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Christmas Season Begins on a Dark and Violent Note

The Christmas season, so we are told, officially begins on Black Friday (now it seems Dark Thursday or Thanksgiving), the day ones inner savage is unleashed as herds of shoppers take to the stores like Bluto (depicted by John Belushi in the motion picture ``Animal House’’) takes to a college dining hall to howl ``Food Fight!’’

After viewing YouTube videos over the weekend of shoppers involved in scrapes with the law either through shootings, stabbings, fist fights, and other acts of gang warfare for something as trivial as a flat screen TV-I couldn’t help but think we might be missing the point of this festive holiday season-a time when we should be exhibiting signs of peace on earth and good will toward others.

 

Consequently, I thought I would highlight the origins of some Christmas traditions we used to treasure before Black Friday came rumbling into to town.

Here are some of my favorites:

• The original Saint Nicholas was a wealthy 4th century bishop of Myria in Asia Minor (now Demre, Turkey), known for his kindness and works of charity.

 

• St Francis of Assisi, Italy constructed the first Nativity scene in a cave near Greccio, Italy on Christmas Eve, 1223.

 

• In Scotland, The Kirk (The Church of Scotland, or the Presbyterian Church influenced by the Scottish Reformation) beginning in 1560 produced the First Book of Discipline (later adopted by an Act of Parliament) abolishing Feast Days, including Christmas, which  did not become an official holiday in Scotland until 1958.

 

• In 1647, under Oliver Cromwell, an Act of Parliament prohibited the observance of Christmas.  The holiday was restored by Charles II after the Restoration in 1660.

 

• The Puritan government in Massachusetts made it illegal to celebrate Christmas between 1659 and 1681.

 

• By the end of the 16th century, indoor Christmas trees were a common fixture in most German homes; by 1610, thin strips of silver, later to be known as tinsel, began to be used as decoration.

 

• J.S. Bach’s Christmas oratorio premiered in Leipzig, Germany in 1734.

 

• The world premiere of Silent Night was performed in the Nikolaus-Kirche (Church of St. Nicholas) in Oberndorf, Austria on Christmas Eve, 1818.

 

• Sir Henry Cole, an English civil servant and founding director of what is now the London’s Victoria & Albert Museum approached a painter in 1843 to devise a series of holiday cards which would read: ``A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.’’ By 1860, Christmas cards became wildly fashionable in England.

 

• In 1847, Placide Cappeau, a wine merchant, amateur poet, and mayor of the village of Roquemaure in Rhone Valley wrote the lyrics to what would eventually be known as ``O Holy Night’’ a French carol, titled: ``Cantique de Noёl’’ or literally, ``Song of Christmas’’; the carol was set to music by Adolphe Adam and first performed at the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass of 1847 in Roquemaure with Madame Laurey performing the solo.

 

• Jingle Bells was first published by Oliver Ditson and Company in Boston in 1857 under the title: ``One Horse Open Sleigh’’, but was later reissued as ``Jingle Bells’’ or ``One Horse Open Sleigh’’ in 1859. Today, the song is simply known as ``Jingle Bells’’ written by James Lord Pierpont, a native of Meford, Massachusetts.

 

• ``O Little Town of Bethlehem’’ a sacred carol written by the Rev. Phillips Brooks, pastor of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Philadelphia , was first performed by children of the Holy Trinity Sunday School on December 27, 1868.

 

• Edward H. Sears, pastor of First Church Unitarian in Wayland, Massachusetts  wrote the lyrics to America’s first prominent carol ``It Came upon the Midnight Clear’’ , which was originally a five verse poem first published in the Christian Register on December 29, 1849. The poem was set to music by Richard Storrs Willis who later became a music critic for the New York Tribune.

 

• George Frideric Handel’s ``Messiah’’, a composition so firmly fixed to the Christmas season, was actually first presented as an Easter oratorio at Dublin’s New Music Hall in Fishamble Street on April 13, 1742.

 

• In Ethiopia, Christmas Day is celebrated on January 7th on a day called ``Ganna.’’ Worshipers are given a candle and walk around the tree three times before standing for the remainder of the three-hour service.

 

• Filipinos celebrate the Christmas season with nine pre-dawn masses known as Misa de Gallo or ``mass of the rooster.'' It begins on December 16 and ends on the midnight mass of December 24.

 

• The first image of the St Nicholas sliding down a chimney appeared in the New York Mirror on January 2, 1841.

