Andrew Porter (music critic)
Andrew Porter | |
---|---|
Born | 26 August 1928 Cape Town, South Africa |
Died | 3 April 2015(2015-04-03) (aged 86) London, United Kingdom |
Occupation | Music critic |
Andrew Brian Porter (26 August 1928 – 3 April 2015) was a British music critic, opera librettist, opera director, scholar, and organist.[1][2]
Biography
Born in Cape Town, South Africa,[3] Porter studied organ at University College, Oxford in the late 1940s. He then began writing music criticism for various London newspapers, including The Times and The Daily Telegraph. In 1953, he joined The Financial Times, where he served as the lead critic until 1972, where his successor was Ronald Crichton. Stanley Sadie, in the 2001 edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, wrote that Porter "built up a distinctive tradition of criticism, with longer notices than were customary in British daily papers, based on his elegant, spacious literary style and always informed by a knowledge of music history and the findings of textual scholarship as well as an exceptionally wide range of sympathies."[4]
In 1960, Porter became the editor of The Musical Times. From 1972 to 1973 he served a term as the music critic of The New Yorker. Returning to the magazine in 1974, he remained its music critic until he moved back to London in 1992. His writings for The New Yorker won respect from leading figures in the musical world. The composer and critic Virgil Thomson, in a 1974 commentary on the state of music criticism, stated, "Nobody reviewing in America has anything like Porter's command of [opera]. Nor has The New Yorker ever before had access through music to so distinguished a mind."[5] In particular, with operas that were unfamiliar to him, Porter exercised additional diligence in his preparation for his reviews. According to Opera News:
When reviewing an opera that was new to him, such as Bloch's Macbeth, he might attend three performances before he felt qualified to write about it; he frequently returned to productions after opening night to refine his viewpoint, and he reviewed virtually all music only after learning it from the score."[1]
In his latter years, Porter wrote for The Observer, Opera, and The Times Literary Supplement.[6]
Porter translated the libretti of 37 operas,[2] of which his English translations of Der Ring des Nibelungen and The Magic Flute have been widely performed. He also directed several operas for either fully staged or semi-staged performance.[2] He authored the librettos for John Eaton's The Tempest, after Shakespeare,[7] and Bright Sheng's The Song of Majnun, based on the ancient Persian story.[8]
As a scholar, Porter notably discovered excised portions of Verdi's Don Carlos in the library of the Paris Opera, which led to the restoration of the original version of the work.[3] Porter was a consultant for a 1996 production at the Théâtre du Châtelet that used portions of the music which he had found.[9]
In 2003, Porter was honored with the publication of a festschrift, Words on Music: Essays in Honor of Andrew Porter on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday.[10]
Porter died of pneumonia on 3 April 2015. His twin sister was his only surviving relation.[3] He continued attending performances, including one of Die Meistersinger, even while sick, and his final two reviews for Opera, of Gaetano Donizetti's Il furioso all'isola di San Domingo and I pazzi per progetto, went to press hours before his death.[6]
Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (July 2012) |
Books
- A Musical Season: A Critic from Abroad in America, Viking Press (1974), ISBN 0-670-49650-2
- The Ring of the Nibelung (translation), Norton (1976) ISBN 0-393-02192-0
- Music of Three Seasons, 1974–1977, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1978), ISBN 0-374-21646-0
- Music of Three More Seasons, 1977–1980, Knopf (1981), ISBN 0-394-51813-6
- Verdi's Macbeth: A Sourcebook (with David Rosen), Cambridge University Press (1984), ISBN 0-521-26520-7
- Musical Events: A Chronicle, 1980–1983, Summit Books (1987), ISBN 0-671-63538-7
- Musical Events: A Chronicle, 1983–1986, Summit Books (1989), ISBN 0-671-63539-5
References
- ^ a b William R. Braun (3 April 2015). "Andrew Porter, 86, Longtime New Yorker Critic Whose Prose and Musical Discoveries Changed Opera, Has Died". Opera News. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
- ^ a b c Opera: "Opera Magazine Editorial Board" (archived 9 May 2011 at Internet Archive), originally accessed 2 January 2011.
- ^ a b c Margalit Fox (31 March 2015). "Andrew Porter, New Yorker Classical Music Critic, Dies at 86". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
- ^ Stanley Sadie, "Porter, Andrew," Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 20, 184–85.
