The Art of Criticism (in four parts), written in 1988
Part 1: Sound
Aesthetic theorists and philosophers often give an important place to the critic as the one who sees beauty before the rest of us and then points it out to us so that we can share the joy–a sort of aesthetic watchdog, you might say. Critics themselves are usually more modest and take refuge in “opinion”: “All we’re really doing is offering our opinion, for what it’s worth.”
The critic is, of course, too modest. There is a difference between mere opinion and trained judgement. In other words, some people’s opinions are worth a lot more than others. What makes someone a decent critic, after all, is that he has learned to listen critically; that is, he hears more than the rest of us because he knows how to listen and what to listen for. Years of experience have also given him some standards of comparison. That in itself validates his work and lends credibility to a journal like American Record Guide.
It’s also true that astute readers come to know whose judgements and opinions come closest to their own. Readers have experience, too. Suppose Critic X says to steer away from so-and-so’s Mozart, while Miss Y, in another magazine, thinks the same so-and-so is the greatest Mozartean of them all. I, the reader, decide to buy the record. Now, listening to it with my own ears, I can tell whether I can trust Mr X or Miss Y; I will know who listens to music more the way I do. Repeated experiences of this sort tell me which critics are most helpful to me, so that after a while I can even buy many records without hearing them–on their recommendation. In other words, even if record criticism were a totally subjective matter it would still be a great help in deciding what records to buy.
But there <I>are</I> objective areas in criticism, and much of it can be stated objectively. “I don’t like the sound on this record” is a subjective statement; if we know and trust the critic,that may be enough. But if the critic goes on to explain that the sound is extremely close-up, that is not an opinion. It is a fact, and that factual statement allows people who happen to find close-up sound exciting to choose to buy the record. I happen to hate close-up sound. My concertgoing experience must have something to do with this. I heard all the world’s great orchestras in Carnegie Hall. Since I never had much money I was always pretty far back in the hall. In a good hall like Carnegie, the sound is wonderfully blended. Herbert von Karajan has a totally different idea of orchestral sound. He is used to hearing the instruments close-up and in a cold modern hall. That’s probably why he has all his recordings engineered so it sounds like he’s checking up on the back row of the second violins. If you’ve always wished you could sit right in the orchestra with the musicians, or if you are a musician and that’s the way you’ve always heard an orchestra, you’ll love that kind of sound. To someone like me such a sound is not the sound of an orchestra at all, but merely the sound of instruments.
Recordings are either engineered for clarity and detail or for warmth and ensemble. It is very hard to get both and simply impossible to have the fullest experience of both in the same recording (or, for that matter, at a concert). Some audio men mike very closely and then add artificial reverberation to simulate “in-the-hall” realism; the result is invariably unrealistic.
For one thing, microphones are not as good as the human ear (or, really, brain) at integrating sounds and disregarding extraneous elements. Suppose you have sat in the front of the balcony in Carnegie Hall for years. You think, “all the recording engineers have to do is put a couple microphones right where I sit”. Would that it were so easy! To begin with, the hall sounds quite different without all those people in it to absorb and smooth the sound. And your ears are compensating for the hall’s reflective properties. You can see the orchestra, and your eyes persuade your ears that the sound is coming from down there, when actually it’s coming at you from all sides, and at slightly different times at that. Unfortunately, microphones don’t have eyes and are not very good at integrating all that reflected sound. Two mikes at your Carnegie Hall seat will almost surely produce a tubby and echoey recording. Sometimes a whole hall that’s great for concerts hasn’t a single good spot for recording.
And of course, recordings made in the same hall will not necessarily sound the same, because microphone placement and mixing vary. Compare, for example, the different sounds of the Boston Symphony on RCA, DG, Philips, and Erato. You can barely recognize the same orchestra. Which is the true sound of the Boston Symphony? Perhaps we should assign Boston Symphony recordings to reviewers who are familiar with their sound in concert.
Certainly the last couple of paragraphs demonstrate the foolishness of buying records by orchestra or recording location or even label (engineering practices change from year to year). As I write this I am quite enamored with the sound Erato is getting in Boston. I am a sound sensualist: I want to be stroked, soothed, tamed, cuddled, and warmed by the orchestra. The sheer sound of an orchestra thrills me. Some of our readers will judge me rather vulgar for saying that, but you know that here’s one critic who won’t praise a cold-sounding record. To the lawyers and doctors and scientists among our readers (there are many), perhaps clinical clarity is very important. Then I am not their man; watch for the critic who praises “definition”, and uses words like clarity, presence and immediacy. We have them. But I am listening for ambience, balance, blendedness, ensemble sound, and in-the-hall (Carnegie!) realism. It should be admitted, though, that there is no reason why one must have recordings that sound like concert experiences; some people think a recording should be a different experience altogether. Many listeners want a recording to let them hear things a seat halfway back in Carnegie Hall would never permit. Preferences vary, but the sound on the record is an objective matter.
