Page 274 - 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. 274
glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes | music criticism – yesterday and today
– selling or offering to sell promotional CDs, DVDs or other videos
received for free from record companies;
– accepting payment for writing programme notes published by
performing organisations you cover;
– accepting free tickets for concerts you are not going to write about;
– accepting travel expenses or other perks from an organisation
connected with something you intend to write about;
– sitting on boards of musical organisations.
The field of ethics is, of course, wider than this. There is no room in
criticism for the critic’s personal grudges and the critic should never lose
sight of their responsibility – towards music, towards composers and per-
formers and towards the audience.
So what should criticism be like?
Evaluation is an essential part of criticism, but the problem with evalua-
tion, as we have seen, is its extremely limited capacity for objectivity. Ob-
jectivity can only relate to objective facts (in music these include intonation,
rhythm, faithfulness to the score, etc.) and their importance in the context
of the accepted rules of the discipline; it can never apply to purely aesthet-
ic categories. On the other hand, evaluation is not possible without criteria,
regardless of where these criteria are found. The opinions of “theorists” dif-
fer on this point. Some claim that the critic must have predefined criteria,
while others say that it is the artistic work that has the criteria and it is the
critic’s job to identify them. In all cases, however, the critic must be consist-
ent with regard to the criteria or their identification.
The object of judgement or evaluation must be clearly evident in a
piece of criticism. It may be a work or performance or both. It is important
to avoid going beyond these specific contexts, since this either means stray-
ing into another genre or involves a different object of evaluation. Regard-
ing the functions of the critic, it is advisable not to be too ambitious. As Er-
nest Newman put it: “A critic’s duty is not to foresee the future of music, but
to explain the present, and this can be done only insofar as he is anchored in
the past.”45
The critic’s ‘mirror’ must reflect the effects of the sonorous phenome-
non, and not its causes. It should be descriptive for the reader, and not
45 Ibid., 100.
274
– selling or offering to sell promotional CDs, DVDs or other videos
received for free from record companies;
– accepting payment for writing programme notes published by
performing organisations you cover;
– accepting free tickets for concerts you are not going to write about;
– accepting travel expenses or other perks from an organisation
connected with something you intend to write about;
– sitting on boards of musical organisations.
The field of ethics is, of course, wider than this. There is no room in
criticism for the critic’s personal grudges and the critic should never lose
sight of their responsibility – towards music, towards composers and per-
formers and towards the audience.
So what should criticism be like?
Evaluation is an essential part of criticism, but the problem with evalua-
tion, as we have seen, is its extremely limited capacity for objectivity. Ob-
jectivity can only relate to objective facts (in music these include intonation,
rhythm, faithfulness to the score, etc.) and their importance in the context
of the accepted rules of the discipline; it can never apply to purely aesthet-
ic categories. On the other hand, evaluation is not possible without criteria,
regardless of where these criteria are found. The opinions of “theorists” dif-
fer on this point. Some claim that the critic must have predefined criteria,
while others say that it is the artistic work that has the criteria and it is the
critic’s job to identify them. In all cases, however, the critic must be consist-
ent with regard to the criteria or their identification.
The object of judgement or evaluation must be clearly evident in a
piece of criticism. It may be a work or performance or both. It is important
to avoid going beyond these specific contexts, since this either means stray-
ing into another genre or involves a different object of evaluation. Regard-
ing the functions of the critic, it is advisable not to be too ambitious. As Er-
nest Newman put it: “A critic’s duty is not to foresee the future of music, but
to explain the present, and this can be done only insofar as he is anchored in
the past.”45
The critic’s ‘mirror’ must reflect the effects of the sonorous phenome-
non, and not its causes. It should be descriptive for the reader, and not
45 Ibid., 100.
274
