Reviewing the Arts

Campbell B. Titchener

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781135607685
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Kommunikationswissenschaften

Reviewing the Arts is written for those media writers assigned to review an artistic event or performance, providing the tools for a journalist to write informed and enlightened reviews of the arts. This useful text guides writers through the steps for producing an acceptable review of fine and performing arts, covering the range of arts from film and television to drama and dance; from sculpture and architecture to music. Author Campbell Titchener suggests ways to approach both familiar and unfamiliar art forms to prepare an informed evaluation, and in this updated third edition he includes current examples from practicing journalists and veteran critics. This practical text fits readily into the journalism curriculum, and will be a useful resource for practicing journalists.

CHAPTER

1

The Critic, the Criticism, the Reviewer, the Review

o begin this discussion of reporting on the arts we need definitions. Then we need to expand the definitions. There are two basic forms of artistic comment, the criticism and the review. We will spend considerable time with the criticism, but our main concern is the review. Then there is something called an advance. It is basically reporting, as is so much of the copy in a typical daily newspaper, but it often includes opinion, which takes it out of the objective category. The advance appears before the arrival of the object of evaluation. The most common example is in TV where there are far more advance stories, many with critical comments, than reviews. More on the advance later in this chapter.

As composer and critic Lehman Engle put it in his book The Critics,¹ a criticism is a studied evaluation over time of an artistic effort, and a review is an overnight reaction to a play, concert or exhibit. It follows that the critic is an expert in one area of artistic expression, and the reviewer, more likely, is what newspapers call a generalist, able to comment on a variety of arts. Engle’s definition of a studied evaluation as opposed to an overnight reaction puts the emphasis on the time element.

Another definition comes from the late William Glackin, who capped a 50-year career at the Sacramento Bee as the newspaper’s distinguished critic at large. He offered this definition:²

The distinction between critics and reviewers is an arbitrary one and, in a sense, artificial, but it has its uses in understanding what newspaper reviewing should be. It is a question of emphasis. The determining factors include the audience, space, time, and equipment of the writer. One might say simply that a critic is a man who has a lot of time to think about his views, plenty of space to write about them, readers who already know the background of what he is talking about, and the authoritative knowledge (and, let us hope, sagacity) to locate a given work of art in a meaningful place in the whole history of art. A reviewer, on the other hand, is a fellow who tries to tell you, pretty much in terms of personal description, what happened with the art and what the experience was like.

Glackin continued:

When people start talking about newspaper reviewing, sooner or later the talk gets around to the qualifications a reviewer should have. Inevitably, somebody will insist he ought to be as expert as the artist himself. “If you’re not a musician, what gives you the right to tell them how to play?” Aside from the fact that the reviewer ought to be writing more about what they are playing than how, the remark is twice confused. It regards the reviewer primarily as a judge, rather than a reporter, reversing what should be the order of emphasis. (This is a confusion often compounded, unfortunately, by reviewers themselves.) And it confuses the act of making art with the act of perceiving it. Or, as somebody once said, “You don’t have to lay an egg to know when one is rotten.”

More than 40 years have passed since Glackin used the terms artificial and arbitrary in his analysis of reviewing and the difference between it and criticizing. Today the similarities and differences still prevail. A critic is an expert in an art, but what if the criticism appears the day after the event? Then it is a review. But can it include elements of criticism? Of course, as two California reports will show shortly. What if the writing appears 2 days after the showing? Or 3 days or 4? In the case of weekly journalism, often a review appears some time after the attraction—particularly an ongoing event such as a play—but is still clearly an immediate reaction. It is a review. So it is wrong to place too much emphasis on the time factor. More important is the writer’s approach and credentials. Long-time reviewer Glackin was primarily just that, a reviewer. Yet he accumulated so much knowledge of and feeling for classical music over the years that his later reports were clearly as much criticism as review.

Many newspapers rely on part-time reviewers for artistic comment. Usually they are well-versed in the art, as is the case of two Eureka, California, writers who contributed to the theater and sculpture chapters. Both have considerable experience in an art, which gives them credentials normally found in a critic. Yet they write reviews. So it is fair to say that the approach taken by the writer is as important as the writer’s credentials.

