Music Criticism

This article follows on the heels of one by Holly Watkins, who argues that music, “a subsystem of the social system of communication,” can evoke the organic (the bodily and the psychic) not by forming a self-contained unity of parts and whole but through the “internal recursiveness” of musical works, their external “recursiveness vis-à-vis other music,” and – crucially – “the knowingness that music displays toward its own operations.” I adopt the premise that music evokes the organic most vividly not through recursive processes in individual systems but through the as-if intentional integration of such processes in multiple systems, of which I concern myself particularly with the harmonic, contrapuntal, and formal domains (or, more precisely, the motivic). I offer correctives to the organicist theories of Arnold Schoenberg and Heinrich Schenker, which similarly concern these domains, and especially to their reception. And I explore this direction through an analysis of Bach’s Prelude No. 7 in E-flat major from book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 852, a singular piece that billows forth like an unfathomable blossom.

More than a century after Guido Adler's appointment to the first chair in musicology at the University of Vienna, Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History provides a first look at the discipline in this earliest period, and at the ideological dilemmas and methodological anxieties that characterized it upon its institutionalization. Author Kevin Karnes contends that some of the most vital questions surrounding musicology's disciplinary identities today-the relationship between musicology and criticism, the role of the subject in analysis and the narration of history, and the responsibilities of the scholar to the listening public-originate in these conflicted and largely forgotten beginnings.

Musical criticism represents an interval of communication values which develops its set of actions on a gnoseological territory, from where the object of its research – the sound phenomenon – is perceived like an axiological and complex structure. It encompasses the auditory receptivity and studies the significance of creation and the aesthetic value of the performance by which is emphasized the expressiveness, the balance between intention, achievement and the force of suggestion.
The central theme of the book was shaped after a variety of answers that I  have obtained at this question: “How to write a musical criticism?”. Starting from Umberto Eco’s statement, Come si fa una tesi di laurea [How to Write a Thesis?]. I have asked  myself: Come si fa una critica musicale? This question has motivated me to a deep research of the area, a less approached subject in Romania, but it can remain opened for further investigations.As a starting point I have chosen the terms from the title, which constitute the essence of the contents of the book: periegesis, exegesis, hermeneutics. Its senses are revealed by the questions from the Quintilian’s hexameter: quis (who), quid (what), ubi (where), quibus auxiliis (by what means), cur (why), quomodo (how) and quando (when).

The content of this research includes the last of those “three worlds of music” noticed by the conductor Erich Leinsdorf: of the composer, of the performer and of the critic. The title reveals the essence of the the work expressed in three words: periegesis, exegesis and hermeneutics. These are three parts which forms the intern constitution of the entire research investigation. Three pillars in the cathedral of art which are impossible to be explored only with an instant and synthetic glance but, eventually by a serie of analytical, reflexive and conclusive considerations.

A partire dalla primavera del 1866 un’improvvisata troupe di comici e saltimbanchi proveniente dalla Francia tocca le principali piazze italiane, proponendo ogni sera, nel suo piccolo teatro di legno, le nuovissime (per l’Italia) operette buffe di Offenbach e Hervé. Il successo è dirompente e l’operetta parigina si impone ben presto come uno dei generi prediletti dal pubblico italiano. La sua ampia diffusione comportò non solo una riconfigurazione della geografia sociale dei teatri ma, più in generale, nuove modalità di produzione e consumo della spettacolarità. Il libro ricostruisce gli esordi (1860-1890) dell’operetta parigina a Milano, Firenze e Napoli, città d’importanza strategica nell’affermazione del genere, evidenziando le diverse modalità di produzione e di adattamento ai contesti locali, nonché le reazioni da parte della critica e del pubblico.

Utilizing the early career of Bruce Springsteen during the 1970s as an example, this article begins to theorize and historicize the relationship between hype as a communicative process and the field of rock criticism. I argue that hype should be understood in three distinct ways: as a result of material changes in the music industry of the period, as a multifaceted discursive process that involved the creation, circulation, and debate of journalistic writing; and as a rhetorical strategy employed by music critics to distance themselves from the aforementioned processes. In working toward a theory of hype, I suggest how it is a critical factor in coming to terms with how rock criticism became an element of promotional culture.

When the nominees for the 2013 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards were announced I took a particular interest in the albums list. Of the five nominated, three of them were by artists renowned for their courageous experiments within the genre (i.e. Sam Lee, Bellowhead and Lau). What struck me was this: Why was a powerful, national institution like the BBC championing off-centre, “untraditional” artists in its celebration of one of the country's most deeply ingrained musical “traditions”? Are experiments in folk music today looked upon more kindly than in the days of yore or even commonly accepted, something that people expect of the artists? To get a perspective on this, and possibly some answers, we will take a look at a modern, experimental strand in folk music, with an emphasis on the works of folk singer Sam Lee, and contrast it with another experimental strand, the revolutionary folk music of Fairport Convention et al at the end of the 60s. Do these two strands of experimentations, although divided by time and generations, meet in their revisionist ideology or are they worlds apart? And is the original one able to shed a light on the workings of this modern one?

