Posted 7:00 PM by Gene

Terry Teachout has written a somewhat fatuous column about "masterpiece fatigue" -- somewhat fatuous in that Terry's become a different writer since the "success" of his AH-pe-RAH, and the "success" of his Satch bio, and perhaps somewhere he figures his musical masterwork should take the place of those fatigued masterpieces. (Never mind it got rotten reviews -- but didn't Tchaikovsky?) That said the problem with Kind of Blue may not be fatigue but groupthink; as it's the victim of so much CRITICAL ACCLAIM you must steel yourself up to like it, and it turns out to be, well, dull. What Mark Twain said of books applies to CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED jazz albums. And the chances of your throwing jazz away with Kind of Blue vastly increase if you're a neophyte. (I happen to like Birth of the Cool myself.) There's plenty of good obscure music floating around. How many thousands of jazz CDs are there? The excellent British label Hyperion has made a whole series out of forgotten piano concertos. The problem is most were forgotten for a reason. Nikolai Medtner (one example) was as profound a composer as Rachmaninoff -- but his works are basically all harmony and no melody. Too much art inevitably must succumb to the long-tail syndrome (ugh!). But another part of it, a part Teachout is obscuring in no small way because he's written a "successful" opera, is that nobody's writing the works that could supplant the Messiahs and Nutcrackers, for the genius isn't there anymore, however many raves Terry writes.