Music Criticism
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'' The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of
music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...
, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of musical aesthetics. With the concurrent expansion of interest in music and information media since the turn of the 20th century, the term has come to acquire the conventional meaning of journalistic reporting on musical performances.


Nature of music criticism

The musicologist Winton Dean has suggested that "music is probably the most difficult of the arts to criticise." Unlike the
plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic polymers, synthetic or Semisynthesis, semisynthetic materials composed primarily of Polymer, polymers. Their defining characteristic, Plasticity (physics), plasticity, allows them to be Injection moulding ...
or literary arts, the 'language' of music does not specifically relate to human sensory experience – Dean's words, "the word 'love' is common coin in life and literature: the note C has nothing to do with breakfast or railway journeys or marital harmony." Like dramatic art, music is recreated at every performance, and criticism may, therefore, be directed both at the text (musical score) and the performance. More specifically, as music has a temporal dimension that requires repetition or development of its material "problems of balance, contrast, expectation and fulfilment... are more central to music than to other arts, supported as these are by verbal or representational content." The absence of a systematic or consensus-based musical aesthetics has also tended to make music criticism a highly subjective issue. "There is no counter-check outside the critic's own personality."


History


To end of 18th century

Critical references to music (often deprecating performers or styles) can be found in early literature, including, for example, in
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
's ''
Laws Law is a set of rules that are created and are law enforcement, enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a Socia ...
'' and in the writings of medieval music theorists. According to Richard Taruskin, the active concert life of late 18th-century London meant that "the role and the function of arts criticism as we know it today were the creations of the English public." However, the first magazines specifically devoted to music criticism seem to have developed in Germany, for example, Georg Philipp Telemann's ''Der getreue Music-Meister'' (1728), which included publications of new compositions, and ''Der kritische Musikus'' which appeared in
Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
between 1737 and 1740. In France in the 1750s, the Querelle des Bouffons (the dispute between supporters of French and Italian opera styles as represented by
Jean-Philippe Rameau Jean-Philippe Rameau (; ; – ) was a French composer and music theory, music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of ...
and Jean-Baptiste Lully respectively) generated essays from
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Republic of Geneva, Genevan philosopher (''philosophes, philosophe''), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment through ...
and others, including
Denis Diderot Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during th ...
's '' Rameau's Nephew'' (1761). The English composer Charles Avison (1709–1770) published the first work on musical criticism in the English language – an ''Essay on Musical Expression'' published in 1752. In it, Avison claims that since the time of Palestrina and
Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its cl ...
, music had improved in status whilst pictorial art had declined. However, he believes that George Frideric Handel is too much concerned with naturalistic imitation than with expression, and criticises the habit, in
Italian opera Italian opera is both the art of opera in Italy and opera in the Italian language. Opera was in Italy around the year 1600 and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in the history of the form until the present day. Many famous ope ...
s, of
that egregious absurdity of repeating, and finishing many songs with the first part; when it often happens, after the passions of anger and revenge have been sufficiently expressed, that reconcilement and love are the subjects of the second, and, therefore, should conclude the performance.
Typically, until the late eighteenth century, music criticism centred on vocal rather than instrumental music – "vocal music ... was the apex of heaesthetic hierarchy. One knew what music was expressing."


Age of Romanticism

The last years of the eighteenth century reflected both a change of patronage of music from the aristocracy to the rising middle classes, and the rise of
Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...
in the arts. Both of these had consequences for the practice of music criticism; "the tone of the critic was lowered as his audience expanded: he began to approach the reader as a colleague rather than a pedagogue", and a new generation of critics began to widen their consideration to other aspects of music than its pure representative aspects, becoming increasingly interested in instrumental music. Prominent amongst these was E. T. A. Hoffmann, who wrote in 1809
That instrumental music has now risen to a level of which one probably had no inkling not long ago and that the symphony, especially following...Haydn and Mozart, has become the ultimate form of instrumental music – the ''opera'' of instruments, as it were – all this is well-known to every music-lover.
A further impetus to the direction of music criticism was given by the changing nature of concert programming with the establishment of the European classical music canon; indeed it is at this period that the word 'classical' is first applied to a received musical tradition. At the same time, the proportion of new music to 'canonic' music in concert programming began to decline, meaning that living composers were increasingly in competition with their dead predecessors. This was particularly the case in respect of the rise of Beethoven's reputation in his last year and posthumously.; ; . This gave rise both to writings on the value of the 'canon' and also to writings by composers and their supporters defending newer music. In 1798 the '' Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung'', edited by Friedrich Rochlitz (1769–1842), began publication in
Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
, and this is often regarded as the precursor of a new genre of criticism aimed at a wider readership than qualified connoisseurs. In subsequent years several regular journals dedicated to music criticism and reviews began to appear in major European centres, including '' The Harmonicon'' (London 1823–33), '' The Musical Times'' (London, 1844-date), the '' Revue et gazette musicale de Paris'' (Paris 1827–1880, founded by François-Joseph Fétis), the ''Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung'' founded in 1825 by A.M. Schlesinger and edited by A. B. Marx, and the '' Neue Zeitschrift für Musik'' founded in 1834 in Leipzig by
Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; ; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic music, Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber ...
and Friedrich Wieck, and later edited by Franz Brendel. Other journals at this period also began to carry extensive writings on music:
Hector Berlioz Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic music, Romantic composer and conductor. His output includes orchestral works such as the ''Symphonie fantastique'' and ''Harold en Italie, Harold in Italy'' ...
wrote for the Parisian '' Journal des débats'',
Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; ; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was an outstanding poet, writer, and literary criticism, literary critic of 19th-century German Romanticism. He is best known outside Germany for his ...
reported on music and literature in Paris for the Stuttgart '' Allgemeine Zeitung'', the young
Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...
wrote articles for Heinrich Laube's magazine ''Zeitung für die elegante Welt'' and during his 1839–42 stay in Paris for Schlesinger's publishing house and German newspapers. The writer George Henry Caunter (1791–1843) was called ''"one of the first musical critics in the metropolis ondon''. In 1835 James William Davison (1813–85) began his lifelong career as a music critic, writing 40 years for ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...
.''


See also

* List of chief music critics *
Music journalism Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary o ...
for reporting on classical and popular music in the media * : Music critics


Notes


Sources

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Further reading

* * {{Authority control