• In 1836, Alabama became the first state to declare Christmas a legal holiday.

 

• The first department store to feature a Santa Claus was in Philadelphia on December 24, 1841 at the J.W. Parkinson's store. The next Santa Claus wouldn't be spotted again until 1890, this time accompanied with his own white beard at the Boston Store in Brockton, Mass.

 

• In a poem published in Harper’s Weekly on December 26, 1857, ``The Wonders of Santa Claus’’, the poem makes one of the first references to elves making toys.

 

• Thomas Nast, a German immigrant, age 22, published his first depiction of Santa Claus speaking to Union troops in the January 3, 1863 edition of Harper’s Weekly.

 

• Based largely from the German and French models, the first English gift book or literary annual, ``The Forget me Not: A Christmas and New Years Present for 1823. was published by R. Ackermann, a publisher of illustrated books.

 

• The first illustration of a Christmas tree was in an American book, published in 1836,  ``The Stranger's Gift. A Christmas and New Year's Present’’ written by a German immigrant, Herman Bokum.

 

• The London Illustrated News in 1848, published a woodcut print of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children gathered around a Christmas tree.

 

• Charles Dickens first wrote about Christmas in ``Sketches by Boz’’ (1836). His last chapter, ``A Christmas Dinner’’ is undoubtedly a foreshadowing of Cratchits’ Christmas Dinner in a Christmas Carol.

 

• On June 26, 1870, Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the United States.

 

• In 1883, Sears, Roebuck & Company began offering the first artificial Christmas trees – 33 limbs for 50 cents and 55 limbs for $1.00.

 

• In 1897, an 8 year-old girl, Virginia O'Hanlon, who lived at 115 West Ninety-Fifth Street in New York City, wrote a letter to her local newspaper, The New York Sun, asking if there really was a Santa Claus after some of her friends told her there is no such thing as Santa Claus. The editor, Francis B. Church, responded to her letter, which was published on September 21, 1897, with the heading: ``Yes Virginia There is a Santa Claus.''

 

• Great Britain’s King George V delivered his first Christmas broadcast by the BBC radio in 1932 with the message reaching an estimated 20 million people; the first televised broadcast of a Christmas message was delivered by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957.

 

• John Adams was the first U.S. president to celebrate Christmas in the White House; while Calvin Coolidge was the first president to light the National Community Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in Washington D.C. on Christmas Eve, 1923.

 

• The First Radio City Music Hall Christmas Show was launched in 1933.

 

• In 1939, Chicago retailer Montgomery Ward introduced Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

 

• The radio broadcast of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel was the first opera to be broadcast by radio from New York City’s Metropolitan Opera on Christmas Day in 1931.

 

• On December 7th, 1898 Canada issued the world's first Christmas stamp, showing a map of the world in 1569 by the Flemish cartographer Gerhardus Mercator inscribed with ``Xmas 1898.''

 

• Eggnog originated with the British from posset, a hot drink consisting of eggs and milk with nog (strong ale) or wine added.

 

• The motion picture ``A Christmas Carol’’ premiered as a silent film in 1914 starring Charles Rock as Scrooge; the first sound version was made in the United States (1938) starring British actor Reginald Owen as Scrooge.

 

• The televised broadcast of the Midnight Mass from St Peter’s Basilica in Rome has been an annual tradition since 1948.

 

• In January, 2003, President Hosni Mubarak issued a presidential decree authorizing the celebration of Christmas as a national holiday, making it the first time that the Egyptian government recognized a Christian holy day.

 

-Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

December 1, 2013

 

Shattering the Myths of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

American classical radio station WQXR  in New York City has dedicated November as Mozart Month in which they’re rolling out, among other goodies, 20 essential Mozart recordings, Mozart quizzes, common myths about Wolfgang and a host of other musical delights.

In keeping with WQXR’s theme, I checked in with some musical historians and scholars to see if they might clarify some common misconceptions concerning Mozart; among the most hotly debated centers on how Mozart died-could he have been murdered or poisoned as many have speculated?  What about the notion that he was just in the end, a buffoon or idiot savant who never really grew up, such as his uncontrollable bursts of laughter as depicted in the 1984 Academy Award winning motion picture ``Amadeus.’’ Others come to blows over whether his works merely flowed out of his head, saving him from the demanding task of constructing sketches and notations, much like his contemporaries suffered through.

