musical criticism

musical criticism, branch of philosophical aesthetics concerned with making judgments about composition or performance or both.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to show that a value judgment can stand for anything that is even remotely true about music, as opposed to standing for something that is merely a personal whim on the part of the critic, since there is no such thing as an organized body of knowledge called “musical criticism.” The entire history of musical criticism can be summed up as a struggle to forge itself into a suitable tool for coming to grips with the art of music.

Historical development

The criticism of music first gained serious hold in the 17th and 18th centuries. Among the first writer-musicians to make systematic contributions to criticism were Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France, Johann Mattheson in Germany, and Charles Avison and Charles Burney in England. Their work coincided with the emergence of periodicals and newspapers all over Europe. The first journal devoted entirely to music criticism was Critica Musica, founded by Johann Mattheson in 1722. Mattheson had a number of successors, notably the Leipzig composer Johann Adolph Scheibe, who brought out his weekly Der critische Musicus between the years 1737 and 1740 and whose chief claim to notoriety was his scurrilous attack on Bach. Generally speaking, the criticism of the time was characterized by an obsessive interest in the rules of music, and it tended to judge practice in the light of theory—a fatal philosophy. Mattheson, for instance, castigated Bach for ignoring certain rules of word setting in his cantatas.

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At the turn of the century, the age of academicism dissolved into the age of description. Schumann, Liszt, and Berlioz, the leaders of the Romantic era, frequently saw in music the embodiment of some poetic or literary idea. They composed program symphonies, symphonic poems, and lesser pieces bearing such titles as “novellette,” “ballade,” and “romance.” Their literary outlook naturally influenced criticism, the more so as they themselves frequently wrote it. In his pamphlet On John Field’s Nocturnes (1859), Liszt wrote, in the purple prose of the time, of their “balmy freshness, seeming to exhale copious perfumes; soothing as the slow, measured rocking of a boat or the swinging of a hammock, amid whose smoothly placid oscillations we seem to hear the dying murmur of melting caresses.” Most of the Romantics were guilty of this type of descriptive criticism. Its weakness is that, unless the music is already known, the criticism is meaningless; and once the music is known, the criticism is redundant, since the music itself says it all far more effectively.

The most influential critic of the age was Schumann. In 1834 he founded the periodical Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (“New Journal for Music”) and remained its editor in chief for 10 years. Its pages are full of the most perceptive insights into music and music makers. The first major article Schumann wrote was a laudatory essay on the young Chopin, “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius” (1834), and the last, called “New Paths” (1853), introduced to the world the young Brahms.

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During the second half of the 19th century, the critical scene was dominated by the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, who is rightly regarded as the father of modern musical criticism. He was a prolific writer, and his book Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854: The Beautiful in Music) is a milestone in the history of criticism. It took an anti-Romantic stand, stressing the autonomy of music and its basic independence of the other arts, and it encouraged a more analytical, less descriptive approach toward criticism. The book was continually reprinted until 1895, appearing in many languages.

Inspired by Hanslick’s example, critics in the 20th century rejected the age of description for the age of analysis. Scientific materialism created a climate of rationalism from which music did not remain immune. Critics spoke of “structure,” “thematicism,” “tonality”—a far cry from Liszt’s “dying murmur of melting caresses.” A group of musician–thinkers arose who questioned the very basis of musical aesthetics. They included Hugo Riemann, Heinrich Schenker, Sir Henry Hadow, Sir Donald Tovey, Ernest Newman, and, above all, Arnold Schoenberg, whose theoretical writings show him to be one of the most radical thinkers of the age. Criticism itself was criticized, its basic weakness clearly diagnosed. The search was on to discover the criteria for the evaluation of music. This quest—made ever more urgent by the rapidly changing language of music in the late 20th century—has dominated the work of serious critics ever since.

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The practice of criticism

Criticism always seems to founder on the same small handful of basic problems. These problems are essentially philosophical. They appear to be insoluble. They are aggravated not only by the esoteric nature of music but also by the psychological mystery surrounding the very act of criticism. Are there any “standards” in criticism? If so, can they be defined? Are they objective or subjective? If the latter, can they possibly be true? These questions are fundamental. They disclose the full range of the philosophy of criticism.

Musical criticism has a primary aim: the evaluation of music. How does the critic set about this difficult task? The scientific school of criticism holds that he apply certain standards to the work in question. His evaluation is the result of testing music against his critical yardsticks and observing how far short it falls. According to this view, a value judgment is like a prize to be won by careful, objective, intelligent effort. This is an attractive notion, particularly among critics. It fosters the view that the critic is in a position of authority, and that he possesses the means to arbitrate over the creative artist. Unfortunately for criticism, there is nothing to suggest that this is anything but an illusion.

If one reflects on the way in which one listens to music, a basic fact is apparent. Music’s value is inherent; it resides in the work of art itself. A value judgment is something that comes across as part of musical communication. Paradoxically, a value judgment appears to be necessary before the critical process can start. The consequences of this observation are far-reaching. Rather than critics with standards, there appear to be only works with standards, which critics observe. It is not necessary to prove that Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony is a masterpiece in order to be certain that it is a masterpiece. Its mastery is self-evident. Critics did not bestow value on Mozart; they perceived it in him.