musoc.org hip pains

Pseudo Cream

Welcome to the cream of the Pseudo Cream. Please email details of (un)worthy entries to gro.cosum@ofni. Listing is chronological, and potentially bottomless.

"Classical [sic] music is the only musical medium that discourages audiences from participating in the performance and the resulting disconnect between listener and player is dangerous. I'm not advocating singing along, or applauding instrumental solos before movements have finished, but forbidding people from doing so creates an inhibiting atmosphere. Within that context, it's not surprising that some feel alienated from the experience. [...] My heart always sinks when I hear the now customary pre-concert mobile-phone announcement. People are paying us to play for them. Are we entitled to ask that they conform to our own sense of formality?"

Conductor Mark Wigglesworth, in his BBC Music blog, January 2012

"Liszt took his audiences to a frenzy of musical ecstasy, making female members of his audience literally faint with the sensual, sexual [sic] heights of his playing. [...] The idea of musical instruments as tools of sexual gratification is more familiar to us today from pop and rock musicians [...] It's now the norm for rock groups to use their guitars as **** substitutes to bring them and their stadium-full audiences to a point of noisy orgasmic union."

The Guardian's Tom Service starting the new year as he doubtless intends to continue - in the ripest, immaturest of form, January 2012

"The Guardian's obituary of [English composer] John Gardner failed to mention his greatest claim to fame - that, as first reported here, he contributed the E minor chord that closed Paul McCartney's ambitious song, Eleanor Rigby."

Norman Lebrecht, still desperately trying to be trendy, in his blog, December 2011

"Classical music ain't just for snobs".

Title of an article by Patrick West in Spiked, "an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms." December, 2011

"Portland [Oregon] has never liked being told how to behave or what to do. I think this is why it's so fertile for spawning a 'bad-boy' alt-classical music scene. We might be the geographic location most likely to give classical music a much needed blood transfusion, in the same way Seattle was for pop when it spawned grunge."

Pianist Maria Choban, "locally renowned for electrifying performances of contemporary and classic repertoire", shining the light in the Wall Street Journal, December 2011

"The Smile Sessions - [...] finally officially released commercially on November 1, 2011 - contains some of the most provocative musical ideas of the last half-century in any genre of music."

"What about John Cage, the composer who completely redefined music, making it more inclusive than anyone else had acknowledged it to be previously?"

A double whammy in the same 8000-word article on a finally released 1960s mega-album by The Beach Boys (yes, 8000 words; yes, The Beach Boys) from the American Music Center's resident intellectual powerhouse Frank J Oteri, December 2011

"Carnegie Hall brings Stravinsky to the black community, but would its staff bring people from the black community to Carnegie Hall, to teach hiphop record production? Would Carnegie Hall's staff go salsa dancing?"

Greg Sandow, in his read-it-to-believe-it Greg Sandow on the Future of Classical Music if the American Illuminati Had Their Way blog, November 2011

"I'm not saying that people in classical music are consciously racist. But the gravitational pull of the field is toward the white community (and, for the most part, the upper-income part of it)."

More Greg Sandow, same unbelieva-blog, November 2011

"There's a lot of so-called contemporary classical music that sounds like indie rock. The boundary between jazz and concert music is now so blurry and so are the boundaries with world music."

More pearls from American Music Center big gun Frank J Oteri in a New Music Box interview with Naxos founder Klaus Heymann, explaining to him how things 'are', October 2011

'On his forthcoming tour, [Nigel Kennedy] will play The Four Seasons [...] though the Vivaldi is likely to sprout a few unfamiliar protuberances. Kennedy has recruited drum programmer Damon Reece, who has worked with Massive Attack and Goldfrapp, to rearrange Vivaldi's familiar furniture. "Damon was a real inspiration for us in the studio, and we're going to get him to do some beats and vocals with lyrics and stuff on the Vivaldi, so it won't just be Kennedy coming back with his 5000th appearance of The Four Seasons. It'll be a bit more contemporary, I hope."'

Violinist Nigel Kennedy, as cool and irritating as ever, in the Daily Telegraph, September 2011

"Tchaikovsky is nearly always perfect to set steps to, Bach only sometimes good, Mozart generally useless. Those shouty guitar heros The White Stripes (it turns out) make for fabulous ballet music, whereas original, choreographically orientated scores by some of the more successful, classically trained writers of musicals have proved as melodically and rhythmically thrilling as low-fat margarine."

Daily Telegraph 'culture critic' and evident ballet expert Mark Monahan, wondering whether Paul McCartney, "of course, one of the very greatest songwriters there has ever been", can write a successful ballet score, September 2011

"...I had a bainstorm [sic]. Popular culture... artistic freedom... democracy... they all come together in pop music. So I rose from my seat and offered the romantic thought that pop music functions, in many ways, like a true artistic democracy."

