Shifting Responsibility, Part I
Posted on Thursday, June 29, 2017 at 12:52 AM
From writing columns to reviews, it's important to always consider
the who, why, and what.
By Peter P. Jacobi
Recently,
respected Bach scholar and eminent musicologist Daniel Melamed invited
me to address his class on writing about music, which -- as a member of
the faculty in the distinguished Jacobs School of Music at Indiana
University -- he teaches every couple of years.
We used to
exchange visits: I to his class and he to mine in IU's School of
Journalism titled "Reporting the Arts." I no longer teach mine, since I
dropped out two years ago when I was 85. By then, I had been officially
retired for 16 years but was still teaching part time. It was long
enough, I decided. Daniel is far younger and still engaged full-time in
his academic duties.
I was happy to join him. He attracts
interesting and interested students. Most of the time, they will be
writing -- if writing they do -- for different audiences with different
needs. Handling a lay audience for a journalistic publication,
newspaper, or magazine, as I do, differs vastly from his world, but he
understands that it can be most useful for his budding musicologists and
the like to understand there are opportunities elsewhere, away from the
technical journals and scholarly books. For them to also know that, in
addition to writing my newspaper Sunday columns and just about
every-other-day reviews, I have written about music for children in the
magazine Highlights for Children, for adults in program notes for Lyric
Opera of Chicago, and for other markets.
Who Am I Writing For?
I
benefit hearing from Daniel's crew: their questions cause me to pause in
my work and remember how important it is to always consider the who and
why and what when I sit down to write. Who am I writing for? Why am I
writing for the who? And with what will I satisfy the wants or needs of
my projected who?
Even for the same kind of audience, the one for
Lyric Opera, I have to remember (and the editor there will remind me,
even guide me) that my approach writing some sort of background piece
for a performance of Verdi's La Traviata or Puccini's La Bohème,
should be different from one, say, for Alban Berg's Wozzeck. The
first two are so popular and well-known that a writer should consider
some hidden aspect or zigzag approach to gain the interest of a reader
waiting for the curtains to open. For a Wozzeck performance, a
more nuts-and-bolts approach is probably preferable because far fewer
folks in the audience will have sufficient knowledge of what that
remarkable opera is all about. My responsibility shifts.
Historical
and Contextual Reviews
When it comes to reviews, I have to
make decisions while experiencing the performance or the book or the CD
or the DVD about in which direction to head. To offer an example, let me
turn to a children's opera, Brundibár, which was performed
here in Bloomington last fall. I realized before anything happened that
my obligation and opportunity differed from the norm, both in a preview
column and then in a review of the production and performance.
The
column became historical and contextual. Here, in part, is what I wrote:
"Terezín:
the name in Czech. Theresienstadt: the name in German. It makes one
shudder. It makes one weep.
"To Terezín or Theresienstadt, to
this concentration camp near Prague during World War II were sent
artists: musicians, writers, actors, painters, and cultural leaders,
first Czechs, later Europeans. From this concentration camp were sent
most of those musicians, writers, actors, painters, and cultural leaders
to the not-far-away extermination camp at Auschwitz.
"Those
artists, while at Terezín, practiced their skills and created a cultural
life in the midst of disease, malnutrition, scandalous conditions, and
death. They created and presented cabarets and theater; they gave
concerts and lectures and classes, to stimulate the mind and fortify the
heart.
"Music became particularly important. Four significant
Czech composers came to Terezín and practiced their craft: Viktor
Ullmann, Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, and Hans Kráza. Conductor Rafael
Shächter brought the score of Verdi's Requiem with him and
trained soloists and choristers to perform it as a statement of
defiance, the 'Dies Irae' ('Day of Anger') coded as a message of
damnation due to come for their evil German captors; the 'Libera me,
Domine' ('Deliver me, Lord') hinting at later reward for the prisoners'
suffering."
Skip a paragraph to this: "One of the Czech
composers, Hans Kráza, brought with him to the camp a children's opera
he had written before his arrest. Brundibár it was called. Brundibár
it still is, and this coming weekend, you can see this slice of
20th-century history at The Warehouse in a series of performances
co-produced by Jewish Theater of Bloomington and Stages Bloomington.
