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A conversation with Jon Jacob who blogs at Thoroughly Good

JJ: I read a few reviews this morning with star ratings. I’m reminded how they much they annoy me. I’m not entirely sure why they do. I was hoping our exchange might help me understand why a bit better.

Basically, I just think rating someone’s performance is a bit odd. Mean really. By stating how many stars you thought someone’s performance was you’re kind of elevating yourself – making out that your criteria for judging whether something is good or not is valuable.

What really irks is that so much marketing stuff makes use of these star ratings. Because when that happens that rating process is legitimised.

Do I need to lighten up? Am I missing something?

CEP: I have always been uncomfortable with the star rating system for reviews and was acutely aware of it when I wrote for an international concert listings and reviews site where star ratings were de rigueur. For me, when reviewing, it meant that I had to always been thinking “is this a …. star performance?” and the aforementioned site actually had guidelines for reviewers to help them decide whether the performance deserved five stars or fewer. Awarding three stars often felt quite mean-spirited to me – being in the middle of 1 and 5, 3 feels like you’re saying “it was ok”, when in fact it was quite obvious to me, being a musician myself, that the performer had clearly spent hours and hours preparing for the performance and was maybe just having an off day at the concert, for whatever reason (something I think many reviewers – and audiences – don’t appreciate: performers are human too and a disrupted journey to the venue, feeling under par and a whole host of other factors can affect one’s performance…..)

From the reader’s point of view, I think star ratings are very limiting, especially if they are published at the head of the review (as is common practice). The reader/potential audience may see a low star rating (and I think a lot of readers think 3 stars signals “mediocre”) and not bother to read on. There is, of course, a converse argument – that a one-star review might pique one’s interest to actually read the review and/or go and hear that performer out of curiosity.

As I think you know from my writing on this subject and our conversations, I do not think it is the reviewer’s role to “rate” the performance; nor do I think music performance can be rated via such a rudimentary metric as stars. We are not talking about hotel accommodation here where the criteria for star ratings are more easily comprehendable! I believe a music review should be a record of the event and as such serves to place the concert in context (for example, a composer anniversary or a premiere of a new work). I believe we still need to record the activities of performers/composers via intelligent, well-informed and well-written music criticism – in the blogosphere and in the mainstream media. Such writing prevents mediocrity and dumbing down, and, I hope, encourages variety, authenticity and objectivity. Unfortunately, I feel the star rating system discourages all of this by putting an undue focus on “rating” the event rather than describing it and bringing it to life for those who weren’t there.

I agree with your comment about the value of star ratings for marketing purposes and this troubles me for the same reasons you express. And to describe someone as a “five star performer” seems to me be an anodyne and lazy way of presenting what might be a really exceptional artist. Sadly, in our feedback-driven culture, where undue emphasis is placed on customer reviews on sites like Amazon or TripAdvisor, I don’t think we can easily escape this…..

JJ: Your response reminds me of the challenge in art music at the moment. On the one hand we want more people to enjoy it. I want people to experience a similar thrill discovering personal insights about the art. Such insights can’t be documented as a criteria or expectation from listening. They are by definition personal and distinctive. A Haydn sonata’s impact on you will be different from the impact it has on me, for example.

How do we report on a performance authentically and respectfully without stating implicitly or explicitly that the performance should be performed one way or the other? And how do we style that reporting such that it advocates attentive or active listening rather than promoting an erroneous requirement of prior knowledge in the subject? It’s as though we need to promote listening, rather than the content.

In that way, I’m not entirely convinced that star ratings support that approach to documenting events or promoting active engagement in performance.

There’s a personal perspective too. What if the star ratings apply to a soloist rather than an ensemble? Does the person using the rating mechanism have a responsibility for the way the rating might be interpreted by a large audience (ie the rater’s intent maybe entirely different from the audience/reader interpretation)?

I also don’t get the point in rating a live performance which is by definition a one-off. Fine for opera because there’s a run of performances, but a one off concert seems a bit odd.

But still, I wonder whether there’s another perspective I’m missing.

CEP: I agree re. star ratings for opera (or theatre/film, for that matter) – stars are more relevant if there’s a run of performances.

I’d love to know how much store audiences/potential audiences really set by star ratings (maybe we should run a survey?!). Do people really select concerts by performers who’ve received favourably ratings on the basis of those ratings (I know I don’t), or are there wider criteria (such as reputation of performer, venue, programme etc – the last point being my usual criteria for selecting a concert)? Do they think “oh I’ll book to hear Trifonov because he always gets 5-stars”? Not sure…. and I think audiences are actually far more discerning than mainstream reviewers/promoters give them credit for.

