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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.

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Denver: If you have had a chance to read the article "The Constitution and Original Intent: Sorting Out the Issues with Mozart's Help," what was your reaction to it?

Alex Ross: I haven't read the piece, but it seems to be referring to the issue of staying true to the composer's intention vs. reshaping scores in light of contemporary taste. We're now well familiar with opera productions that update famous works to space stations, boutique hotels, and brothel houses, as the director sees fit. I don't like a lot of them. I'm a bit of a conservative in that regard: I tend to prefer a more realistic approach, because the music does the job of "updating" all by itself: the emotions are of the present. That said, it's often not so clear what the composer intended. Mozart would make many changes to his operas depending on where they were being performed and what singers were available. What's the right version? Scholars debate such questions endlessly, and there's seldom a clear answer.

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Denver: When Mr. Ross spoke of "the nagging problem of modernist experiment vs. audience taste," is this what he meant?

"There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat."—Mario Batali

Alex Ross: That's fascinating—I suppose every form of artistic expression, from food to music and beyond, feels this struggle between individual exploration and mass taste. Arnold Schoenberg once said: "If it is art, it is not for the many, and if is for the many, it is not art." But I don't think that's necessarily true. I believe that certain artists are capable of pleasing large audiences while also remaining true to core principles, even radical ones. It's thrilling when that happens.

Ben Ratliff: I think that artists often like to give audiences a higher bar to reach—that's what they're good at, and that's what audiences sometimes want and deserve. Also, apparently there are studies showing that most people go to jazz clubs for ambience, for the "jazz experience," and not necessarily to hear a particular musician.
But cooking and music aren't exactly one-to-one. Eating is a lot more primal, I think—and more dependent on absolute pleasure as the result Whereas a lot of music really a very acute intellectual experience, involving patience, historical/contextual understanding, all sorts of things. I don't think I would want to have a meal that was the taste equivalent of, let's say, a Keith Rowe solo guitar improvisation. But I enjoy hearing Keith Rowe. Thanks.

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Rockville, Md.: When I started my college years many years ago, I liked Brubeck. But Nat Hentoff roasted him "like a piano player in a bar where you ask for selections," so I always felt his music was disrespected. What are the thoughts today? I saw him downtown the year before last. He still gets a kick out of playing.

Ben Ratliff: Hi, Rockville. The '60s were a heavy-duty time, I hear. So much incredible music coming at the Hentoffs of the world. Nat also compared Ahmad Jamal to a cocktail pianist, and has never been allowed to forget it. The disrespectful adjective often lobbed at Brubeck is "stolid," and I can often agree. But he's more complicated than that. Listen to "Pennies from Heaven," on the record "Brubeck Time," from 1954. It, and he, has nothing to do with piano-bar music there. That was also a great band he had then, and bands make a very big difference in jazz. ... Thanks for this question.

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Fort Washington, Md.: Years ago in the summer, I was catching a ride with a neighbor. As a teenager, I only had listened to R&B and pop music. Well, this lady only listened to country music. After three months at the end of summer, I got used to it and learned to appreciate it. This forced music appreciation turned me to Patsy Cline, k.d. lang and Reba McEntire. Although I am not an Elvis fan (she loved Elvis!), if you listen to Elvis sing gospel and you fall in love with his voice. People are rediscovering Tony Bennett and others whose musical ability transcend time and age.

Alex Ross: Thanks for this story! I am fascinated by how we can fall in love with music we think we hate. It happened to me years ago when I was staying in a foreign city in a friend's apartment. He had five or six CDs, including Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited." Up to that point I had dismissed Dylan as a croaky-voiced old hippie dude. I started listening out of sheer boredom, and then I listened over and over, until I had memorized all the lyrics. An intense period of Dylan infatuation began, which led me to write a big piece on the Maestro for the New Yorker. What happened in my brain at that moment? Or in my heart? It's wonderfully mysterious. Musical tastes are not set in stone. I called my book The Rest Is Noise as a way of referring to John Cage's comment that what seems like noise can turn into music if we listen in the right spirit.

Ben Ratliff: I really love the experience of listening to music through the ears of someone else—which sounds like what you did with your friend and country music. It's very, very good to find out that your ability to appreciate music is stronger than you thought. It's like learning a new language.

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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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