WEBVTT - Alex Ross: Music vs. Noise 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:05.720 This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:49.640 thing from my Heart radio. That is, of course, the 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:55.000 Prelude to Lohengrin by Richard Wagner, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, 0:00:55.320 --> 0:01:00.880 conducted by Sergio Zawa. My guest today. Alex Ross is 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:05.040 the author of Wagnerism, Art and Politics in the Shadow 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:08.440 of Music, about the life and work of German composer 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:13.240 Richard Wagner. Alex Ross has been the music critic at 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:16.720 The New Yorker since nine and at The New York 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:21.320 Times before that. While his beat is classical music, he 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.840 writes on a wide ranging number of subjects, from opera 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:29.280 to avant garde, Kurt Cobain to Bob Dylan, all alongside 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:34.640 essays on history, art, film and literature. He's a MacArthur 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:39.200 Genius Grant recipient, cited by the Foundation for his ability 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.679 to offer quote new ways of thinking about the music 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:46.280 of the past and its place in our future unquote, 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:50.240 with his deep knowledge of music history. I wanted to 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:54.080 know how Alex Ross saw popular music fitting into the 0:01:54.120 --> 0:02:00.360 pantheon of culture against past illustrious genres. Well, I think 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:04.480 there is kind of a natural life cycle with genres 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:08.760 as they unfold over time that eventually their their past 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:12.600 can begin to overshadow their present. You know, if you 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:14.960 if you look at the history of jazz, you know, 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:19.720 and the emergence of this jazz classicism in recent decades, 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:23.079 where you know, kids go to music schools and and 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.840 and study jazz and sort of learn how to play 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:30.720 Ellington the same way generations of conservatory students have have 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:34.720 learned Beethoven and Brahms, and so there's that kind of 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:39.120 classical mentality, which yeah, I think can sort of overcome 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:43.840 any art form. And it's tricky, you know, because I 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:48.320 think that the fires of invention are alive in every 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:51.480 genre all the time, and they remain alive in quote 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:54.240 unquote classical music as well. And so the kind of 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:56.799 seduction of the past, for me as a critic and 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.200 also just as a listener, is something to be you know, 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:02.840 it's inescapable, and I love all the music of the past, 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:04.800 but for me it's also something to be resisted, you know, 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:07.680 because you you sort of have to pay attention to 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:10.359 what's going on now, and you know there is in 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:15.359 every genre sort of always also that completely new kind 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:17.720 of feelings. So it's kind of I mean, a lot 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.320 of has to do with well, what's getting marketed, you know, 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:23.120 what's getting marketed as kind of new music now in 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:26.240 pop music, and I think a lot of that is 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:30.760 just kind of market driven and not necessarily paying attention 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.680 to where the real originality is. And so you know, 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:37.360 if something is just being sort of shoved down your 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:42.480 throats so kind of relentlessly, people will, Yeah, people will 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:44.280 tend to kind of go back to the past because 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.440 they have a sort of freedom. This is kind of 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:49.400 wonderful freedom for like, I don't know if someone who's 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:52.560 like fourteen years old now like choosing to become obsessed 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:56.160 by by the Beatles, you know, And I think there's 0:03:56.200 --> 0:03:58.480 a joy in that, you know, in just in kind 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:00.920 of taking ownership of the pa asked. And I think 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:03.320 you can also like open you up to sort of 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.080 new ideas in the present, Like once sort of engage 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:08.680 with something that just seems from a totally different world, 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:11.960 almost irrelevant to your own when it comes alive and 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:14.440 just feel so urgent, then I think that just sort 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:16.800 of changes your perspective on the present and opens you 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.640 up to new possibilities. So so there's there's a real 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:23.880 power also in and just disappearing into the past and 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:25.960 kind of re emerging on the other side, and in 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:28.240 real safety and security too, you know. I mean, I 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:32.000 I found like I would look at popular music today 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:35.880 and I neither listen to nor collect anything today. Nothing. 