The Philosophy of Criticism

[Ein Heldenleben]

Leading or following seminars in the 70s and 80s, most of the literature we studied was modernist or more recent. Including recent Poetry like Plath, Lowell, Hill, and those just coming through.
With drama, everything from Waiting for Godot to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Sartre's Huis Clos, and Absurdism....some academics and students mounted their own productions of these. ( Including Genet's The Maids (with two of our French Tutors as the leads) and even Macbeth!).

And yes - we did attend performances where possible, and brought this into the discussion of the text.

We also discussed how poetry itself is often an "assumption" with the writer as the actor.
In seminar, of course you focus on the text. That is what you have before you. But we didn't exclude performance possibilities. As Shakespeare is often great and original writing - prose and poetry - text was always a good place to start - just as any director would. Perhaps finish there too, rather like listeners preferring to hear Mozart or Wagner Operas as Music Dramas at home, without going to a production.

I never took Leavis very seriously, with his worship of Lawrence his sweeping dismissal of Ezra Pound. An acute mind with a very narrow view. My tradition grew from Eliot, Pound, Wyndham Lewis and Yeats through to Barthes, Derrida and Kristeva; structuralist and deconstructionist. Analytical tools I've found useful in many areas of Life.

The Waste Land is very complex. But finally I think it is Life-Affirming, in its final verses, with their beatific quotes from the Baghavad Vita. I often think "These fragments I have shored against my ruins" applies to so many brave, damaged lives. Great Poetry reaches far.

I thought Leavis was quite keen on Pound - isn’t there a long Analysis of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley in New Bearings? Maybe he lost patience with the Pisan Cantos.
I can’t work out whether The Waste Land is life affirming or negating to be honest. The standard analysis is that it’s a study in psychological and cultural disintegration which probably tends toward the latter. The Shantih chant is suffused with bitter irony . But on the other hand to quote Elton John “ I’m still standing “ …

[Dave2002]

But isn't that 'truth' more of a 'belief'? If Bach is played on a harpsichord it is indisputably being played on an instrument which sounds closer to what Bach and his listeners would have heard.

Sadly I think even this sentence is open to question - or at least should be considered carefully.

[french frank]

Sadly I think even this sentence is open to question - or at least should be considered carefully.

I should have specified (I suppose), in this context, closer than to a Steinway. Or do you find that open to question? I will accept the amendment 'clavichord' though that or a harpsichord surely will sound closer to any instrument Bach heard?

[kernelbogey]

I should have specified (I suppose), in this context, closer than to a Steinway. Or do you find that open to question? I will accept the amendment 'clavichord' though that or a harpsichord surely will sound closer to any instrument Bach heard?

So would a performance of (say) Goldberg Variations on a clavichord be more true than one on a harpsichord, and the latter more true than one on a Steinway?

[Bryn]

So would a performance of (say) Goldberg Variations on a clavichord be more true than one on a harpsichord, and the latter more true than one on a Steinway?

An Evil Penguin might help you with that one, https://www.eprclassic.eu/items/J.S....-On-Clavichord

[french frank]

So would a performance of (say) Goldberg Variations on a clavichord be more true than one on a harpsichord, and the latter more true than one on a Steinway?

Ar, well . I wouldn't use the word 'true' or 'truth', just as I tend to be sparing about the use of 'right/correct' and wrong/wrong/wrong'.

Nice video, Bryn. I was looking forward to the whole thing, bit it's stopped

[Bryn]

Ar, well . I wouldn't use the word 'true' or 'truth', just as I tend to be sparing about the use of 'right/correct' and wrong/wrong/wrong'.

Nice video, Bryn. I was looking forward to the whole thing, bit it's stopped

That's why I linked to the vending site, rather than directly to the Yoube sample. In addition to the streaming services promoted on that page, it is also on QOBUZ.

[kernelbogey]

Ar, well . I wouldn't use the word 'true' or 'truth', just as I tend to be sparing about the use of 'right/correct' and wrong/wrong/wrong'.

Nice video, Bryn. I was looking forward to the whole thing, bit it's stopped

I think I should have taken more time over my wording.... I was using true or 'true' in the sense of someone insisting on a particular interpretation. I think I'm more on your side, ff, than that!

Bryn - thanks for the link. It sounds just right for playing just outside the bedroom of an insomniac aristocrat....

[french frank]

I think I should have taken more time over my wording.... I was using true or 'true' in the sense of someone insisting on a particular interpretation. I think I'm more on your side, ff, than that!

This discussion all came about over the various views of Beethoven on fortepiano, didn't it? I tend to feel that the grandeur (the best word I can think of) of Beethoven's works outgrew the fortepiano and a concert grand does them justice, but why should that be a problem for anyone? Just as if other people feel the fortepiano brings out other qualities, nuances, that isn't a problem for me (though I quite like to check things out for myself, so listened to the version that was being discussed: I can't remember how the pianist's name is spelt - Schoonderwoerd? - and still felt I would prefer to listen to Mozart on that instrument). But where does anything approaching 'criticism' come into any of that, whichever 'side' you're on? Each person has their criteria and tests the perfomance against those criteria. I would see that as valid 'criticism'.

[Joseph K]

I can't remember how the pianist's name is spelt - Schoonerwoerdt?

Had the thread not been deleted for some reason, we could have checked.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Had the thread not been deleted for some reason, we could have checked.

Is it not still on the Conducting Beethoven from the piano thread ?

[Cockney Sparrow]

Is it not still on the Conducting Beethoven from the piano thread ?

The thread itself has become one that "formerly existed" aka deleted, or at the least, inaccessible and unlisted. IIRC over prescriptive pronouncements led to exception being taken which in turn led to slightly intemperate ripostes.

I can only speculate that some of the participants being upset, in the cold light of day, has led to the thread being deleted. I wanted to check back in to read more attentively why my revealing (enough) sound system is inadequate because its not hi-res and exactly the right sort of equipment..... (and more). I should have taken a download of the relevant pages......

[Barbirollians]

It has returned this morning.

[french frank]

Taking up something Richard said on that other thread, wondering why Beethoven had become the focus of controversy in the way that Bach was, I was wondering whether there was some sort of watershed, musical or chronological. Whereas I wasn't keen on the Beethoven PC5 (Schoonderwoerd/Cristofori), I did like what I heard of the Mendelssohn/Brautigam Lieder ohne Worte op. 53 written significantly later. So, for me, not a question of chronology but as I said earlier on this thread a matter of personal feeling that the "grandeur" of Beethoven's work benefited from the concert grand.

So attempting to explain the differences (which so far I haven't analysed and doubt I'd be able to satisfactorily) is criticism; pronouncing that I'd rather have a) than b) is personal taste/preference; declaring that one is 'better' than the other seems to me to be neither, and hard to justify.

But as in many disgreements, differing criteria, the critic's tools, seem to be the problem, I suggest. The considerations of 'national sovereignty' and 'taking back control' are dead in the water as far as I'm concerned; whereas they were fundamental to others in forming their views on Brzxjkd. My views on the benefits of cooperation with countries who broadly share 'my' world values cut no ice with the opposition. But at least in matters of differences of opinion over performance practices, it doesn't have to be one or the other.

The heat generated by such disgreements originates somewhere other than cool critique.