CANR
WORK TITLE: Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning
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WEBSITE: https://philipkennicott.com/
CITY: Washington
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COUNTRY: United States
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Attended Deep Springs College, 1983-85; Yale University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1988.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, editor, and critic. Musical America, New York, NY, senior editor, 1991-92; Chamber Music America, New York, NY, editor, 1993-95; Detroit News, Detroit, MI, classical music critic, 1995; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, MO, classical music critic, 1995-97; Washington Post, Washington, DC, chief classical music critic, 1999-2001, culture critic, 2001-2011, art and architecture critic, 2011–. Participant in national and international symposia, including the Aspen Ideas Festival and the World Justice Forum IV, the Hague.
AWARDS:Pulitzer Prize, finalist for editorial writing, 2000, for series on gun control in the St. Louis-Dispatch, runner-up for the criticism prize, 2012, winner of criticism prize, 2013; Emmy Award nomination, 2006, for Web-based video journal about democracy and oil money in Azerbaijan; American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors’ general commentary award, 2010; National Magazine Award finalist in essays and criticism category, 2015, for an essay in the Virginia Quarterly Review.
WRITINGS
Contributor to Best American Essays 2015, Mariner Books. Monthly columnist for Gramaphone, 2008-2011; contributing editor at the New Republic, 2013-14. Freelance contributor to music publications, including Gramophohne, Opera News, Virginia Quarterly Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, Afterimage, the New Republic, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Christian Science Monitor, and Stanford Business.
SIDELIGHTS
Philip Kennicott has had a long career as an editor and critic, including serving as a critic of classical music and of art and architecture. Kennicott grew up in Schenectady, New York and studied piano with Joseph Fennimore, a composer, pianist, and teacher. Kennicott spent his early career as a classical music critic and eventually became an art and architecture critic, with a special interest in the relationship between architecture and culture. In addition to serving as a critic at the Washington Post, Kennicott is a contributor to numerous music publications as a freelance writer. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Kennicott, according to the prize judges as reported in a Cadogan Tate website article, received the prestigious award “for his eloquent and passionate essays on art and the social forces that underlie it.” The judges added: Kennicott is “a critic who always strives to make his topics and targets relevant to readers.”
In his book Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning, Kennicott ponders the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and describes his own efforts to play Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The masterpiece was first published in 1741 and consists of thirty variations, which is a formal technique in which materials are repeated in altered forms. The book’s origins stem from Kennicott’s obsession for listening to Bach’s music as his mother was dying from cancer. Over the following five years after his mother’s death, Kennicott devoted much of his time trying to learn Bach’s difficult keyboard masterpiece while continuing to cope with his grief over his mother’s death.
As Kennicott describes Bach’s music and the technical challenges of learning the variations, he delves into his own life and his relationship with his mother, whom he describes as an unhappy woman. Kennicott writes that he had a difficult childhood and that one of his goals has been to avoid having an unhappy life like his mother. Kennicott also examines the history of playing the piano in the twentieth century in connection with the culture of the times. In the process, he ponders what it really means to intimately know a musical composition compared to intimately knowing another human being. Kennicott also writes that, although he will never be truly satisfied with his performance of the Goldberg Variations, his long-time effort to learn the compositions helped him understand and better cope with his mother’s death and life in general.
“This desire for control in the face of sorrow, mortality, and loss recurs as a contrapuntal theme as the author chronicles his obsession with the Variations,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. A reviewer writing for Publishers Weekly remarked: “While the memoir elements get lost here, aficionados of music theory and Bach will take delight in this raw and cultured narrative.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2019, review of Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning.
Publishers Weekly, October 14, 2019, review of Counterpoint, p. 55.
ONLINE
Cadogan Tate, https://www.cadogantate.com/en/ (April 17, 2013), “Art Critic Philip Kennicott Wins Pulitzer.”
Philip Kennicott, https://philipkennicott.com (November 18, 2019).
Pulitzer Prize, https://www.pulitzer.org/ (November 18, 2019), “Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post.”
Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ (November 18, 2019), “Philip Kennicott.”
Philip Kennicott
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Philip Kennicott is the chief Art and Architecture Critic of The Washington Post. Kennicott won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.[1] He had twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist before: in 2012, he was a runner-up for the criticism prize, and in 2000, he was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for a series on gun control in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 2015, he was a National Magazine Award [2] finalist in the Essays and Criticism category for an essay he contributed to Virginia Quarterly Review; that piece, "Smuggler," [3] was also selected for the 2015 volume Best American Essays. In 2006, he was an Emmy Award nominee for a Web-based video journal about democracy and oil money in Azerbaijan.