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.960 I mean that the artists whose contemporary recording as I 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.920 buy more regularly is Winton Marsalis. I mean I listened 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.760 to classical music. Pretty much of my listening is classical music, 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:49.719 or five percent, five percent of it might be jazz. 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:53.200 The other ten percent is Beetles Stone Zeppelin, who from 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:56.440 my pots smoking south Shore Long Island youth, you know, 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.640 I mean that which these were are? I mean, whose 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:01.839 neck exten all that kind of stuff. But another thing 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:04.080 I thought about reading that Dylan article you wrote a 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.760 while back, and I think about artists of their day, 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:11.599 and certainly Dylan is by and large of his day 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:16.480 and thoughtful. And I'm wondering if back then you wanted 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:21.080 people to help you negotiate that new frontier we were 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:24.800 in of learning the truth about the American government and 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:29.839 our political process, and people did that, and they devoured 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:33.279 a lot of thought provoking and political content in music 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:35.440 and in films and stuff forth, and now we're in 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:37.840 a place where people have a fatigue from that and 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:39.680 they're like, I don't want to talk about that. I 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:42.440 want love songs. It's almost like your audience is saying, 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:45.479 I need my art art my artistic menu, my artistic 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.320 reality to be easy and simple. Do you feel that 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.120 way that's how the audience used it. I don't know. 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:53.560 I mean, I think you're right in that you're just 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:56.520 in the marketplace. You know, the sixties and seventies were 0:05:56.560 --> 0:06:00.279 just a really remarkably open moment in terms of themercial 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:04.960 musical marketplace. A lot of voices came in who were 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:11.400 not being kind of just unexpected voices, unexpected faces, being 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:14.800 sort of allowed that that space to to speak to 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:16.920 a really broad public. You know, if you just look 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:21.040 at how Dylan, how his career developed at at Colombia, 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:23.719 he put out a couple of records and they went nowhere, 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:26.840 and and they just sort of waited around and sort 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:29.320 of kind of they just let him go on making 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.400 records even though he was getting very little attraction. And 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:35.720 then suddenly he became Bob Dylan. Suddenly these this extraordinary 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.279 phenomenon began. But there was a patience there to sort 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.200 of sign up an unusual artist and and sort of 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:46.200 let them develop. And I think that that kind of 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:50.560 patience is much less common, you know, the idea that 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:53.120 you would sign up an artist, give them some money 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:55.200 and and sort of see what they come up with, 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:57.680 you know, I mean now, and an artist gets signed today, 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:00.800 like you know, they're they're already They've often already become 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:04.760 super famous you know, on YouTube, on on TikTok. You know, 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.920 they already have the audience, and so just kind of 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:11.880 carving out the creative space. It's it's more uncommon. But yeah, 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:17.040 the seventies, it was just remarkable how many albums were 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:20.920 made where artists were just really exploring just in terms 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:23.760 of themes, not just political themes, but also just spend 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:26.520 the sounds, you know, the kind of sounds that that 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:31.080 got explored. And yeah, I think maybe going back to 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:34.760 the eighties, eighties and nineties, everything became you know, a 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.240 bit more kind of straight and narrow in terms of 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:40.480 what was going on. And then it is a celebrity, 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:43.440 the power of celebrity and just how we mean the 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:46.600 biggest problem I think in any arena is we just 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.000 pay so much attention to just such a small number 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.720 of artists, and so many other voices get crowded out. 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:56.640 And it's just this winner takes all economy at the 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:00.600 works in culture the way it works in in mainstream 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:03.720 kind of worlds, and frankly it works in classical music too. 