MUSIC
CRITICISM
Fall
2008
Greg Sandow
home phone: 212 974-6914 or
845 976-4810
cell phone: 917 797-4265
go to my website (badly in need of
updating)
read
my blog on the future of classical music
read my online book on the future of
classical music (currently on hiatus, relaunching in October)
read today’s New York Times music reviews
Classwork and assignments
These dates are approximate. The schedule might change, depending on
how long some of our discussions take. Assignments might change, too. You’ll
find links here to all reading assignments, and also to the optional listening,
which you’ll be able to do online. I’ll e-mail all updates, including links to
any assignments that change.
Introduction to this course. What do we think about
music criticism and music critics? (class discussion)
September 17
More discussion of music criticism. How critics do
their work. What critics ought to do, and what they actually do.
Classical reviews, from the Wall
Street Journal:
You’ll
see that I added a long postlude when I put this review on the web. You don’t
have to read this extra part unless you want to.
One
pop review, from the late ‘80s, when I was chief pop music critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner:
“Vintage Talent’s Pop Wine: Rocking Chair’s Got ‘Re, James
B” [about Aretha Franklin]
One
of my reviews from the early ‘80s, when I was a columnist for the Village Voice, specializing in new
music:
September 24
Ways to write about music
Novelist
Nick Hornby
says why he likes songs by Ani DiFranco and Aimee Mann (from his book about pop
songs he likes, Songbook).
Optional
listening:
the
songs Hornby writes about:
Jack Kerouac
describes jazz in On the Road.
Two
music reviews by Tom Johnson, reprinted in his book The Voice of New Music:
optional
listening: Charles
Ives’ The Unanswered Question, which Tom Johnson writes about.
October 1
George Bernard Shaw’s music reviews (written in London
in the 1890s)
Reading assignment
Anthony Tommasini, “A Tale of Sex and Disdain in
Wharton’s Berkshires” (review from the New York Times, September 2, 1999)
October 8 no class
(I’ll
be in residence at the music school at Florida State University)
October 15
More on Shaw
Three Shaw reviews:
“Municipal Bands
and Opera Tricks” (excerpt; start at “I cannot congratulate Lassalle…” and
finish after “…bring down the house with La
donna e mobile”)
October 22
No
assignment. But you can read my outline
of how to write a music review.
Discussion
of how to write a music review
October 29
First paper due. Please write a two-page review of
some music I’ll put online.
Please e-mail
this and all other assignments to me. I don’t happily accept late assignments.
If you’re going to be late with your work, you have to let me know in advance.
Virgil Thomson’s music reviews (written for the New York Herald-Tribune in the 1940s and
‘50s).
two reviews
of a Jascha Heifetz concert in 1940, written by Thomson and by Olin Downes of
the New York Times
November 5
More on Thomson
Two Thomson reviewa:
“Schuman’s Undertow”
(about William Schuman)
“Gloomy
Masterpiece” (about Berg’s Violin Concerto)
November 12
More on Thomson
Four Thomson reviews,
of four pianists:
“Master of Distortion
and Exaggeration” (about Vladimir Horowitz)
“Equalized Expressivity”
(about Artur Schnabel)
“Dramatizing the Structure”
(about Clifford Curzon)
November 19
Rock criticism
No assignment. We’ll listen to Elvis’s very first
record, and find ways to talk about it.
November 26
Second paper due. Please write two or three
pages about a concert you’ve gone to.
Rock criticism vs. classical criticism
Reading assignment
Eva Hoffman, “My First Language”
(a novelist writes about classical music; feature article from The Guardian,
the British newspaper, August 19, 2008)
Laura Barton, “Baring Their Souls”
(feature article from The Guardian, August 20, 2008)
Steve Smith, “And Now, Works By
Female Composers (Hold the Polemics)” (review
from the New York Times, July
1, 2008)
Jon Pareles, “Revisiting a Debut
Album and its Semi-Confessions” (review
from the New York Times, June
28, 2008)
December 3
More
on rock
Reading
assignment
From Nick Hornby’s Songbook:
“Nelly Furtado: ‘I’m
Like a Bird’”
optional:
listen to the song
From The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll (in
the reference section of the library):
Ellen Willis, “Janis
Joplin”
optional listening: three Janis Joplin songs:
“Ball and
Chain” (live)
December 10
Take-home exam given
out in class
Jazz criticism
Reading assignment
Stanley Crouch:
an essay on
Charlie Parker (an excerpt from Crouch’s review of Bird, the Clint
Eastwood film about Parker)
optional listening: Charlie Parker, “Koko”
December 17
Final discussion. Take-home exam due.