The Morning Report
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Monday, July 31, 2006 | I was happy to see an article on classical/art/choose-an-adjective music on the voiceofsandiego.org website. However, I think that Cathy Robbins’s fault-finding with local music criticism was an unwelcome detour. What are words like “uneven,” “workmanlike,” and “maddeningly pure” supposed to mean? When Jonathan Saville reviewed concerts for the Reader, one of the things I really enjoyed was that he always gave enough concrete details that you knew what he meant by his adjectives. Ms. Robbins doesn’t do that, and she doesn’t cite her own qualifications, so the end result comes across as pretentious and belittling. And what’s inherently wrong with a music reviewer bringing the score to a concert?
If Ms. Robbins wants to write music reviews for voiceofsandiego.org, I would happily read them. But she doesn’t need to cut down other publications’ reviewers in order to do that.