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:06.200 You know, we have we have a few just celebrity 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:09.120 artists in classical music who cog up too much attention 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:11.840 and in factly the repertory you know, I mean, I 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:14.440 think we we tend to play you know, a certain 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:16.520 number of pieces over and over again. Yes, there are 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:20.440 fantastic pieces, but there's so much more, you know, to 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:23.360 be explored in the past and in the presence. People 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:26.160 don't want to take a chance. Yeah, yeah, just people 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:30.120 only buying tickets when they see just really familiar names, 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:32.040 you know, on the on the program. So it's something 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:34.760 to be pushed back against in class musical world, you know, 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:37.520 as well as the kind of mainstream arena. It's just 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:40.400 been kind of my proccupation, like from the start of 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.600 the critic is just kind of all right, so you know, 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:46.240 you know this like trying something new, try to break 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:51.560 composer or sort of try kind of Alexander Zemlinsky, you know, 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:53.880 instead of Maller. You know, they're just there are other 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.000 options out there, and it's just this, It's what I 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.800 get really excited about, you know, because I grew up 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:03.400 and and I just first I devoured you know, Mozart, 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.400 by Demon and Broms and divor Jack, you know, and 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:08.880 then I started discovering more and more and just the 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:13.360 ongoing excitement as always finding new music as well as 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:16.800 of course kind of interesting new ways to perform the 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:19.400 familiar music. But that's just kind of what I try 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:22.600 to communicate on my writing is just try something new. Well. 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:25.719 The thing about Dylan is that I'm always reminded of 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.320 that line that people had about Olivier in my business. 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:32.080 They said, if Olivier came around today, he'd be on 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:35.960 a soap opera. They said they weren't quite sure that 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.520 that really rich flavor of hisn't that rich quality that 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:43.640 that that heightened sense of of the polished actor would 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:46.800 have a place, Or you'd be the villain in Game 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:49.360 of Thrones or something like that. When I look at Dylan, 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:51.439 I think of him being of his time, and if 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:53.760 he came around now, you know, where would he because 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.400 there's a period of Dylan and not a lot of albums, 0:09:56.480 --> 0:09:58.720 but a couple of them that I just crave as music. 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:01.679 You know, blood on the track because I crave desire, 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:03.600 I crave I mean, there's cuts on that thing that 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:05.520 I just can listen to again and again and again, 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.400 and I have the highest amount of appreciation for those. 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:10.200 And then there's a lot of it which is to me, 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:13.360 it's just Dylan sounding like Dylan. When I discovered Dylan, 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:15.080 and it was late, you know, because I had this 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.719 strange development in terms of my taste where it was 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.320 all classical, correct, all classical, and just all kind of 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:24.840 eighteenth nineteenth century classical. I mean, I was just barely 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:26.520 in the twentieth century. I listened to a little bit 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:28.520 of mod or a little bit of sibilious. You know. 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:30.679 That was as crazy as I got as a teenager. 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:33.120 And then, you know, past the age of eighteen, I 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.520 really started moving into the twentieth century in classical music, 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:42.600 discovering modernism and then finally starting to listen to first 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.680 jazz and then rock. But it still it took me 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:48.160 a few years until I got around to Dylan, you know, 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:50.800 because I just sort of dismissed him as this something 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:54.439 from a different generation, of no interest. And then I 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:58.720 was in Berlin in summer, never forget this, staying at 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:01.480 a friend's apartment, and he had a few albums c 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:03.360 d s, and I was just sort of looking for 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:06.360 stuff to listen to um while I was working, and 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:09.600 put on Highway sixty when we visited, and almost immediately 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.000 became obsessed by it. You know it once, listen to 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:14.560 it again. I listened to it, like, you know, ten 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:16.959 more times that day, and after a couple of days, 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:19.640 I started to memorize the lyrics, and you know it 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:22.640 become obsessed. But when I started sort of looking at 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.720 Dylan's career, it is the kind of career that you 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:29.360 find in classgow music. He's always himself, but he goes 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:34.160 through phases, he sort of matures, He takes unusual turns, 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:38.000 He kind of scandalizes his audience at a certain point. 