Your response ties in with something else I am pondering – the apparent need to find “meaning” in everything, specifically in classical music as a way, perhaps, of validating it or making it relevant to people today. In an way, reviews are complicit in this by trying to express meaning (whether it is actually there or not in the music) to the reader. It seems we can’t simply report on the concert, describing the sounds the performer/s made, the quality of the performance, our personal response to it. Everything must be freighted with meaning or “relevance”. The music is not simply allowed to “be”, or be “entertainment” (in the best sense of that word)… But I digress slightly.

When I was reviewing regularly, I would quite frequently receive comments from other people who had attended the same concerts and who might take issue with something I had said in a review. For example, I was accused of being “far too generous” to a very elderly pianist (now sadly no longer with us) because his Chopin performance was “riddled with errors and inconsistencies”, and why hadn’t I documented them? But I don’t believe it is my job as a reviewer to highlight a performer’s errors (unless they are really dreadful, in which case I simply wouldn’t write a review); nor do I think reviewers/critics should seek to tell the musicians how to do their jobs.

My personal “crusade” – and I think this is a sentiment we share – is to encourage people to enjoy classical music and to debunk this silly notion that one needs to be well-informed, knowledgeable or educated to a certain level in order to “appreciate” it. Unfortunately, some of the more high falutin or pretentious writing on classical music isn’t helping; but I also think people are becoming more suspicious of mainstream critics and reviewers and are turning instead to independent review sites/blogs where they can find longform/more considered writing which has a more personal/authentic voice to it.

JJ: We agree. For me I experience unfamiliar works, familiar ones, or new compositions as a journey of self-discovery. What or how the composer or performer does is of secondary importance to the effect their work is having on my emotions. That for me is the thrill of this art form. Being able to articulate when it works and when it doesn’t takes more than just a rating.

What I keep coming back to in our exchange here is the responsibility on the mediator – be it marketer, journalist, critic – to advocate the art form in a respectful way that pays deference not only to the effort involved in creating it, but also emphasises the listeners contribution to the end product.

I’m not sure I’ve arrived at the best way of achieving that preferred mediation, but I’m working on it.

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What do you do when you read a concert review that you disagree with? Do you bristle with ripe indignation because the reviewer did not concur with your view of the concert and then fire off some harrumphy comments in response, informing the reviewer that they clearly need their hearing tested? (I’ve had a couple of comments like this in response to reviews on this blog – it does happen!) Or do you read the review in a considered way, accept that not everyone is going to agree with you, and be glad that it’s possible for people to express differing (sometimes wildly) opinions?

Nowadays, we live in a world where everyone is a critic: whether someone has seen one show or several thousand, they have an opinion about them and the means to broadcast them. But it is palpably false to say that all opinions are equal. Some people stand above the noise and clamour of the internet simply by virtue of the credibility their opinions have earned.