When discussing Mozart and his creative mystique, it’s hard to think of him as a mere mortal, but rather as a genius endowed with superhuman powers, as if his music miraculously fell from the heavens to fete the world with his divinely inspired masterpieces.

It’s clearly a mountainous task to separate fact from fiction, mortal from immortal, myth from reality, when Mozart’s father, Leopold, described this child prodigy as ``the miracle which God let be born in Salzburg."

As Maynard Solomon described in his epic biography of this prolific and influential composer, Mozart was the most famous musical prodigy of history, who was considered from the outset, the quintessential, perfect child. ``He was received, feted, and honored by the royal families of Europe’’, Solomon writes, ``by the King and Queen of France, the Empress of Austria and her son the Emperor Joseph, the King and Queen of England, and Pope Clement himself. He and his family were showered with money and expensive gifts. He was kissed by empresses and petted by Marie Antoinette.’’

Now that’s a memorable childhood.

While there are unquestionably a number of myths surrounding Mozart, these are the hard facts. He was born on January 27, 1756 at 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, Austria, (a territory of the Holy Roman Empire), baptized with the name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus to Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart. He had a sister, Maria Anna (Nannerl), and the two of them were among the only surviving children out of the seven that Anna Maria bore. Mozart learned the harpsichord from the age of three or four, and began to compose under his father's strict and demanding supervision when he was five; by the age of six had already acquired a reputation throughout Europe as a musical prodigy; in 1764 at the age of eight, he performed before King Louis XV of France; and by age 12, composed his first opera.

Mozart's most prolific years came not in Salzburg, but in Vienna, from age 25 to his death at 35, where he taught piano (mostly to daughters of the rich), composed and performed his greatest piano concertos, married Constanze Weber; and beginning in 1782 with the Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio), turned out a steady stream of masterpieces in practically every form and genre.

During his years in Vienna, Mozart also met and became fast friends with Franz Joseph Haydn, the Austrian composer who had profound influence on him. Other seminal influences shaping Mozart’s works during his Vienna years were born when he acquainted himself with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel.

Taken together, Mozart composed no fewer than 20 operas, 18 Masses, 27 piano concertos, 23 string quartets, 35 sonatas for piano and violin, and 41 symphonies, including  The Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, G minor K550, and C major K551 (Jupiter') symphonies. His operas include Idomeneo (1780), Entfuhrung aus dem Serail/The Abduction from the Seraglio(1782), Le Nozze di Figaro/The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), Cosi fan tutte/Thus Do All Women (1790), and Die Zauberflote/The Magic Flute (1791).

Mozart died at five minutes to 1 a.m. on Monday December 5, 1791, two months before his 36th birthday. The cause of death reported by a Berlin newspaper in 1791, a week after his death, was thought to be due to poisioning; more credible and recent findings attribute his death to a strep infection.

Now that the facts have been presented; it’s time to address common myths and misperceptions about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

 

Q. What is the biggest myth or misconception about Mozart?

 

A. ``What I find absolutely inadequate is the idea that he [Mozart] was a kind of idiot-savant. On the contrary, one of the most extraordinarily impressive things about him is how he could understand the corners of human feelings, even at a rather young age. He must have been hypersensitive and therefore emotionally very vulnerable: certainly very aware of everything that was going on around him.’’

``The biggest myth about Mozart, is that his music is pure, joyous, and "easy". It is intense, dense, complex and has many layers. Joy and clarity is certainly only one of them, and often deceptive. To focus the attention only on that layer make us miss his very human and quite mysterious complexity.''

-Federico Cortese, Music Director of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras and Senior Lecturer on Music and Director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra in the Department of Music at Harvard University

 

Q. Mozart completed most of works by dint of sheer memory?

 

A. ``A generation ago scholars thought Mozart composed everything in his head and then notated it on paper after the creative process was over.  He was most certainly capable of this, as works such as the Linz symphony (composed in four days) attest.  But his process of notating in layers, revealed by the different ink tints in his manuscripts, and his surviving sketches (some 90% of which were destroyed by his widow), have revealed a more nuanced sense of his creative process.’’

``The fragments—a larger number than by any other major composer (1 in 5 over his lifetime, 1 in 3 during the mature Vienna years)—are extraordinary in what they reveal about the creative process—both how he conceived his works and how he wrote them down.  Above all, the fragments frequently contain some of his most interesting, and most experimental ideas, and not infrequently one wonders why he finished some of his works instead of those left in draft stage (and by that I don’t mean the Requiem or other works begun in 1791, where clearly it is a question of death staying his hand).’’

