Andrew Porter (music critic)

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| name = Andrew Porter

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| birth_date = 26 August 1928

| birth_place = Cape Town, South Africa

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|2015|4|3|1928|4|26}}

| death_place = London, United Kingdom

| occupation = Music critic

| period =

| influences =

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Andrew Brian Porter (26 August 1928{{spaced ndash}}3 April 2015) was a British music critic, opera librettist, opera director, scholar, and organist.{{cite news | url=http://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2015/4/News/Andrew_Porter.html | title=Andrew Porter, 86, Longtime New Yorker Critic Whose Prose and Musical Discoveries Changed Opera, Has Died | work=Opera News | author=William R. Braun | date=2015-04-03 | accessdate=2015-04-04}}Opera: [https://web.archive.org/web/20110509235310/http://www.opera.co.uk:80/page.php?pid=132 "Opera Magazine Editorial Board"] (archived 9 May 2011 at Internet Archive), originally accessed 2 January 2011.

Biography

Born in Cape Town, South Africa,{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/arts/music/andrew-porter-new-yorker-classical-music-critic-dies-at-86.html | title=Andrew Porter, New Yorker Classical Music Critic, Dies at 86 | work=The New York Times | author=Margalit Fox | date=2015-03-31 | accessdate=2015-04-04}} 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."Stanley Sadie, "Porter, Andrew," Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 20, 184–85.

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."Virgil Thomson, "A Drenching of Music, But a Drought of Critics," New York Times, 27 October 1974 In particular, with operas that were unfamiliar to him, Porter exercised additional diligence in his preparation for his reviews. According to Opera News:

{{quote|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."}}

In his latter years, Porter wrote for The Observer, Opera, and The Times Literary Supplement.{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/postscript-andrew-porter-new-yorker-music-critic|title=Postscript: Andrew Porter (1928-2015)|author=Alex Ross|date=4 April 2015|magazine=The New Yorker|accessdate=18 September 2015}}

Porter translated the libretti of 37 operas, 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. He authored the librettos for John Eaton's The Tempest, after Shakespeare,{{cite web|url=http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/405/27521|title=John Eaton|work=musicsalesclassical.com|accessdate=18 September 2015}} and Bright Sheng's The Song of Majnun, based on the ancient Persian story.{{cite web|url=http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/32936|title=Bright Sheng|work=musicsalesclassical.com|accessdate=18 September 2015}}

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. Porter was a consultant for a 1996 production at the Théâtre du Châtelet that used portions of the music which he had found.{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/06/style/06iht-carlos.t.html | title='Don Carlos,' Early and Late | work=The New York Times | author=David Stevens | date=1996-03-06 | accessdate=2015-04-04}}

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.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}}

Porter died of pneumonia on 3 April 2015. His twin sister was his only surviving relation. 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.

Bibliography

=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

External links

[http://www.bruceduffie.com/porter.html Interview with Andrew Porter], 24 March 1988
[https://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2015/04/03/397295421/multifaceted-music-critic-andrew-porter-dies-at-86 Tom Huizenga, "Multifaceted Music Critic Andrew Porter Dies At 86". National Public Radio, "Deceptive Cadence" blog, 3 April 2015]
[https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/05/arts/classical-view-americans-lose-a-voice-of-tradition.html New York Times] profile

{{succession box |

before= Winthrop Sargeant|

title= Music Critic of The New Yorker|

years= 1972–1973, 1974–1992 |

after= Paul Griffiths

}}

Category:1928 births

Category:2015 deaths

Category:Alumni of University College, Oxford

Category:English music critics

Category:British classical music critics

Category:Italian–English translators