"The
story tells of a brother and sister whose father has died and whose
mother is ill and in need of milk for nourishment. The problem is that
the children have no money to make the purchase. They decide to sing in
the town's marketplace, hoping that way to gather the necessary funds.
An evil organ grinder named Brundibár [Hitler] stands in their way. He
chases them off. But with the assistance of a sparrow, a cat, a dog, and
the children of the town, Brundibár is chased away, and the singing
begins."
I go on to say: "Brundibár was
performed at Terezín more than 50 times and documented in a propaganda
film the Nazis made in an attempt to fool the outside world into
believing that the camp was a beneficent place where children
flourished. In reality, not only were the children mistreated while in
the camp but, apparently, all but two members of the cast pictured in a
photo ended up in the gas chambers at Auschwitz."
The column
goes on to quote those in charge of the production about how it all
happened and what was required to get it done and what they hoped to
accomplish with a run of Brundibár. Most of the column,
however, turned out to be a lesson in history. Our job as writer and
editor requires making decisions. How best do we serve the subject and
reader?
My task after seeing the opera was to react, to give my
readers a review. Again, I knew that my follow-up had to be no regular
follow-up. Here is how I approached my reaction:
"Brundibár
is not for reviewing. It is not for critiquing. It is not for nitpicking.
"Brundibár
is for hearing and listening and experiencing and thinking about and
learning from.
"What Jewish Theater of Bloomington and Stages
Bloomington have produced together for us, the citizens of southcentral
Indiana, is a lesson in history, a lesson in social conscience, in the
nature of good and evil, in the unending struggle for humanity and
against inhumanity.
"Within the sprawling expanse of The
Warehouse, an unusual but appropriate venue down on South Rogers, two of
Bloomington's theatrical institutions have put Brundibár on
exhibit, a short, one-act opera written by Czech composer Hans Krása.
Krása, when sent to the concentration camp Terezín, took the score with
him and, then, saw to it that children in the camp could either perform
the opera or see it while, over time, there were 55 presentations of his
charming yet also menacing handiwork.
"A production here and now
is far different, of course. There is no composer today, in the safety
of our community, to end up in the death camp at Auschwitz as did Hans
Krása. There are no performers, children or adults, in the safety of our
community, to end up at Auschwitz as did all but two of the children
that took the stage in Terezín.
"But the tale told and sung
in Brundibár needs to be told and sung from time to time so
that we, who lived through that period, will not forget and so that
those who did not live in the 1940s and might not be thinking about such
matters do learn and think. As the evil organ grinder, Brundibár, warns
at opera's end: he may have been defeated in his efforts to control a
fairy tale village, but if we don't watch, he might return, not only in
fiction but in nonfiction. The danger is always present."
There
were flaws aplenty in the production. None of that mattered because of
the honesty portrayed in getting the project done and the importance of
bringing history up to date. The actors, adults and children, were
amateurs. Those who led the preparation were limited in ability but so
totally committed that the production achieved tremendous power. The
effort was terrific, noble, as it turned out worthy of a viewer's tears.
"The sincerity of what one saw," I wrote, "the sense of community, the
desire to show something important, the hope that a significant lesson
was being passed along: all these I deem as an act of love contributed
by everyone involved."
List of Elements to Consider
The
lesson being passed along to you is not complete. I will continue it
next month. But in the interim, please consider the list that follows, a
list of elements that can be important in a review, a list from which a
reviewer selects a path for content, purpose, and approach. The list is
alphabetical:
Allegiance to art, allegiance to artist, allegiance
to audience, analysis, community boosterism versus welfare of community,
consumerism, context, description, education, elucidation,
entertainment, history, impression, institutional goals, interpretation,
intimate knowledge, judgment, narration, observation, opinion, reportage.
We'll
go from there.
Peter P. Jacobi is a Professor Emeritus at
Indiana University. He is a writing and editing consultant for numerous
associations and magazines, speech coach, and workshop leader for
various institutions and corporations. He can be reached at 812-334-0063.
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