Desde su construcción, en 1876, el Teatro del Duque fue concebido como un espacio de ocio para las clases trabajadoras de la ciudad. Durante el régimen primorriverista este coliseo fue, con diferencia, el que ofreció mayor número de funciones de teatro lírico. Organizó 3.548 representaciones, lo que supuso más del 80% del teatro lírico representado en Sevilla. Esta intensa actividad fue posible gracias a la inteligente gestión de su empresario, Máximo Meyer, que adoptó un modelo de programación, basado en el "teatro por horas", ofreciendo de tres a cinco sesiones diarias, en las que generalmente se representaban obras en un acto. Además, en lugar de contratar a agrupaciones visitantes, optó por formar una compañía lírica titular, que actuó en este escenario durante la mayor parte de las temporadas...

Benjamin Britten’s music drew on texts taken from English music, lyrics and subject matter relating to the period c.1250–c.1650 (e.g. Gloriana, A Ceremony of Carols, Lacrimae, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) throughout his compositional career. Britten’s interest in this material was partly historical, in keeping with the spirit of his age, but infused within this was a deliberate alignment of his creative output with a lost ‘Merrie England’ of the medieval period, and with the ‘Golden Age’ of English music in the century that followed it. This was not, in itself, exceptional: during World War 2 and the post-war period a great many artists created pieces that conjured with nostalgia and ‘innocence’, while simultaneously tapping into nationalist sentiment. However, perhaps more than for others, Britten’s reputation as a national composer – undermined by his pacifism and exile during the War – was reliant on his crafting of a uniquely British-English identity. This paper argues that through his appropriation of historical subject matter, and his choice of texts relating to springtime and renewal (notably his Spring Symphony, 1949), Britten was reborn as a composer of national significance. In particular, I will show how Britten’s selection of the most famous of medieval English songs, Sumer is icumen in, reflected a more widespread appropriation of the piece for this purpose than has hitherto been appreciated.

Claude Debussy was a notable music critic of the French Third Republic. The aim of this study is to determine the signification of the critical works of Debussy in the context of both musical and cultural history. As a young composer, Debussy strived to get over Wagner’s musical langage. In this context, he devotes most of his critical effort to refute wagnerian idea of music drama and the french wagnerism. Debussy’s general approach to the art is heavily influenced by two major artistic trends of his era, impressionism and symbolism. If he draws a critical reflexion on the notion of representation from impressionist paintings, symbolist poetry offers him a new understanding of the nature, based on a mystical  point of view of correspondance. But at the same time, Debussy keeps distance to these artistic trends to save the autonomy and liberty of musical art.

Debussy’s conception of music as an absolutely free art can be called pure music, which implies for him concrete aesthetical programs such as formal liberty, arabesque pattern, simplicity and immediacy. His attitude implies also a certain scepticism which deprives from music any metaphysical function. However, Debussy’s radical demand for musical freedom seems to make apparent contradiction with his defense of national tradition. But he describes french musical tradition as definitely interrupted. The tradition, supposed ever lost but never existed in fact, turns out to be a principle of modernist musical creation from tabula rasa, which serves to justify the very individualist approach to the music of Debussy the composer.

Through a conspiracy of silence on the part of music historians, coupled with the gender-biased writings of philosophers, music critics and music educators of the past, the age-old myth has been perpetuated that the gift of musical creativity is granted only to males.  This article examines some  of these writings in order to demonstrate their relationship to both the limited content of music education for women throughout most of the Romantic era--specifically, the lack of adequate instruction in theoretical subjects--and the nineteenth-century double standard in music criticism,  which allowed critics to evaluate a woman's compositions in terms of the extent to which they were thought  to conform to prevailing stereotypes of ideal femininity.

Fontelles-Ramonet, Albert. (2020). La sardana segons Joaquín Turina. Dins 
Revista Catalana de Musicologia, núm. XIII, p. 257-287

L'article relaciona Joaquín Turina amb Catalunya. Per una banda, corrobora l'existència d'una revisió del concepte de sardana deslligat pròpiament de la cobla i consolidat en altres ambients musicals com el simfònic o el de la música de cambra. Per altra banda, exposa el punt de vista del compositor vers la sardana i la cobla. A partir de l'anàlisi de «Sardana» de Joaquín Turina, es demostra fins a quin punt la visió crítica d'un compositor pot quedar plasmada en la visió creativa de la seva obra.

