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September 30, 2004
Critics
Music reviews are arguably the most obscure, a function of the sheer difficulty of describing music. While art critics are rarely artists and drama critics are rarely directors, music critics almost have to be musicians if they are to opine with authority. Yet to write in detail about music involves using a coded language and, in the process, losing nonmusical readers. Thus, more than in other disciplines, music critics write for musicians - and each other.
So what about the public? I recall a music critic friend who once observed that, during a recital by a popular but fading diva, he was probably the only person in the concert hall not enjoying himself. He considered the performance embarrassing; everyone else was lapping up the aura, the charisma, even the voice. It often happens in opera too: the audience cheers a soprano; a critic says she was singing off-key.
Really? I would have thought that more than any of the performing arts, visual arts, or (especially) food, music *needs* critics. If not partly for the reason the author says it doesn't, the perplexity - & im·pos·si·bil·i·ty - of transporting the musical experience into language. I think the critic is also there to position the piece of music, give it context, a history, a lineage, elicit its relationships, which at its most base level, is a way for the consumer to preview the art-object. Generally, music doesn't have the benefit of say, the trailer. But particularly, the author fails to recognize that music is perhaps the most commonly purchased art by the public, whereas a painting is viewed (unless you're a blue blood), and the others are art-experiences, one-offs. Which leads onto the question, besides the europhilic costal elites, who goes to the opera? Or the ballet? When speaking of relevance, sheer numbers outweigh the desirability of the elite, and this author. Food critics? I'll leave that alone.
Critics are part educator, part interpreter, and part advisor. There are thousands of pieces of music released every year. Most of which don't make it into the industrial machinery of promotion, radio rotation, and major market distribution. Don't folks need a guide through the flotsam? The problem with the big newspapers' music deparments is their seething irrelrevance, covering obscure performances of some long dead euro-composer, or Cult-Studding the significance of Ashlee Simpson. Of course folks don't want to read that. They read an ever growing universe of music journalism, which by its very growth, demonstrates the need for the critic, and the public's desire for them. Or at least, I hope.
Posted by jmarston at September 30, 2004 10:19 AM