A little less objective is the notion that certain kinds of sound suit certain kinds of music. I happen to think, for example, that Stravinsky sounds fine in a rather dry acoustic; his music is pretty dry in itself. But Bruckner must be warm and rich and reverberant: he was thinking cathedrals all the time! I don’t know how far one can take this kind of reasoning, though.
Then there’s the matter of “dynamic range”–that is, the range between the loudest and the softest sounds. This is strictly an objective, measurable matter; but one’s attitude toward it is not. One listener may revel in a huge dynamic spread while another (and I am such) was quite happy with the dynamic range on early LPs and finds it annoying to have to turn up the soft passages and turn down the loud ones in some newer recordings. Many technical advances serve mainly the finicky listener–the one who doesn’t go to concerts anymore because the audience and the air conditioning distract him. Only on CD will he find a listening environment free of background noise: certainly not in real life! Technology is strongly influencing the way we hear music; one wonders if the tail is starting to wag the dog.
The basis of all good thinking is the ability to generalize (said by a true synthetic!). There are two kinds of mind: the analytic and the synthetic. The analytic is always looking at details (the trees, their branches, their leaves) while the synthetic is trying to grasp the whole (the forest). The analytic listener may have the score in his lap, and may become upset that the triplets in the third movement violin solo at bar 134 were not accurately rendered. The synthetic listener is not bothered by that at all, because the overall interpretation is so moving. As a reader of music criticism you can spot each type pretty fast. And you can learn to trust the ones who think the way you do and hear what you would be listening for.
The hardest thing in this business is to believe our ears. My mind tells me that the Philadelphia Orchestra is known for wonderful string sound, but the recording I’m listening to may not do them justice. The Sofiensaal in Vienna was one of the great recording locations, but audio engineers can make any place sound terrible. The only way to know is to listen–more than once, because everything from our mood to the humidity can affect our perceptions–and to compare, because the recording at hand can seduce you.
The critic must doggedly believe his own ears; if he can’t trust his ears, he’s in the wrong business. He must do so in the face of technological hype, the star system, record company publicity, advertising, and the views of other critics. It is all too easy to say the expected thing–even to hear the expected thing. It is too easy to prejudge on the basis of past experience. No conductor is as great as his worshippers think he is, and none is as bad as his detractors say he is. And a great deal in this world is not what it purports to be.
We think our reviewers have demonstrated over the years that they listen carefully and comparatively. We hope that you have found reviewers here who listen the way you do, or who have helped you to listen better. Critics, after all, are little more than a vicarious pair of ears. As such, they save you a lot of hard work and introduce you to new sources of listening enjoyment.
Part 2: The Nature of Music
It is perfectly rational to recognize that some things go beyond human reason. Music is one. It has been considered divine, its power supernatural; and many composers have pointed beyond themselves to such a source. At the very least, music is a spiritual phenomenon, arising from and answering to the depths of the human spirit.
Novelist Iris Murdoch, a professed atheist, has described music as the quintessential spiritual experience, because it lifts people out of themselves and brings them together on a higher level than self-interest. Religious people may very well feel that there are more important spiritual experiences, but they can hardly deny the spiritual power of music.
Like all spiritual matters, music is a bit of a mystery. So naturally being a music critic is a little frightening. Aesthetic judgement is difficult and often hard to explain and defend. Critics feel vulnerable and tend to latch on to anything that can make them sound more objective and scientific.
But what we are dealing with is art, not science. Art does not rule out “objectivity” entirely, but it can never be the same kind as in science or technical matters. Even less so in music. A painting is a finished work of art; it only needs to be displayed properly and received knowingly to make its effect. But a musical score is only a blueprint; a performance is required before we have a work of art. Necessarily, then, the performers are co-creators with the composer. Their humanity and self-expression cannot be suppressed. And every performance is a slightly different work of art from every other, with a slightly different mix of composer and performer.
