Page 26 - 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. 26
glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes | music criticism – yesterday and today
hegemony makes one wonder whether the two domains are in some way
interdependent, despite the rhetoric of dissent arising from some sectors.
The classical concert has become an increasingly singular phenom-
enon in modern life, one that leads us away from the culture of distrac-
tion and into a very different mode of paying attention. Thoughtful criti-
cism can perform a similar function. As long as we have concerts and art
exhibitions and films and books, we should have need for writing of sub-
stance as we prepare for these works or as we think back upon them. And
to the extent that cultural choices are now being organized and controlled
by algorithms, by a sophisticated averaging out of mass taste, the critic can
serve as an anti-algorithm, as a wrench in the machine. We can point peo-
ple in a different direction, we can speak up for idiosyncrasy, eccentricity,
difficulty, overlooked pleasures. Journalistic criticism may have no practi-
cal future, but the function of criticism can be carried out by those work-
ing in a free-lance capacity, especially those who have positions in academ-
ia and can write journalistically on the side. Encouraging in this respect is
a new communicative urge among younger musicologists, who have em-
braced the practice of “public musicology.”4 They follow in the wake of the
late musicologist Richard Taruskin, who wrote prolifically and brilliantly
for The New Republic and The New York Times in the last years of the twen-
tieth century and in the first years of the twenty-first.5 Even if the critic in
the traditional sense dies off, criticism will undoubtedly continue.
Permit me to insert a few autobiographical notes on how I conduct my-
self in this endangered but not quite extinct profession. I have been writing
for The New Yorker since 1996. My principal responsibility is to write the
magazine’s Musical Events column, which appears fourteen times a year. In
planning the columns, I seek maximum variety: major orchestral and op-
eratic events, smaller chamber-music or recital concerts, new-music con-
certs, early music, choral music, and so on. My role, as I see it, is not to re-
spond overnight to musical events, in the style of a daily newspaper critic,
but to step back and survey the entire field, intervening as a kind of color
commentator. I attempt to assemble a portrait of the musical world piece
by piece, in mosaic fashion. I alternate between major events at big insti-
tutions – the magazine wishes me to report regularly on the latest ups and
downs of the Met and the New York Philharmonic – and the activities of
4 See: William Robin, “Public Musicology,” annotated syllabus, https://willrob-
in251824868.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/musc-699p-syllabus.pdf.
5 See, among many other publications, Richard Taruskin, The Danger of Music and
Other Anti-Utopian Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
26
hegemony makes one wonder whether the two domains are in some way
interdependent, despite the rhetoric of dissent arising from some sectors.
The classical concert has become an increasingly singular phenom-
enon in modern life, one that leads us away from the culture of distrac-
tion and into a very different mode of paying attention. Thoughtful criti-
cism can perform a similar function. As long as we have concerts and art
exhibitions and films and books, we should have need for writing of sub-
stance as we prepare for these works or as we think back upon them. And
to the extent that cultural choices are now being organized and controlled
by algorithms, by a sophisticated averaging out of mass taste, the critic can
serve as an anti-algorithm, as a wrench in the machine. We can point peo-
ple in a different direction, we can speak up for idiosyncrasy, eccentricity,
difficulty, overlooked pleasures. Journalistic criticism may have no practi-
cal future, but the function of criticism can be carried out by those work-
ing in a free-lance capacity, especially those who have positions in academ-
ia and can write journalistically on the side. Encouraging in this respect is
a new communicative urge among younger musicologists, who have em-
braced the practice of “public musicology.”4 They follow in the wake of the
late musicologist Richard Taruskin, who wrote prolifically and brilliantly
for The New Republic and The New York Times in the last years of the twen-
tieth century and in the first years of the twenty-first.5 Even if the critic in
the traditional sense dies off, criticism will undoubtedly continue.
Permit me to insert a few autobiographical notes on how I conduct my-
self in this endangered but not quite extinct profession. I have been writing
for The New Yorker since 1996. My principal responsibility is to write the
magazine’s Musical Events column, which appears fourteen times a year. In
planning the columns, I seek maximum variety: major orchestral and op-
eratic events, smaller chamber-music or recital concerts, new-music con-
certs, early music, choral music, and so on. My role, as I see it, is not to re-
spond overnight to musical events, in the style of a daily newspaper critic,
but to step back and survey the entire field, intervening as a kind of color
commentator. I attempt to assemble a portrait of the musical world piece
by piece, in mosaic fashion. I alternate between major events at big insti-
tutions – the magazine wishes me to report regularly on the latest ups and
downs of the Met and the New York Philharmonic – and the activities of
4 See: William Robin, “Public Musicology,” annotated syllabus, https://willrob-
in251824868.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/musc-699p-syllabus.pdf.
5 See, among many other publications, Richard Taruskin, The Danger of Music and
Other Anti-Utopian Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
26
