# Pseudo-Intellectual Drivel About Opera



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Could someone explain to me what this woman is blathering about?

Here are a couple lines:



> *Manages to "reduce" vocal materiality to components that can be parsed in relation to histories of music, of race, and of identity*





> *The inverse relation between the Xtreme modes of embodiment called for by Wagner's stage directions-which have only been ratcheted up by recent directorial visions-and the airy transcendence that audiences increasingly seem to desire (especially) from sopranos calls for a theory of sublimated materiality, or materialized sublimation, that has yet to be imagined*


The whole short piece is here:

http://voxtap.org/?p=324#comment-87

Yes I know the basic answer is that the woman in question is an academic where the prevailing rule is always to express oneself in language mainly comprehensible only to other academics and to never let 1000 words do if one can manage 10,000... [sigh]

But seriously what does any of the above have to do with the love of opera or the psychology of aesthetics? Not that I myself am terribly interested in her topic to begin with, but it is a shame that so many scholars continue to write such abominable prose. There is no good, sustainable reason that academic writing can't be readable; it can and should be, and that so little is merely shows how disastrously far serious study has fallen.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Xavier said:


> Could someone explain to me what this woman is blathering about?
> 
> The whole short piece is here:
> 
> ...


As far as I can make out, there's something in there about the different ways the soprano is looked at: as instrument, as person, and as unique artist, and how they interact and conflict, but as with most of these articles, any points made are half-hearted and tentative, simply because _that is exactly the point_. All of the pseudo-speak and pretension is intended to reflect "the messy reality" of things.



Xavier said:


> But seriously what does any of the above have to do with the love of opera or the psychology of aesthetics? Not that I myself am terribly interested in her topic to begin with, but it is a shame that so many scholars continue to write such abominable prose. There is no good, sustainable reason that academic writing can't be readable; it can and should be, and that so little is merely shows how disastrously far serious study has fallen.


Not much.

Unfortunately, the people who do the best at aping this style end up with careers in academia...


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Reading that was kind of on a par with the semi-secret code spoken by wine ponces when they yak on about a glass of plonk having 'serious biscuity attack' and 'hints of wild berries shot through with vanilla'. I guess statements like that are only truly appreciated or understood by the kind of person who writes or debates in a similar manner.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

academics trying to make up new (useless) theories so they can secure their tenure...


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Ugh... and yet she panders to the generation-Text with her hipster spelling of extreme.

I went to a symposium on Puccini at the equally academic University of Chicago last year with high hopes but came away thinking these academic studies are so much snake oil. It wasn't quite as bad, but one speaker's point - something about how Puccini used relative tempo fluctuation for characterization - seemed partly to be stating the obvious and partly to ignore the musical logistics of staging a complex scene like Act II of La Boheme with a dozen things going on at once versus a straightforward aria scene. 

I got the impression opera was a ripe field for these psuedo intelluctuals since there hasn't been a lot of research and it's easy to snow certain funders to get grants. Her research was funded in part by the city of Lucca (the mayor himself was in attendance), mostly, I think, because they were flattered that their native son finally merited some academic interest. I'm not sure they understood or realized the inanity of her thesis.


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

As usual, when extracts are quoted out of context, they make little or no sense. I agree that there is a lot of unnecessary jargon and fluff in your quotes, but I did understand it better when I read the whole article (which was quite interesting, actually).


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Cavaradossi said:


> Ugh... and yet she panders to the generation-Text with her hipster spelling of extreme.
> 
> I went to a symposium on Puccini at the equally academic University of Chicago last year with high hopes but came away thinking these academic studies are so much snake oil. It wasn't quite as bad, but one speaker's point - something about how Puccini used relative tempo fluctuation for characterization - seemed partly to be stating the obvious and partly to ignore the musical logistics of staging a complex scene like Act II of La Boheme with a dozen things going on at once versus a straightforward aria scene.
> 
> I got the impression opera was a ripe field for these psuedo intelluctuals since there hasn't been a lot of research and it's easy to snow certain funders to get grants. Her research was funded in part by the city of Lucca (the mayor himself was in attendance), mostly, I think, because they were flattered that their native son finally merited some academic interest. I'm not sure they understood or realized the inanity of her thesis.


Here is my new motto (from an old friend):

*Lord preserve us all from the explications and attentions of academics on opera and opera stagings!*


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

^ it would have been funny if she held forth on regie vs. traditional stagings in that self conscious style :lol:


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

mamascarlatti said:


> As usual, when extracts are quoted out of context, they make little or no sense. I agree that there is a lot of unnecessary jargon and fluff in your quotes, but I did understand it better when I read the whole article (which was quite interesting, actually).


