Music Criticism Research Articles

Ancient and Modern in Eighteenth-Century British Music Criticism: The Contradictory Case of Henry Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate

ABSTRACT During the early modern period, the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns encapsulated profound changes in the way people conceived of the past in relation to their own present. While the Ancients continued to advocate emulating esteemed ancient authorities, the Moderns sought to break away from previous models through original invention. In reality, this binary opposition disguises a much more gradual process of change, which often resulted in contradictory perspectives on the past. This article uses music criticism from eighteenth-century Britain to explore these complexities, concentrating on how Henry Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate was appropriated by authors from both sides of the Quarrel to advance opposing viewpoints, using embryonic musical analysis as a hermeneutic tool. The study exposes the tensions underlying the developing historical narratives on which Purcell’s posthumous reputation was built, allowing us to place our own understanding of his reception more firmly within its socio-cultural context.

Martha Argerich and the Queer Histories of Feminine Pianism

Charges of eccentricity have long clung to the Argentine pianist Martha Argerich. Flouting many of the conventions governing classical performance, Argerich has openly resisted professional and identitarian confinement, admitting that she “[doesn’t] want to be a pianist” and has never “felt like a woman.” Indeed, reviews of her performances are littered with impressions of disorientation attributed to the subtleties of her gendered transgressions coupled with her corporeal stillness in performance. This fixation on stillness invokes a history traceable to eighteenth-century music criticism, wherein descriptions of stillness policed the borders of palatable gender expression. This phenomenon of stillness would come to condition the figure of the “virtuosa” and, persisting into the twentieth century, complicates prevailing narratives centering the great men of piano performance history. This article takes Argerich’s performances as invitations to look back toward the tradition of feminine virtuosity to which she belongs, while exploring the ways in which she challenges its gendered limitations. I argue that the tensions underpinning her self-professed gender ambivalence and professional dissatisfaction are enacted through the virtuosic choreography she fashions in performance—a choreography that both reinscribes and traverses the borders of feminine virtuosity. I thus read her performances as queer enactments of her gender disidentification. I then turn toward Argerich’s world of artists misaligned with the demands of classical performance. Her commune has provided refuge not only for this community of outcasts but also for those who have never shared a space with Argerich, yet nonetheless stumble upon the traces of her aberrant desires.

Opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by M. Glinka: pages of history and modern times

The article, based on the works of musicologists, literary critics and music critics, examines the history of Glinka's fateful acquaintance with Pushkin, the birth of the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, the reasons for the failure of its first production and modern directorial decisions of the play. The magical national poem-tale by A. Pushkin “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, despite the attacks of critics, enjoyed great success among contemporaries. Pushkin’s plot attracted Glinka because it opened up a wide scope for his melodic talent. Glinka listened to Pushkin's wishes and created a vivid performance with dance episodes, original stage solutions, lyrical line and emphasized originality of Russian images of Pushkin’s poem. At the same time, Glinka rejected Pushkin's irony, which permeates the poem, and composed a magical work dominated by music. We have a Pushkin plot in the absence of the Pushkin word. Ruslan and Lyudmila have been arguing about the opera for almost 200 years, there are several editions of the music.

Defining ‘Russianness’, defining ‘Austrianness’ – defining ‘Europe’: Austrian Tchaikovsky imageries during the Allied occupation, 1945–55

ABSTRACT This essay will examine critical discourses regarding Peter Tchaikovsky as a symbolic figurehead of high-brow Russian music in the two most widely circulated Austrian newspapers of the Allied occupation period: the Wiener Kurier (WK) and the Salzburger Nachrichten (SN), both affiliated with the US administration. In the context of Austria’s (problematic) denazification, post-war reconstruction, nation-building and reorientation towards the West, the reception of Tchaikovsky serves as a litmus test of negotiations concerning questions of cultural capital, habitus, musical canon, and nationalism (Otherness), Austria’s position as Europe’s Musikland, and a composer’s branding. Influential critics evaded a clear positioning within the Cold War ‘East–West’ context by appropriating Tchaikovsky for constructing an Austrian, European identity from a position of cultural power. This led to the coexistence of several musical ‘Russias’ in the Austrian public space: Soviet cultural diplomacy, US promotion of musical modernity (Stravinsky) and Austrians’ own, and self-interested, reconstruction of a Russian ‘national’ canon. Wiener Kurier and Salzburger Nachrichten columnists display a significant degree of middle-term continuity, while developing remarkable independence from and agency vis-à-vis the hard power presence of both the United States and the USSR, by subverting the superpowers’ cultural offensives, engaging in Austrian prestige politics, and affirming their interpretative sovereignty and knowledge-power within the re-emerging Austrian musical field. The music critics’ robust judgment, combined with the relative popularity that Tchaikovsky enjoyed, affirmed the considerable autonomy of the cultural field, and the discursive pre-eminence of musical conservatives and their knowledge-power.

