In a recent posting on the subject of critics (see my blog “ Days of Yore”) my friend John Duffus asks if reviews really matter.
To be dismissed as a parasite - not that John goes that far - is something quite familiar to me, and I have my answers to such accusations. One of them is Kenneth Tynan’s definition of a critic as “someone who knows the way but cannot drive the car” - which has always struck me as a sharp, succinct observation. Once, quoting it to the conductor Sir Charles Groves in the course of an interview, I was interrupted by his wife, who was present and remarked proudly that “Sir Charles not only knows the way but can also drive the car.” Coming from a conductor’s wife, It was a neat riposte.
In fact, there are plenty of conductors well qualified to drive the car - think of Herbert von Karajan - but who cannot be said to know the way, if their opinions and style are to be taken seriously (just consider what Karajan had to say about the abilities of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, his Viennese rival).
But whether or not critics matter can perhaps seem a moot point. Do bad reviews stop people going to a show if they want to do so? Does a good review prompt them to go to an event they do not desire to attend? Sometimes yes and sometimes no, it seems to me.
“Beyond the Fringe” may initially have received no more than moderately appreciative reviews but there was something about it which rightly caught public attention and its four protagonists went on to win world fame.
Some critics, such as Bernard Levin, gained readers because they were witty and vicious, but I do not think people were greatly deterred by him from going to what he despised. Edward Greenfield of The Guardian, on the other hand, was the kindest - and one of the most popular - of critics, who never wrote a bad word against anyone, yet never lost his following.
Reviewing events - such as concerts - which are already in the past by the time the review is printed has understandably perturbed John Duffus, though I myself see it as a vital part of newspaper criticism. The critic as chronicler is invaluable to the art of reviewing, if he or she is a good enough writer, and the fact that an event is already over seems to me of no consequence.
Every review of a work, even the most familiar of works, is an incident, however small, in the ongoing life of that work. Andrew Porter, who died recently, was the supreme exponent of that sort of review, and wrote in a way which showed why his large-scale reviews were worth collecting, as they were in the five volumes of reviews he wrote for the New Yorker magazine.
In this respect Bernard Shaw, whose reviews are still deservedly in print, was Andrew’s forerunner, a lesson to us all. William Mann’s reviews for The Times were, alas, never collected, though he did produce two fine big operatic books, on Mozart and Strauss, filled with a musical journalist’s spirited knowledge.
3 September 2015
To be dismissed as a parasite - not that John goes that far - is something quite familiar to me, and I have my answers to such accusations. One of them is Kenneth Tynan’s definition of a critic as “someone who knows the way but cannot drive the car” - which has always struck me as a sharp, succinct observation. Once, quoting it to the conductor Sir Charles Groves in the course of an interview, I was interrupted by his wife, who was present and remarked proudly that “Sir Charles not only knows the way but can also drive the car.” Coming from a conductor’s wife, It was a neat riposte.
In fact, there are plenty of conductors well qualified to drive the car - think of Herbert von Karajan - but who cannot be said to know the way, if their opinions and style are to be taken seriously (just consider what Karajan had to say about the abilities of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, his Viennese rival).
But whether or not critics matter can perhaps seem a moot point. Do bad reviews stop people going to a show if they want to do so? Does a good review prompt them to go to an event they do not desire to attend? Sometimes yes and sometimes no, it seems to me.
“Beyond the Fringe” may initially have received no more than moderately appreciative reviews but there was something about it which rightly caught public attention and its four protagonists went on to win world fame.
Some critics, such as Bernard Levin, gained readers because they were witty and vicious, but I do not think people were greatly deterred by him from going to what he despised. Edward Greenfield of The Guardian, on the other hand, was the kindest - and one of the most popular - of critics, who never wrote a bad word against anyone, yet never lost his following.
Reviewing events - such as concerts - which are already in the past by the time the review is printed has understandably perturbed John Duffus, though I myself see it as a vital part of newspaper criticism. The critic as chronicler is invaluable to the art of reviewing, if he or she is a good enough writer, and the fact that an event is already over seems to me of no consequence.
Every review of a work, even the most familiar of works, is an incident, however small, in the ongoing life of that work. Andrew Porter, who died recently, was the supreme exponent of that sort of review, and wrote in a way which showed why his large-scale reviews were worth collecting, as they were in the five volumes of reviews he wrote for the New Yorker magazine.
In this respect Bernard Shaw, whose reviews are still deservedly in print, was Andrew’s forerunner, a lesson to us all. William Mann’s reviews for The Times were, alas, never collected, though he did produce two fine big operatic books, on Mozart and Strauss, filled with a musical journalist’s spirited knowledge.
3 September 2015
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