critical mass, 2022 edition

The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism is a training session for budding classical music critics. A raft of professional critics critique and mentor work by students. And every once in a while they hold a public discussion.

This year's, held in the small recital hall of the San Francisco Conservatory, featured the eight faculty discussing the relationship between critics and their editors. The critics like copy-editing that saves them from awkward expressions and factual errors - Gary Giddins, ex of the Village Voice, compared it to a net - but not to have their work rewritten. No surprise; I feel the same way.

Some of the newspaper writers talked about the difference between having editors who are knowledgeable about classical music and ones who are not. You'd think you'd prefer the former, but if the latter are receptive, it's better, because then you have to explain why the music is important instead of just diving into performance trivia.

I asked an audience question: who makes city paper review assignments and decides what's covered? Two such writers replied that they have essentially free rein, though the editor may nudge them to say you're covering too much of this and not enough of that. Steve Smith, formerly of the NY Times, said that in Anthony Tommasini's day, Tommasini and the editor would work out the assignments before the weekly staff meeting, so the junior writers were mostly stuck with what they were given, though some give and take was possible if you had strong objections.

Some of the best stories came out of moderator Janice Page's declaration that there has to be a writer-editor relationship of mutual trust. Page, a Washington Post editor, told of the time a previously reliable writer failed to turn in an article by the deadline, confessing to being totally stuck. Page said, just send me your notes and we'll make something out of that, and the writer did. (I thought, that's interesting, as that's pretty much how New Journalism was born.) It turned out well, but Page said never again: the writer had breached trust.

A more spectacular story of trust fulfilled came from Natasha Gauthier, a Canadian critic. Tasked in 1994 with writing a feature story on a music festival, she interviewed its musical director, conductor Charles Dutoit, in his dressing room. With her tape recorder visibly running, he made verbal and then physical passes at her. "I'm here to work, M. Dutoit," she said. "Why are you here?" He had her kicked out of the room and cancelled the article.

Gauthier told her editor. "Do you have it all on tape?" he asked. Yes, she replied. "Write it up and we'll publish it," he said, and they did. And this was over 20 years before public allegations of sexual assault were made on Dutoit!

They also talked interestingly of censoring issues. Steve Smith told of the time he edited a new critic's review that compared the length of Yo-Yo Ma's vita to a roll of toilet paper. That's original imagery, he thought, and approved it, but wasn't expecting the objections it got. He also told of a review of his own where he wanted to compliment the libretto of a new opera for brilliantly condensing the long book it was based on. The word he picked was "flensing," which means to trim the blubber from whales. His editors said no-one will know what that means and cut it. But it was the perfect word, he objected, because the opera was Moby-Dick (music by Jake Heggie, libretto by Gene Scheer). Page told of the time management refused to publish, alongside a relevant article, a photo of Michelangelo's David because it was full-frontal. Only the most famous statue in the world, but ...

Apropos of I forget what, Zachary Woolfe, new chief classical critic of, and formerly an editor at, the NY Times, said that the best writing by a critic at the paper is from their wine critic, Eric Asimov. He makes wine interesting even if you, like Woolfe, know nothing about wine. Neither do I, but I also find Asimov's columns interesting.

John Rockwell, the panel's alte kocher, then made a gratuitous remark to the effect that he still preferred the science fiction of Eric Asimov's father Isaac. Buzzz! Wrong! Isaac wasn't Eric's father, he was his uncle. I called that out but nobody heard me, and I was unsuccessful at catching Rockwell afterwards. Editors save you from factual errors, but not this time.