From the article:



> As a rule, though, it is almost taboo in the opera world to talk about imitation. In handbooks and vocal tutors, the emphasis falls heavily on how to discover and liberate your own true voice. As one recent popular text begins, "I have spent my professional career teaching singers how to undress (vocally, emotionally, and psychologically)" (W. Stephen Smith, The Naked Voice, Oxford 2007, 3). Yet singers can recite the lineage of their teachers, can trace aspects of their own training back to notable figures of (at least) the early twentieth century. And it's well known that *cadanzas* and ornaments are passed down over many decades in an oral tradition, from teacher to student. These transactions are a key part of the lore of the operatic voice, but history elides them almost completely. Nor do we think much about how singers are taught to verbalize what they do with their voices, or how that vocabulary has changed over time.


Sorry but she sounds completely ignorant that the much more practical field of vocal pedagogy even exists. Not surprising as her point of reference is a critical review of Amy Winehouse. I'm no expert by any means, but I have had a front row seat to my partner's experiences in high end vocal training the past several years. She doesn't even seem to understand the difference between teachers (who teach the technique of vocal production) and vocal coaches who work with singers on the stylistic elements the author seems to mistake for the substance of the voice.

But perhaps most damning is that this supposed Professor of Musicology misspelled _cadenza_.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Cavaradossi said:


> But perhaps most damning is that this supposed Professor of Musicology misspelled _cadenza_.


haha, I saw that too, but I didn't want to be too mean 

that piece is silly fluff.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

If people have any actual insight obfuscating it with needless wordiness would be the last thing they do. If they don't - well, there's your motive for writing like this.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Take no notice,that's what I say. That also includes one or two of our honourable members ,although not as bad as the psychobabble here presented.
One wonders how one has got through without the help of such stuff.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Great writing like great teaching means expressing oneself in words people can understand. As one great speaker once said, Any full can baffle people in an attempt to look learned. I wonder whether that academic actually knew herself what she meant!


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## Glissando (Nov 25, 2011)

One of the academics she cites, Carolyn Abbate, recently co-wrote a book called _A History of Opera_. This book is actually quite good for the most part, but there is a similar sort of discourse going on throughout. Some of it gets so rarefied as to be ridiculous. For example, in regard to Walther's prize song in _Die Meistersinger_, the authors claim that the song is not only ineffective, but that it is ineffective because it's an instance where a composer tries to draw attention to an aria/song that is _supposed_ to be awesome. They allege that this sort of failure is a thread that runs through operas throughout history.

Here's the quote in full: "Wagner's failure with the Prize Song points once again to a fundamental operatic truth: when operas must, for plot reasons, invest any particular song with overwhelming power and transfigured loveliness, the actual music is invariably insufficient to deliver on the debt."

Gimme a break.

I feel bad for the author of the blog post in question - in her bio it states that she has conducted research into the ways that Parisian society interacted when they would come to the opera and just talk all the time, with the music as background wall-paper.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

Glissando said:


> the ways that Parisian society interacted when they would come to the opera and just talk all the time, with the music as background wall-paper.


sounds similar to the atmosphere at contemporary pop concerts.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

deggial said:


> sounds similar to the atmosphere at contemporary pop concerts.


plus ça change....


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## Barelytenor (Nov 19, 2011)

The woman is seriously, er, messed up from being named Mary Ann Smart. 

Best Regards, :tiphat:

George


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## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

There was a good article in this week's The New Yorker that reminded me of this old post:

"Academic writing is knotty and strange, remote and insular, technical and specialized, forbidding and clannish. That's because academe has become that way, too..."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/02/why-is-academic-writing-so-academic.html

I'm not well acquainted with academic literature in any of the humanities fields but several people have told me recently that a good chunk of musicology articles on opera are dreadful these days.

By the way have you noticed that the piece I quoted in my OP is gone? She apparently chose to delete every trace of it.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

That New Yorker article has been discussed at length on teh interwebs with excellent results - it comes from a certain sort of bias and conveniently ignores the quantity of writing done by academics which is not for academics which can be pretty darn good. Academic writing for academics is frequently problematic as a result of some poor incentives and people love to point at funny examples and sneer at it - especially anything that brings in cultural or critical theory. Where such a simplistic position exists (ie academics are dreadful) it's usually time to think a bit more critically - there are usually more nuanced arguments going either way. I know some music academics - they're passionate and knowledgeable. Surprise, surprise!

