Paved with Good Intentions

Fellow blogger Drew McManus adds some apt cautionary points to my musings on granting degrees in music criticism:

One of my overriding thoughts while reading the series of posts has been "why is it that a good share of music critics have no serious musical training?" I know that's a topic worthy of a large amount of debate, but I wonder that if too many schools eventually start offering degrees in music criticism then aren't they going to start producing more and more individuals that have no direct experience with the art they are creating?

Granted, academically verified music criticism is at such an infant stage most people probably don't think about those long term evolutionary issues, but it does occur to me. I compare it to how arts administration degree programs have developed. The more AA programs expand, the more they develop managers that have to have absolutely zero experience as an artist or even a direct understanding of art. At the initial stages of these programs, that thought was abhorrent, but a mere decade later it's an accepted fact.

It never takes long for mediocrity to sink its evil claws into a good idea.

Well, thousands of years of civilization have found no cure to ameliorate that last fact. A graduate program in criticism could require a degree in performance or composition as a prerequisite. Maybe I just want to play a bunch of budding music critics some repertoire they'll never hear in the usual concert halls.

August 3, 2004 12:00 PM |

Categories:

Sites To See

Postclassic Radio! - Kyle Gann's internet radio station that accompanies the blog; see the playlist at kylegann.com

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer

Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by PostClassic published on August 3, 2004 12:00 PM.

School for Critics was the previous entry in this blog.

Leave No Term Unstoned is the next entry in this blog.

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