-Robert Levin, pianist, musicologist, composer, and Mozart scholar. Levin has completed and reconstructed a number of classical works, including unfinished compositions by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach.

 

Q. What are we to make of the suggestion that around July, 1791, Mozart was visited by a tall, sickly-looking stranger clad in gray who presented an anonymous letter commissioning him to compose a Requiem as quickly as he could, no matter the price?

 

A. ``The REQUIEM was commissioned in the summer of 1791, from Count Walsegg-Stuppach (1763-1827), a fellow freemason and acquaintance.  To be written in memory of his wife who died in February of that year.    However, the count did send an anonymous messenger to negotiate with Mozart.''

 ``And there is little evidence to support the suggestion that Walsegg, like some have argued, intended to claim the Requiem as his own.''

-Andrew Clark, Director of Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer on Music at Harvard University

***

Robert Greenberg, American composer, pianist, musicologist, and currently historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances, puts to rest a great many myths surrounding Mozart in his series of lectures (Great Lectures) through The Teaching Co., entitled, ``Mozart—His Life and Music.’’

Based on the compelling material Greenberg presented through his lectures, I posed the following questions.

Q. While living, was Mozart as popular among the masses as say John Lennon or a Mick Jagger, and what about the suggestion his music was the product of divine inspiration?

 

Dr. Greenberg: A. ``Mozart's music was NOT considered populist, easy listening, new age sweet-stuff in his own lifetime. On the contrary, music that we turn to today for its lyricism and for the solace it offers from our overly complex world was considered by many of Mozart's contemporaries to be too long, to “academic", and unnecessarily complex. Mozart had talent, yes, by the bucketful, but oh my, he did work hard. And let's not make it easy on ourselves by thinking of Mozart as a freak, an eternal child, an idiot touched by the hand of God. Unfair and untrue.''

 

Q. How much validity is there in the theory, advanced by some writers, that Mozart was murdered by his rival composer, Antonio Salieri?

 

Greenberg. A. ``And on what do these writers (and many others) base THEIR premise? In 1823, at the age of 73, Antonio Salieri slashed his own throat.  He survived this little "shaving accident" and, until his death two years later, claimed that he had poisoned Mozart.  Aha!! So the Italians got him after all, snotty little Austrian upstart! Nipped him in his prime, they did! Arrivaderci, Amadeo!

 ``Well, not really.  There's virtually no reliable evidence that points to Salieri, or the involvement of any Italian "cabal" in Mozart's death.  And Salieri was stark raving looners when he made his "confession"; he might as well have professed to being Blanche du Bois.’’

 

Q. Was Mozart poisoned, perhaps by the masons in revenge for his disclosure of masionic practices and secrets in the Magic Flute, a two-act opera by Mozart which premiered in 1791 at the Schikander Theater in Vienna?

Greenberg. A. ``Mozart was not poisoned.  Not one of the doctors who attended him in his final days or the doctors that examined him after his death ONCE MENTIONED IN THEIR REPORTS EVEN THE POSSIBILITY THAT HE HAD BEEN POISONED.  And if indeed Mozart HAD been poisoned by aqua toffana, as was suggested, he would have suffered from a severe burning pain in the mouth, throat and abdomen, scalding tears, muscle spasms, a blue line on the gums, among other things.  Mozart experienced none of these symptoms.''

 

Q. So, what did kill Mozart? 

Greenberg. A. ``According to his death certificate, Mozart died of "heated millary fever" which was 18^th century for "haven't a clue.’’  A contemporary newspaper claimed that he died of "dropsy of the heart," a swelling of the body due to water retention as a result of kidney failure. So, kidney failure has also been blamed for Mozart's death, a failure that would have been brought on by a streptococcal infection, viral hepatitis, or some other viral illness.  According to Dr. Peter J. Davies in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (1983), Mozart died from Henoch-Schonlein syndrome, ANOTHER secondary illness brought on by a viral infection.’’

 

Q. Were Mozart’s remains ever recovered?

Greenberg. A. ``Although it has commonly been assumed that Mozart's remains were lost to posterity - like most people of his time and station he was buried in a communal grave - a skull reputed to be Mozart's was unearthed ten years after his death by the gravedigger who had interred him.  The skull ended up in Salzburg's Mozart Museum, where it is today, its authenticity still in dispute. Anyway, in the early 1990's, the skull was analyzed by a team of French anthropologists from the University of Provence.  Wear on the teeth confirmed that the skull had belonged to a man between 25 and 40 years of age.  And when the researchers superimposed photographs of the skull on portraits of Mozart, they found that the skull's features - in particular the cheek bones and the egg-shaped forehead - matched perfectly.''