Национальные певческие голоса Советского Союза в 1920-х годах

The aim of the study is to determine the ways of describing the national voice in the 1920s. With all the multiple functions of the voice, it is most clearly manifested in singing, and, accordingly, in relation to singing, it undergoes the greatest theorization among music critics of that time. The body of the Soviet singer is marked through social class, topos and ethnicity and is endowed with multiple emotionally charged characteristics. Ultimately, many singers of that time, precisely due to their voice features, often were marked by contemporaries with the ethnographic clichés of ‘nature’ or ‘naturalness’ and formed a musical fashion for many decades. Others, though, despite possessing similar characteristics, were persecuted. The study will be devoted to the analysis of these characteristics. The novelty of the work is determined by the use of approaches to the voice characteristic of cultural studies and Western philosophy of sound, coming from the works of R. Barthes, J. Derrida and M. Dolar, in relation to the problems and tasks of the field of soviet studies. As a result, several clusters of national voices were identified: the first of them are Jewish, Gypsy and Ukrainian voices, marked mainly through class and political affiliation with previous era. The second cluster is represented by Caucasus and Central Asian voices, which possessed, on the contrary, purely colonial-ethnographic characteristics. Conclusions are made about the high level of theorization and politization of the human voice in the early Soviet period.

Getting emotional: Emotions and ‘journalistification’ in Norwegian music reviews, 1981–2022

Whether emotional experience should be part of a critic’s evaluation has been a central but contentious issue in the history of music criticism. In this article, I trace how music critics in Norway treat emotions through three stages from the historical transition from an ‘aesthetic’ to a more ‘journalistic’ paradigm of arts journalism. I analyse an archival dataset from the dailies ‘Aftenposten’, ‘Dagbladet’, ‘Bergens Tidende’ and ‘Arbeiderbladet’/’Dagsavisen’ in 1981, 2001 and 2022. The qualitative analysis reveals that, paradoxically, emotions became more prevalent and explicit at the same time as the ‘journalistic’ paradigm, which is characterised by the strategic ritual of objectivity, became more present in the reviews. I argue that the way the journalistic paradigm increasingly intersects with emotion in these reviews has theoretical implications for the study of arts journalism and the subgenre of music criticism, challenging the dichotomy between emotions and objectivity that exists in both journalism studies and the history of music criticism.

Pemaknaan Lirik Lagu Feel Special ( Analisis Wacana Van Dijk )

Song lyrics are verbal symbols created by humans. In expressing their experiences, songwriters play with words and language to create appeal and distinctiveness to their lyrics or verses (Awe, 2003:51). Twice's Feel Special depicts the importance of valuing oneself and finding happiness within oneself, without relying on the validation or recognition of others. It also describes feelings of doubt and uncertainty about one's worth. Therefore, the background explains that the song Feel Special has received many positive responses from fans and music critics. This Feel Special song remains relevant today because its message about self-worth is something that is relatable to many people. This song can be a source of strength and inspiration for those who are feeling a loss of confidence. This research uses a qualitative research method with van dijk's discourse analysis approach. This analysis focuses on the macro and micro structure of the song text, as well as the social context and social cognition. The results show that the lyrics of the song Feel Special contain the meaning of the importance of loving oneself and accepting one's shortcomings, as well as telling the story of a person who feels insecure and insecure, then he learns to become more confident. This message is conveyed through various discourse strategies, such as text, social cognition and social context. The meaning of this song can help its listeners to increase their self-confidence and self-acceptance.

Democratisation without democracy: Musical discourse in the digital age

ABSTRACT The contemporary discourse of digitalisation suggests that the music world has been ‘democratised’ through technical protocols that allow for greater access and voice, and eliminate the need for intermediaries such as record company executives and professional music critics. Yet there is little engagement in this formulation with normative conceptions of democracy. Indeed, the formal similarities between technological platforms and democratic structures obscure what are far more significant substantive differences. Using examples of historical moments when the connection between music and normative conceptions of democracy in the US were significantly more robust, I consider developments that led to the hollowing out of such critical public discourse about music and analyse the transposition of meaning of key democratic terms. This work builds on Jeffrey Goldfarb's commitment to the relative autonomy of the arts and sciences and their central place in democratic public life.

