Alan Rich, enemy of romantic music, is dead.

[john_boyer]

The poster, John, has asked for his post to be removed.

Mark Thomas
Administrator

[Kriton]

Being European, I'd never heard of this Alan Rich until your post.

I must say I find it very dubious, to say the least, that someone 'despising Brahms' can be taken seriously as a music critic (poor Hanslick!), and is able to influence the opinion of thousands of ignorant concertgoers.

I do find that many music critics nowadays are too easily enthusiastic about what I consider to be 'bad' performances or 'uninspired' recordings; in other words, I often deem them not critical enough, but he seems to have been the other extreme...

Of course, everyone is entitled to his or her favourites, and - as always in art - everything is a matter of taste, but dismissing the music of Brahms seems to me an error which no educated musicologist/music critic is allowed to make.

How did this man ever get that job?

[thalbergmad]

How did this man ever get that job?

Rubbishing great people sells papers I guess.

Thal

[chill319]

I met Alan occasionally in Berkeley and New York during the heady early days of his career. He could be charming, of course, and had the high energy of one whose writing talent had recently been recognized and rewarded -- and who consequently felt important.

Alan's opinions capture the Zeitgeist of the late 1950s and early 1960s in Berkeley and New York. It was a time when intellect regularly trumped emotions in art. Stravinsky was writing dodecaphonically. Even some jazz musicians were trying to improvise dodecaphonically. Alan was repeatedly rewarded for articulating the aesthetic of that fleeting Zeitgeist, which focuses on method and syntax rather than content and semantics. He became an effective mouthpiece for those who disdain innigkeit in music as well as for those who want their music, above all, to evince textural and gestural novelty in its surfaces. 

Alan long outlived the era that formed his taste, as most composers also do.

[eschiss1]

Offtopic, but far as I know (I didn't know Stravinsky, of course), Stravinsky wrote dodecaphonically not because it was some sort of in thing, but because it was where his muse directed him; and his "In Memoriam Dylan Thomas", for all that I am no great fan of Stravinsky of any period usually, has generally seemed to me a fairly good answer to those who regard serialism as synonymous with intellect unmediated by emotion.  But then such critics have generally neither thought, nor felt, about such pieces (at least...), in my honest opinion...
Eric

[JimL]

I met the man twice.  He was eating at my favorite restaurant and noticed I was reading his column in the Weekly.  I ran into him at a Philharmonic "Minimalist Jukebox" concert the second time.  His taste in Romanticism tended more towards Mendelssohn than Brahms, and he despised that which he considered bombastic and overblown.  In other words, the kind of stuff I (and many others here) love.  He may have had harsh judgement, but he stuck by his guns.

BTW, nice to hear from you again John.

[Revilod]

I knew the name but I'm from the U.K. and he wasn't a big name over here.
If Alan Rich hated Brahms, isn't he just another in a long tradition dating from the Brahms/Wagner wars? Mahler, Scriabin and Tchaikovsky (who once, according to a translation I read, called him a "talentless git"!) all hated Brahms. So, more recently, did Britten. In fact, isn't Brahms about the only major composer that you can hate without risking being sneered at?
If you can sneer at Brahms, what chance do Raff, Scharwenka at al have?!

[Kriton]

If Alan Rich hated Brahms, isn't he just another in a long tradition dating from the Brahms/Wagner wars?

This "War of the Romantics" has been over for a looooong time; Hanslick's successor, Julius Korngold, already realised that. To go on "fighting", means to not take seriously all those important late romantic (and early modern!) composers who have been influenced by Wagner as well as Brahms. Schönberg, to mention just one...

Mahler, Scriabin and Tchaikovsky (who once, according to a translation I read, called him a "talentless git"!) all hated Brahms.

...and Mozart hated the Flute, and Brahms hated women, and Wagner hated jews... It's usually the music that matters, not the opinions of the composers. Although I must admit, it is rather fun to see that even our "heroes" could be very misguided. I find it hard to understand why the old conservative Hanslick thought Tchaikovsky's violin concerto (of all pieces!) "stinks to the ear", but I guess even the most famous of music critics could be wrong sometimes.

In fact, isn't Brahms about the only major composer that you can hate without risking being sneered at?

May I mention the constant Vivaldi-bashing since the umpteenth recording of his 4 Seasons? Or the present vogue with musicology students to hate Mozart on the account of his music being "predictable"? You have a point, though; if one can deny the worth of Brahms, Raff and Scharwenka hardly stand a chance...

[Amphissa]

 
I read only a few of Rich's columns and really disliked his entire approach to writing about music. Perhaps the articles I read were atypical, but the content was dominated with discourse about himself rather than the music or the performance. I have never been fond of that approach to criticism in any of the arts, or to that style of "autobiographical" journalism as a whole.

Since he seemed to be more absorbed with himself than the music he was mentioning in passing during his public navel-gazing, I immediately dismissed him as irrelevant annd his prose, a complete waste of my time.

As others have noted before, the greatest art and the recognition of those who created it survive long after the death of those who created it. With only a very few exceptions, their critics are forgotten.