Most critics are experts in their fields, and when a play or musical composition or film has general acceptance as a work of enduring quality, it is usually the collective opinion of the critics that places it in that lofty category. Therefore, it is the critic’s role to assign an event to a place in history. Reviewing that effort for the next day’s paper is a smaller aspect of the critic’s occupation.

To summarize: A review is, at its most basic, a report with opinion, but the reviewer can bring so much background to his or her observations that there can be a critical aspect to it. A criticism is an expert’s evaluation of an event, incorporating similar and dissimilar events to back up the writer’s judgment. Or, a criticism can be an overnight reaction to a major artistic occurrence, differing from the review only in the writer’s approach.

SOMETHING IS GOING ON IN EVANSTON AND SAN FRANCISCO

At Northwestern University, a brand new program is in place that promises to add a new dimension to the business of reporting on the arts, specifically music. Two of the University’s exemplary programs, the School of Music and the Medill School of Journalism, are offering a new joint degree program, training students in the listening and analytical skills of a musician as well as the reporting and writing skills of a journalist. The graduates, then, would be ideally suited for careers as critics and reviewers. For some time journalism educators have been encouraging their students to minor in political science, or even move into that area in graduate school. In fact, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, journalism is an obvious partner with literature, theater, and the fine arts. The Northwestern experiment could well be just the first of such ventures.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Robert P. Commanday has made use of the Internet to establish the San Francisco Classical Voice, a weekly collection of reviews and news of Bay Area classical music offerings. But he has taken a new and interesting approach. He was a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, when he became the music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle in 1965, where he was lodged until 1993. Responding to what he felt was a lack of coverage of musical events by the establishment press, particularly smaller concerts and recitals, he assembled a staff of professionally trained musicians and set them to work reviewing music. Clearly, then, he seeks artists to function as journalists. He and two others edit the copy and offer suggestions on how to write a review. Thus Commanday, an accomplished musician who turned critic, is in effect cloning himself many times over. (Interestingly, the instructions he gives his writers are remarkably similar to the ones the author has been giving his reviews and criticisms students for many years.) These writers regularly produce more than 300 reviews a year.

E-mail subscribers to the SFCV can be found in every state in the nation and in countries from Finland to South Africa, from Turkey to China. And, serving as a model, SFCV has assisted in the formation of similar Web sites in North Carolina, Cincinnati, Seattle, Boston and Detroit.

Here is how Lisa Hirsch, a technical writer who studied music at Brandeis and SUNY/Stony Brook, dealt with an interesting interpretation of Wagner’s “Ring.”³

VIRTUOUS BREVITY

By Lisa Hirsch

Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” has a running length of sixteen hours or so but it has often been compressed, whether for fun or with serious intent. The comedienne Anna Russell was able to explain the whole thing in about 20 minutes, and my very first “Ring” performance was also a compressed version. It was staged in about four hours with puppets and people at Harvard’s Loeb Theater, the music provided by George Solti’s great complete recording, directed by a talented undergraduate named Peter Sellers. He took a greatest-hits approach, so we heard the Rheingold prelude, the ride of the Valkyries, Siegfried’s funeral march, and other bleeding chunks in full.

David Seaman’s “The Legend of the Ring,” currently at Berkeley Opera, takes a different approach to reducing its great length by three-quarters. His version tells the story of the ring and cuts everything that doesn’t directly advance that story. Out go most of the famous set pieces, orchestral interludes, and perorations, including the call to the mists, entry of the Gods into Valhalla, Wotan’s monologs, the Valkyries and their Ride, the Wanderer’s riddle duel with Mime and his scene with Alberich, the Norn scene, the Waltraute scene, and the funeral march.

Everything that’s left is drastically shortened: the Fricka/Wotan debate in Walküre, Act II, might take three minutes, and Siegfried races from bear to Brunnhilde in about a half hour. Gotterdammerung’s last act is cleverly compressed by cutting the Rhinemaiden scene and moving Siegfried’s narration to Gibichung Hall, where his death takes place in front of a silent, horrified Gutrune.