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.040 You know, this kind of sort of plugging in, the 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:44.440 kind of going electric moments disturbs his audience, the same 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:48.240 way you know, Scherenberg and Stevinsky disturbed their audiences, you know, 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:50.880 or late Beethoven for that matter. And the sort of 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:53.439 these sort of ups and downs in terms of reputation. 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:56.239 But at the same time, he's he's always kind of developing, 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:59.520 he's always sort of growing as an artist, and and 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.280 that is unusual. I think in the pop music arena, 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:07.280 it's so hard to sustain. You know. It's not that 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.920 people lack talent, I think just the marketplace. It's it's 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:13.679 just so difficult to sort of keep your place in 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:17.239 the marketplace and the sort of business in the industry 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:19.600 while also sort of continuing to develop because people want 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:21.200 you to keep doing the same thing over and over again, 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:24.000 you know. And and the power of Dylan was to 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:26.240 refuse to do the same thing over and over again, 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:29.480 to go in new directions and to keep his place, 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:32.760 and that just doesn't happen very often. I think there's 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:35.800 just an incredible willpower they're not to give in and 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:39.480 to sort of continue going in his own direction. But yeah, 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.320 I just think we're lucky to be living at the 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:46.840 time that this man is alive. You know, he's completely 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:51.760 extraordinary talent um and just kind of will Like thousands, 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:53.720 for thousands of years, people will still be talking about 0:12:53.960 --> 0:13:01.720 Bob Dylan. The New Yorker critic Alex Ross, If you 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:06.040 like conversations with insightful journalists, check out my interview with 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:11.160 Alex Ross's colleague New Yorker editor David Remnick. The magazine 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:13.000 is not the magazine if it doesn't have a sense 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:17.200 of humor. You're not in business to depress the hell 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:20.840 out of the reader. Unremittingly, it's like a band having 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.760 a set list. If you do everything, it's all sixteenth 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:27.640 notes from mentioning. So you got a divito? Or will 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:30.520 you sound like the Ramones? Although I've heard of worse things. 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:36.000 So you want some variation in tone, invoice, and that's 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:40.280 your responsibility, you feel, I feel all of it's my responsibility. 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:44.920 Hear more of my conversation with David Remnick in our 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:49.240 archives that Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:51.880 I talked to Alex Ross about one of the most 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:55.840 important composers in the world, Ricard Wagner, and the dark 0:13:55.920 --> 0:14:08.120 specter of his anti Semitic views. I'm Alec Baldwin and 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:11.600 you were listening to Here's the Thing. Alex Ross has 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:15.200 been a music critic for three decades. I wanted to 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:18.600 know how his line of work has evolved as our 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:23.320 access to media has changed, the world has definitely changed, 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:25.560 you know. I mean when I started out in the 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:28.360 early nineties first writing for the New York Times is 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:31.880 their most junior, very junior critic. There were just so 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.520 many more of us, you know. I remember the world 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:40.240 premiere of John Corleano's The Ghosts of Versailles the Meto, 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:42.680 I mean I think they were they were seventy or 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:46.240 eighty music critics from around the world, you know, attending 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.760 that that performance. You know, I just had so many 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:52.040 colleagues from different papers that I would see, you know 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:55.840 at concerts, a latent Kerner from the Village Voice and 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.160 Kyle Gann from the Village Voice, and people from the 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.000 Post and the Daily News, and you know that someone 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:03.080 was still writing a Terry teach Out was still writing 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:06.200 back class music for a Time magazine. You know. So 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:07.800 there were just a lot of us, you know, and 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.480 now very often when to go to concerts, like I'm 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:12.880 the only critic there, or it's just kind of one other, 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:16.800 one other colleague, and that diminishes the power of criticism, 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.760 I think, because I think the sort of critics have 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.160 power and usefulness as a pack, you know, because no 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.800 one wants like a single voice laying down the law 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:30.280 in terms of what's good and what's not. But what 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:33.160 you want is the conversation, the debate. You know, you 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.720 want Pauli and k L and Andrew Sarah's yelling at 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:39.440 each other, you know, and for the reader, you kind 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:43.320 of triangulate your idea of what's actually going on from 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:46.720 reading different critics and and you know, I usually agree 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:49.240 with this person on such and such a thing, And 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:52.360 so if as the field kind of empties out, we're 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:55.760 losing our sort of ability to to really have an impact. 