AJ Logo an ARTSJOURNAL weblog | ArtsJournal Home | AJ Blog Central

« Critics: more different than similar | Main | Baltimore counterpoint; In Search of Lost (press) Time »

July 21, 2005

A "school" with few students

I’m struck by the slowness with which the changes of outlook that have convulsed musicology in recent years have made themselves felt in daily criticism. I’m thinking of the attention paid in academe to alternative historiographies, “subaltern” narratives, the emancipation or suppression of the body in art, sexual identity, and power relations within and around the making and consumption of music now and in the past. In short, the whole bundle of concerns known as postmodernism. These subjects have mostly been reflected in journalistic pieces about the more titillating allegations of some scholars – that Schubert was gay, for instance. In the main, I think critics have stuck with the Great Master paradigm and the notion of a timeless art that is endlessly renewable. I know of only one avowedly feminist classical critic: my colleague Tamara Bernstein at the National Post (Canada).

As I mentioned in a response to reader Barbara Scales (below), classical critics are professional Platonists, who relate what they hear to an ideal – a score and/or a “definitive” performance of the past. I think Allan Kozinn’s preference for criticism that operates in complete personal isolation from musicians and producers - a preference I don’t share - is a logical consequence of this view. The critic makes himself pure to contemplate the pure work of art.

As for differences across the Atlantic, I think European critics may be a bit more aware of the continuing political implications of the high-art music tradition. These have been obscured in the USA by the arts-for-all ideology that was necessary in order for an art-form developed for aristocrats to be transplanted into an officially egalitarian society.


Posted by reverett-green at July 21, 2005 03:02 PM

COMMENTS



Post a comment




Remember Me?


Tell A Friend

Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):