Lloyd Schwartz, response
The Boston Phoenix critic has sent a response to the criticism of his role at the Tanglewood Music Center.
Given that so much relevant information I willingly supplied to the Exhibitionist blog was inexplicaly absent from the public post, I'm not surprised that there has been so much confusion and controversy, although the level of personal hostility surprised even me. At least, let me try to set the record straight:
First of all, I was paid only a very small (make that VERY small) token honorarium to cover my time and expenses driving back and forth from Boston to Tanglewood and working with six young composers who are studying with the composer-in-residence at the Tanglewood Music Center (the separate educational branch of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) this summer. The composer-in-residence, whom I had never met before and never reviewed, assigned these students to each write a musical setting for one of my poems. The idea was to have these students working on--and with--a single living poet. Since I am both a poet and creative writing teacher and someone knowledgeable about music, it was fortuitous that I was the poet chosen. It was a very good fit. I would spend a total of six days working with the six composers, six student singers, and six student pianists, going over with them their short settings of my poems. In fact, I've already spent two extra days with them with no further remuneration because they were so talented and the project was so productive and moving. Unlike what many people have assumed after reading the Exhibitionist, these settings of my poems are not going to be played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; there is no recording contract; and there are no residuals. I was not paid for the use of my poems.
I've known about this appointment since January. It was not a secret. I have been completely forthright about it. I disclosed it publicly myself, in a blog I was invited to write by The Best American Poetry, who thought it would be particularly interesting for other poets to read about this experience. None of this would have been public knowledge if I hadn't mentioned it myself. As for my favoring the BSO, I wonder if anyone responding to the blog has bothered to read my reviews of the Boston Symphony Orchestra during the last few months, let alone compared them to what I've written about the BSO in the past 30 years? I've always been honest in my reviews and have always said, sometimes indiscreetly, what I think. Anyone who reads my reviews knows this. And I will continue to say what I think as long as I write.
I'm surprised that some people think that artists shouldn't write criticism. Hasn't some of the most valuable criticism in the history of criticism been by other artists, poets, musicians, who may or may not have something personal at stake? Of course I try to be objective, but is "absolute objectivity" really possible under any circumstances? I'm not putting myself in the same league as Berlioz, Debussy, Eugenio Montale, or Virgil Thomson, but I think I'm at least in the same category. One blogger, a respected critic himself, mentions that I'm likely to give better reviews to the BSO because I will surely hope for another opportunity to work for that organization. I wonder what that opportunity--given that only one has come up in the 30-plus years of my reviewing them--might possibly be?
By the way, to the blogger who reported that I submitted my own work for consideration for the Pulitzer Prize, that is categorically untrue (although anyone is allowed to submit his or her own work). My work was nominated , as is most journalistic work, by the editors of the newspaper I write for. I would like to receive (though I don't expect) an apology for this complete fabrication.
It's difficult to sum up all my reactions to the Exhibitionist blog. Can this be thorough or serious reporting when readers are deprived of facts I unhesitatingly supplied and are misled by those omissions? Still, I can't believe that there is anything wrong with anyone, let alone a teacher and artist who also happens to be a critic, taking part in a worthy educational enterprise such as this one, a modest effort to further the education of a handful of young classical musicians. It's a sad state of affairs that anyone thinks this service to a new generation of composers and musicians compromises my standing as a critic.
