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Notes on MusicBen Ratliff and Alex Ross discuss the state of the art form and the experience of listening.


Posted Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007, at 5:42 PM ET

Music critics Ben Ratliff and Alex Ross were online at Washingtonpost.com on Thursday, Nov. 8, to chat with readers about the state of jazz, pop, and classical. An unedited transcript follows.

Alex's Fan Club: Alex Ross, I adore you and want to buy many copies of your book in hardcover and have you inscribe them all to me—but did you know you're doing your Politics & Prose appearance the same night Dmitri Hvorostovsky is at Strathmore? And while you are clearly the superior human being in every other way, that Dmitri really can sing. This creates a serious dilemma.

Alex Ross: Thank you so much! Although I will be singing a selection of twentieth-century opera arias at my Politics & Prose reading, including Lulu's death shriek from "Lulu" (transposed down), Hvorostovsky is indeed serious competition. But I should be at the store a little on the early side, if that's any help...

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Falls Church, Va.: There's a fundamental dishonesty at the heart of your dialogue this week. You purport to be discussing "how can we attract more people to the cutting edge of music?" but you don't really want that. If too many people discover a particular avant-garde form, it by definition becomes mainstream. The whole point of being on the cutting edge is to exclude others and hold oneself apart. If more people were to take to the classical and jazz music of today, many classical and jazz musicians would react with horror; they're trying to shock the bourgeoisie, not please them (this of course applies to rock music as well—think Kurt Cobain). In reaction, the frontiers of classical and jazz music would move away again, and you'd be right back to wondering why people don't listen to the newest of the new.

Ben Ratliff: Falls Church, I don't believe in the term "edge" when it comes to music. It's meaningless. I do think it's great and helpful for people to listen to what's new, in jazz or classical or anything else. But cliquishness will always exist and will always reinvent itself in some new way. In particular when you mention shock and frisson, that's more an indie-rock argument—there's not too much of it in jazz. Used to be in jazz, but now jazz has different fish to fry. Thanks.

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Paris: Could you explain why jazz in America has been considered simply entertainment, background music while eating and clinking glasses, while in Europe it is a highly respected art form? European audiences certainly would not think of having loud conversations during concerts. I often have wondered about this difference and hope you can share your opinion. Thank you.

Ben Ratliff: Paris, I just don't believe that the audience issue—Americans are boors, Europeans are respectful consumers of culture—reduces this easily. Are you speaking for all of Europe? That's a lot of territory ... the notion that "no man is a prophet in his own land" does hold true for American jazz to some extent, but then again audiences, even here, are quite curious about foreigners. I remember going to see the Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen with his trio here in New York City a couple of years ago and it was like a church in there. Thanks.

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Denver: When Mr. Ross says "great composers...are those who make violently unexpected combinations of sounds..." What about subtlety, nuance, understatement, gradation and restraint? And when he says "all music created before notation is basically unknowable," what about the music of the non-literate Polynesians? It seems to me that because critics are exposed to music constantly, their orientation changes from the pleasure of rediscovery to the thrill of discovery: "We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment."—Hilaire Belloc

Alex Ross: Thanks for your comment—but you've misunderstood! "Violently unexpected combinations of sounds" can include "subtlety, nuance, understatement, gradation and restraint." Who could have thought that Stravinsky, composer of the violent and hyper-rhythmic "Rite of Spring," would turn around a few years later to write the serene, otherworldly "Apollo"? That's what I mean by the unexpected. As a critic, I divide my time between the new and the old. The wonderful thing about classical music is how the deep past flows right into the present.

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Denver: Mr. Ross: Compared to jazz musicians, don't classical musicians think of their music as less of a springboard for their own creativity, imagination and originality? Also, I always thought that innovation only could occur within the context of tradition. Isn't an artform in decline when the role of innovation begins to be thought of as more important than the role of tradition?

Alex Ross: With classical performing musicians, I believe that creativity and imagination enter the picture in subtler form. It may seem that a particular pianist is dutifully playing the "Pathetique" Sonata just as thousands of pianists before her have done. But small differences can be invested with great originality. Simply to execute one of these complex scores with the proper technique and the proper emotional intensity requires enormous re-creative imagination. And, yes, innovation for its own sake can be damaging. In the twentieth century, too many composers were maybe caught up in the spirit of rushing on to the next technical innovation, losing sight of musical values in the process. But extremes of experimentation are almost always balanced out by a return to basics. That's why minimalism in American music was so important—it was a much-needed corrective to a decade or two in which music did go a little bananas. Which is not to say that some truly amazing scores didn't come out of that period!

Ben Ratliff: It's fascinating for me to hear someone suggest that an "artform is in decline when the role of innovation begins to be thought of as more important than the role of tradition." usually, in the rhetoric of jazz, this is stated the other way around—and when I hear that I don't believe it. I don't particularly believe it this way either, tho. I think an artform is in decline when the artists stop doing the art. audiences are another important part of the equation, of course, but the doing goes first. the new music will build on or respond to older material to varying degrees, but as long as lots of people are doing it, then I think it seems premature to talk about the decline, death, ruin of an art form. with jazz things seem to be ok in terms of people learning it on an amateur or semi-professional level—they're spilling out of jazz programs by the hundreds, and I'm constantly meeting people who like to play at home with no particular goal in mind. Thank you for this.

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Ben Ratliff is a New York Times jazz critic. His new book is Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. Alex Ross is The New Yorker's music critic. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, has just been published.
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