Still, in our technocratic age we search for some standard of objectivity. Literal fidelity to the score is one that appeals to some people. Perhaps some of our readers picture us sitting around with scores on our laps, keeping score as to how well a given performance carries out the directions of the composer. But of course that kind of fundamentalism misses the point. Musical notation, though it has become more precise, has certainly never been exact. The notes are not the music. The music the composer was hearing in his mind can never be contained in those little squiggles on a page. The composer relies upon sensitive and sympathetic artists to bring his music to life. Instead of objectivity, then, music demands authenticity–meaning, a performance by people who can enter the composer’s mind-world, get to know almost intuitively (partly by familiarity) what the composer was getting at. It really is a rather mystical process: the artist communing somehow with the composer and with the audience at the same time. Add in a whole orchestra, and it gets even more complicated: a conductor communing with musicians, composer, and audience (it takes a great man to bring it off). It does help to read a lot: to know the composer’s life and letters.
But the elusive sacred cow that we call “the intention of the composer” is not really accessible to research and more likely to be found by intuitive, instinctual, mystical means. Surely it is false to limit “the composer’s intentions” to conscious ones or to the general limitations of his time and place. The great composers almost routinely rise above all that, as did great artists in every field. Historicism, the sacred dogma of contemporary scholarship, is really nonsense. Music breaks the bonds of “possibility”, transcends the historical and the mundane. That’s why it has such a strong hold on us. Music lovers are not necessarily museum lovers, or even history lovers. We are not fascinated by the artifacts of the 18th Century: the carriages, the wigs, the costumes. But Mozart has a powerful hold on us, as if he were our contemporary–not as an historical figure. It is senseless to try to recreate the kind of performance his music had in his own time, because the whole point of music is that it gets recreated every time it is performed. Mozart’s music can be recreated this very minute by the local youth orchestra. That’s part of its fascination: Mozart interacting with late 20th Century adolescents! They will certainly not present his music the way musicians did in his own time, but there is absolutely no reason on earth why they should. Mozart is our contemporary; his music depends on artists who bring it to life anew for every generation–in every concert and every recording. And what really counts is “the master’s voice”–sympathy (empathy) with Mozart, with his soul and his self-expression. Our technological age has tried to posit a simpler, more scientific-sounding affair: historical research into the instruments and performing practices of his time. Leaving aside the fragmentary nature of all historical research, this is of questionable value in music. At best it is no substitute for the mysterious creative process that we have been trying to describe with words like “authenticity”.
No, fundamentalism of the score is untenable, and historical research offers little enlightenment. But what remains is not as hopelessly subjective as it sounds. True, music is about the emotions and can only be understood by emotionally sensitive people. But beauty is not merely in the eye of the beholder. Reasoned standards of judgement can be developed and defended, but few critics are impelled to do so when they can so readily take refuge in one sort of fundamentalism or another. There is something objective to be said, but it’s very hard work!
On the other hand, no critic or scholar can determine objectively and for all time how a Mozart symphony ought to be played. Least of all can it be stated in words. We gasp, we weep, we shout, we exclaim, we rejoice–but any words we use in doing so are miserably inadequate.
There is no formula to recognize a great performance. Still, with a little practice, any music lover can. It is there; it is objective, outside of ourselves and our individual tastes. It happens to us, it grasps us. Just as I do not judge Shakespeare, but he judges me; so a great performance imposes itself upon anyone who is sensitive and receptive. But great performances are rather rare, because that kind of spirituality is rather rare (and getting rarer? I’m afraid so). More commonly, critics are called upon to judge the adequacy, rather than the greatness, of a performance. A great performance leaves comparisons in the dust; it is incomparable. But an adequate performance demands comparison, because there are degrees of adequacy–and because definitions in art are necessarily vague. I may not be able to tell you exactly why (though I must attempt it if my writing is to be more than emotional gushing), but I may be able to hear that one performance is a richer experience of the music than another. Comparison is basic to the critic’s art, because it gives him something to say: without it, he’d be at a loss for words, he’d be unable to make his reaction to a performance meaningful to anyone else. Aesthetic terms like “grace”, “nobility”, “grandeur” do have objective referents. Comparing performances reveals that some have more of these and similar qualities than others do. These qualities reside in the performance (recording); they are there for the receptive listener to discover, like a sunset. (When was the last time you looked?) Receptivity itself varies a lot from person to person, and a person who is wonderfully sensitive to Mahler may be grossly insensitive to, say, opera. If he is honest, he will freely acknowledge that as a shortcoming; because opera has a lot to offer, and he is missing it. The larger one’s own emotional arsenal, the larger the range of music one can appreciate. Limited people have limited tastes. There’s also a thing called openness and something related that we call empathy: these allow the music to “get to” us, to work on our emotions, to reach us deeply.