This paper relates Joaquín Turina to Catalonia. On the one hand, it confirms the ex istence of a review of the sardana concept, properly separated from the cobla and consoli dated in other musical areas such as symphonic music and chamber music. On the other hand, it presents the composer's point of view regarding the sardana and the cobla. From an analysis of Turina's «Sardana», we show the extent to which a composer's critical vision can be reflected in the creative vision of his work.

This essay evaluates the quite complex connection between Eduard Hanslick and Richard Wagner in a variety of contexts, thus challenging the common notion of Hanslick as intransigent adversary of Wagner and the “New German School”. The first section traces Hanslick’s references to Wagner’s operas and his aesthetic theory in the different editions of “On the Musically Beautiful”, a treatise initially received as “book against Wagner” (Popper). I argue that Wagner’s significance for Hanslick’s aesthetics is strongly exaggerated and the result of a one-sided historical reception. The text itself does not provide evidence to support the prevalent opinion about Wagner’s importance for the treatise. A different approach, however, has to be adopted for the modified prefaces of the book. Here, Hanslick reflects on the complex aesthetic controversy of his own time and harshly responds to the growing support for Wagner’s “school”, thus contributing to the distorted reception mentioned above. The results of this study of “On the Musically Beautiful” is not to be confused with Hanslick’s journalistic criticism: Although he disliked Wagner’s concept of the music drama and regarded numerous aspects of his operas as deficient, Hanslick nevertheless recognized Wagner’s historical importance. In his opinion, Wagner wasn’t a great composer but a great artist, who managed to combine his various talents in a unique manner to produce “exceptional theatrical events”. Even though he couldn’t come to terms with Wagner’s technique (endless melody) and strongly objected to the renewed poeticization of pure music (leitmotif), he clearly stated that Wagner’s significance was beyond doubt and accurately predicted his enormous influence on the subsequent development of the opera. In his nuanced reviews, Hanslick anticipated many aesthetical, ideological, and political observations that were later refined by Nietzsche and Adorno and that shape the discourse on music and opera to this day. The last section deals with Hanslick’s remarkable transition from a mainly positive outlook on Wagner’s music in his youth to his (seemingly) equally negative critique since the early 1850s. I briefly examine various related assertions of biographical, political, and aesthetical nature and argue that his increasing scepticism was largely informed by Wagner’s writings and the growing dogmatism of the “Wagner cult”. Hanslick mainly criticised two effects of Wagner’s impact: 1. The steeply rising number of “talentless” composers that nevertheless managed to write music in the “Wagnerian fashion”. Hanslick’s classicism distinguished between “exceptional” (appropriate for a single person) and “exemplary” artists (artists justly forming a whole school), with Wagner belonging to the first category. 2. The universal conception of Wagner’s theoretical writings that were not limited to aesthetical issues, but also encompassed philosophical, religious, and political opinions. The fact that Wagner’s personal position on nearly every matter was regarded as a priori truth by his devoted followers certainly made as great an impact on Hanslick’s  ritique as the specific musical innovations of the “Bayreuth Master”.

Reviews the changing assessments of Schumann's Second Symphony, especially of the last movement.  At the basis of these is a change of attitude towards Schumann's conviction that music embodies a transformational series of _Sellenzustände_ , that a symphony is in some sense a composed novel, appealing to plot archetypes present in a given culture.  Using reviews and commentaries from the 1840s to the 1940s as well as personal biographical material the essay defends this point of view.  Then proposes an analysis of especially the first and last movement based in these ideas.

This spectral issue of „Czas Kultury” shows that we are living in a time of continuation in which separation has become impossible – nothing today passes irrevocably, while the idea of a final death, ending, or separation has been laid to rest. Everything that leaves is doomed to return to live a strange, undead, spectral life. Is the present permeated by a weak, trace presence of the past, which continually undermines and stratifies our current activities and projects?

The phenomenon of spontaneous canonization is examined here in relation to the standards of listening to music, accepted as a norm within Western cultural establishment. The same self-organization of the music market that led to formation of canon in composition and performance affected the practice of consumption of music. The listener’s canon has been constructed and fixed through the interaction of professional criticism, music education, music journalism, and later, music records and radio broadcasting. This canon is documented in the music appreciation literature. More recent poll data suggests that the listener’s canon closely follows the performance canon. High degree of correspondence between the composer’s, performer’s and listener’s canons testifies to the futility of attempts to revise existing canons or introduce any new canons. This discussion is especially useful for understanding of the problems faced by concert agencies and record companies of today. The very same bug of “non-communication” that affects modern composition and modern performance is identified in modern practice of listening - as “non-communicative listening.” The roots of this problem are examined in light of cultural mismanagement of music by the record industry. Its ramifications in relation to both, classical and popular music are discussed.

