Page 262 - 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. 262
glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes | music criticism – yesterday and today
al, and arts criticism is usually one of the first victims. In his article “The
fate of the critic in the clickbait age,”5 music critic Alex Ross describes the
shrinking space for arts criticism in American newspapers and the conse-
quent decline in the number of professional critics. In the Neue Zeitschrift
für Musik we read: “2018 was a year of mass extinction for traditional mu-
sic publications.”6 In this country, too, criticism appears increasingly rare-
ly in our media, and even such criticism that does appear is often written
by jack-of-all-trade “experts” who are not actually masters of any field. The
drastic dimensions of these changes in Slovenia can be seen even from a
fleeting comparison of the cultural pages of the Delo newspaper in the ear-
ly 1990s, when it was Slovenia’s biggest national newspaper, with the cultur-
al pages of Delo today. Culture is becoming increasingly unimportant and
is disappearing from public discourse.
The content of criticism is also changing, with the disappearance of
critical judgement becoming increasingly noticeable. This is a wider social
phenomenon that is not limited to traditional fields of the arts. For exam-
ple: in the context of the unclear future of popular culture magazine Rolling
Stone, the German music and film critic Andreas Borcholte concluded that
critical reporting in the field of music is disappearing everywhere.7 Gener-
ally speaking, writing on the arts and music is moving closer and closer to
overt promotion. Elkins, for example, talks about “descriptive criticism,”
which means describing an event or work without expressing any critical
judgement on it. “There is too much positive reporting,” thinks pop critic
Britta Helm,8 since critical, particularly non-affirmative reporting in the
media is becoming more an exception than a normal phenomenon. This is
confirmed, for example, by a glance at Slovene theatre criticism in the 2014–
15 season in the daily newspapers Delo and Dnevnik. On the basis of critical
rankings (scores ranging from 1 to 5 stars), the season was apparently “su-
perlative,” although nothing would appear to justify such an evaluation. It
is therefore possible to conclude that the rankings were too high.9
5 Alex Ross, “The Fate of the Critic in the Clickbait Age,” The New Yorker, March 13,
2017, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-fate-of-the-critic
-in-the-clickbait-age.
6 “Musikkritik,” https://musikderzeit.de/ausgabe/musikkritik/.
7 Britta Helm, “Kritik an der Musikkritik. Musikbransche ist ‘ein fürchterliches Klün-
gel-Business’,” Deutschlandfunk, September 21, 2017, https://www.deutschlandfunk
.de/kritik-an-der-musikkritik-musikbranche-ist-ein-100.html.
8 Ibid.
9 Mitja Rotovnik, “‘Kr neki’ o uprizoritvi + zvezdice = gledališka kritika,” Delo, April 24,
2015, https://old.delo.si/sobotna/kr-neki-o-uprizoritvi-zvezdice-gledaliska-kritika.html.
262
al, and arts criticism is usually one of the first victims. In his article “The
fate of the critic in the clickbait age,”5 music critic Alex Ross describes the
shrinking space for arts criticism in American newspapers and the conse-
quent decline in the number of professional critics. In the Neue Zeitschrift
für Musik we read: “2018 was a year of mass extinction for traditional mu-
sic publications.”6 In this country, too, criticism appears increasingly rare-
ly in our media, and even such criticism that does appear is often written
by jack-of-all-trade “experts” who are not actually masters of any field. The
drastic dimensions of these changes in Slovenia can be seen even from a
fleeting comparison of the cultural pages of the Delo newspaper in the ear-
ly 1990s, when it was Slovenia’s biggest national newspaper, with the cultur-
al pages of Delo today. Culture is becoming increasingly unimportant and
is disappearing from public discourse.
The content of criticism is also changing, with the disappearance of
critical judgement becoming increasingly noticeable. This is a wider social
phenomenon that is not limited to traditional fields of the arts. For exam-
ple: in the context of the unclear future of popular culture magazine Rolling
Stone, the German music and film critic Andreas Borcholte concluded that
critical reporting in the field of music is disappearing everywhere.7 Gener-
ally speaking, writing on the arts and music is moving closer and closer to
overt promotion. Elkins, for example, talks about “descriptive criticism,”
which means describing an event or work without expressing any critical
judgement on it. “There is too much positive reporting,” thinks pop critic
Britta Helm,8 since critical, particularly non-affirmative reporting in the
media is becoming more an exception than a normal phenomenon. This is
confirmed, for example, by a glance at Slovene theatre criticism in the 2014–
15 season in the daily newspapers Delo and Dnevnik. On the basis of critical
rankings (scores ranging from 1 to 5 stars), the season was apparently “su-
perlative,” although nothing would appear to justify such an evaluation. It
is therefore possible to conclude that the rankings were too high.9
5 Alex Ross, “The Fate of the Critic in the Clickbait Age,” The New Yorker, March 13,
2017, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-fate-of-the-critic
-in-the-clickbait-age.
6 “Musikkritik,” https://musikderzeit.de/ausgabe/musikkritik/.
7 Britta Helm, “Kritik an der Musikkritik. Musikbransche ist ‘ein fürchterliches Klün-
gel-Business’,” Deutschlandfunk, September 21, 2017, https://www.deutschlandfunk
.de/kritik-an-der-musikkritik-musikbranche-ist-ein-100.html.
8 Ibid.
9 Mitja Rotovnik, “‘Kr neki’ o uprizoritvi + zvezdice = gledališka kritika,” Delo, April 24,
2015, https://old.delo.si/sobotna/kr-neki-o-uprizoritvi-zvezdice-gledaliska-kritika.html.
262