Tchaikovsky, Onegin, and the Art of Characterization

Tchaikovsky enjoyed composing Yevgeni Onegin. He expressed his fulfillment in a famous letter to Sergey Taneyev. What could his enthusiasm convey about the content of the project? Music criticism has taken Tchaikovsky’s words as proof for the thesis that the opera is connected to autobiographical circumstances. In this mode of thinking, the quality of Tchaikovsky’s music is the result of the composer’s identification with the subject matter. Despite the objection of several Tchaikovsky scholars, the autobiographical paradigm remains very much alive in the reception of Tchaikovsky’s music. As an alternative, Tchaikovsky scholarship has explored a hermeneutical approach that would link his music to its context in Russian society and culture. In this paper, I present another possible reaction to Tchaikovsky’s statement: an exploration of the composer’s approach to musical characterization. Analysis of some key scenes reveals that the definition of characters and situations by musical means is more precise than standard interpretations of the opera would concede. This discovery may lead to a new assessment of characterization as a critical tool to refine the definition of Tchaikovsky’s position in European music history. The method may be applied to examples outside his operatic output, such as Serenade for Strings and the Fifth Symphony.

Mahalia Jacksonin musiikin ja hänen gospellaulutyylinsä saapuminen Suomeen 1950–1960 luvuilla

Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972), “The World’s Greatest Gospel Singer”, broke path for the worldwide popularity of African American gospel music. Her European concert tours never reached Finland, but since the 1950s, Finnish audiences have been able to listen to her music via recordings, radio, film and other media. This article explores the ways in which Jackson’s music came to Finland in the 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, the article shows how the early marketing of her records and music critics’ excited reception of her gospel vocal expression sought to shape local audiences’ listening experiences and appreciation for the artistic merit of her music. This article is based on a study of various sources including advertisements, music reviews, correspondence and other archival materials, recordings, Jackson’s performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959). This article shows that when Mahalia Jackson’s music came to Finland, her gospel vocal expression was recognized for its powerful spirituality and emotional impact on listeners. Yet the ways in which her music was presented to Finnish audiences was often mystifying, decontextualized and guided by the interests of music industry actors. This limited the ability of local listeners to understand the cultural and historical meanings of her gospel vocal expression. At the same time, however, the enthusiasm and admiration demonstrated by music critics paved the way for the enduring influence of Mahalia Jackson’s music in Finland.

SERBIAN MUSIC CRITICISM OF THE INTERWAR PERIOD: TEXTS ABOUT MUSIC BY DANICА KRSTIĆ IN THE MAGAZINE MUZIČKI GLASNIK

The paper analyzes the texts of Danica Krstić (1873–1966) in the magazine Muzički glasnik, published in 1922 in Belgrade. Danica Krstić is known to the professional public as one of the first piano teachers at the Serbian Music School (from 1903 to 1940) and as the author of the first piano textbook in the Serbian language, Piano School (1911). However, few people know the fact that she was also a music critic in the magazine Muzički glasnik. Namely, she gave two critical reviews of the concerts of young pianists - Ćiril Ličar and Vera Lotar. In both articles, the author used the same method - it is an analytical presentation of the works that are in the repertoire, while the emphasis is on the performing skills of the mentioned artists. This fact is not surprising, given that the author was professionally oriented towards performing. The paper will also discuss the historical development and importance of music criticism in Serbia in the period between the two World Wars. The historical processes through which music criticism in our region went through, as well as the methods of changes in the critical model in the period between the two World Wars, will be pointed out. It will also be discussed about the magazine Muzički glasnik in the context of selected articles, but also the entire magazine as one of the most important in the domestic area in the mentioned time frame. The goal is to highlight the diverse professional involvement of Danica Krstić and her role in the process of developing musical culture and education in Belgrade and Serbia at the beginning of the 20th century. The paper uses the method of theoretical analysis as well as an analytical-musicological view of the concert life of the Serbian capital.