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:57.880 But still, you know, we're still here, and and there's 0:15:57.880 --> 0:15:59.560 still a bunch of us here, and I think really 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:02.920 critics still have a very big role to play. For me, 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.800 it's never been about delivering a judgments. You know, it 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:09.280 was a good or bad thumbs up, thumbs down, That's 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:12.120 not what it's about. You know, my opinion kind of 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.200 needs to be somewhere in the review, but it's not paramount. 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:18.080 The first thing to do is just sort of convey 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.520 the texture of of what happened, something that happened. You're 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:25.080 a journalist, an event has taken place in musical form 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:27.800 and you're reporting on it, but to give it context, 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:30.880 to show well how did this concert compare to sort 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:34.280 of a bunch of other sort of beet symphony performances 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.080 of the past, you know, this new composer, where did 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:39.960 they come from? How do they depart from sort of 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:42.720 the given styles of the day, And that I think 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:45.280 is really useful to the reader, just giving the sense 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:48.440 of context and just starting a conversation. You know, let's 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.320 just let's think about this music and talk about it. 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:53.520 And in classical music, I think there's so many people 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:55.920 who are experienced. They go to concerts all the time, 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:59.160 they're very knowledgeable, but they don't they're kind of reluctant 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:01.920 to say anything, you know, they're not sure sort of 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:04.960 how to articulate, you know, what they've experienced. And so 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:06.840 for me, I just always feel as I'm just kind 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:11.160 of throwing a phrase out there to begin the conversation 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:13.840 and to filter you know, I think there's just we're 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:16.640 just being assaulted by so much information and so many 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:19.800 just kind of possibilities, and so I'm just here sort 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:22.960 of filtering out as best I can and seizing on 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:25.879 a few things and saying, you know, try this. And 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:28.800 I think that's that's a very important role. You know, 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:30.600 you can get that in other ways, you can read 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:33.119 the Amazon reviews and and sort of have you know, 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:35.160 there are other people out there filtering. But I think 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:38.720 kind of I've been doing this long enough that, you know, 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.320 like to have experience. I have a kind of track record, 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:44.000 and people kind of know what to expect a little 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:46.080 bit when when they read our reviews, whether whether they 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:48.160 agree with me or not, they kind of know where 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:50.720 I'm coming from. And I think that's that is something 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.080 that you can trust. So I hope we'll still be 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:55.600 able to keep doing this, you know, for for a 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:59.680 while longer. But you know, I feel very lucky to 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:02.919 be where I am at the New Yorker and editors 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:06.120 who really give me freedom to explore different areas. Many 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:08.400 years ago, I was doing a film and I went 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:13.359 off on location and just devoured Scott Berg's biography of Lindburg. 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:16.320 I read the book in like three nights. Obviously, there 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:19.720 were some things about Lindbergh that he discovered that he 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:24.560 was very disturbed by his his isolationism and his uh 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:28.160 anti Semitism or what have you. And ironically, the same 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:31.600 thing relates to your book about Wagner. Was for people 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:36.760 who don't know was Wagner known to be white supremacist 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:40.359 anti Semitic. Was that common knowledge in his day or beyond? 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:43.000 Or do people just suspect that for certain because of 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:45.920 the company he kept. Oh no, it was very vocal. 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:49.040 It was. It was in prints from eighteen fifty on. 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:53.600 He wrote an essay in eighteen fifty Jewish Nous in Music. 