Beauty is greater than the emotions, but never independent of them. Emotional range and aesthetic sensitivity go together. Of course, intellectual capacity and emotional capacity also go together, even if people sometimes allow the intellectual to stunt or thwart the emotions. How sad when intellectuals reduce themselves to mere scholars!
A life without music must be so sterile. I have known very intelligent people who don’t seem to respond to music; I can only think of that as a defect in their character. I have also known very ordinary people who could only respond to the simplest and most obvious in music; perhaps that is less a defect than lack of development. 99% of the “popular” (commercially successful) music of our day is about only one thing: sex. (Certainly Plato and Aristotle would consider rock music more dangerous than pornography. They believed in the power of music; we seem to underestimate it.) Classical music is by no means lacking in sexual feeling but possesses a much broader, more balanced emotional repertory. Nothing that is human is alien to it. We who care about human values like truth, beauty, and love find that it feeds us richly on all levels. It is a crime to reduce music to the technical, to leave it to the scholars. It is almost as bad to reduce everything to “taste”, as if there is nothing of value in the music itself. Music belongs to all who have felt its power.
If some music or performance has enriched me, if I am somehow more of a person for giving it my attention, than I want to tell you about it and persuade you to give it a try. Joy wants to be shared–that’s the secret of all true evangelism. (The converse is true, too: if I have been disappointed, I want to spare you the disappointment.) A critic can’t help but become an evangelist when he strikes gold.
To further mix metaphors, in a sterile technological age, there really aren’t many sources of food for the soul. Music is one of the few. And the critic is merely a beggar who has found food and wants you to have some too.
Part 3. Evaluating Performances
Music–any music–has a will of its own, a natural way of expressing itself. The performer (conductor) grasps this–or it grasps him–largely on a pre-rational, intuitive level. The enemy of a good interpretation is intellectualizing. The best interpretations seem to arise out of the music itself–spontaneously and almost necessarily–not out of scholarship and analysis. A great performance seems inevitable: it just had to be this way.
The only thing that counts is that the music makes its effect. Some performances reduce its effect; others paste on the performer’s own effect. But the music can make its own effect.
Intellectualizing is also the enemy of good listening. Dogmas and ideologies only get in the way. Have you ever enjoyed a concert very much and then had to listen to someone cut it to bits over some undotted I or uncrossed T?
Sometimes these people have an ideal performance in their heads. Sometimes it’s one they heard from a great conductor or recording. And fairly often they reject a performance because it violates a cherished dogma. It’s quite easy, really, to name some of these stultifying dogmas:
–all repeats must be taken.
–no cuts permitted.
–absolute fidelity to the score is required.
–the latest research findings must be observed.
–the style must conform to the style of the period.
–sentimentality must be avoided.
–conductor-orchestra-performers must be the right nationality.
This last one infuriates me! Let’s get one thing clear: music belongs to all of us. If it’s any good, it’s universal. The nation from which it came has no proprietary rights. Nor does the period it was written. Time and place are almost totally without significance. There’s no reason why Karajan’s La Mer shouldn’t be better than any French reading, no reason why a Swedish tenor shouldn’t be better at Italian opera than any Italian.
All dogma, all ideology, narrows one’s receptivity. There is no dogma that matters. There is nothing an interpretation must have to be acceptable. The critic has to clear all that garbage out of his mind and listen. Does the music make its effect? Does it work?
If it doesn’t, it is usually possible to explain why. Very often the culprit is a rigidity of some sort on the part of the artists, reflecting a bondage to some dogma. Engineers, too, can sabotage a recording through their subservience to a rigid idea. (It’s pretty ludicrous to judge a recording by the number of microphones used.)
It is much easier to prejudge than to judge. It saves a lot of work to write about all the intellectual baggage one brings to the work. It is harder, even somewhat daunting, to start from scratch with what one is actually hearing. It is not easy at all to make judgements in this field without falling back on preconceived categories. Comparisons often come to the rescue. Stokowski’s Scheherazade is without question an extremely effective, almost magical, performance. If I’m reviewing that work I must know outstanding performances like Stokowski’s. And I must know why it’s outstanding–I must know it by listening to it, not merely by reputation. I must compare the newcomer to it to see if he manages to make as much of the music.
