Eastman School of Music - Score Yearbook (Rochester, NY)

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fha- hf et-my f- g.,,.M fQwT1J -. .r...w,-erase A f fl . 3 Tiff: 4.-4.1 ff -1 11 f .snuff K 1 fjj,',2iLPC 1 .av-sfrpf pr .. J--'-'4' A -I ifb-1 4 xi?!'Ev4Ar1gPff ' 'ffilf 1 TW. Y P , iff J Th ' 4' '-f. .45 6 ltQQ'A ' l' ,Q it fi -nz wt 5.,,...-f fi-1F:N . T- Lo ' ' 'Q Y' A Music Critic In the Age of fy N.,f -i.. 41 Aquarius Like every creative or interpretative artist, the critic has to earn his audience and retain it. He must castigate the pasti- cheur, regret the incompetent, respect and understand the past, but live entirely in the present. What the future will think of his work is totally irrelevant. He is writing not for posterity but for now ... Life will be less rich if the age of Aquarius deprives its inhabitants of the joys of backwards time-traveling and of think- ing about music as well as being mas- saged by it. William Mann - London Times Opera Criticism in America: Prac- tice, Problems and Abuses It fthe Symposiumj was a rather traumatic experience. Nevertheless, critics do make sensi- ble judgements more often than their victims and historians are willing to con- cede. The problem, of course, involves human nature rather than art. People like to remember disasters, but they take the positive - if it happens to coincide with their own assessments -for granted. If we had a choice in the matter, it would be simple: do we want to be re- membered for being wrong, or forgotten for being right? Luckily, there is no clear- cut right or wrong when it comes to subjective evaluation. And, by its very nature, criticism must be subjective. Martin Bernheimer - Los Angeles Times

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14 The Washington Post Critic claimed that those who studied and went on to teach com- position at Eastman usually fol- lowed what emerged as the party line. Their music could almost invariably be described as well- made, conservative, solid in de- sign, but without much in the way of innovation in melodici harmonic or rhythmic thinking. Paul Hume - Washington Post

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The Ethics of Music Criticism Almost the only thing we all agreed upon, 2:13 Paul Hume pointed out, was the necessity of a love for music. I asked several students at the close of the symposium what they had thought of it. It's the most exciting thing that's happened here since I came to Eastman. said one. That indeed says something for the symposium - but maybe it also says something about the current state of music education. The critic must understand something about the economics of music. No less a figure than George Bernard Shaw made a great point of this. 'It is one thing,' he said, 'to set up an ideal of perfection and complain as long as it is not reachedp but to blame individuals for not reach- ing it when it is economically unattainableg in- stead of blaming the conditions which make it unattainable: or to blame the wrong person - for instance, to blame the artist when the fault is the publicls - is to destroy half your influence as a critic. All the counterpoint of literary brilliance in the world will not save the critic from blunders of this kind, unless he understands the economics ot art. james Goodfriend - Stereo Review Vfteeaf lrll F f Alec Vt Th premi to sa' tional agree knov poor. with went of a adagi GOO Aftei the 5 from was muc Spite plau m0V hear