistic rules, and the latest of these is Rob Kapilow’s “Listening for America: Inside the Great American Songbook From Gershwin to Sondheim” (Liveright), a listicle-style book whose publication earlier this month put me in mind of two other infectiously readable books that take a similar approach to their subjects.

The first one is W. Somerset Maugham’s “Great Novelists and Their Novels,” a volume of essays based on a piece that Maugham published in 1948 in Redbook, a magazine best known today for such listicles as “Thirteen Positive Benefits of Spending Time with Family During the Holidays.” Time was, though, when Redbook also published first-rate fiction by authors as diverse as Edith Wharton and Dashiell Hammett (“The Thin Man” first saw print there). Maugham was for many years a regular contributor, and in addition to writing dozens of crisply wrought short stories for Redbook, he also preached the virtues of such classics as “The Brothers Karamazov,” “David Copperfield,” “Madame Bovary,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “War and Peace” in a listicle that he later expanded into a series of essays for the Atlantic Monthly….

Less well known but just as worthy of note is Bernard Shore’s “Sixteen Symphonies,” a book published in 1950 by the then-principal violist of the BBC Symphony. In addition to being a distinguished instrumentalist, Shore was also a gifted writer, and during his decade-long tenure at the BBC, he performed under such legendary conductors as Serge Koussevitzky, Arturo Toscanini and Bruno Walter. “Sixteen Symphonies” is a memoir-like book in which he described the experience of playing the classics for great and not-so-great conductors, eschewing gossipy tale-telling to consider the art of orchestra playing from an insider’s point of view.

I thought of “Sixteen Symphonies” in particular as I read Mr. Kapilow’s “Listening for America.” The author, who is himself a conductor and musical commentator, is best known for “What Makes It Great,” a series of NPR radio commentaries in which he talks about the inner workings of familiar pieces of classical music in close but easily comprehensible detail. It turns out, though, that Mr. Kapilow is no less passionate an advocate for the Broadway musical…

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Read the whole thing here.

Rob Kapilow talks about “Over the Rainbow,” one of the songs discussed in Listening for America:

Believe it or not

November 22, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the New York transfer of Bedlam’s off-Broadway revival of The Crucible. Here’s an excerpt.

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Bedlam’s small-scale revival of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” directed by Eric Tucker and performed by a cast of 14, has opened off Broadway after a preliminary run earlier this season at the Nora Theatre Company in Cambridge, Mass. Here’s part of what I wrote about it then: “The animating premise of [Mr. Tucker’s] new staging…is wholly in keeping with the #MeToo moment: ‘In a culture in which power resides in the hands of men—who do you trust?’ If his statement of purpose sounds suspiciously reductive to you, fear not: Mr. Tucker is the least reductive of artists, and his forceful, fast-moving ‘Crucible’ will send you home filled not with smug self-confidence but anxiety-making doubt….”

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Read the whole thing here.

Eric Tucker talks about The Crucible:

Replay: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays Chopin

November 22, 2019 by Terry Teachout

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays Chopin’s B Minor Mazurka, Op. 33/4, on Italian TV in 1965:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Joseph Conrad on the isolation of the fanatic

November 22, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“He was no good in discussion, not because any amount of argument could shake his faith, but because the mere fact of hearing another voice disconcerted him painfully, confusing his thoughts at once—these thoughts that for so many years, in a mental solitude more barren than a waterless desert, no living voice had ever combatted, commented, or approved.”

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

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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