Greg Sandow, in his bovine Greg Sandow on the Future of Classical Music if the American Illuminati Had Their Way blog, March 2011

"...two song cycles David [del Tredici] wrote, "Gay Life" and "My Favorite Penis Poems," one small (well, large) problem being that these pieces are virtually unperformable in today's classical music world, because we're so far behind visual art that David's gay-themed work seems shocking. Which pretty clearly shows that classical music hasn't kept up with our changing culture."

Greg Sandow again, same bovine opinions, same bovine blog, January 2011

"Here's what I found in [Glee], that threatens classical music: Diversity. Black kids, Latino kids. Heavy kids. Disabled kids. Including a guy in a wheelchair whirling through a dance routine. Plus, of course, black music and Latin music. [...] We don't see these things in classical music."

Greg Sandow same bovine opinions, same bovine blog, January 2011

"...The premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's new opera, with a libretto by Richard Thomas, based on the life of American model and sex symbol Anna Nicole Smith, who died in 2007. Richard Jones's staging promises sex, extreme language, drug abuse and a troupe of pole dancers."

Andrew Clements, celebrity-tat-loving critic, mistaking a lump of wood for a crystal ball as he predicts "The best classical music for 2011" in The Guardian, January 2011

"His passion for Arsenal seems almost as great as his love of Mozart. But does this faith extend to any other composers? 'There are two music makers whose inventiveness I never tire of,' he said on his way out. 'One is Mozart and the other is The Beatles.'"

Cliff Eisen, musicologist and series consultant for BBC Radio 3's The Genius of Mozart season, quoted by Petroc Trelawny in the Radio 3 blog, January 2011

"A musician called Dominique Leone has lifted a $500 prize for reinventing part of a work by the minimalist composer Steve Reich called 2x5. What's new about his achievement is that he took Reich's piece and remixed it - a technique long familiar in rock music but not yet so common with classical. [...] modern techniques make the reinvention of all sorts of music from Bach to Reich far easier than ever before. Parsifal - the remix? It's surely just a matter of time."

The Guardian editorial, January 2011

The moniker 'classical music' simply does not have the snap and pop of active, evocative terms like 'jazz', 'rap' or 'rock'.

Peter Gelb, General Manager of New York's Metropolitan Opera, dumbing down in the Denver Post, December 2010

In the last decade or so, a new breed of conservatory-trained musicians has reinvented crossover in unprecedented ways, fusing classical tradition with hip-hop, indie rock and world music and providing new, exciting audience bridges among these forms at the same time.

In-house critic Kyle McGann (aka "Greg Sandow lite") in the Denver Post, December 2010

Alex Ross, the music critic of the New Yorker, who has written the kind of book, The Rest is Noise, that absolutely had to be written, and could only have been written by him, a brilliant demonstration that classical music, all that monolithic history and immense discover and re-discovery, can be written about in a way that does not obscure and dry up its brilliance and beauty, but that plants it firmly in the centre of the modern world, as a vital part of the world that is turning into another world.

Shapeshifting critic Paul Morley, genuflecting without any sense of dignity in The Guardian, December 2010

So what could the Last Night [of the BBC Proms] come up with to top the night before [Monteverdi's 'Vespers of the Blessed Virgin']? Well, soprano Renee Fleming's sensational Vivienne Westwood frock for starters.

Edward Seckerson, fashion - sorry: music - critic of The Independent, September 2010

The future must bring things that are considered blasphemous, like amplifying classical music in an atmosphere where people can come and go, [...] and certainly leave in the middle of a movement if they feel like it.

Composer Jonathan "I may be posh but I'm rather trendy" Harvey, in a radio interview quoted in The Observer, September 2010

For in their own, unpretentious way, Rodgers and Hammerstein have done more to engender a love of music than anything written by Mahler or Beethoven.

A clueless Michael Simkins, in the Daily Telegraph, August 2010

Listen closely, and you realize that gifted pop producers routinely turn out sophisticated orchestrations that surpass the reckonings of avant-garde prophets like Busoni, Varèse and Stockhausen.

Not very critical critic Stevie Smith, guffing in the New York Times, August 2010

Of course, it speaks volumes about the inaccessibility and exclusivity of classical music concerts hitherto that this [clapping between movements] can even be an issue. [...] This year [at the BBC Proms] that arcane barrier has been broken down. The much sought-after new audience seems to have arrived.

Voice of the (Gormless) People David Lister, critic in The Independent, July 2010

Thank all that is holy: it seems as if the fatuous snobbery of not clapping after any movement as proof of holier-than-thou cognoscenti-dom may be becoming a thing of the past.

Blog entry by fatuous anti-snob and holier-than-thou incognoscento Tom Service, musoc.org's residential Hip Pain, July 2010