Rossini’s sins
newcriterion.com
Rossini’s sins
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Rossini’s sins
#2I'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?
Re: Rossini’s sins
#3I'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?
[deleted]
Re: Rossini’s sins
#4I'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?
Probably just written for self-fellating film auteurs..
Re: Rossini’s sins
#5I'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?
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?
Re: Rossini’s sins
#6I'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?
I think it’s mostly for effect, but you’d be hard-pressed to find people in the classical music sphere who don’t understand some French. Oh also Google Translate exists?
Re: Rossini’s sins
#7I'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?
I do think it’s funny, though, that when HN has literally no analysis to offer, either out of laziness or a fundamental inability to understand something that doesn’t end in .js, all they do is criticize some minuscule, tangential fact about the article’s structure or layout or how “the scrolling is fucked up on my phone”.
Re: Rossini’s sins
#8As 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.
Re: Rossini’s sins
#9I'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?
> 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?
You may also keep reading and not pretend that you understand what it says, like I did.
The Péchés de Vieillesse really are quite delightful (first recording I found) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4xqLvT-Esk
Re: Rossini’s sins
#10As 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…
> "In an age of left-liberalism / “progressivism” and relativism, it is classically liberal and aspires to universal truths."
Are you attempting to imply that engaging in your favoured brand of politics is a prerequisite in the quest for universal truth?