You also come across as being seriously uncomfortable about academic women - is there a story you'd like to share? It might help you feel better.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Glissando said:


> One of the academics she cites, Carolyn Abbate, recently co-wrote a book called _A History of Opera_. This book is actually quite good for the most part, but there is a similar sort of discourse going on throughout. Some of it gets so rarefied as to be ridiculous. For example, in regard to Walther's prize song in _Die Meistersinger_, the authors claim that the song is not only ineffective, but that it is ineffective because it's an instance where a composer tries to draw attention to an aria/song that is _supposed_ to be awesome. They allege that this sort of failure is a thread that runs through operas throughout history.
> 
> Here's the quote in full: "Wagner's failure with the Prize Song points once again to a fundamental operatic truth: when operas must, for plot reasons, invest any particular song with overwhelming power and transfigured loveliness, the actual music is invariably insufficient to deliver on the debt."
> 
> Gimme a break.


Actually, the quotation about the Prize Song and the thesis the authors are stating is perfectly clear and well expressed. Your interpretation, however, seems confused. In this statement they are not stating that the song "is ineffective *because* it's an instance where a composer tries to draw attention to an aria/song that is _supposed_ to be awesome." They seem to be stating that there is a pattern of arias and songs with such aspirations falling short. My only question would be: Did the authors make a good case citing other examples? Well, did they?


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> They seem to be stating that there is a pattern of arias and songs with such aspirations falling short


but what point was in stating that other than to undermine the value of masterpieces as such?


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

dgee said:


> That New Yorker article has been discussed at length on teh interwebs with excellent results - it comes from a certain sort of bias and conveniently ignores the quantity of writing done by academics which is not for academics which can be pretty darn good. Academic writing for academics is frequently problematic as a result of some poor incentives and people love to point at funny examples and sneer at it - especially anything that brings in cultural or critical theory. Where such a simplistic position exists (ie academics are dreadful) it's usually time to think a bit more critically - there are usually more nuanced arguments going either way. I know some music academics - they're passionate and knowledgeable. Surprise, surprise!


I think that part of the tendency to declare academic appraisals of operas ridiculous/meaningless is that there is a history of snobbery on the part of academia. Of course that doesn't cover everybody, but there is a real contingent of critics who see it as their job not simply to ask questions and provide ideas about great works of art, but to assign value judgments to them. When I read a book on opera, I'm looking for one of several things: Information about a composer, group of composers, or the history of opera in general; an analysis of a composer's output as a whole, or of a single work from a musical or dramatic perspective; or history or study of ideas in and about operas, or new ideas in or about operas. I'm not looking for somebody to tell me why the fact that I just don't really care for Wagner's Ring Cycle makes me a troglodytic waste of ears; I'm not looking for abstruse arguments about irrelevant things, like how to pronounce Henry Purcell's last name; and I'm not looking a justification of academic study- in other words, a book written for the express purpose of demonstrating the superior intellect and taste of music scholars. The former group (the books I _am_ looking for) are by far the majority of opera books that I've come across. But the latter do exist, and they occupy a greater place in what I perceive as the makeup of opera-related musicology than I would like (of course I could have a skewed view of that, as I am a lay reader not an expert myself). And it is because of this latter group of writings, which are often nothing more than obscenely complex justifications of personal taste masquerading as intellectual and often even pseudo-scientific analyses, that many people, myself included, have a knee-jerk, defensive reaction to much of the musicological opera literature. In many cases it is unfair, and dissipates quickly.

As a disclaimer, I would add that my defensiveness is heightened by the fact that, before a few years ago, and even today in some quarters, it was a badge of honor to drag Puccini's name through the mud. If you look at Charles Osborne's biography and analysis of Puccini, for example, you find that he simply has no idea what to make of Puccini's music, and occasionally says things that are factually inaccurate or completely absurd (for example, he assumes, quite incorrectly, that Puccini's use of leitmotifs is simply a primitive imitation of Wagner's, and therefore considers Puccini's reminiscences to be nonsensical).

And finally, I find it problematic that the study of opera has been left primarily to musicologists. Music theory has no system with which to evaluate the dramatic effectiveness of a piece of music. (This is a digression, so do with it what you will) Opera is primarily drama, not pure music. Drama should not be confused with the libretto, the plot, the characters, or the effects of the music in the abstract; drama is the living artistic process that occurs withing the performers and the audience during an _actual performance of the opera_. What tools has musicology to analyze that? You can tell me as much as you want how Italian operas lack this or that sophisticated form or technique, or how Wagner's orchestrations are far superior to Verdi's. I would concede those points to an extent (Puccini's operas, for example, are for the most part organic, and have little in the way of musical form; there are exceptions, of course). But that's beside the point- that's only half the story. So without a solid foundation, rivers of ink have been spilled trying to shoehorn musicology into the world of drama, and with almost no success, in my opinion. As such, musicological treatises on opera are either half complete, covering only the musical side, or become dubious when musicologists cross the line and become either theatre critics or reductionist who deny the other half of opera.

These are many of my many more impressions, I hope at least one of them was relevant.


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