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:56.760 It was actually first published anonymously, but it became known 0:18:56.840 --> 0:18:59.240 that he was the author, and then almost twenty years 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:01.920 later he reap published that essay under his own name 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:04.800 eighteen sixty nine, and he was becoming just one of 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:07.840 the most famous composers in the world. And he threw 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:13.000 his reputation behind this repellent document and did not deviate 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:15.440 from that, you know, from until the end of his life. 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:20.520 What was he suggesting? He had the idea that you 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:25.399 know that, of course anti Semitism had had existed, you know, 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:29.680 for centuries, for for millennia. Wagner and they sort of 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:33.280 had this religious basis. But Wagner was moving towards a 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.320 more racial kind of idea. You know, it's sort of 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:39.760 beyond the idea that that Jews could convert and and 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:45.920 therefore solve whatever problem was deemed to exist with them. 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:48.399 And Wagner was sort of moving towards this idea that well, 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:50.760 there's a problem here that can't be solved because just 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.280 you know, Jews are are inherently different from other people. 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:56.840 And his thesis and that essay was that you could 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:00.239 tell if Jewish people writing music, you could tell there 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.359 was something off, there's something inauthentic, something we kind of 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:07.239 seeped through. They can never master this language. Now, when 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.360 you when you write a book, let's use the Wagner 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:14.280 as an example. I would imagine that the process begins 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:18.240 with just a mountain of reading. You're just doing nothing 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:20.880 but reading in the beginning, and I was wondering whether 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:23.040 are things that were disqualifying or the books you were 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.240 going to write, or the biographies you were gonna write. 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:27.720 And you started to get into it when you go 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:30.480 maybe not, I don't want to write about this guy's 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.120 life and this woman's life. Did you ever have that happen? Yeah, 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:36.000 I mean Wagner does not. Yet Vagner does test your 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:40.800 your There are moments you know when sort of sort 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:43.080 of towards the end of the process, I really I 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:45.240 got to the stage I was talking about Nazi Germany, 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.639 and it is. It is horrifying, you know, to watch 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:55.639 a film like The Eternal Jew, this absolutely disgusting propaganda 0:20:55.680 --> 0:21:00.280 film that the Goubbles made demonizing the Jews, and Wagner 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:03.440 is quoted right right there at the beginning of the 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:06.600 film as an authority, you know. And this was literally 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:10.159 a film that was designed to make people comfortable with 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:14.720 the idea of murdering Jews on mass was designed to 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.200 sort of reduce Jews to a level of just sort 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:22.400 of vermin, you know, literally, people, is this this entity 0:21:22.440 --> 0:21:24.720 that needed to be exterminated. So that was the function 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:27.160 of the film, And there was Wagner being cited as 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:29.600 an authority at the beginning of the film, as a 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:32.959 as a great German cultural figure who would apparently approve 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:36.119 of this undertaking, you know, horrifying, And you know you 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:39.680 stop and think, well, you know, have I just gone 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:43.119 sort of completely taken wrong turn here? But then you know, 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:46.520 there are so many other aspects of of Wagner that 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.199 that contradict that Nazi image. Like I said, they're very 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:53.840 appealing aspects to his personality. You know, he was a 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:57.720 clownish kind of human being who just ran around talking 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:00.720 all the time, jumping around was was just sort of 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:05.159 overflowing with with ideas and energies. Wagner was not this 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:09.159 kind of cold, dogmatic figure. And I think when you 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:12.720 look at the fact that Tator Herzel, the great Zionist 0:22:12.920 --> 0:22:16.560 loved Wagner's music, Artist Schnitzler W. E. B. Du Bois, 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:21.760 the great Black civil rights Titanic intellectual figure, absolutely loved 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:25.680 actions music and and so these figures found something in him. 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:29.440 They not only enjoyed it, they found it inspiring to 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:32.720 their their personal projects. And so there's that energy and 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:37.360 Wagner which can really be turned in in any direction, 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:39.080 and it can be turned toward evil, it can also 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:41.800 be turned towards good. It can be just completely reinvented 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:47.679 and and transplanted to two different kind of uh world entirely. Um, 0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:49.800