- ^ Virgil Thomson, "A Drenching of Music, But a Drought of Critics," New York Times, 27 October 1974
- ^ a b Alex Ross (4 April 2015). "Postscript: Andrew Porter (1928-2015)". The New Yorker. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
- ^ "John Eaton". musicsalesclassical.com. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
- ^ "Bright Sheng". musicsalesclassical.com. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
- ^ David Stevens (6 March 1996). "'Don Carlos,' Early and Late". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
- ^ David Rosen and Claire Brook, ed., Words on Music: Essays in Honor of Andrew Porter on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, Pendragon Press (2003), ISBN 1-57647-097-0
External links
- Interview with Andrew Porter, 24 March 1988
- Tom Huizenga, "Multifaceted Music Critic Andrew Porter Dies At 86". National Public Radio, "Deceptive Cadence" blog, 3 April 2015
- New York Times profile
Preceded by | Music Critic of The New Yorker 1972–1973, 1974–1992 | Succeeded by Paul Griffiths |
- v
- t
- e
- Michael Steinberg (1964–1976)
- Richard Dyer (1976–2006)
- Jeremy Eichler (since 2006)
- Campbell Clarke (1855?–1870)
- Joseph Bennett (1870–1906)
- Robin Legge (1906–1931)
- Herbert Hughes (1911–1932)
- Richard Capell (1933–1954)
- Martin Cooper (1954–1976)
- Peter Stadlen (1976–1985)
- Michael Kennedy (1986–2005)
- Geoffrey Norris (1995–2009)
- Ivan Hewett (since 2009)
- George Fremantle (1867–1895)
- Arthur Johnstone (1896–1904)
- Ernest Newman (1905–1906)
- Samuel Langford (1906–1927)
- Neville Cardus (1927–1940)
- Edward Greenfield (1977–1993)
- Tom Service (1999–2003)
- Andrew Clements (since 2003?)
- Isabel Morse Jones (1925–1947)
- Albert Goldberg (1947–1965)
- Martin Bernheimer (1965–1996)
- Mark Swed (since 1996)
- Robert A. Simon (1925–1948)
- Winthrop Sargeant (1949–1972)
- Andrew Porter (1972–1992)
- Paul Griffiths (1992–1996)
- Alex Ross (1996–present)
- William James Henderson (1887–1902)
- Richard Aldrich (1902–1923)
- Olin Downes (1924–1955)
- Howard Taubman (1955–1960)
- Harold C. Schonberg (1960–1980)
- Donal Henahan (1980–1991)
- Edward Rothstein (1991–1995)
- Bernard Holland (1995–2000)
- Anthony Tommasini (2000–2021)
- Zachary Woolfe (since 2022)
- Ernest Newman (1919)
- Percy Scholes (1920–1925)
- A. H. Fox Strangways (1925–1939)
- William Glock (1939–1945)
- Eric Blom (1949–1953)
- Peter Heyworth (1955–1987)
- Nicholas Kenyon (1986–1992)
- Andrew Porter (1992–1996)
- Anthony Holden (2000–2008)
- Fiona Maddocks (since 2008)
- James William Davison (1846–1879)
- Francis Hueffer (1879–1889)
- J A Fuller Maitland (1889–1911)
- H. C. Colles (1911–1943)
- A. H. Fox Strangways
- Frank Howes (1943–1960)
- William Mann (1960–1982)
- Paul Griffiths (1982–1992)
- Richard Morrison (since 1992)
- Paul Hume (1946–1982.)
- Joseph McLellan (mid-1970s–1995)
- Tim Page (1995–1999, 2001–2008)
- Philip Kennicott (1999–2001)
- Anne Midgette (2008–2019)
- Michael Andor Brodeur (since 2020)
- The Baltimore Sun (2000–2019)
- Tim Smith
- Chicago Tribune
- George Putnam Upton (1861–1881)
- Frederick Grant Gleason (1884–1889)
- Daily News
- George Hogarth (1846–1866)
- Evening News
- Mosco Carner (1957–1961)
- Evening Standard
- Percy Scholes (1913–1920)
- Barry Millington (2000s)
- Financial Times
- Andrew Porter (1953–1972)
- Ronald Crichton (1972–1978)
- Frankfurter Zeitung
- The Independent
- Bayan Northcott (1986–2009)
- Edward Seckerson (c. 2009–2012)
- New York Daily News
- William Zakariasen (1976–1993)
- New York Post
- Henry T Finck (1881–1924)
- Olga Samaroff (1926–1928)
- San Francisco Examiner
- Michael Walsh (1977–1981)
- Saturday Review
- William Barclay Squire (1888–1894)
- The Scotsman
- Mary Miller (1992–1998)
- Sunday Express
- Ralph Hill (1940s)
- The Sunday Telegraph
- John Warrack (1961–1972)
- Michael Kennedy (1989–2005)
- The Sydney Morning Herald
- Roger Covell (1960 – late 1990s)
Birmingham Post |
|
---|
Daily Express |
|
---|
Daily Mail |
|
---|
New Statesman |
|
---|
San Francisco Chronicle |
|
---|
The Sunday Times |
|
---|
The Morning Chronicle |
|
---|
The Morning Post |
|
---|
Neue Freie Presse |
|
---|
New York Herald Tribune |
|
---|