Affective Authenticity

This article develops the concept of “affective authenticity” to explore the experiences and reception of US-based African migrant musicians in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on interviews, archival sources and musical analysis, we trace the migration stories of South African singer Letta Mbulu and the ways in which she negotiated conflicting demands for “authenticity” in her musical performances on the American stage. Affective authenticity represents a heterogenous, explorative sound, reflecting pan-African politics and aesthetics that created the very conditions for African and African American musical collaborations. This aesthetic was countered with expectations for “scientific authenticity:” an ethno-linguistically circumscribed performance that catered to colonial ears and conceptualized African musics as insular, ancient and unchanging – an aesthetic held and policed primarily by (white) music critics. Through analysis of the Yoruba hymn Ise Oluwa (1927) and its “translations” in Mbulu’s performance on the soundtrack for the television show Roots (1977), we show the careful balance of voices, texts, instruments, and rhythms African migrant musicians perform in order to adhere to conflicting demands for authenticity, and the rebuke they experience when they transgress them. We also place conceptualizations of affective and scientific authenticity applied to popular music in broader discourses occurring during the height of the civil rights movement in the United States, the decolonization of Africa, and the entrenchment of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

고등학교 음악비평문 지도방안 연구

Objectives The purpose of this paper is to provide teaching methods for guiding music criticism in Music Appreciation and Criticism, one of the High School Music Career-related Subjects.
 Methods The authors have reconstructed Stolnitz's art criticism and presented three musical criticisms, contextual criticism, intrinsic criticism, and impressionist criticism; we have applied Feldman's four critical stages, description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation to the three types of musical criticism. We have also presented a model of what should be included in each stage so that students can actually write criticism of musical works.
 Results In the first stage, explanation, students can obtain some information on the composer's biography and background of the work from textbooks and introductory books, and describe musical surface such as tonality, beat, rhythm, etc. When guiding students on the second stage, analysis, let them identify the components of the music and the characteristics of the piece. In the next stage, interpretation, students are asked to find musical meaning based on the analysis, describe the work in a social or historical context, or contextually reveal their subjective feelings about the work. In the final stage, evaluation, the teacher makes students judge the meaning and value of the piece.
 Conclusions This study is significant in that it systematizes and presents a framework for writing in high school music criticism classes. Through this study, we hope that discussions on music criticism will be actively conducted and contribute to school music education.

Delphine von Schauroth, Corinna-Sister

Despite her current marginal position, the nineteenth-century pianist and composer Delphine von Schauroth (1813–1887) once ranked among the most prominent virtuosos of the nineteenth century and had connections with Fanny Hensel, Ferdinand Hiller, Josephine Lang, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and others. Drawing on large body of music criticism, as well as compositions, letters, images and literary works, this article presents a portrait of Schauroth as an artist, with an emphasis on the role of improvisation and the improvisatory in her pianism. In particular, the article fleshes out Robert Schumann's characterization of Schauroth as a ‘Corinna-sister’, a reference to the improvising poetess of Madame de Stäel's novel Corinne, or Italy. The article suggests that Schumann's comparison highlights key facets of Schauroth's status and character as a pianist and composer. Firstly, like Corinne, Schauroth was widely renowned as an eminent performer and was celebrated as a genius by critics, which was particularly notable for a woman musician in the early nineteenth century. Secondly, Schauroth was received as a creator, not only for her compositions, but also for her performances: in the late 1820s and early 1830s, in particular, critics responded to these performances with images of magical creation and an emphasis on the newness of her performance over the composer's work. Thirdly, Schauroth displayed a varied practice of improvisation, and her compositions were understood as having an improvisatory character.

Analytical Listening and Aesthetic Experience in Music Criticism

In this article, I discuss the methodological and contextual aspects of writing music criticism, drawing cues from applied musicology and autoethnography. The challenge for any music critic is the question of the relationship between objective and subjective approaches. I analyze the relationship between analytical listening and aesthetic experience, using the examples of two music reviews of Ivo Pogorelić’s piano recitals that I wrote. The interpretations of this pianist are suitable for the analysis precisely because he is commonly seen as an unconventional, even controversial pianist, and his interpretations of romantic music are often regarded as examples of anti-academicism and even deconstruction of pianistic canons accumulated during the 20th century. Against that term, I will talk about liberation, which is perhaps a more suitable label for Pogorelić’s modernist approach to performance.

Antonio Tamburini and the Baritone Role

The study of opera art at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries is currently a topical research. At the beginning of the 19th century, many cardinal changes took place in the field of vocal performance: new types of singing voices and dramatic roles were formed, the manner of ornamentation of parts underwent changes. Many works of domestic and foreign musicologists are mainly devoted to the study of the operatic performance of tenors, basses, contraltos and sopranos. Occasionally, they mention the baritones of the Verdi period, and the period of the birth of the baritone role, unfortunately, remains unexplored. The subject of this study is the operatic and vocal work of the Italian baritone Antonio Tamburini. The object of the study is the baritone roles created for the singer. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study was the works of modern domestic and foreign musicologists devoted to the art of vocal masters of the early 19th century, reviews of Tamburini's contemporary music critics and his creative biography. The novelty of the study lies in the identification of causal relationships between the performance of the singer and the evolutionary processes that occurred in the opera art of the early 19th century. The main conclusion of the study is to identify the role of Tamburini in the formation of the role of the baritone.

