The composer as critic

Gordon Kerry

Quite by chance, the former art critic John McDonald and I both stopped writing for the Sydney Morning Herald at about the same time: he went off to curate at the National Gallery, I to spend more time with my manuscript. McDonald’s departure attracted rather more notice than mine, with petitions from artists, agents and gallery owners fulminating that a mere critic, and one with such conservative tastes—or so they said—should be given such a position of responsibility at the National Gallery of Australia. The outrage expressed in the press and electronic media generated more heat than light, but it interested me strangely in that the whole furore ventilated questions about the role of criticism: who might the proper people be to practise it, and what we might make of the political relationships within which the activity takes place.

These are all questions that I had to ask of myself when I originally accepted a position with the Herald, partly because as a composer I would be called upon to judge the work of my colleagues. The situation was also delicate when I accepted a part time position as artistic administrator of Musica Viva Australia which I held from early 1997 to mid-1998. As a critic and administrator I was clearly in a position to advance my career as an artist. I could, for example, have panned every new work I heard so that I would be the only composer left standing. I could have given inaccurately favorable reviews to performers that I wanted to perform my own work. As a critic I could easily have worked in the interests of Musica Viva by undermining the reputation of any ensembles or companies with whom the organisation competed. And if all else failed, I could commission myself for a national Musica Viva tour, and review the performance in Sydney.

Don’t laugh: I was accused of no less improper conduct at various times—for example, that I had panned an Australian opera because my own had failed to be included in the same festival. The source of that rumor went so far as to suggest that it was conflict of interest for me to review his ensemble when it performed Australian music, but that as my reviews of their other performances had been generally favorable, I should continue to attend those concerts. Actually, it was quite simple to behave ethically: I disqualified myself from reviewing chamber music as soon as I became involved with Musica Viva, and I would hardly want my work to be performed by artists whose own was below a certain standard. The Musica Viva board deliberated on the issue of my works being commissioned or performed while I held the administrative position, and concluded that my appointment had been made partly on the strength of my standing as a composer. Furthermore, artistic directors frequently and quite properly perform or direct in their own companies and festivals. On occasions I felt compelled to make adverse judgements on the work of friends and colleagues, but while I made a few enemies, but I didn’t lose any friends.

It would be disingenuous to pretend that criticism has not been advantageous to my work as a composer. Composition, administration and criticism are all mutually enriching activities through which one can contribute something to the overall health of the artform, and composer/critics have been fairly numerous since music criticism gained some semblance of maturity in the nineteenth century. A few names selected at random will suffice: Schumann, Berlioz, Debussy, Thomson, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, Wolf, Cui, Glanville-Hicks. Now of course the ability to string a sentence, let alone a paragraph, together doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with compositional skill, and for many composers the medium of music is the single means of coherent public utterance. Furthermore, a gifted composer isn’t necessarily equipped with the ability or will to listen analytically to other music: indeed, for many composers any style other than one’s own is more or less anathema. Finally, it goes without saying that even for those who write both words and music, being good at one doesn’t guarantee being good at the other. Just look at the list.

Some of the best criticism in English—by which I mean the most illuminating and usually, therefore, the most well-written—has been penned by critics with no serious musical training or pretensions: one thinks of George Bernard Shaw or Neville Cardus. The lesson here is that criticism gains much of its force from the eloquent description of a spontaneous personal experience. And by eloquence I mean good writing, which includes some of the most inspired nonsense in Shaw. But I am not suggesting that anyone with a quick wit and Concise Grove Dictionary can necessarily write good criticism, and indeed would argue that there are very few cases where having some detailed technical knowledge is actually a liability. The challenge for someone writing in a daily newspaper is then to express intelligible views based on that knowledge.

