'Gramophone magazine of blessed memory'
Tue, Feb 7 2012, 10:33AM
Interesting blog entry about Gramophone magazine.
Tue, Feb 7 2012, 2:40PM
#2
RE: 'Gramophone magazine of blessed memory'
Long time readers of the Gramophone miss the long reviews.
Did this "golden" era ever really exist, at least within living memory? The old reviews that I tend to look at in the archive (which are mostly from the late 50s, 60s and 70s) are perhaps on average no longer than the longer ones of today. There are plenty of very short reviews. Even the quality of the old reviews doesn't seem that high on average. Many are short, snobbish, undetailed and not that useful.
Ted
Tue, Feb 7 2012, 4:54PM
#3
RE: 'Gramophone magazine of blessed memory'
Looking back at the archive from the 1970s and before - which I do quite a bit these days as we're re-printing old reviews in the newly-redesigned reviews pages - I can assure readers that in many cases our reviews are longer now than they were in the 70s, 60s and even 50s.
Also, with these re-designed pages (the format that kicked-in with the November 2011 issue) we are adopting a far more flexible approach to word-counts with our critics: if they can justify it, they can use a hundred - even two hundred - extra words on top of the standard 250.
We're only choosing beautiful recording-related photography which now doesn't have to be fitted around headlines and boxes; this means we can snake longer reviews around the columns/pictures ad libitum.
So thank you, Ted, for noticing this - and I hope the author of the linked blog post will open a recent issue of Gramophone and feel heartened by the fact that our most recent changes were made in search of greater analysis, expanse, insight, rigour, opinion and graphic beauty.
Andrew, reviews editor
Wed, Feb 8 2012, 8:52PM
#4
RE: 'Gramophone magazine of blessed memory'
The past often exists in a golden glow. There was a time when G seemed to manage reviews on almost every new review in every format. But then there were only 6 big labels.
G has evolved, along with most other magazines. I used to read Hi-fi news a lot. i bought one a year or so ago - not to my taste at all. G has kept my loyalty.
P
Like so many of these things, it's a matter of swings and roundabouts. Long time readers of the Gramophone miss the long reviews and the small font densely-printed pages of the 1960s issues, which have given way to more pictorial matter and shorter reviews. But in an age when we have to do more in a shorter period of time, a review that gets to the nub of the matter has certain advantages. And the profiles of artists/composers that are taken by some critics to be mere fodder to the celebrity mill at least makes them into real people rather than just distant and unapproachable eminences.