Антонин Дворжак и идеи чешского панславизма в последней трети XIX века

The article examines the influence of the ideas of Pan-Slavism on the culture of Czechia at the end of the XIX century. For the first time, Czech pan-Slavism is consistently chronologically examined (from the 1860s to the 1890s) from three perspectives: its manifestations in a political way, in the cultural dialogue between the Czech Republic and Russia and in the life and work of Dvorak. The article focuses on the interaction between cultural and political life in Prague, revealing the debate between two political parties ("Young Czechs" and "Old Czechs") and controversies in the Czech press that divided the musical world between supporters of Smetana and Dvorak. The study places significant emphasis on Dvorak’s work in a broad context related to pan-Slavism in the context of Pan-Slavism in the spheres of political, social, and cultural life, including literature and music criticism.

In Memoriam Viorel Cosma (1923-2017): Outstanding Personality for Romanian Musicology

"This year marks a century since the birth of the musicologist and enescologist Viorel Cosma (1923-2017). The purpose of this article is to recall the impact that Viorel Cosma had in musicological research on a national and international level through the thousands of signed articles and through the approxi¬mately 100 books published on themes that highlighted Romanian music and musi¬cians. The significant contribu¬tions of Viorel Cosma are recognized in particular for 22 volumes dedicated to George Enescu, for 12 biobibliographical lexicons with personalities of Romanian music, for musical criticism signed throughout 40 years at concerts as well 60 years at opera performances. Viorel Cosma remains in the history of Romanian musical culture as an emblematic personality who successfully combined the role of musicologist, teacher, enescologist, lexicographer and music critic. Keywords: Viorel Cosma, Romanian Musicology, George Enescu, Lexicographer, Music critic."

Context and Content Analysis of the History of Female Composition in Eastern Galicia in Light of Gender Theories

For a long time, the profession of the composer was undeservedly on the periphery of the world of music and was considered not only few in terms of female representation in performance, music education and musicology, but also low-value and not worth discussing. The relevance of the article is due to the rethinking of the attitude towards female composers, including in the light of gender ideas. It is necessary to research the stories of the life and work of Ukrainian female composers from Eastern Galicia, S. Turkevich and O. Olshanetska, in order to fully return their figures to the national musical space, both in the performance and research spheres. The purpose of the article is to highlight the stories of the creative achievements of Galician female musicians. In the course of the research, the works of music critics, historians and psychologists related to the topic were analyzed. Content analysis and context analysis (biographical method), as well as analytical method, methods of comparison and systematization were chosen as the main research methods. As a result, it was established that due to ethnic gender stereotypes, gender-professional prejudices and socio-cultural features of the society of Eastern Galicia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the creativity of the mentioned female composers did not gain the necessary publicity. Despite the fact that female musicians had the opportunity to get an education and engage in creativity, the Ukrainian-Galician musical elite belittled their achievements compared to their male colleagues. While women's writing in Galicia developed rapidly and caused a public outcry, despite the innovation and boldness of ideas, traditional views on the gender issue continued to prevail in the musical sphere. Thus, the achievements of S. Turkevich went beyond the boundaries of traditionality as "too ambitious", while the works of O. Olshanetska did not have actual support for publication. The practical significance of the study is that it helps to demonstrate the influence of the socio-cultural context and stereotypes on the development of women's creativity in the musical sphere and to change the modern attitude towards them by increasing their recognition.

Writing for the Papers: Colette’s Chroniques and the Question of Genre

Apart from her familiar fiction and memory writing, Colette wrote hundreds of short pieces for the periodical press. Some of these are theatre and music criticism; many are chroniques. This article selects several of these in which Colette reflects on this very fluid genre. Firstly, she receives advice from a child about writing without an assigned topic. This is a parodic poetics. Secondly, she tells us where she finds her topics: it is in the streets, not in the “factory” that makes the paper. Yet, in an evident paradox, her vehicle for this lesson is a story about crackpots who do not respect this boundary. Thirdly, in another paradox, she wanders in the streets, writing while taking time off from writing. This last chronique foreshadows the work of Ross Chambers on Loiterature.