 

-Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

November 5, 2013

A Poynter Reminder of the St. Petersburg Times Legacy

Tom C. Harris (in 1923) as Copy Boy in the St Pete Times Newsroom. He claims to be wearing knickers in this photo. From Copy Boy, he rose to City Editor and by the age of 25, was named Managing Editor.  He retired in 1968, after 45 years with the Times.

St Pete Times Newsroom, 1974. On the left is Gene Patterson, former editor, chairman and chief executive officer, standing next to Times chairman, Nelson Poynter.  Poynter's most lasting legacy was to establish the Modern Media Institute which was renamed the Poynter Institute after his death in 1978. He also founded and served as chairman of Congressional Quarterly . Mr. Patterson, a Pulitzer Prize recipient for editorial writing and a dogged champion for civil rights and journalistic excellence died last month at the age of 89.

St Pete Times Newsroom in the early 1950's.  The entire staff squeezed into the space where the Features Department now resides.

NOTE: Photos, courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times

Former Newsday staffer Justin Davidson adjusting to the new rhythms at New York Magazine

The way cultural news and entertainment reporting took such a severe beating during the ``Great Downsize’’ within the newspaper industry of this past historic recession, you might be wondering whatever became of all those wonderful classical music writers?

Justin Davidson, for one, former classical music writer for Newsday, and a 2002 Pulitzer recipient for distinguished criticism, I’m happy to report, is doing splendidly at New York Magazine [See article archive  ] where he is the architecture critic in addition to reporting on classical music.

Davidson, who landed at Newsday in 1996, left in 2007 when a golden opportunity presented itself.

The timing couldn’t have been more on cue. Just as he was exiting Newsday, the newspaper industry was collapsing like a string of vacant homes during a Category 5 hurricane.

``Newsday was disintegrating around me’’, Davidson told me of the final months at the daily newspaper. ``Yes, there was less space for the arts, but what was more discouraging was that there was less space for everything else.’’ `` The last year I was there’’ [at Newsday], Davidson said, ``they closed all their foreign bureaus, closed the Washington Bureau, closed the national desk, halved the sports staff, and closed down practically all of New York City coverage. This was a newspaper that was basically surrendering all its ambition beyond just the very narrow purview of covering Long Island; and I don’t think they were doing that so well either.’’

Alongside the dismantling of departments, and the severe staff cuts, the spirit of the Newsday staff, Davidson asserts, was becoming shattered beyond repair.  ``People were either taking buyouts, or they were being shuttled out to jobs they weren’t happy with.’’ Davidson said the worst was yet to come and he was able to execute an exit strategy, when opportunity came knocking, before the downsizing reached a level of crisis. ``I could see that I needed to move on.’’

Despite those heartbreaking memories of his last days, witnessing such a massive breakup of a newspaper he loved so much, Davidson nevertheless is enormously grateful to Newsday and its management team in a number of ways. ``In its best years’’, Davidson explained, ``they really allowed me to do a wide range of things that were not in my beat.``It allowed me to pursue other interests; one of those was in architecture. I did it gradually and then over a period of several years, built it up to a regular beat. ‘’ Most importantly, Davidson went on to explain, ``it allowed me to develop myself as a writer in a completely different field.’’

The way Newsday allowed him to pursue other interests while continuing to write on classical music, turned out to be a godsend, making him a great deal more marketable when he continued his journalism career with New York Magazine, where he’s now able to straddle two beats: architecture and classical music, where space restrictions, under normal circumstances, doesn’t require a full-time writer in each of those areas. So, when many of his contemporaries are finding it difficult to make a living, being able to write with such authority in two different specialized areas is a great boon to any publication.

When you think of classical music writers, just imagine it wasn’t that long ago, as recently as 25 years ago in fact; that the four major New York City dailies: The New York Times, The N.Y. Daily News, the New York Post and Newsday housed full-time classical music critics.

When asked about the lack of news space devoted to classical music in many major U.S. dailies, Davidson thinks more troubling than the lack of newspaper coverage has been the lack of specialty magazines devoted the classical music, such as Opus, High Fidelity, Stereo Review, Classical, Ovation, and Keynote, to name some of the more prominent magazines that have ceased publishing.

