
Rossini’s sins - tintinnabula
https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2017/11/rossinis-sins
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p15
As someone who didn’t know much about Rossini, this was both entertaining and
enriching.

==

New Criterion is in my view the best magazine around, so always love seeing it
on HN! Hilton Kramer, the late New York Times Critic, founded it to pursue a
Modernist, as opposed to Postmodernist, approach to criticism.

It is unabashedly highbrow. While certainly accessible to a cultured layman,
it is not dumbed down, and there is no pretense to accessibility or relevance
for the modish chattering classes (e.g. NYT, NYBooks, New Yorker). Thus the
articles can be intimidating. This is not snobbery but in an idealistic belief
in unifying power of high culture – a universal striving towards perfection,
accessible to anyone who makes the effort.

TNC’s contrarianism thus contributes to its small circulation of 6,000. In an
age of left-liberalism / “progressivism” and relativism, it is classically
liberal and aspires to universal truths. Many will thus despise what they view
as a Eurocentric, chauvinistic veneration of “dead white men,” as well as an
evil discriminatory belief in “high culture” – that some art is better than
the rest.

TNC’s polemic (elsewhere) can be tiresome – depending where you stand, either
inflammatory or preaching to the choir. But this sort of article – educating
us about someone we should know – is what makes it great. For those of us who
missed out on critical theory, “this is Good Art” is a lot more accessible
than today’s typical Pomo. And there is a certain satisfaction that Rossini,
who perhaps we knew only as a "name to conjure with," as well as his _Péchés,_
are a little less unfamiliar than when we started.

~~~
bambax
I almost subscribed but:

1/ they don't accept Paypal

2/ they insist on typing in a physical address even for electronic
subscriptions

Why do they make it hard to love them.

~~~
Bromskloss
What is the difference between an electronic subscription and simply reading
it on the web, as we seem to be able to do even as non-subscribers?

~~~
bambax
> _as we seem to be able to do even as non-subscribers_

This one article is available to non-subscribers, for some reason, and indeed
some others are too, but many aren't. This one about Dante for example isn't:

[https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2017/11/dantes-
curse](https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2017/11/dantes-curse)

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jstewartmobile
About what I expected for a piece on classical music.

Composer writes a batch of pleasant little ditties, critic spins that in to
page-after-page of breathless prose as though they were the second coming.

No 19th century salon piece is going to live up to that.

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saghm
I'm not familiar with this publication, so it might just be that I'm not the
target audience, but it throws me that there are a bunch of French phrases
used in the article without translations being provided. Is this intended to
just be for people who can read them, or am I supposed to just keep reading
and pretend that I understand what's being said?

~~~
jonstewart
This sort of thing is (forgive me) _de rigeur_ in cultural criticism. It's
possible to infer the rough meaning of many from context clues. The article
also settles down quickly, with subsequent usages of French or Italian being
titles of works.

Sometimes it's nice to be exposed to new things, n'est-ce pas?

