D. Stephen Heersink takes apart Alex Ross's recent music column in the New
Yorker:

>"Recordings, in short, are fetish objects, sublimations of a solitary,
>most male desire. But they have a crucial role to play in musical life.
>They supply snapshots of young artists, open up the neglected areas of
>the repertory, preserve the great voices of the past." His adumbrative
>ruminations are left to stand on their own. How ever he concocted such a
>profile of the collector of classical recordings remains a mystery -- even
>though his disingenuous assertions seem to cry for a foundation.

Oh, I don't know.  I'm perfectly willing to accept that I'm a fetishist.

>In an example of how not to embark on criticism of classical recordings,
>he denounces in turn Barenboim, extols Gieseking and Wand's Bruckner
>(mentioning the merits of the budget label Naxos' recordings for its
>excellence and price) but not explaining, or justifying, his views.

and, later:

>What evidence does Ross cite to justify his generous and benevolent
>accolade of Kent Negano recording of Busoni's "Doktor Faust?" "Busoni's
>art needs no special pleading; it casts an immediate and lasting spell."
>Neither I nor most readers requested a special pleading, just an
>explanation. Yet, none is forthcoming.
>
>The article continues along these lines. It's quite a bore, but beyond
>that, it is an example of how *not to write a review of classical music,
>the folly of making pontifical and pompous statements, and the
>vacuity when one fails to justify something without reason. ...

At the risk of living in a glass house, I nevertheless find nothing to
disagree with here.  The great strength of the New Yorker magazine has
always been its editing.  But editing requires editors.  In his "Preface to
London Music in 1888-1889," George Bernard Shaw, way back when, made similar
complaints about musical journalism and traced the cause to the following:

   I purposely vulgarized musical criticism, which was then refined
   and academic to the point of being unreadable and often nonsensical.
   Editors, being mostly ignorant of music, would submit to anything
   from their musical critics, not pretending to understand it.
   If I occasionally carried to the verge of ribaldry by reaction
   against the pretentious twaddle and sometimes spiteful cliquishness
   they tolerated in their ignorance, think of me as heading one
   of the pioner columns of what was then called The New Journalism;
   and you will wonder at my politeness.

   ...

   I cannot help chuckling at the tricks they (music critics) play
   on their innocent editors.  An editor never does know anything
   about music, though his professions to that effect invariably
   belie his secret mind.

   I have before me a journal in which the musical critic has
   induced the editor to allow him to launch into music type in
   order to give a suggestion of a certain "fanciful and suggestive
   orchestral design" in Caval- leria Rusticana.  The quotation
   consists of a simple figuration of the common chord of G sharp
   minor, with "etc." after it.  If a literary critic had offered
   this editor such a sample of the style of Shakespear as "Now is
   the," etc.

   he would have probably have remonstrated.  But he is perfectly
   happy with his chord of G sharp minor, which is ten times more
   absurd.

In short, if the editor knows little about music or what constitutes good
music criticism, it's extremely unlikely that the music criticism will be
strong in that department.  Porter was an exception, as was Winthrop
Sargent.  It's going to take the magazine a while to find someone that
good.

Steve Schwartz