Journalism In Context: Classical Music & The Dawn Of Music Criticism

Music Writing

Music Writing is all writing about music, this includes poems, books, movies, plays. The writing often isn't specific, it doesn't't name a piece of music or a composer, but it states how music can improve you as a person and tells you what music you shouldn't be listening to. Evidence of this ranges from thousands of years ago, when music was sacred, to recent years where certain types of music have been related to acts of violence and rebellion.

Music criticism

Music criticism is different to music writing as you need to analyse a specific piece, type or composer of music. Criticism can be positive or negative, you give your personal opinion. Music criticism could only start being written when music became available to everyone, not just the church or people who could afford to pay musicians. This happened in the classical era when the church lost its influence on music, people could now write what they wanted to and they could perform it where ever they wanted. The classical era was the start of using music for entertainment and people could now have their own opinion on that music. 

Music Journalism

Music journalism can be criticism, news stories, reviews, gossip pages, features, interviews. Writing music journalism only really became a possibility when newspapers and magazines exploded in popularity in the victorian era. Music journalism os different to music writing as it needs a platform in which it can reach wide groups of people on a regular basis to keep everyone up to date with the information they have to share. A big change in music journalism happened when recording was invented, people could now write about music that was widely available as well as scores and live performances.

http://hz.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/4/4e/IMSLP59385-PMLP121821-Avison_essay_on_musical_expression.pdf

This essay talks about music as a beautiful art form that people need to help them through harder times. The writer tells that music is much more passionate than spoken words, its more expressive as it shows a passion silently and brings happiness to all who listen, "It is their peculiar and essential property, to divefe the soul of of every unquiet passion, to pour in upon the mind a silent and serene joy, beyond the power of words to express, and to fix the hear in a rational, benevolent, and happy tranquility".
The essay on a whole talks in a way that suggests music is only for those who have been educated, the language he uses and the introduction he gives almost talk down to those who won't understand, "it may therefore be necessary for the fake of those that who are not particularly conversant in music, to explain them according to their most general acceptation". Through out the essay he explains how the different musical elements show a story and send a message to make the listener feel a certain way.

“Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz is a hideous, incomprehensible jargon of noise, cacophony and eccentricity, musically valueless, and only interesting to ears that prefer confusion to meaning… It had about as much propriety on the program with Schumann and Handel as a wild boar would have in a drawing room.”
—Boston Gazette, November 20, 1887

This piece of criticism not only states that the music was awful but states it holds no value and then emphasises this point referenced the wild boar. It almost seems like its aiming to embarrass people who enjoyed the piece when it talks about ears the prefer confusion, the writer is putting people down who like this music. He's stating that you don't want to be the kind of person who likes this music, that music should have an obvious meaning, music shouldn't confuse you and should be harmonious (opposite of cacophony).