– Mark Shenton, The Stage

The internet has made us all “reviewers” to a greater or lesser extent: from “likes” on Facebook or Instagram to product reviews on Amazon to long articles on personal blogs and mainstream news sites, the medium allows us to express our thoughts and opinions like never before.
On one hand this can be wonderful: it adds variety to discussions and fuels debate; but the internet also seems to have created a place where every entrenched or polarised view is expressed without the nuance that comes from more considered or face-to-face interactions. People can be far more brutally frank or insensitive in the anonymity of the web than they would ever be to someone’s face. Sometimes when I read comments on concert reviews I see quite of lot of responses which suggest, none too subtly, that “if you don’t agree with me, you are wrong!”. Twitter is, sadly, one of the worst places for this – the brevity of the medium (140 characters) seems to encourage polarity and confrontation rather than nuanced discussion. The commentator might counter that “everyone is entitled to their opinion” but a sense of entitlement is not enough: as far as I’m concerned, you’re only entitled to an opinion if it’s an informed opinion….
 The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” – and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.
– Patrick Stokes
An example of this is the reaction online to a review in The Washington Post of a concert by pianist Sir Andras Schiff. A flurry of comments online in response to the review reveal an uncomfortable amount of entrenched or binary views rather than accepting the review as an informed, coherent write up offering one person’s opinion of the concert. Of course it doesn’t help that it’s a review of an artist whose statue borders on sacred and who is regarded by many as a high priest of the piano.
Many concert-goers, and even some critics and reviewers, feel a very special, personal connection to performers like Andras Schiff, or Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini, Yuja Wang, and many others. We seek out our favourite artists, enjoying the special magic they create for us personally in their performances and recordings (and never forget that music is a highly personal, subjective experience). Social media platforms like Twitter allow us to contact and interact with many of these artists directly, giving us an even greater personal connection with them. We place these people on pedestals for our personal worship and we’ll argue vociferously with those who do not share our reverence and admiration. And that’s fine – just so long as we’re able to accept that others have differing tastes and opinions.
But it troubles me when I come across comments which accuse the reviewer of being “wrong” or worse “stupid” simply for not appreciating a concert in the same way as the reader did. Reviews offer a record of an event and express one person’s opinion: it is neither right nor wrong, merely an opinion. In a well-written, coherent review, the reviewer should be able to write a record of the concert based on a degree of knowledge, to describe the music and performance, and explain why he/she liked or disliked aspects of the concert, in language which is intelligent, considered and fair, rather than just making bald unsubstantiated statements or, worse, hiding their lack of an opinion or knowledge in purple prose or jargon-ridden, high-falutin language.
The purpose of a review is to provide a record of what happened at a performance and to evaluate what happened, whether the reviewer heard greatness, horror, or mediocrity. Evaluation is what sets a reviewer or critic apart; a reviewer theoretically has enough knowledge and experience to support the opinions they form about a performance.
– Lisa Hirsch, Iron Tongue of Midnight
Some years ago, an acquaintance, who knows about my reviewing and blogging activities, wrote to inform me that he thought a certain international concert pianist, one whom I much admire and have reviewed several times in concert, was an example of “the emperor’s new clothes”. There was no further explanation as to why this person held this view of the pianist in question (and I suspect the comment was largely driven by professional jealousy). Now, if asked, I could give at least three coherent, considered reasons why I admire this particular pianist, or indeed any of the other musicians whom I admire, and I would expect – nay, welcome – someone who disagrees with me to be able to argue otherwise in a similarly coherent, substantiated way.
All of this reminds me of that quote attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” In the curious and very noisy echo-chamber of the internet, it serves as an important reminder that we should take note of the opinions of others, to respect or accept them, to respond in a more nuanced way, and to agree to disagree.
707px-graham27s_hierarchy_of_disagreement-svg
 Hierarchy of disagreement (source: Wikipedia)

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Guest post by The Bard of Tysoe

I inherited my musicianship and my love of music from my mum. Many of her first musical memories are religious – as are mine. Hers include pumping the bellows for the organist at the Methodist church in Yorkshire where my grandad was a lay-preacher. Mine, sitting astonished in the congregation of Blackburn Cathedral – then still a building site – waiting for my audition for the choir: wondering if this amazing noise was also what filled heaven. (I was never religious, in any sense: but the compositions and architecture inspired by all faiths will never cease to amaze and inspire me.) I was four.

Forty years later, I also inherited my mum’s deafness – although mine has been accelerated, and deepened, by other medical issues. After a lifetime of singing, playing, composing, conducting, listening… in some ways the loss of music was worse than the main disability which accompanied it. I felt bereft, and grieved for a very long time. Even the ‘familiar’ works on my music server (which has over 20,000 tracks on it – ranging from plainchant to punk; serialism to soul) could not console me. For several years, music was something I accidentally bumped into; never actively sought out; and always came away from more disappointed than before.

When I obtained my first hearing aids (properly called hearing ‘instruments’), a very talented and patient audiologist spent an afternoon with me at home cycling through some of those many pieces, in many different genres, adjusting these little life-savers over and over again until one of their four programmes was specifically set up for listening to music. However, not all harmonies are born equal – there is a reason iPods come with so many equalizer settings, I discovered – and, eventually, I realized that I needed to know the music note for note (often helped by a score resting on my lap) for it to make ‘sense’ to me. It also helped if the composition was sparsely scored. (Thank goodness for chamber music – especially Bartók’s magnificent six string quartets – which I now have so many different recordings of, I have lost count!)

As my hearing rapidly worsened, the technology could not keep pace. Concerts were always painful – and listening to the piano (my own instrument) always sounded especially dissonant: the clash of harmonics confusing the processing of both my digital hearing aids and my analogue brain.

However, I kept reading about improvements to hearing technology; and, as my first set of ‘instruments’ were no longer powerful enough, late last year I was granted a new pair. Initial technical and customer care problems rendered them almost uselessalmost useless. However, thanks to another thoughtful audiologist, I am now progressing well on my return to the musical world, with a much wider and deeper soundscape. (It takes a while to get the fine-tuning right with these things: but I feel that I am more than halfway back to the best the sound can be for me. And what we have achieved is already a massive leap forward.)

It is so long since I played (the family Bechstein upright now resides with my son: another keen musician – those genes are obviously dominant); composed (my Mac, with all my part-finished digital manuscripts, is in storage – along with multiple backups, of course); and I am no longer fit enough (physically or aurally) to conduct: so I simply assumed that any future I had with music would be passive – although immensely enjoyable – as a ‘mere’ listener.