Now we all know that new recordings carry Danger signs all over them. Danger: fantastic sound can subvert your judgement. Danger: artists’ names and reputations can affect the way we listen. Danger: a new recording has not had time to win you over; it may be unfair to compare it to one you have known for 20 years. (That’s why we do the Overviews: a retrospective look may put things in their place.) Danger: things that irritate us now may endear themselves to us in time. Danger: there was only one Stokowski.
Still, comparison is the critic’s bread and butter. It’s also the only fair way to do a review. Sticking one’s nose in a score is usually a waste of time. I have a good collection of scores, but strictly for recreational use. Once in a while I hear something in a familiar piece that I never heard before; then a score comes in handy. But notes do not make music. A score is only a blueprint, not the law of the Medes and Persians. It’s a starting point, not the goal. What counts is what the performer makes of the music. The “objective” things are not the most interesting things in a performance. Of course it matters that the instruments are tuned right and in tune with each other and play reasonably accurately and together. And it will not do to disregard a composer’s instructions recklessly. But we’ve all heard the objectively perfect performance that fails the music rather seriously–precisely because it isn’t personalized. There are qualities of involvement and passion and vitality that emerge clearly in comparisons and can make all the difference in the world. It is precisely because this is all so slippery, so seemingly relative, that comparisons are necessary.
Readers expect it, too. It is not enough to tell you that I love the music, which is played well and sounds great. You want to know how it stacks up against the competition. And in finding that out, I often find I have overestimated the recording at hand.
I am always amazed how very objective this is. I know all the arguments (even biological and anatomical ones) to support the idea that no two people hear alike. (I also know that if I believed that I would have to earn my living elsewhere!) Truth is, agreement is easy to find among unprejudiced listeners. And, let’s face it, a lot of music critics are anything but unprejudiced. Some are just plain jaded and only respond to a “shake-’em-up” performance. Some hate slow tempos or fast ones. Some dislike “sentimentality”, by which they often mean any emotion whatever. And critics are as subject to dogmatic ideologies and fads as anyone else (see the list above).
But if we put the effort into it, most of us can describe fairly well what is actually there on the record. And we do hear the same thing, you know–even if we respond quite differently to what we hear. In our last issue (Sept/Oct 1988) there were two examples of two very different reviewers working (independently) on the same recording: Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto. I believe this sort of agreement is normal, not unusual. Certainly Steven Haller and I do not listen to music the same way or with the same hopes–but we both heard what was there.
This business is a lot more objective than people think it is. What’s there is there: in the aesthetic object, on the record. Disagreement is largely a failure to get at what’s there, which in turn is usually because of prejudice, dogma, ideology. Sensitivity, intelligence, and openness help us get at the truth and allow you to put some confidence in our aesthetic judgement.
Part 4.
We travelled to Columbus to see the Son of Heaven exhibit of Chinese art and artefacts. It was installed in what was once Central High School; and one could still read over the door, carved into stone, “Knowledge is power”.
I never liked that. Knowledge used as power (over other people) is knowledge abused, knowledge in service of the ego. The critic, of course, does have a bit of an ego: how many people think the whole world should know their opinion about a recording or performance? Do some of our critics get their kicks from the sense of power? From power over readers? Over classical record sales? I hope not.
The truth is, no one can tell you what you should like. If you like the sound of Hogwood’s Beethoven, by all means buy it and enjoy it. But don’t buy it because some critic or scholar has declared that this is the correct way to play Beethoven–that it is authentic Beethoven, Beethoven the way the composer intended it to be heard. That’s nonsense to begin with, but it is also intimidation: “knowledge as power”. “I am a famous musicologist (critic, scholar), familiar with all the research, and I say this is the way it should go.” That man is a bully. Why does he need to make other people share his tastes?
It’s very easy, though, to fall into that. When we put together the Beethoven Piano Concertos overview I was inclined to say the early concertos should sound like the later ones. Another critic wrote that it was wrong to play the early ones like the later ones. I think history is on my side, since Beethoven himself played his earlier concertos all his life, and as time went on he played them more and more like the later ones–and always on the most modern piano he could find. But does this mean no one has the right to prefer them to sound more like Mozart? Does this give me the right as a critic to make someone feel “wrong”, even guilty, because of his tastes? Why do this? What have I gained by doing this?
