Page 29 - 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
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classical music criticism: an american perspective
remains, however, that there is about their machine-tooled finish and empty
elegance something more than just a trifle vulgar.”13 That the reader may hap-
pen to disagree with most or all of these assessments – that is certainly my
own reaction – illustrates the important point that the critic’s task is not to
fashion an opinion that represents the popular majority. What arrests the
attention is the forcefulness with which these judgments are delivered and
the knowledge in which they are grounded.
The donnish Porter and the waspish Thomson were very different crit-
ics, but they had in common an enormous inborn authority. They did not
speak down to their readers but addressed them as intellectual equals, ca-
pable of grasping sophisticated references and digesting complex argu-
ments. Given the parlous state of modern journalism, such assumptions
are now considerably riskier, but they are still worth holding up as models.
Some readers will be well versed in classical music; others will know very
little. The challenge is to navigate between these groups and to find a lan-
guage that engages both at once. There is also an educational component to
the profession. It is clear that classical music has an actual audience and a
potential audience. A critic can draw new listeners in, give them a vocab-
ulary for their unspoken but often very solid perceptions. Critics writing
in general-interest publications are among the few people in the public eye
who even mention classical music. Because the art form is for the most part
shut out of the mainstream media, we have attained a peculiar and perhaps
undeserved prominence that critics in other genres do not possess.
Porter and Thomson also had in common an unswerving belief in the
centrality of contemporary music. They set themselves against an Ameri-
can classical-music establishment that viewed the commissioning and per-
formance of new music as an annoying duty to be dispatched as quickly and
bloodlessly as possible. As a practicing composer, Thomson was maddened
most of all by the degree to which concert programs had devolved into a
fixed canon, which he famously named the “Fifty Pieces.” In a 1944 essay,
he rails against not only the unchanging nature of that repertory but also
the idea of the masterpiece itself. One passage is worth quoting at length:
The enjoyment and understanding of music are dominated in a most
curious way by the prestige of the masterpiece. Neither the theatre nor
the cinema nor poetry nor narrative fiction pays allegiance to its ide-
al of excellence in the tyrannical way that music does. They recognize
no unbridgeable chasm between “great work” and the rest of produc-
13 Ibid., 221.
29
remains, however, that there is about their machine-tooled finish and empty
elegance something more than just a trifle vulgar.”13 That the reader may hap-
pen to disagree with most or all of these assessments – that is certainly my
own reaction – illustrates the important point that the critic’s task is not to
fashion an opinion that represents the popular majority. What arrests the
attention is the forcefulness with which these judgments are delivered and
the knowledge in which they are grounded.
The donnish Porter and the waspish Thomson were very different crit-
ics, but they had in common an enormous inborn authority. They did not
speak down to their readers but addressed them as intellectual equals, ca-
pable of grasping sophisticated references and digesting complex argu-
ments. Given the parlous state of modern journalism, such assumptions
are now considerably riskier, but they are still worth holding up as models.
Some readers will be well versed in classical music; others will know very
little. The challenge is to navigate between these groups and to find a lan-
guage that engages both at once. There is also an educational component to
the profession. It is clear that classical music has an actual audience and a
potential audience. A critic can draw new listeners in, give them a vocab-
ulary for their unspoken but often very solid perceptions. Critics writing
in general-interest publications are among the few people in the public eye
who even mention classical music. Because the art form is for the most part
shut out of the mainstream media, we have attained a peculiar and perhaps
undeserved prominence that critics in other genres do not possess.
Porter and Thomson also had in common an unswerving belief in the
centrality of contemporary music. They set themselves against an Ameri-
can classical-music establishment that viewed the commissioning and per-
formance of new music as an annoying duty to be dispatched as quickly and
bloodlessly as possible. As a practicing composer, Thomson was maddened
most of all by the degree to which concert programs had devolved into a
fixed canon, which he famously named the “Fifty Pieces.” In a 1944 essay,
he rails against not only the unchanging nature of that repertory but also
the idea of the masterpiece itself. One passage is worth quoting at length:
The enjoyment and understanding of music are dominated in a most
curious way by the prestige of the masterpiece. Neither the theatre nor
the cinema nor poetry nor narrative fiction pays allegiance to its ide-
al of excellence in the tyrannical way that music does. They recognize
no unbridgeable chasm between “great work” and the rest of produc-
13 Ibid., 221.
29
