Wider Still and Wider: British Music Criticism since the Second World War

This chapter provides the first historical examination of music criticism in Britain since the Second World War. In the process, it also challenges the simplistic prevailing view of this being a period of decline from a golden age in music criticism

The Gender Paradox: Criticism of Women and Women as Critics

In May 2014 a storm erupted in the British classical music world when five established male critics fat-shamed Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, who was performing Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at Covent Garden. Instead of focusing upon Erraught’s technique or interpretation, the critics ridiculed her physique. Writing in the Financial Times Andrew Clark referred to Erraught as ‘a chubby bundle of puppy-fat’; Michael Church in The Independent and Rupert Christiansen in The Telegraph both described her as ‘dumpy’; Andrew Clements in The Guardian called her ‘stocky’; and Richard Morrison in The Times characterised her as ‘unbelievable, unsightly and unappealing’. Although these sexist comments drew widespread condemnation, they are symptomatic of a centuries-old tendency for empowered male critics to fail to produce objective assessments of female musicians

Critiquing the Canon: The Role of Criticism in Canon Formation

Music critics wield great power. Their writing influences public opinion and contributes to how audiences receive works. They focus attention upon specific works and musicians, thus justifying these as most worthy of public recognition and debate. They help works to achieve repeat performances, and thereby to establish their places within the performing canon. In the age of recorded sound, they influence sales and affect charts. Although some claim that with the recent rise of ubiquitous digital critical commentary (much of it amateur) professional critics have lost their traditional authority, online criticism continues to exercise considerable sway. In a very real way, critics have been – and continue to be – the gatekeepers of the canon. As Roy Shuker has observed, ‘popular music critics … function as significant gatekeepers and as arbiters of taste’

Catalysing Latin American identities: Alejo Carpentier’s music criticism as a Cuban case study

Despite the rich diversity of cultures, language and musical tradition in the Latin American world, the vast lands of Central and South America have often been considered a monolithic cultural area when viewed from a European perspective. While some scholars have suggested that concepts of Latin American identity remain fluid, others have observed that the fascination for European culture generated anxiety about the perceived cultural and historical gap between the Old continent and the New, a tension which resulted in the pendular movement between servile imitation and militant rejection of European influences that has become a feature of the Latin American cultural consciousness since the early twentieth century. Exploring a range of European musical influences, this essay considers issues of identity through a Cuban lens by investigating the music criticism of Alejo Carpentier who was not only one of the most influential writers of twentieth-century Latin America and uniquely placed through birth, education and up-bringing to question the European-Latin American dichotomy, but also a vigorous champion of European modernism, this providing a paradoxical catalyst for his advocacy of a distinctive Latin American identity

Musical Discourse in Italy, 1500-1800

The Cambridge History of Music Criticism is the first study of music criticism on this scale, and is intended to become the standard reference work in this growing area of investigation. My chapter considers musical discourse in Italy between 1500-1800. It surveys writings on music in various different guises, including a discussion of previously-neglected musical correspondence and summarises the beginning of 'true' music criticism towards the end of the period

Spanish music criticism in the twentieth century: writing music history in real time

This chapter examines how the documenting and reflecting on current musical life carried out by two Spanish music critics whose careers spanned most of the twentieth century – Adolfo Salazar (1890–1958) and Federico Sopeña (1917–91) – provided a crucial foundation for the historiography of Spanish music after 1900. For decades, Salazar and Sopeña have shaped our thinking about Spanish twentieth-century music; their works are still regarded as authoritative to a considerable extent and they are frequently cited as secondary sources in studies of Spanish music. Indeed, it is only in the last decade that their writings and biographies have started to be examined with a view to identifying and critiquing the master narratives they crafted to present and explain Spanish music of the twentieth century: the music they were immersed in and, in some cases, turned into history almost from the moment they heard it for the first time