Page 269 - 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. 269
what is happening to music criticism?
The third level is the function of criticism as part of the general life of
society. With the blurring of quality criteria and the dominance of all-pow-
erful capital in every facet of life,
criticism is a tiny part of the ecology of the music business, but an es-
sential part. Without smart, independent critics who know their stuff,
everything collapses into hype, public relations, and the almighty
dollar.25
This aspect of the importance of criticism is more relevant today than
ever before.
In 2005 art critic Dave Hickey offered the following important warn-
ing: “Criticism, at its most serious, tries to channel change, and when noth-
ing is changing, when no one is dissenting, who needs criticism?”26 His voice
joins the ongoing debate about the crisis of contemporary arts criticism. To
continue with Elena Martinique:
For a long time, art criticism has been perceived as a form of privileged
consciousness that provided an insight into the art that required a spe-
cial eye for it. Art critics served a regulatory, introspective and proscrip-
tive function for the circulation and reception of art, and artists often saw
their opinions as useful, insightful, or instructive. In this way, art prac-
tice and art criticism are supposed to be in a dialectical relationship – to
complement each other.27
Hickey is not alone in this view. Cristina Şuteu believes that “[the mu-
sic critic] must ‘unite’ the artist with the public, and educate the general taste
by guiding it into a deeper understanding of the valuable works.”28
Or there is this opinion from the Dortmund symposium mentioned
earlier:
Jürgen Kesting, one of the invited music critics, states very clearly that
without a sense of art, art will be destroyed – he said this freely quoting
Goethe – and music criticism promotes a sense of art. Music criticism
is thus a form of aesthetic training that leads to correct listening, which
controls and improves it, and through this exchange one can penetrate
into the mysteries of music. It is also true that enjoying any art with-
out understanding and education is actually not possible. The more you
25 Gioa, “Music criticism has degenerated into lifestyle reporting.”
26 Martinique, “What is the purpose of art criticism today?”
27 Ibid.
28 Şuteu, “Is there a theory of musical criticism?,” 96.
269
The third level is the function of criticism as part of the general life of
society. With the blurring of quality criteria and the dominance of all-pow-
erful capital in every facet of life,
criticism is a tiny part of the ecology of the music business, but an es-
sential part. Without smart, independent critics who know their stuff,
everything collapses into hype, public relations, and the almighty
dollar.25
This aspect of the importance of criticism is more relevant today than
ever before.
In 2005 art critic Dave Hickey offered the following important warn-
ing: “Criticism, at its most serious, tries to channel change, and when noth-
ing is changing, when no one is dissenting, who needs criticism?”26 His voice
joins the ongoing debate about the crisis of contemporary arts criticism. To
continue with Elena Martinique:
For a long time, art criticism has been perceived as a form of privileged
consciousness that provided an insight into the art that required a spe-
cial eye for it. Art critics served a regulatory, introspective and proscrip-
tive function for the circulation and reception of art, and artists often saw
their opinions as useful, insightful, or instructive. In this way, art prac-
tice and art criticism are supposed to be in a dialectical relationship – to
complement each other.27
Hickey is not alone in this view. Cristina Şuteu believes that “[the mu-
sic critic] must ‘unite’ the artist with the public, and educate the general taste
by guiding it into a deeper understanding of the valuable works.”28
Or there is this opinion from the Dortmund symposium mentioned
earlier:
Jürgen Kesting, one of the invited music critics, states very clearly that
without a sense of art, art will be destroyed – he said this freely quoting
Goethe – and music criticism promotes a sense of art. Music criticism
is thus a form of aesthetic training that leads to correct listening, which
controls and improves it, and through this exchange one can penetrate
into the mysteries of music. It is also true that enjoying any art with-
out understanding and education is actually not possible. The more you
25 Gioa, “Music criticism has degenerated into lifestyle reporting.”
26 Martinique, “What is the purpose of art criticism today?”
27 Ibid.
28 Şuteu, “Is there a theory of musical criticism?,” 96.
269
