Here’s the explanation, maybe. “Gesamtkunstwerk” is a term I remember flinging around in the interests of pretentiousness and filling up space. It’s Wagner’s term for total theater, a concept that meant not just music, drama, scenery, dancing, etc. all combined (i.e., gesamt) — in other words, a Wagner opera — but if possible everything else, too, including (as I like to imagine it) cooking, fireworks, and potato sack races. Need I say, that’s the route modern opera production has taken, though nobody uses that word as far as I know.

Was that exclamation mark really in there? I tried to avoid the things, which have this gushy look about them that a real man will always endeavor to avoid.

“Received with thanks” is something I adopted from my late friend Michael Steinberg.

We were speaking above about critical ill temper. How widely known is it that Michael once slugged Peter Gelb? This is absolutely, verifiably true. There are a LOT of Michael Steinberg stories.

As Richard Buell used to say, “Received with thanks.” from Spectrum review and

“Ultimately Gesamtkunst prevailed. Received with thanks!” from the Emmanuel Music “appreciation”

Speaking not as an assassin — honest — but as a consumer of what BMint is putting on offer I have to say that rather a lot of space is given over to people’s remarking in saecula saeculorum that a pleasant time was had by all and, furthermore, how commendable and life-enhancing it was that such an event was taking place in the first place but then we’re Boston aren’t we … etc. etc.

Parish newsletters are like that. And really, what value can there possibly be in being told that an ovation, or two or three or four ovations, took place? That’s PR speak, children. And it’s embarrassingly naive.

As to having Boston musicians and academics writing about other Boston musicians, there may be no way around that problem — if it is one, let us hope not — barring very full disclosure statements, blood oaths, and polygraph tests.

By my lights BMint functions wonderfully as an annals of performance and as a supplier of countless intriguing facts about music. Thank you so much. But the reviews, or at least a good many of them, one doesn’t so much read as sift through. Here, as in so much else, Americans lack for good models. (Insert here one of Joel Cohen’s spirited jeremiads about America’s going to hell, molto accelerando, in a handbasket.)

Models. So have there been first-class writers on classical music out there in recent times? Yes, if you know where to find them. It’s an unexpectedly sizable list. On it you find Hilary Finch, Philip Kennicott, Robin Holloway, David Schiff, Roger Nichols, and the late Michael Oliver, all of whom I would have to call compulsively readable. Oh, to have Will Crutchfield on the Times again!

As to VT, while he was probably the best-informed and most articulate music critic this country has produced, some of his judgments have been notoriously wrong–about Ives and Gershwin, for example–and many of his criticisms displayed little but prejudice of various sorts, and were infra his dig. The lesson for those of us who follow in his footsteps ought to be cautionary: be honest but be humble.

A celebrity, it’s been said, is someone who is well known for being well known. Hence, Celebrity Series. Next question?

Those fascinated by the distinctive pathology that superstar violin recitals are notoriously prone to would do well to look into Virgil Thomson’s “The Musical Scene” (1948) and “The Art of Judging Music” (1948). It’s the former that includes VT’s famous hatchet job on Jascha Heifetz, “Silk Underwear Music.”

What NICE — and I mean REALLY nice — reviewers you find in BMint, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and if you’re like me you find yourself lusting for just an occasional outburst of personal animus, irresponsibility, or even discreet homicidal mania. Michael Steinberg, thou should’st be living at this hour!