NY Times reviews a book the author never wrote
NewsJeremy Eichler’s new book, ‘Time’s Echo’, looks at common factors in Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw, Britten’s War Requiem and Shostakovich’s Babi Yar symphony. All are connected by experiences of war and genocide.
The NY Times sent it for review to musicologist Kira Thurman (pictured), author of “Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.”
Dr Thurman goes off-topic in the opening paragraph of her review and pretty much stays that way:
It’s worth considering whether these four canonical men serve as the best funnels through which to tell this particular story of the past. There is no room given here for the Fasia Jansens or Ruth Schonthals of the world.
In recent years, a debate has caught fire among historians about whether or how to bring colonialism and the Holocaust together in one frame. We might listen for classical music’s place within this fraught discussion in the work of the brilliant Nigerian choirmaster Fela Sowande, who composed orchestral pieces for the British Ministry of Information during World War II.
While Strauss and Britten were both tucked away in the countryside in 1944, Sowande conducted his “African Suite,” a blend of West African melodies and European instrumentations, for BBC radio in a bombed-out London. The suite takes on a new register when we hear it as an artifact that amplifies the complicated position of a colonized subject tasked with serving the war effort on behalf of the empire.
Hello? What has this to do with Eichler’s book? Clearly the NY Times could not be caught reviewing a book about ‘four canonical men’. So it reviewed the book that Eichler never wrote.
The review counts seventeen paragraphs. The passage you complain about, three. The other fourteen are a glowing, detailed account of the book. Pretending that the three paragraphs that irritate you are representative for the review, is simply disingenuous.
These are the opening and closing pars of the review, the only ones most readers ever absorb.
Not quite. The actual last paragraph reads:
Despite these absences, the rich, historical details that Eichler chose to weave together in his book make for a moving read. “Time’s Echo” offers the same kind of immersive experience that he encourages us to explore in music. His beautiful meditation on the dark shadows that compelled, propelled and ultimately haunted classical music in Europe during and after World War II inspires our ears.
The readers fault.Apparently you too did absorb only the opening and the closing pars( i assume you mean parts) .Do you also want your books jugded by people who read only the first and the last page? Do you also review Cds by only listening to the first and last track? People have unlearnt how to read,listen,and absorb.
par is a standard abbreviation for paragraph.
Exactly so. I’m glad I read the review before reading this “review” of the review. That said, Dr. Thurman made her point about the choice of subjects well enough, the first time around.
100% agreed, Clem.
But I can’t blame anyone for being irritated at the irritating paragraphs either. Her tangent makes no sense.
Do I need to spell it for you?
Hint, it starts with R and its an ISM. Also, its a cherished, long-atanding tradition in anything to do with classical music.
I agree. I think the article above is unfair.
What the reviewer fails to recognise is that Strauss, Schoenberg, Britten and Shostakovich are all well known composers that were all influential in shaping 20th Century classical music in different ways Throwing in obscure composers with African backgrounds who wrote music during WWII might make for a good book but not this one.
Would we be griping about the review as much if she had complained that Penderecki and his Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima were ignored by Eichler? I’m sure Dr. Thurman understands perfectly well that all books are limited in their perspective; she chose to mention one omission of particular significance to her; in my opinion, she need not have repeated that point; yet what she writes about the actual book is pertinent and complimentary.
Such is the world of academic publishing where reviewers and editors abound who feel the need to insinuate their own agendas on and into the work of others.
Absolutely agree. This inclusion is agenda-driven. And if she wants to discuss that agenda, I agree with Genius Repairman above that the Nigerian choirmaster’s story might be a very interesting starting point. But it is unsound academically to insert it into THIS review, which covers, seemingly very well, an important topic.
When I was a student — before all this woke malarkey and victim culture and agenda-driven stuff took hold — if I had handed this in as an essay I would have been excoriated for going off topic to accommodate my personal interests rather than simply tackling the subject at hand.
But such professors as I was lucky enough to have appear to have been driven from the academy, or else bullied into submission. Hence this sort of self-indulgent use of the public presses, making sure that no work by anyone, however valuable, is not seen in the context determined by The Agenda.
“a debate has caught fire among historians about whether or how to bring colonialism and the Holocaust together in one frame.”
Did countries invaded by Germany join a “Nazi Commonwealth” in 1945?
If so, I must have missed it.
The debate concerns amongst other things German colonialism and the way its brutality paved the way for the Holocaust.
Exactly!
I gail to see the achievement. Even ChatGPT can do that.
The closing paragraph:
Despite these absences, the rich, historical details that Eichler chose to weave together in his book make for a moving read. “Time’s Echo” offers the same kind of immersive experience that he encourages us to explore in music. His beautiful meditation on the dark shadows that compelled, propelled and ultimately haunted classical music in Europe during and after World War II inspires our ears.”