It is wrong–unethical–to use knowledge as power over other people: to bully them into seeing things your way by dumping a pile of “research” on them. It is especially obnoxious in matters of taste. Half of my opposition to the “authenticity” school is a response to the self-righteous sense of superiority that emanates from their propaganda. If they happen to like the sounds they are producing, fine; just don’t lecture me because I don’t!
The world of scholarship is as subject to fads as the clothing market. Ideas are “in” for a while, then fade away. While they are “in”, every professor expects his students to “take account of” (i.e., bow down before) “the latest research” (theories). The whole system of footnotes and bibliography–the “apparatus” we expect from our students and scholars–discourages originality, breeds fads, and inculcates intellectual timidity and conformity. Everyone jumps on the bandwagon for every new movement, particularly if it looks like it may prevail. You are lucky if you have ever read or met a scholar who is not always testing the wind. How very, very few people think for themselves–and that goes for our intellectual “leaders” as well.
We used to hear quite often that someone “had the courage of his convictions”. That has become very rare. In the academic world, at least, people with unpopular convictions keep their mouths shut. They are afraid to seem out of sympathy with the Latest New Thing. The ones who have perspective and see each new idea in light of a whole history of ideas are not the ones who get published and promoted.
“Originality” is a fetish; shock sells, even in scholarly journals. A great deal of what goes on in the academic world is silly and useless. Most doctoral dissertations involve splitting again an already much-split hair. Pedantry abounds. What people really think or like is suppressed in favor of what they think they ought to think or like. That’s “knowledge as power”, and it reeks.
The honest critic must distance himself from the “Knowledge as Power” industry. His directness and frankness probably offend the “scholars”. His theme is “I like this and here’s why” (or the opposite). Yes he must tell you why, because he has no right to expect you to take his word for it. But he does not try to convince you that it’s “correct”. He knows there are many legitimate ways to approach any piece of music. It is extremely refreshing to read the work of an honest critic, as opposed to the would-be scholar. And once you get a feel for their tastes and preferences, the “subjectivity” of the honest ones is far more useful and dependable than the “objectivity” of the others. The latest theory in historical performance practice is no guide at all as to whether you would enjoy the performance at hand!
Who can resist the temptation to dictate taste? Often we do it unknowingly as we attempt to justify our own choices. Perhaps the basic human sin is the need to justify ourselves–to prove ourselves “right”, to demonstrate that what we do or prefer is better than what others do or prefer. And the second most basic human sin is the desire to manage other people’s lives. It is very difficult to resist crossing from “I prefer it this way” to “this is the way it ought to go.” We want so much to back our preferences with something more ostensibly “solid” so we can make other people like what we like.
It also happens to be an evasion of the critic’s task to take refuge in historical scholarship, just as it is an evasion of the interpreter’s job for the performer to do so (as Ralph Kirkpatrick was fond of saying). To say “this is the way Beethoven conceived this concerto” is outrageously arrogant. To say “this is the way he heard it at its first performance” is pretty theoretical, but still totally irrelevant. We don’t even know if he liked it that way, do we? We certainly have reason to doubt that he preferred it that way, because he played it other ways and never went back to the first performance. Why should we?
And none of this has any necessary connection with the way we prefer it. Why are so many critics afraid to say, “I like it this way”? That statement may be helpful to 90% of his readers. “This is the way it ought to be done to be faithful to the historical evidence” begs 1000 questions and helps no one. People with healthy egos do not need an “authority” to validate their preferences. Most of the great composers are dead. Beethoven may or may not have liked Riccardo Muti’s performances of his symphonies better than anyone else’s. We don’t know. Nor does it matter. The music is ours now, and what matters is how we prefer it. We have the right to hear the music the way we want it performed, and historical considerations have nothing to do with the case. All this self-conscious historical concern is incredibly unhealthy, anyway. If we perform the music the way we feel it, it becomes authentic in our world. If we artificially try to duplicate a performance from the past, the music is no longer alive for us. What worries me the most about the museum movement is that it may very well mean that “classical music” is dead. It certainly isn’t for me; but if these people take over, it may be.
The subject really is “The Art of Criticism”, but how one thing connects with another! I am only the Editor here. I cannot change the mind of 45 or 50 critics. I keep trying to edit out “knowledge as power” statements. I encourage open-minded criticism that asks, “Does this performance work? Is it effective? Do I like it? Why?” rather than “Is this correctly performed?”, which is a useless and pretentious question.
VROON