“The Legend of the Ring” is reduced in sound as well as length. Seaman imaginatively shrinks Wagner’s huge orchestra to a chamber ensemble for a dozen musicians, playing primarily winds and brass. So many characters are trimmed that Berkeley Opera’s production uses only eight singers for the remaining roles.

The whole enterprise works surprisingly well. The profound moral epic with its web of leitmotivs is mostly gone, but the ripping great tale of gods and giants, humans and dwarves, dragons and birds remains. The headlong rush does omit details a newcomer might need to understand the story line fully. I missed the full orchestra much less than I expected to because the reduction beautifully retains the flavor of every important orchestral sonority. Enough of the great moments remain that I was predictably reduced to tears a few times.

I must lament a few of the losses, however. Cutting Erda’s warning from Das Rheingold left Wotan’s surrender of the Ring to the giants without motivation. Wotan’s “Die Walkure waite frei” (“The Valkyrie is free to choose”), normally heard in the dense to-and-fro with Fricka, might be the most important single line in the whole cycle. The god’s farewell to his daughter is mercilessly cut; he’s not even left with a “Lebwohl!” The Annunciation of Death scene starts with Siegmund’s first line instead of Brunnhilde’s, shortening the proceedings by all of 45 seconds. She also loses “Was es so Schmahlich?” (“Was it so shameful?”) in Act III.

This is a real pity, and not only for the loss of the music itself. Christine Springer, who is singing the Valkyrie (and also a Rhinemaiden) had plenty of shine and volume for the heroic phrases, but she was especially moving and beautiful in the intimate moments, and I would have liked to hear more of those.

The whole Berkeley Opera cast performed on a very high level, with few weaknesses. The Rhinemaiden trio of soprano Marie Plette, Springer, and mezzo Catherine Cook is competitive with what’s heard in major opera houses. (They’d make first-class Norns as well, if Cook is comfortable with the First Norn’s contralto mutterings.) Plette is a fine Freia, a touching and varied Sieglinde, and a strong Gutrune. I loved her adorable and funny portrayal of the Forest Bird—whom you never see in standard Ring stagings—but her voice is just a bit too heavy to be ideal for the role. Springer would have sung it better, though it wouldn’t have worked dramatically. Cook’s Fricka is more the sad and betrayed wife than shrewish goddess; too bad she didn’t also get a shot at Erda.

Jo Vincent Parks brought excellent stage presence and a fine way with the words to the roles of Alberich and Fasolt; he also earned some kind of good-sport award for physical abuse, as he got thrown to the ground multiple times and—contrary to the libretto—apparently got a finger chopped off by Froh to take the Ring for the Giants. (Was this an allusion to that other Ring?) William Pickersgill’s smoothly produced, beautiful bass and air of physical menace made him an ideal Fafner, Hunding, and Hagen. Gary Ruschman, unlike many character tenors who take on Loge and Mime, went out of his way to sing the parts rather than sneer them; he was mercurial as the demi-god and abject as the dwarf.

Roy Stevens has the right sound for Siegmund and the murderous role of Siegfried, though I’m not sure he would survive singing them in full; but for this short version, he had enough voice without obvious struggle. He certainly brought the right manner to both parts: noble for Siegmund, swaggering for Siegfried. He was also a terrific Froh, whose music fits him like a glove.

Clifton Romig looked good and acted well as Wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Critic, the Criticism, the Reviewer, the Review
• 2 The Seven Lively Arts—And More!
• 3 A Method for Reviewing the Arts
• 4 Film—Where Everyone Is an Expert
• 5 Television—The Awesome Medium
• 6 Music—The Divided Art
• 7 Drama—Where “All the World’s a Stage”
• 8 Music Plus Theater Equals Dance
• 9 Design and Function Meet in Architecture
• 10 “It’s Pretty, but Is It Art?”
• 11 Sculpture—Thousands of Years of Art
• 12 Familiar Subject, Unusual Treatment
• 13 The Ethics of the Business
• 14 The Reviewer as Reporter
• Epilogue
• Index