I had, though, started writing reviews of the plays I regularly attended at the RSC – aided enormously by the access provision there: including captioned performances. These were posted on my blog, which had initially been about life in my remote Warwickshire village, both scenic and politic; but which had expanded eclectically to cover more wider culture, as well as life from my slightly warped point of view. And, although I was writing mainly for myself, and happy just to be occupied in some sort of creative act, it really had not occurred to me at all that my previous experience as an amateur musician could similarly be applied.

However, ever since we moved to this area of the world, we have been on the mailing list of the inspirational Orchestra of the Swan (OOTS), also based in Stratford-upon-Avon. And, encouraged by my partner, over the last few months, I have attended quite a few of their concerts. This was an extremely tentative – and somewhat daunting – exercise, at first: but, as I have grown accustomed to my new instruments (which, at first, were bass-heavy and treble-light: my hearing loss has a large neurological component, which is not easily adjusted for), I felt compelled to write about my experience, dubbing it “this journey (nay, this pilgrimage) back to live music that I am on”. This was something I needed to do, it seemed – especially as it brought together the things I loved. And it was helped by the fact that OOTS is a small ensemble – as is Eboracum Baroque, who I accidentally discovered on my trek – both of whose sound is tremendously transparent.

Of course, as with the plays’ scripts, re-reading, re-learning the scores, has helped tremendously – although I have not yet had the temerity to experiment with referring to them during a concert: despite never meeting with resistance to this as a student; nor, nearly four years ago, when I followed Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius – a work I know better than most; but at a time when my hearing had failed badly – on my iPad in the grand tier of Birmingham’s wondrous Symphony Hall.  (In fact, many other enthusiastic Elgarians told me that it gave them the courage to try something similar: so I probably will return to this practice in the future – although I worry that it may detract from my usual somewhat immediate, emotional response.) Such familiarity also helps; and I am fortunate that, once absorbed, the musical notation often floats through my head whilst listening: bringing me improved clarity.

As with the listening, though, so with the resultant writing. Much professional music – and drama – criticism leaves me cold; does not give me what I crave from not being there (basically, regret…); does not enlighten the mind nor accelerate the heart. But, as I was – I believed – writing for myself, I hesitantly attempted to rectify these faults by producing the sort of review, I would like to read myself – not yet aware that there were those in the wider world who had similar feelings (principal amongst them, of course, this blog’s generous host, Frances Wilson). I was therefore surprised by the reception: not just from other concert-goers – but from musicians (and others) who I admired. (Special mention must go here to David Curtis, artistic director of OOTS: who not only welcomed my different approach, but embraced it with his habitual enthusiasm; and who continues to encourage and help me re-immerse myself in this refreshed world of constant magic.)

After writing a very thorough (i.e. customarily lengthy, detailed and discursive) critique of one of David’s concerts with the (non-professional-but-most-awesome) Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra – not a small ensemble, at all: not for Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto (and with my hero, Peter Donohoe), and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony… – I was still gobsmacked to find the number of hits on the review increasing almost before my eyes: rapidly gaining more viewings and feedback than any other post I had authored. It seemed that I had, unwittingly, serendipitously, hit some sort of target, some sort of nerve: fulfilling a similar need to my own, but, moreover, for many others.

This took a while to sink in – and, me being me, the only way I could deal with it was to write about it. I therefore penned an article on my motivations: what music criticism means to me; what I think it should be; but, principally, what drives me to write in the way I do – and why it is so different to what others (might) produce.

To be honest, I published it assuming I would be condemned (not that I truly minded) for my amateurishness; for treading on the toes of those more ‘qualified’ to produce such writings (although I do have a background in professional journalism – albeit covering technology…). But, again, the positive feedback opened my eyes: and I feel not only have I found some sort of vocation (and one that I enjoy); but that music – as it frequently does – has started to connect me with those who, with much more expertise and experience than me, too wish to promote it in their own inclusive, collegiate, enthusiastic way.

This is only the beginning, though. Not only do I believe that there is a wider audience to be reached by writing with my own, peculiar brand of passion – as do others – additionally, I hope that my experience can encourage and help others who may have also ‘lost the music’ in their lives (for whatever reason) to try and find a way back in for themselves. Without making light of it, my deafness now helps me appreciate music so much more. I therefore hope that I have also inherited my mum’s longevity

The Bard of Tysoe is a peculiar animal: often to be found limping around parts of Warwickshire at night – as well as in the daytime – he is said to be addicted to all things artistic; and can be found blogging about not quite all he encounters (it just feels that way) at http://tysoebard.blogspot.co.uk/.

What matters most to him are beauty, truth and fairness – in whatever myriad forms they occur. His favourite occupation is thinking.