One of the most destructive undercurrents of the ``Great Recession’’ has been the financial chaos that has impacted orchestras nationwide. According to news reports, at least five U.S. symphonies sought court protection resulting from the 2008 economic collapse, including the Philadelphia Orchestra.

On a broader scale, Davidson argues classical music has always been in crisis and probably it will always be that way.

``Orchestras are the most rigid kind of business you can imagine,’’ he explained.  As Davidson sees it, all the costs of maintaining orchestras are fixed, making them vulnerable to fluctuation and improvising on the fly. In particular, Davidson emphasizes, ``there is no wiggle room into cutting costs, other than cutting what you actually do. When the economy gets better, their financial situation will get better.’’

In addition to the recession impacting the financial health of orchestras, Davidson believes there is a ``systemic problem.’’

The elaborate infrastructure the industry has developed makes it all the more difficult to support. ``The most successful businesses are the ones that are most flexible’’ Davidson stresses. Going from part-time to full-time musicians, going to longer seasons, combined with the closed shops (employees required to join a union) have made it difficult to sustain.  Orchestras are pretty much one niche operations, according to Davidson’s reasoning, in a much more multi-cultural entertainment world, which makes it exceedingly more difficult for the industry to adapt.

Even the radio market for classical music has suffered. According to Robert Conrad, president and co-founder of WCLV, a classical music radio station in Cleveland, Ohio, because of the re-writing of the Telecommunications Law in 1996, many commercial radio stations discovered they were worth more dead than alive; their stations, in other words, were worth more than previously thought, such as WNIB in Chicago (sold for $162,000); and WTMI in Miami (sold for $100,000.)

As a consequence, the number of commercial classical music stations has dropped from 90 or more in the early 1990's to nine or 10 today. Mr. Conrad additionally attributes the decline of classical music stations to the crippling recession which affected the advertising business with classical music stations, like all other forms of media, taking a severe hit. ``The result'', Conrad said, ``was that at least four major stations were sold to public broadcasters who wanted preserved the format and who turned them into non-commercial operations: WQXR New York; WCRB Boston; KING Seattle; and KDFC San Francisco. WCLV, on the other hand, was donated to Ideastream, a non-profit parent organization of WCPN public radio and WVIZ public television, which has owned WCLV since May 2011.

Though fortunate enough to be employed by a weekly magazine like New York Magazine, which has been able to sustain a high level of excellence through the worst of times, Davidson sees nothing but trouble spots for the newspaper industry from coast-to-coast.

Asked about the gloomy pessimism emblematic in so many newsrooms with continued fears of more layoffs and more rumors of newspapers planning to scale back on the number of days they will publish print editions, Davidson says that he is ``discouraged about the discouragement because it feeds on itself. ‘’ ‘’What happens’’ Davidson says, `` is some of the more optimistic people get out and look for other things and those that are left feel like they are conducting a kind of mop up operation.’’

Like so many others struggling to make sense of the financial hardships afflicting the newspaper industry, Davidson is torn with conflicting views on this massive shift from print to online. Davidson explains that he subscribes to The New York Times print edition and has it at his breakfast table, even though by the time the newspaper arrives, he’s already read most of what he wants to read.  ``It‘s hard to argue for the continued relevance of print, Davidson reasoned, ``when I’m not even reading it, even though it’s sitting right in front of me.’’

One benefit of a daily newspaper at his doorstep, however, is that his 15 year-old son is making a daily habit of reading the Times, which gives Davidson a strong sense of encouragement that a teenager, who rarely reads news online (too busy doing other things online), is making a print newspaper part of his daily ritual.

But to be blunt; Davidson is not optimistic about any given newspaper. ``Clearly,’’ Davidson says, ``this shakeout within the industry is not going to be a two or a five year thing, it will take years.’’

The former Newsday staffer’s heart especially bleeds for the older employees at many newspapers who don’t have as many options as the younger generation. ``The more you have invested in the way things used to be, the more vulnerable you are’’ Davidson believes.

Batting down criticisms that the high quality of writing has suffered at many U.S. dailies, Davidson insists that ``the issue is not the quality of writing, the issue is to find a business model that works, which doesn’t seem like an insoluble problem.’’

