(from todays times, ” ‘Mountains’ and Messiaen in a Music Project’s Gift”)

i know, its just too easy to pick on bernard holland these days, but it just bugs me so much that critics still write like this, so romantic….

heres the worst part:

After intermission it was Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time,” in the face of which attempts at music criticism simply break down. No one else ever wrote a piece of music like this, and any description of its transfixed, out-of-body quality will end in contradiction. Like the title, these eight movements for violin, cello, clarinet and piano are neither old nor new. Familiar consonances appear but are transferred to wholly original contexts. The music exists outside, far beyond the politics of 20th-century composing. Any idea of avant-garde or reaction is rendered meaningless