The aesthetics espoused by Schopenhauer and Hanslick, which can be approached after a concept-critical examination of the respective understandings of the connection between feeling and music, are here subiected to critical questioning with reference to their music-historical classification. The similar lines of thought on dynamic emotional aspects in particular, which both authors believe can be represented through musical progressions, are accentuated as a point of systematic intersection. This shows that they do not simply belong to the opposing camps of feeling-based and formal aesthetics, but actually represent a more nuanced musical thinking than they are usually credited with. Overall, the present article seeks to provide the currently immobile specialist discourse with new impulses in order to deal productively with these aesthetic concepts which, primarily in the Anglo-American discourse, are being developed further in a constructive manner.

In B/W Paperback, and Full Color deluxe Hard Cover, the Second Edition of Charles Ives and his Road to the Stars brings a fresh approach to a broad cross section of the composer’s extraordinary musical contributions. Exposing many myths, misconceptions, faulty impressions, and falsehoods along the way, Cooke guides the reader through the unique musical language Ives created, as well as what lay behind it. For anyone interested in knowing more about this unique American icon, as well as reaching a better understanding and appreciation of his music and world, this accessible volume might be the perfect answer.

Admit it, you too have sneered at art school kids. It's hard not to, with all their hip hair, funny antics and wild clothes. Who do they think they are, rock stars? Turns out, art school has been a fertile breeding ground for pop musicianship since the Rolling Stones. Because of this, the inclusion of “art-school” in pop biography, scholarship and criticism has taken on a strong set of connotations and is, by this time, a well worn but under analyzed cliché.
With an emphasis on conceptualism over skill, process over result, and creative amateurism over technical virtuosity, art school-trained musicians have become icons of a certain type of pop performance often negatively connoted as 'dilettante' by rock(its) audiences. When adding to their pedagogically-instilled predisposition towards appropriation and their often savvy eyes to the visual aspects of pop performance, these musicians often incur the ultimate insult in the rock fan lexicon: poseurs.
In my paper I will examine the prose record of words connoting art-school trained musicians as “dilettantes” or “poseurs” to show how hierarchies of value and the unspoken rules of rock tradition are challenged when art-theory and practice jump into pop sound and performance.  What threat do amateurism, conceptualism, appropriation and the willful embrace of artifice pose to traditional concepts of popular music and musicianship, performance presence, gender and persona construction? And, when writers bite the artsy conceptualism/hype, does it lend them Avant garde status or make them big dupes? Only Fischerspooner knows for sure, and that's where my examination begins.

[Part of this essay come from a chapter commissioned (then cut) by Rebecca Walker for the book What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future (Riverhead Books, 2005).]
Although this is a "review essay" about Juan Luis Guerra's CD set "Colección Romántica," it is also a literary essay, and an auto-ethnography. My engagement with Guerra's music was shaped by three factors in my life in 2000: becoming fluent in Spanish, being a father of two children with whom I spoke in Spanish, and passing through a decade of celibacy.

Macario Santiago Kastner (1908-92) is recognised as the first to put ‘the name of Portugal on the map of international musicology’ (Manuel Carlos de Brito 1989). Settled in Lisbon from 1934, Kastner’s lifetime focus was on the uncovering of sixteenth to eighteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish music. Captivated by Iberian music from the early ‘30s, he began to programme Portuguese keyboard repertoires across Europe, developing a substantial career as a performer. Kastner was, during that decade, the first to play Carlos Seixas in Sofia, Amsterdam and even Helsinki, the first to publish a modern collection of Portuguese early keyboard pieces -his Cravistas Portuguezes (1935)—and a pioneer in introducing the clavichord to play these repertoires in his vision of the historically informed performance practice. A large amount of unexplored source material (concert programmes, concert reviews, correspondence with his mentor Joan Gibert Camins, his own curriculum and Promotional Brochure), preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal and in the Biblioteca de Catalunya, document Santiago Kastner’s early career. The purpose of this article is to analyse Kastner’s activity during the ‘30s in championing Portuguese music across Europe with particular emphasis on the way he configured his programmes—both repertoire and organological approach—in order to create a niche in the expanding early music market.

Long considered to lie ‘light years’ apart, Ravel and Wagner actually have multiple
points of contact. Several appear in the comments Ravel made about the German composer in his articles, interviews and correspondence. Another is a previously unrecognised allusion to Parsifal in the Passacaille of Ravel’s Trio (1914), which he composed shortly after writing a review of the opera’s premiere in Paris. Additional Wagnerisms can be located in Daphnis et Chloe´ (1909–12) and L’Enfant et les sortile`ges (1920–5). More broadly, Wagner plays a central role in the ‘decadent dialectics’ of Ravel’s style.