Seems often there is a bias toward the NYT.
If you are the Metropolitan Opera, the BBC, Gustavo Dudamel, Plácido Domingo, Yuja Wang, or a host of others, anything that you do will be reported with a negative spin. I swear Dudamel could save an infant’s life and somebody here would say that he didn’t do it as well as Leonard Bernstein would have.
The Times chooses its reviewers, presumably for a reason. She delivered what they wanted when they chose her. Don’t blame the reviewer.
How many people actually buy and read books like this? The authors are just trying to rewrite history to suit their own agendas. I’d rather spend my time going to a concert than struggling through this kind of sophistry.
Yet again imposing politics and PC over art. Do they even care if the music is any good?
Physically battering musicians: no problem, still calling all the praises of the perpetrator, belittles and movks the victim and calls it “slapped singer”.
Very classy.
But a review is not to the liking of the ivory tower and it HAPPENS to be written by an AA??
The 4 horsemen of the apocalypsis have arrived…
For a change, I have absolutely nothing to say about all this meaningless nonsense! Who really cares???
You’ve inspired me to go to BookFinder and order the book, which seems to discuss four pieces I really like, two of which I’ve been closely involved with as a conductor [Britten and Strauss]. However, reviewing the book which–in the reviewer’s opinion-the author SHOULD have written is a time-honored tactic, encountered both in specialist periodicals and in more widely circulated publications.
The review in the NYT is trite, padded with empty verbiage, and doesn’t show evidence of engagement with the book or much reading of it either.
Very common that people draw to their own agendas no matter what they should be doing. Kira Thurman’s own reflexions about Fela Sowande are, for her (right pronoum?- if not, I am sorry…) more important than any book she was assigned to review.
Then she should write that book and risk review herself. It’s amusing (or is it sad?) that reviewers always seem to know more and better than the authors they review, yet we almost never (giving the benefit of the doubt here by saying almost) seem to get a full accounting of their more informed and insightful version of the topic. Such armchair quarterbacking in the guise of “peer” review can really be quite petty and loathsome with all their “but what about”s and “you forgot to mention”s. Typical, really. In the end the review’s conclusions weren’t all that bad. But did anybody else catch that last, passive aggressive dig? “Despite these absences, the rich, historical details that Eichler CHOSE to weave together in his book make for a moving read. [emphasis added]
The book’s focus is not war and genocide in general. Its focus is not colonialism. Its full title, as this reviewer knew but ignored when wielding her polemical megaphone in the review lead, is, “Time’s Echo–The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance.” It is specifically about how classical music as examined through four major composers responded to the cataclysm of WWII and the Holocaust. Three of the four were specially addressing the Holocaust in the major works examined in the book.
It might be worth a note in a book with this focus that Ruth Schonthal suffered dislocation and loss in WWII and the Nazi terror, and avoided addressing the Holocaust in her work aside from a very late chamber piece. But Fasia Jansen was not a classical composer, and was not representative of classical music’s response to WWII and the Holocaust. And unlike the composers discussed in the book, Fela Sowande’s art was not discernibly focused on the WWII cataclysm or the Holocaust.
Leading the review by ignoring the book’s actual subject and portraying it as a lack that these people were not focused on, or lacking for not “bringing colonialism and the Holocaust together in one frame,” is an exercise in reaching and shoehorning that makes the reviewer look, er, intellectually limited, not to mention ideologically blinkered.
Are musicians really so bad at basic comprehension? The title of the book, Time’s Echo, justifies drawing attention to other ‘echoes’ of musicians less well known than the four the book focuses on. The reviewer suggests two distinct categories: women who survived nazism; and a composer from a British colony who was employed in the war propaganda effort. Fela Sowande may seem ‘obscure’ to some, or irrelevant; but remember that one motive for Nazi Germany’s war was ‘Lebensraum’ combined with resentment at being losers in the race for African colonies. A biography of Sowande would be illuminating. If Germany had colonized Nigeria, what sort of success in his career could he have expected if he were living in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s?
As others have pointed out, the bulk of the review is devoted to the book itself (not the book that was not written), and is very positive.
Re-check your facts. The book’s title is, ““Time’s Echo–The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance.” The reviewer’s agenda didn’t belong in a review of a book with this focus. The reviewer came off as intellectually limited as well as intellectually dishonest. And the editors who are supposed to be giving this stuff a good going-over just can’t stop embarrassing the NYT
Should you review only reviews you have actually read? Or was „expert Black woman has considered opinion“ just too much of a provocation to handle 14 paragraphs?