Page 131 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2024. Glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes ▪︎ Music Criticism – Yesterday and Today. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 7
P. 131
doi: https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-299-2.131-146
Putting Music Criticism to Positive Purpose:
William Glock’s Promotion of Three Composers
Niall O’Loughlin
Univerza v Loughboroughu
Loughborough University
Preliminaries
If any one person was responsible for transforming our musical life
from the insular conservatism of the 1960s to a culture that cared about
what was happening in the wider world, it was [William] Glock.1
William Glock (1908–2000) began his musical career as a newspa-
per music critic. Was it a promising start or was it insignificant? The Aus-
trian-born musical commentator and broadcaster, Hans Keller, described
music criticism as a phoney profession.2 In a sense he was suggesting that
those who made a life of criticising music were frauds, perpetuating a posi-
tion in which they could pass judgement on the value of any music. In an-
other sense he was making the point that really the critic should be mu-
sician first and critic second. Criticism of music, however, is something
that happens all the time. It is necessary, however, for another process to
precede it: that of listening. Similarly for a music critic these two processes
must be present. In another of his polemics, Keller prefaced his discussion
of Stravinsky’s Agon with the following words:
There is criticism and there is reporting, or at any rate there ought to be.
I do not mean the kind of thing we read in the newspapers, where writ-
ers criticize things they have heard, and report things they haven’t in or-
1 Andrew Clements, “A Night to Remember,” The Guardian, August 9, 1994, London,
A6.
2 Hans Keller, Criticism (London: Faber, 1987), 20–36.
131
Putting Music Criticism to Positive Purpose:
William Glock’s Promotion of Three Composers
Niall O’Loughlin
Univerza v Loughboroughu
Loughborough University
Preliminaries
If any one person was responsible for transforming our musical life
from the insular conservatism of the 1960s to a culture that cared about
what was happening in the wider world, it was [William] Glock.1
William Glock (1908–2000) began his musical career as a newspa-
per music critic. Was it a promising start or was it insignificant? The Aus-
trian-born musical commentator and broadcaster, Hans Keller, described
music criticism as a phoney profession.2 In a sense he was suggesting that
those who made a life of criticising music were frauds, perpetuating a posi-
tion in which they could pass judgement on the value of any music. In an-
other sense he was making the point that really the critic should be mu-
sician first and critic second. Criticism of music, however, is something
that happens all the time. It is necessary, however, for another process to
precede it: that of listening. Similarly for a music critic these two processes
must be present. In another of his polemics, Keller prefaced his discussion
of Stravinsky’s Agon with the following words:
There is criticism and there is reporting, or at any rate there ought to be.
I do not mean the kind of thing we read in the newspapers, where writ-
ers criticize things they have heard, and report things they haven’t in or-
1 Andrew Clements, “A Night to Remember,” The Guardian, August 9, 1994, London,
A6.
2 Hans Keller, Criticism (London: Faber, 1987), 20–36.
131
