Quote: food and music
I often observe that classical music stands increasingly outside mainstream culture: more and more, it's a special interest rather even than an elite one. So I was enchanted by a quote in the Food section of Wednesday's Washington Post by the chef Gillian Clark.
In April 2003, she wrote a long note to The Post's Tom Sietsema defending her rule for no-dish substitutions or customizations at Colorado Kitchen. "Personally, I prefer the way Herbert von Karajan conducts Beethoven's Third Symphony," she wrote. "But I would never ask Zubin Mehta to finish the Adagio with the hesitant 3/8 that Herb finishes with."
Not only does she treat classical music matter-of-factly, as a common frame of reference, but she knows her Karajan. Ms. Clark evidently has her detractors, but with that quote she just won herself a new fan.
(Tangentially, I will note another music-food link: music writers frequently use food similes to describe musical works, particularly the sounds of the human voice. I'm guilty, often, of "plummy," but chocolate, wine, brandy, honey, and soufflés are some of the comestibles and potables I've most often heard invoked in performance reviews.)
By
Anne Midgette
| February 2, 2011; 10:00 AM ET
Categories:
Washington, random musings
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There was also this fun piece posted a few weeks ago:
Food for Thinkers: When Music Writers Grow Up, They Become Food Writers
http://www.good.is/post/food-for-thinkers-when-music-writers-grow-up-they-become-food-writers/
"Both music and food journalism deal with writing about something intangible—something invisible. Sure, sound waves exist, but you can't see them. And taste; there's no accounting for it. So how do you describe something that is not there?"
Posted by: molly_mindthegap | February 2, 2011 11:00 AM | Report abuse
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