I the first part of the essay I stated that a person writing about music should: Establish the presence of the music before the listener. Stereo recordings used to be labelled "living presence". It is the powerful sense of being there which makes classical music what it is. Engage the presence of the music, by describing its features and its coherence, by looking first at its technique - does the artist know what he is doing? And then at its artistry - does the reviewer think that it is worth doing. And only then attempt to draw some essential connection between the music and its context, its artistic moment and stimmung. This is a radical departure from the resume and impression school of reviewing which is currently in fashion. It is in direct opposition to the idea that music for some particular end, or the progress consists of some particular direction. Progress in Art is the Red Queen's Race we run to catch up to the present - because we are all travellers from the past. Rather than inflict that past on others, we should be reaching for that present. But the basis for the argument was that individuals feel helpless about the world and that helplessness is not confined to any particular group, nor even to classical music particularly. This larger problem must be faced. - - - During the Second World War, Edward R Murrow broadcast from London. He did so, not over television, but over radio. There was no picture and beyond indistinct background noise, there was little audio. And yet "This Is London" became a catch phrase because Murrow could present to his audience a description which pressed the key images forward. A music reviewer is presented with much the same task. The musical sound is not accessible to the reader, and yet the reviewer, with a minimum of words, must conjure it for his reader, so that they can visualise themselves before a pair of speakers, or better still, in a concert hall - feeling the vibrations of sound wash over them. I say a minimum of words, because that is all the space a reviewer will have. But as with all things, there are tactics. Wasting a word on how you feel about the music is one less word about the music. The reviewer's personality will show through, and his or her opinions will be impossible to hide - they need to be forced forward. Richard Strauss quipped "don't even look at the brass, it only encourages them" The same might be said for our reactions, they will be there, there is no need to voice them forward. Consider a composer like Webern in his mature output. While it is tempting to talk about serialism one more time, or about ones feelings about serialism - what evokes the presence of the music? The emphasis on the timbre of individual notes. Notes, not phrases or melodies, but notes themselves, as they shift and move forward - as the press against each other. The dissonance and suspension being essential, for that is how a note with a particular tone colour establishes itself - by pressing back upon others. Or consider a current composer that most people do not know - which says more - condemning it for its "slavish accessiblity and obviousness" or - "<blank> seems to be writing music for a group of bubblegum divas - smooth slinging up and down scales and chords we hear on teeny bopper radio." Both are insulting, but only one pins down the works sound world. Once this presence is firmly in the reader's mind, then, and only then can the reader participate in the review, and do more than nod agreement at the reviewers stance. - - - And this is the fundemental engine of changing the pervasive sense of hopelessness. Currently, we are offered the choice between being non-entities or being statistics. To push out on the world is to be told to join some group or other, and be counted. To be a person in this world comes from having others willing to be your statistics. It is by having a rah-rah crowd that an individual gains access to the level of credibility required to be listened to at all. Which is why press releases read the way they do, they aren't about music, or even about the artist, but an attempt to establish that the person has statistics behind them, and to chum the water looking for more. One becomes a public individual, only by robbing individuality from others. Only it isn't robbing, it is bartering. The person who gives up their sense of self does so because they hope the person they are being as statistic for will smite their enemies. The outrage at being a non-person becomes transfered into outrage at the non-people who are on the other side. For all of his being a critic for the New York Times, Tommasini is basically pleaing for people to be statistics for a particular viewpoint, just as he is a stastic for it. What ever he, personally, has to say, is lost underneath the need to drag himself out of bed and chant the cant one more time. This is the deep bedrock behind not talking about the music, because talking about the music does not produce effect in this scheme of things. Only convincing people that there is a crowd does, or attacking a crowd that exists. To be human is to have an urge to change ones environment. When music is no longer the tool for this, they turn to other things. - - - What is essential is for the reader to reject, and state that he is rejecting, this world view. The resume and bandwagon crowd are very public about putting down anyone who is not "in", and reinforce, yet one more time, the oppression of nobodiness that makes most discourse about classical music so arid and empty. Of course, for this to work, it would require a reviewers willing to put in the discipline of avoiding the travelog school of reviews: "When I first encountered this song cycle it was in the summer of '54", the resume school of reviews: "When writing about a composer whose works have been performed hundreds of times by major orchestras", the social school of reviews: "it is the moral duty of musicians to play important works such as these..." But the advantage is that it is writing in a manner that will not become obsolete so long as the music that is written about is not forgotten. Where as long tracts about the social mileu we live in are fishwrap ready almost as soon as they are typeset. After all, while there are many people now who are upset at their own suffering at the hands of serialist professors, there will be a new generation who will be resentful of the post-modernist accessibility oriented professors they had - and then another wave after that. Address the music, not the present social problem, music reviews are not policy white papers on motions pending before the house of commons. Stirling Newberry [log in to unmask] http://www.mp3.com/ssn