Kennicott was raised in Schenectady, New York, where he studied piano with composer and pianist Joseph Fennimore. In 1983, he attended Deep Springs College, before transferring to Yale in 1986. Kennicott graduated summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy in 1988.
Kennicott served as an editor of several classical music publications in New York City from 1988–95, including Senior Editor of Musical America and Editor of Chamber Music Magazine.[4] He became classical music critic of the Detroit News in 1995, and later Chief Classical Music Critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 1999, he joined the Washington Post as Chief Classical Music Critic, before becoming Culture Critic in 2001, and Art and Architecture Critic in 2011. Kennicott is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic, where he wrote articles on classical music, and has served as a reviewer and columnist for Gramophone.
Kennicott is a frequent participant in national and international symposia, including the Aspen Ideas Festival[5] and the World Justice Forum IV[6] in the Hague.
Philip Kennicott, the senior art and architecture Critic of the Washington Post and a former contributing editor for the New Republic, won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2013. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Philip Kennicott is chief art critic of The Washington Post, which he joined in August 1999. He has also been chief classical music critic for the Detroit News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he also worked for two years as an editorial writer. Before that he was a New York-based editor at Musical America and Chamber Music magazines.
In 2000, Kennicott was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for editorials opposing a concealed-carry gun initiative in Missouri (which failed despite heavy support from gun-rights organizations). In 2006, he was an Emmy Award nominee for a Web-based video journal about democracy and oil money in Azerbaijan. He has also won a Cine Golden Eagle for his video work. In 2010, he won the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors’ general commentary award. Kennicott now writes extensively about architecture and the intersection of architecture and culture.
Kennicott graduated summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy from Yale in 1988. Before attending Yale, he spent two years at Deep Springs College in California. Kennicott, who blogs at philipkennicott.com, is a monthly columnist for Gramophone and a frequent contributor to Opera News and other musical publications.
Philip Kennicott is the Art and Architecture Critic of The Washington Post. In 2013 he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 (criticism) and 2000 (editorial writing). He is also a National Magazine Award finalist (2015) and an Emmy Award nominee (2006). He has served as classical music critic of the Detroit News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Washington Post (1999-2001), and is a regular reviewer for Gramophone, a former contributing editor to The New Republic and a frequent contributor to Opera News, among other publications. More detailed information: KennicottCV2015.
CV: https://philipkennicott.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/kennicottcv2017.pdf
Philip Kennicott
Washington, D.C.
Art and architecture critic
Education: Deep Springs College; Yale, BA in Philosophy
Philip Kennicott is the Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic of The Washington Post. He has been on staff at The Post since 1999, first as classical music critic, then as culture critic. In 2011, he combined art and architecture into a beat that is focused on everything visual in the nation’s capital.
Honors & Awards:
Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, 2013
Art critic Philip Kennicott wins Pulitzer
17th April 2013
Wining a Pulitzer is a testament to your success as a writer. It's not a confirmation of one's fame or command of language, but an award that recognises achievements across all forms of the written word.
It was recently revealed that the Washington Post's art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott had been awarded won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, an accolade that many in the industry will agree is fitting.
Explaining their reason for awarding Mr Kennicott with the prestigious honour, the judges said it was "for his eloquent and passionate essays on art and the social forces that underlie it, a critic who always strives to make his topics and targets relevant to readers".
For a long time now he has been offering wonderful, engaging and thoughtful insights into all things artistic. He has, for example, served as a classical music and cultural critic, expounding all subjects as far and wide as urban planning, documentaries and museums.
Three works in particular from the 47-year-old have been applauded for their exceptional calibre of style and substance: an article on a photographic exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery, an essay on graphic and violent images, and a piece on Kevin Roche's architectural legacy.
Modest as ever, Mr Kennicott said that he was surprised to have picked up the award, especially at a time when art criticism is not doing well. This isn't an attack on the "art of criticism" itself, which continues to deliver fantastic, polemic and enlightening bounties of prose, but the narrowing of its reach.
As an example of his writing, this excerpt assessing his thoughts on the American artist Taryn Simon, whose work was show at Corcoran (A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I – XVIII), is indicative of his innate ability to offer something that is cleverly intellectually philosophical.
"Simon's work lies on the antipodal dark side of the planet from National Geographic," he wrote last year.
"Her portraits show people decontextualised, not in their homes or going about their business, but sitting on a stool, against a generic background, and often wearing almost expressionless faces. People reduced to data points.
