scholarly journals Glenn Gould, Conductor: Critical Reception, Chronicle, and Commentary

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-98
Author(s):  
Timothy Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Orchestra ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Divergence Of Opinion ◽  
Gunther Schuller

In 1982, about two months before he died, Glenn Gould conducted a Toronto chamber orchestra to record Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. Reactions to the recording, eventually released in 1990, varied dramatically: while the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic and Gould scholar Tim Page considered it “a reading of melting and surpassing tenderness,” the composer-conductor Gunther Schuller, also a Pulitzer Prize winner, declared it “the most inept, amateurish, wrong-headed rendition of a major classic ever put to vinyl.” In light of that extreme divergence of opinion, this article examines the recording, Gould’s conducting, and the critical reception to both.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leta E. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Wind Ensemble ◽  
Chamber Orchestra ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Strong Response ◽  
Orchestral Works

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Aaron Jay Kernis's achievements. His current Schirmer catalog lists more than one hundred compositions: a dozen orchestral works; another dozen concerti with large orchestra or wind ensemble; a group of works for soloist with chamber orchestra; nearly two dozen compositions for two to six players and the same number of pieces for chorus; fourteen pieces for solo voice accompanied by piano or chamber groups; and a dozen compositions for keyboard. Quantity, however, is but one measure of achievement. In Kernis's case, quality has been repeatedly affirmed by a steady stream of awards and commissions, by the enthusiastic reception from renowned performers, and by the strong response his music elicits from audiences. Indeed, he has already won three major prizes coveted by contemporary composers: the Pulitzer Prize (1998), the Grawemeyer Award (2002), and the Nemmers Prize (2012).

Gunther Schuller

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunther Schuller
Keyword(s):  
Gunther Schuller

‘What we are up against’: Lindsay Anderson and The Old Crowd

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 332-350
Author(s):  
Tom Sutcliffe
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reception ◽  
Production History

Drawing on the invaluable experience of watching Lindsay Anderson at work and on lengthy interviews with the director, this article traces the production history and critical reception of The Old Crowd, an Alan Bennett play which Anderson directed for London Weekend Television in 1979. In so doing it paints a picture of an ITV environment very different from that of today, one in which there was far more scope for formal experimentation and innovation, but it also demonstrates all too clearly the critical hostility and incomprehension which greeted directors like Anderson who were determined to take advantage of this relatively liberal climate in order to stretch the medium to its limits.

Walter Pater: Personality and Persons

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-250
Author(s):  
Stephen Cheeke
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reception ◽  
The Self ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
History Of ◽  
Knowledge Of Persons

This article argues for the centrality of notions of personality and persons in the work of Walter Pater and asks how this fits in with his critical reception. Pater's writing is grounded in ideas of personality and persons, of personification, of personal gods and personalised history, of contending voices, and of the possibility of an interior conversation with the logos. Artworks move us as personalities do in life; the principle epistemological analogy is with the knowledge of persons – indeed, ideas are only grasped through the form they take in the individuals in whom they are manifested. The conscience is outwardly embodied in other persons, but also experienced as a conversation with a person inhabiting the most intimate and sovereign dimension of the self. Even when personality is conceived as the walls of a prison-house, it remains a powerful force, able to modify others. This article explores the ways in which these questions are ultimately connected to the paradoxes of Pater's own person and personality, and to the matter of his ‘style’.

Google Hangout with Annie Baker, Playwright 1/25/16, 2:33 PM

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 57-64
Author(s):  
Genevieve Yue
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New England ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
The Past

Genevieve Yue interviews playwright Annie Baker, whose Pulitzer Prize–winning play The Flick focuses on the young employees of a single-screen New England movie house. Baker is one of the most critically lauded playwrights to emerge on the New York theater scene in the past ten years, in part due to her uncompromising commitment to experimentation and disruption. Baker intrinsically understands that arriving at something meaningful means taking a new way. Accordingly, Baker did not want to conduct a traditional interview for Film Quarterly. After running into each other at a New York Film Festival screening of Chantal Akerman's No Home Movie (2015)—both overwhelmed by the film—Yue and Baker agreed to begin their conversation by choosing a film neither of them had seen before and watching it together. The selection process itself led to a long discussion, which led to another, and then finally, to the Gmail hangout that forms the basis of the interview.

The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Franko
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
World War ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Critical Discourses

This book is an examination of neoclassical ballet initially in the French context before and after World War I (circa 1905–1944) with close attention to dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar. Since the critical discourses analyzed indulged in flights of poetic fancy a distinction is made between the Lifar-image (the dancer on stage and object of discussion by critics), the Lifar-discourse (the writings on Lifar as well as his own discourse), and the Lifar-person (the historical actor). This topic is further developed in the final chapter into a discussion of the so-called baroque dance both as a historical object and as a motif of contemporary experimentation as it emerged in the aftermath of World War II (circa 1947–1991) in France. Using Lifar as a through-line, the book explores the development of critical ideas of neoclassicism in relation to his work and his drift toward a fascist position that can be traced to the influence of Nietzsche on his critical reception. Lifar’s collaborationism during the Occupation confirms this analysis. The discussion of neoclassicism begins in the final years of the nineteenth-century and carries us through the Occupation; then track the baroque in its gradual development from the early 1950s through the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Crossing the Electronic Divide

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Waksman
Keyword(s):  
Digital Divide ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Electric Guitar ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Mclaughlin

Guitar synthesizers gained prevalence in the 1980s thanks to the work of guitarists such as Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, and Allan Holdsworth. This chapter explores how the guitar synthesizer challenged prevailing ideologies of technology, technique, and tone in the guitar community and was ultimately a commercial failure. It traces a brief history of the electric guitar and the synthesizer and their subsequent conjoining. The chapter discusses three cases in detail: Metheny’s use of the Roland GR-300, McLaughlin’s use of the Synclavier II, and Holdsworth’s use of the SynthAxe. The chapter concludes with an examination of the critical reception of the guitar synthesizer and speculates about the future of technological synthesis across the analog/digital divide.

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