Page 31 - 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
As consumers of culture, we are lulled into passivity or, at best, prod-
ded toward a state of pseudo-semi-self-awareness, encouraged either to-
ward the defensive group identity of fanhood or a shallow, half-iron-
ic eclecticism.16
The role of the critic, Scott says, is to resist the manufactured consensus –
to interrogate the successful, to exalt the unknown, to argue for ambigui-
ty and complexity.
In the end, however, critics exercise authority through their style. Their
language can heighten the stakes for performers and composers alike. For
many decades, the conversation around classical music has been rather too
placid and detached. A dry, reserved manner predominated, especially in
newspapers. If we look into the archives of writing about music, we see a
much more unabashed approach. About a century ago, the critic and au-
thor James Huneker had this to say about Chopin’s C-sharp-minor Prel-
ude: “There is a flash of steel-gray, deepening into black, and then the vision
vanishes as though some huge bird had plunged down through the blazing
sunlight, leaving a color-echo in the void.”17 (That is from Huneker’s preface
to the Schirmer edition of the Chopin Preludes, from which many Ameri-
can students learned the music.) A hundred years before that, the great crit-
ic, author, and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann summoned Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony:
Glühende Strahlen schiessen durch dieses Reiches tiefe Nacht, und wir
werden Riesenschatten gewahr, die auf- und abwogen, enger und enger
uns einschliessen und alles in uns vernichten, nur nicht den Schmerz
der unendlichen Sehnsucht.18
It is not a matter of reviving these historically dated styles. But one can seek
a similar energy, a similar flair, in a contemporary voice.
In 1942, at the height of the Second World War, the supreme American
poet Wallace Stevens delivered a lecture entitled “The Noble Rider and the
Sound of Words.” He asked: what is the use of art, of poetry, at this fright-
ening time in history, when it seems as though all luxuries must fall away?
He quoted Shakespeare’s Sonnet 65: “How with this rage shall beauty hold
16 A. O. Scott, Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beau-
ty, and Truth (New York: Penguin, 2017), 10.
17 James Huneker, “The Preludes,” in Frédéric Chopin, Complete Works for the Piano-
forte, Book Nine: Preludes, ed. Raphael Joseffy (New York: Schirmer, 1915), v.
18 E. T. A. Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese (Munich: Winkler-Verlag, 1963),
36.
31
As consumers of culture, we are lulled into passivity or, at best, prod-
ded toward a state of pseudo-semi-self-awareness, encouraged either to-
ward the defensive group identity of fanhood or a shallow, half-iron-
ic eclecticism.16
The role of the critic, Scott says, is to resist the manufactured consensus –
to interrogate the successful, to exalt the unknown, to argue for ambigui-
ty and complexity.
In the end, however, critics exercise authority through their style. Their
language can heighten the stakes for performers and composers alike. For
many decades, the conversation around classical music has been rather too
placid and detached. A dry, reserved manner predominated, especially in
newspapers. If we look into the archives of writing about music, we see a
much more unabashed approach. About a century ago, the critic and au-
thor James Huneker had this to say about Chopin’s C-sharp-minor Prel-
ude: “There is a flash of steel-gray, deepening into black, and then the vision
vanishes as though some huge bird had plunged down through the blazing
sunlight, leaving a color-echo in the void.”17 (That is from Huneker’s preface
to the Schirmer edition of the Chopin Preludes, from which many Ameri-
can students learned the music.) A hundred years before that, the great crit-
ic, author, and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann summoned Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony:
Glühende Strahlen schiessen durch dieses Reiches tiefe Nacht, und wir
werden Riesenschatten gewahr, die auf- und abwogen, enger und enger
uns einschliessen und alles in uns vernichten, nur nicht den Schmerz
der unendlichen Sehnsucht.18
It is not a matter of reviving these historically dated styles. But one can seek
a similar energy, a similar flair, in a contemporary voice.
In 1942, at the height of the Second World War, the supreme American
poet Wallace Stevens delivered a lecture entitled “The Noble Rider and the
Sound of Words.” He asked: what is the use of art, of poetry, at this fright-
ening time in history, when it seems as though all luxuries must fall away?
He quoted Shakespeare’s Sonnet 65: “How with this rage shall beauty hold
16 A. O. Scott, Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beau-
ty, and Truth (New York: Penguin, 2017), 10.
17 James Huneker, “The Preludes,” in Frédéric Chopin, Complete Works for the Piano-
forte, Book Nine: Preludes, ed. Raphael Joseffy (New York: Schirmer, 1915), v.
18 E. T. A. Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese (Munich: Winkler-Verlag, 1963),
36.
31