This is particularly true when it comes to assessing the work of younger or less experienced (than me) composers. I vividly recall hearing a quintet by a such a composer in which four of the instruments were not flugelhorns. The performance was given by five devoted musicians who had self-evidently prepared the piece with every minute at their disposal. But the fact remained that the flugelhorn was overly dominant. The harmonic language of the piece was very complex, and voiced mainly in the alto and tenor registers, and because the string writing was very difficult, one felt that the intonation was somewhat compromised. The effect was to dampen any of the potential flashes of resonance from passing consonant intervals, such that the texture became more monotone than the composer had perhaps imagined. I said as much in my review, and once used the example of it in a radio interview when I was being asked why music criticism was so soft in this country, and had I stopped beating my wife. I outlined the issues above to illustrate how unhelpful it would have been to a young composer (who nonetheless thought he’d got a bad review) to simply write the piece off as ‘badly written’ or ‘inexpertly played’. My interviewer noted with genuine surprise that it was a ‘sophisticated response’.

News flash: music is a sophisticated art-form. The relative skill and experience of composers and performers is infinitely variable, and this of course has immense practical implication on composition and performance—there is no realizable ideal performance or work. The broader social circumstances of music are no less variable. By that I mean that of course one reviews a young and dare I say emerging composer quite differently from the way one approaches a work by an established figure. The less experienced composers won’t all prove to be geniuses, let alone journeywo/men, but deserve what used to be called constructive criticism. I have been on the receiving end of some superficial criticism (both positive and negative), and can say that I would rather have had a ‘sophisticated’ and considered demolition job that some of the more glibly flattering, or gratuitously nasty, responses.

In responding to some of the more vocal opponents of his National Gallery job, John McDonald reminded us that an artist is only as good as his or her last work. In this specific instance, I took it to mean that even established artists shouldn’t assume that each new work will be automatically acquired and acclaimed, or that if they are, there is something wrong with curatorial culture. The French have that wonderful term monstre sacré. It doesn’t translate well, but the implications are a bit like ‘sacred cow’, someone or thing which cannot be criticized. I suppose I incline to the McDonald view about the artist’s last work, which is why as an artist one strives to maintain a high level of self-criticism. And while we need to bear in mind that anyone can have an off-day, it remains the critic’s duty to pass occasionally negative judgements about pieces or performances by eminent persons.

Now how do I decide if someone is playing a piece of ‘standard repertoire’ well. Leaving aside obvious wrong notes or memory lapses (not in themselves necessarily inimical to the outcome) I, like anyone, have in mind an ideal performance based on a mixture of interpretations that I have heard. It goes without saying, however, that the experience of being knocked sideways by a completely new interpretation is a pleasure, though rare. As a composer, however, I can’t help but speculate on how Chopin or Beethoven put the piece together, and whether that accords with my experience of the performance at hand. It’s just as it was with the young composer’s music: I think the composer is trying to achieve a specific result, and here are the following ways in which that is or is not being facilitated. I can’t pretend that some specific results don’t seem more valuable to me than others, and the result needs to be a musical one—music represents a unique way of expressing and recording aspects of human thought and feeling. A piece ‘about’ a worthy environmental or political cause will not necessarily make for a better musical experience than a Bach fugue or Berio Sequenza, and it certainly doesn’t place the piece above criticism. Nor for that matter, does the religion, sex, gender preference, race or voting pattern of the composer.

Sadly, performers and composers who it has been my melancholy duty to criticize adversely don t always see it that way. One composer burst into print on the letters pages accusing me of being un-Australian for voicing reservations about the libretto he had chosen to set—in fact my response grew out of a conviction that the text was prolix and the morality simplistic. On another occasion a playful literary reference to a work I regarded as inconsequential brought forth an amusing volume of correspondence which turned on my well-known misogyny. It needs to be said that in none of the cases I have mentioned did it give me any joy to find fault. I think most critics would agree that they would rather enjoy than not enjoy a work or performance—especially if one is out several nights a week listening to concerts. Furthermore, as a composer I believe passionately in the need to encourage creativity so that we are not stuck with nothing more than a boxed set of Beethoven CDs, and as an Australian composer I have an enlightened self-interest in promoting a culture where new work is increasingly part of the expected fare at concerts. Naturally, therefore, I have been involved in the commissioning and programming of new works, and in the sophisticated discussion of such things, but I do not resile from asserting that there are workably objective standards of competence and rigour. A composer/critic might just help ensure that if the emperor has no clothes, he/she at least has a great body.