And how has Davidson adjusted from going to the frantic pace of meeting a daily deadline to a more leisurely tempo of a weekly magazine?

``My instincts were a little bit off at first,’’ Davidson chuckled. ``It took me a little while to get used to it. There aren’t many people that make that transition.’’  On the upside, though, Davidson has found that not many staffers at New York Magazine have gone through the long haul of the daily journalism experience that he has, from print to online, meeting fast approaching deadlines, and being able to turn something around quickly.  ``I find that incredibly useful’’, Davidson says.

``What’s harder now is you have all the time in the world to write and re-write.’’

A native of Rome, Italy, Davidson was a stringer at The Associated Press’s Rome bureau, before coming to the United States to attend Harvard University to study classical guitar, later launching his career as a composer.

After spending a year on a music fellowship in Paris, he moved to New York to attend Columbia University in order to pursue a doctoral degree in music composition.

A number of his compositions were subsequently performed in the U.S., Italy, China and Eastern Europe. Davidson was additionally the recipient of a number grants and awards from the American Academy/Institute of Arts and Letters, the Mellon Foundation, Meet the Composer, Columbia University and the Foundtion des Etats-Unis in Paris.

Occasionally, Davidson devotes some time to teaching. He's taught writing at the School of Visual Arts, Syracuse University and NEAs annual Arts Journalism Institutes.

In addition to his contributions on classical music and architecture for New York Magazine, Davidson freelances for a number of publications, including, The New Yorker, Salon, Slate, Los Angeles Times, Opera News, Icon, ART and Travel & Leisure, among others.

He has appeared on WNYC’s “Soundcheck” and “Brian Lehrer Show” and contributes a monthly music column to the subscription-based Web site, E-music.

Davidson lives in New York City with his wife, art historian Ariella Budick, Newsday’s former Arts Critic, who is now writing for the Financial Times as a New York-based art critic. They have a son, Milo.

-Bill Lucey
WPLucey@gmail.com
November 28, 2012

 

 

Tim Page, Former Washington Post Music Critic, Opened a New Chapter of His Life at USC

Tim Page and his son John

***

Tim Page, former cultural reporter and music critic for The New York Times from 1982 through 1987 and chief classical music critic for The Washington Post from 1995 through 2008, tells me his plate is as full as it has ever been since accepting a buyout.

Initially, Page was invited to help found a program in Arts Journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California as a visiting professor. As it turned out, he liked this new gig so much that he decided to accept a company buyout from The Washington Post and devote his energies to teaching full-time. The Pulitzer winning music critic tells me he is fortunate enough to have been named a tenured full professor last year, and teaches in two departments -- music and journalism.

In addition to his new academic responsibilities, Page has published two books since leaving the Post, ``Parallel Play,’’ a memoir, about growing up in Storrs, Connecticut, his strained relationship with his father, his admission of suffering with panic attacks and his lifelong battle with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, that wasn’t diagnosed until he was 45 years old. The memoir is actually an extension of an article he wrote for The New Yorker in 2007 under the same title.

To mark the 120th birth of Carnegie Hall in 2011, Page also wrote (in collaboration with the staff of Carnegie Hall) ``Carnegie Hall Treasures'',  a sumptuously illustrated hardback, packed with heaps of memorabilia about the historic concert venue in Midtown Manhattan.

Other books by this distinguished music critic and professor, include: "The Glenn Gould Reader"  (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), "Music From The Road: Views and Reviews 1978 - 1992," an anthology of previously published work (Oxford University Press, 1992), "The Unknown Sigrid Undset" (Steerforth, 2001), "Tim Page on Music" (Amadeus Press, 2002), and "What's God Got To Do With It?: Robert Ingersoll on Free Thought, Honest Talk and the Separation of Church and State" (Steerforth Press, 2005).

Page was awarded a Pulitzer for Distinguished Criticism in 1997 for his ``lucid and illuminating music criticism’’ as described by the Pulitzer committee. In addition to working at The New York Times and Washington Post, he was chief music critic at Newsday from 1987 through 1995.

Before his journalism career as a music critic took  root, Page formed a rock band, ``Dover Beach’’ and played cocktail piano at the "Wellington Room," a restaurant in Storrs, Conn in 1973 and 1974.

Settling in nicely to his new tenured position at USC, Page now lives in South Los Angeles.

For those who might want to shoot Tim an email, his contact information can be found on his USC home page.

Bill Lucey
WPLucey@gmail.com
June 29, 2012