Page 151 - 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. 151
music criticism in ireland
sweet melody pervading it”). The most surprising information comes at the
end, when we are informed that Orfeo ed Euridice was followed by the last
act of Bellini’s La Sonnambula and a comic scene by a Signor Ciampi. This
lets one speculate that a truncated version of Orfeo must have been present-
ed so that there was still time for more music. It also indicates that dram-
aturgical coherence was not a core concern of programming in Dublin at
this time; however, this is not unlike the regularly eclectic programming of
concerts all over Europe for much of the nineteenth century, which often
combined individual movements of symphonies and concertos with select-
ed arias and instrumental solos.
Between them, these examples give a good impression of the standard
of writing about music in Ireland for much of the nineteenth century. As
Michael Murphy has pointed out, it
represents most readers’ worst impressions of musical criticism in the
daily and weekly newspapers of the nineteenth century, which is to say
there is no attempt at criticism in any sense of that term, a problem that
was repeatedly lamented in the same era.16
There were no full-time, permanent music critics anywhere, while
sometimes “general” journalists without any musical expertise wrote the
texts. As articles were generally unsigned there was no way of knowing
whether the author had some degree of expertise. Reviews regularly report-
ed less about the quality of the performance and more about who attended,
as well as how the audience reacted, as Murphy elaborates:
Applause and encores were always recorded to the benefit of the artists
and the audience alike: it praised the former for their artistry and the
latter for demonstrating their ability to appreciate it. As a mode of so-
cial flattery, reporting on applause was an important part of the curren-
cy of the musical economy because the notices reassured the middle and
upper classes of their status in society, a condition that both necessitat-
ed their presence at such social luxuries as opera and on which the en-
tire enterprise depended.17
Apart from the journalists’ lack of expertise, another reason not to
trust reviews too much is that newspapers were often intertwined with op-
era companies; the reviews were “commissioned” in order to sell more seats
for future performances, so an objective and potentially negative assess-
16 Murphy, “The Musical Press,” 252.
17 Ibid., 254–5.
151
sweet melody pervading it”). The most surprising information comes at the
end, when we are informed that Orfeo ed Euridice was followed by the last
act of Bellini’s La Sonnambula and a comic scene by a Signor Ciampi. This
lets one speculate that a truncated version of Orfeo must have been present-
ed so that there was still time for more music. It also indicates that dram-
aturgical coherence was not a core concern of programming in Dublin at
this time; however, this is not unlike the regularly eclectic programming of
concerts all over Europe for much of the nineteenth century, which often
combined individual movements of symphonies and concertos with select-
ed arias and instrumental solos.
Between them, these examples give a good impression of the standard
of writing about music in Ireland for much of the nineteenth century. As
Michael Murphy has pointed out, it
represents most readers’ worst impressions of musical criticism in the
daily and weekly newspapers of the nineteenth century, which is to say
there is no attempt at criticism in any sense of that term, a problem that
was repeatedly lamented in the same era.16
There were no full-time, permanent music critics anywhere, while
sometimes “general” journalists without any musical expertise wrote the
texts. As articles were generally unsigned there was no way of knowing
whether the author had some degree of expertise. Reviews regularly report-
ed less about the quality of the performance and more about who attended,
as well as how the audience reacted, as Murphy elaborates:
Applause and encores were always recorded to the benefit of the artists
and the audience alike: it praised the former for their artistry and the
latter for demonstrating their ability to appreciate it. As a mode of so-
cial flattery, reporting on applause was an important part of the curren-
cy of the musical economy because the notices reassured the middle and
upper classes of their status in society, a condition that both necessitat-
ed their presence at such social luxuries as opera and on which the en-
tire enterprise depended.17
Apart from the journalists’ lack of expertise, another reason not to
trust reviews too much is that newspapers were often intertwined with op-
era companies; the reviews were “commissioned” in order to sell more seats
for future performances, so an objective and potentially negative assess-
16 Murphy, “The Musical Press,” 252.
17 Ibid., 254–5.
151
