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The Authority of Music Criticism Author(S): Edward T The Authority of Music Criticism Author(s): Edward T. Cone Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society , Spring, 1981, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 1981), pp. 1-18 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/831032 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms American Musicological Society and University of California Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society This content downloaded from 174.92.95.22 on Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:44:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Authority of Music Criticism* BY EDWARD T. CONE W HAT AUTHORITY can the music critic claim for his opinions? That is a question often posed, or implied, by composers and per- formers, and sometimes by critics themselves. Its relevance is not nul- lified by the fact that it is usually asked by one who feels, rightly or wrongly, that he has been misunderstood by the critic and traduced by the expression of his opinion. Rightly or wrongly-for some philosophers, of course, those words are red herrings. George Boas, for example, after contrasting the instrumental values of a work of art (its usefulness for various purposes) with its terminal values (the pleasure derived from the work itself), concludes: "What the critic says about instrumental values is objective and binding upon others, but terminal evaluations will in essence be purely autobiographical and will be authoritative only to men like himself."' Boas may be right; yet oddly enough, many who in theory claim to hold similar opinions, in practice tacitly concede the existence of standards of taste and criticism, and defer to the authority of the standard-bearers. In what follows, I shall try to avoid argument on this point by establishing premises equally valid, I hope, for a personal relativist of the Boas stripe, for a cultural relativist, and for one who insists on the objectivity of absolute standards. The music critic who is to be my primary concern is one of a triumvirate, all of whose members are engaged in some kind of critical activity: the reviewer, the teacher, and what I call the critic proper. To be sure, these are not necessarily three separate persons: a single critic may, and often does, assume two or all three roles. But since the aims and activities of each are distinct, it is convenient to discuss them as three individuals rather than as three aspects of one. * This essay was read, in a slightly different form, at the Salzburg Seminar in April 1979, and at a meeting of the New York Chapter of the American Musicological Society in October 1979. It is part of a study in progress, investigating the various manifestations of music criticism: in words, in performance, and in composition it- self. i George Boas, A Primer for Critics (Baltimore, 1937), p. 149- This content downloaded from 174.92.95.22 on Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:44:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY For the typical member of the musical public the term "music critic" invokes the image of the reviewer whose columns he reads in the daily or weekly press. I suspect, too, that most reviewers think of themselves as practicing exemplary music criticism. In fact, however, what reviewers produce represents a genre of criticism that is narrow- ly delimited, even though it may preponderate in sheer bulk of out- put. The point becomes clear as soon as one looks at the parallel in the world of letters: "book reviewer" is by no means synonymous, or co- terminous, with "literary critic"; indeed, many fine literary critics re- view no books at all. The reviewer writes primarily for the consumer. His reader wants to know what to buy: what concerts and operas to attend, what rec- ords to listen to, and what to think about what he hears. The review- er's ears, then, must be fundamentally similar to those of the lay audience--although, one hopes, sharper and more focused. His essays must describe as accurately as possible how the music sounded-how it went, if it was new; how it was performed, if it was old. If he is successful his reader will say, "Yes, that is what I heard," or, "Yes, that is what I should have heard had I been more attentive," or, "So that is what I would have heard if I had been there." But the reviewer cannot stop with mere description. He must make a judgment, for what his reader is most anxious to know is, Is it worth hearing, worth attending, worth talking about, worth buying? Will I like it? (Or, Should I like it?) The reviewer's authority, then, stems from his read- er's conviction that the reviewer's taste is trustworthy--which most frequently means, consonant with the reader's own. Broader and bet- ter informed, to be sure, but basically similar. Boas is certainly right about the reviewer: his opinions "will be authoritative only to men like himself." The successful reviewer, then, must write from the layman's point of view. He is, if you will, a professional layman. The teacher-critic, by contrast, is your out-and-out professional, a professional profes- sional. His reader, or more likely his auditor, is presumably one who is working at music seriously, either as a performer or as a composer. (I am obviously not dealing here with attempts to train recalcitrant children or apathetic adolescents--nor, at the moment, with the edu- cation of appreciative listeners.) The student of the teacher-critic is a maker, not a consumer, of music. In a word, he is a musician-wheth- er only an aspirant, or frankly an amateur, or fully a professional. The teacher's judgment of his performance, or of his composition, is not pronounced for its own sake; rather it is directed toward helping him to improve or to perfect his work. Criticism of this kind is specific and This content downloaded from 174.92.95.22 on Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:44:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE AUTHORITY OF MUSIC CRITICISM 3 practical. Its aim is to aid the student in achieving his own musical goals. Such a teacher's authority resides in what we call, in general, competence: the precision of his technical knowledge, the breadth of his musical experience, and the ability to apply both knowledge and experience to the solution of the student's problems. The teacher's aim has just been defined in terms of the student's goals. But often the teacher goes beyond that limitation and tries to help the student define his goals. Indeed, at any level beyond the most elementary, the achievement of a given end merges insensibly into the reshaping of that end. It is a duty of the teacher to assist and to direct that process by constantly questioning, not only the appropriateness of the student's methods, but the value of his results as well. He inter- prets-a performance, a composition-and he evaluates. In so doing he becomes, to use my term, a critic proper. The preceding discussion has excluded those who offer instruction in such subjects as music history and "appreciation." The omissions were intentional, for these teachers address a different clientele and pursue different objectives. Their students are seeking, not to produce or to reproduce music, but to understand it better or even just to enjoy it more fully. At every level, their instruction is almost bound to in- volve real critical activity. And when music history moves toward the understanding of style, for example, or when appreciation transcends the mere recognition of themes and patterns, the thrust toward serious criticism is evident. If such teachers often consider themselves to be true critics it is because they often are; for, as will become clear, the basic job of the critic is precisely to broaden and deepen appreciation, in the best sense of the word. The reviewer, too, often regards himself as a critic proper, though less frequently with justification. Yet he can become one, and in much the same way. When description evolves into interpretation, when summary judgment gives way to reasoned evaluation, reviewing be- comes criticism. These activities of interpretation and evaluation correspond to the basic re-creative and judicial aspects of criticism as defined by T. M. Greene, following Asher E. Hinds.2 (A third aspect, the historical, will be specifically considered later on.) But whereas all reviewers and all teachers (of the first type) must engage in judicial criticism, that is not necessarily true of the critic proper. On the other hand, what is essential for him, interpretation or re-creation, can hardly fail to in- 2 T. M. Greene, The Arts and the Art of Criticism (Princeton, 1940), pp. 369-73. This content downloaded from 174.92.95.22 on Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:44:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 4 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY clude at least some implied evaluation, if only by his choice of works for discussion.
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