"What is at the heart of this project? Is it about human misery? Or about the way photographs are used to document that misery? Or is there something perversely “artistic” underneath the whole thing, a game, a bit of performance art, an artistic imitation and critique of the documentary impulse, as if Simon is a one-woman representative of the juridical wing of the Dada movement?"
He asks original questions, scholarly and journalistic ones, which help to make his work accessible to a wider audience. There's none of the convoluted International Art English – a term coined by David Levine and Alix Rule in their observant essay in Triple Canopy – just loaded sentences that nicely capture interesting ideas.
A joy to win no doubt, the realisation that he had secured one of the top prizes in journalism happened on a dark day. On the April 15th two bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 170.
"People asked if it was strange to win on such an awful day," he wrote on his blog. Yes, it was very strange, and I have family in Boston (who are all safe). But it was a thing of wonder to see the newsroom with all hands on deck, to see it do what it does best.
"Arts critics survive in newspapers not because we help the bottom line, but because enlightened editors and publishers see art as an essential part of the picture of the world that newspapers deliver every day."
Nevertheless, as he concluded, if the world is to survive, art and its discussion must endure. More needs to be done to elevate it in the eyes of the world. Why? Because "creation is the opposite of destruction".
Cadogan Tate's professional art handlers deliver expert storage and moving solutions.
Kennicott, Philip COUNTERPOINT Norton (Adult Nonfiction) $26.95 2, 18 ISBN: 978-0-393-63536-2
Pulitzer Prize winner Kennicott, senior art and architecture critic of the Washington Post, makes his book debut with an absorbing meditation on grief.
Unsettled by the death of his mother, the author was drawn to Bach's Goldberg Variations, especially Glenn Gould's 1955 recording, an emotional, aggressive interpretation, "clarifying as with colored light the intertwining lines of Bach's thirty variations." As a piano student years before, he had not mastered anything by Bach, preferring instead dazzling pieces by Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms: "fast and with lots of drama." Now, he decided to confront the challenges of the Variations. "I had no illusions that I would ever master them well enough to be satisfied by my performance," Kennicott writes. "Rather, it seemed a way to test life again, to press upon it and see what was still vital," to attain "clarity, accuracy," and, not least, a sense of order and control. This desire for control in the face of sorrow, mortality, and loss recurs as a contrapuntal theme as the author chronicles his obsession with the Variations--their place in Bach's oeuvre, reception, and demanding technique--along with a memoir of growing up in a tense household dominated by his moody, brittle, often vindictive mother, whom he wishes he could better understand. As he questions what it means to truly know a piece of music, he asks, as well, what it means to know any person. During adolescence, he found in music "a refuge" from chaotic family life, "an adult space where I was fully responsible for my actions." At home, practicing piano functioned as a kind of "wordless communication"; "I would make music for an ideal mother who didn't exist, and she listened to a son who, through music, spoke without irony, or condescension." Now, as an adult, he seeks in music not solace, nor epiphany, nor a "miraculous entrée to higher consciousness," but instead a "raw moment of openness" to "an emotional resignation that is beyond pleasure, or healing, or anything that can be captured in words."
Elegant prose graces a deeply thoughtful memoir.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Kennicott, Philip: COUNTERPOINT." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2019, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A602487711/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b9f61d67. Accessed 10 Nov. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A602487711
Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning
Philip Kennicott. Norton, $26.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-393-63536-2
In this uneven debut, Washington Post and Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Kennicott recounts his efforts to learn to play Johann Sebastian Bach's renowned Goldberg Variations to cope with his grief following the death of his mother from cancer. Kennicott is unabashedly honest, stating he wanted to avoid the fate of his mother, who was "unhappy and died that way, unfulfilled and angry about what she sensed was a wasted life." This thoughtful mission, nonlinearly told, helps him to better come to terms with their complicated relationship (she "is my other ear... always listening for something simple and sweet," yet she would also beat him). He focuses on Bach himself, offering insight into his approach to composing, suggesting he went to "great lengths to subverr our efforts to comprehend the formal structure of the variations." Kennicorr does not skimp on details, causing the narrative to feel more like a scholarly thesis devoted to the composer than an account of his own personal experiences, which tend to take a distant backseat and disappear. About the Goldberg Variations, Kennicot admits, "I had no illusions that I would ever master them well enough to be satisfied by my performance," yet he realizes that life will never be perfect, though one can still find purpose and peace. While the memoir elements get lost here, aficionados of music theory and Bach will take delight in this raw and cultured narrative. (Feb.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning." Publishers Weekly, 14 Oct. 2019, p. 55+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A603319011/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ba7c25ae. Accessed 10 Nov. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A603319011