To end of 18th century Critical references to music (often deprecating performers or styles) can be found in early literature, including, for example, in
Plato's
Laws and in the writings of
medieval music theorists. According to
Richard Taruskin, the active concert life of late 18th-century London meant that "the role and the function of arts criticism as we know it today were the creations of the English public." However, the first magazines specifically devoted to music criticism seem to have developed in Germany, for example,
Georg Philipp Telemann's
Der getreue Music-Meister (1728), which included publications of new compositions, and
Der kritische Musikus which appeared in
Hamburg between 1737 and 1740. In France in the 1750s, the
Querelle des Bouffons (the dispute between supporters of French and Italian opera styles as represented by
Jean-Philippe Rameau and
Jean-Baptiste Lully respectively) generated essays from
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others, including
Denis Diderot's ''
Rameau's Nephew'' (1761). The English composer
Charles Avison (1709–1770) published the first work on musical criticism in the English language – an
Essay on Musical Expression published in 1752. In it, Avison claims that since the time of
Palestrina and
Raphael, music had improved in status whilst pictorial art had declined. However, he believes that
George Frideric Handel is too much concerned with naturalistic imitation than with expression, and criticises the habit, in
Italian operas, of that egregious absurdity of repeating, and finishing many songs with the first part; when it often happens, after the passions of anger and revenge have been sufficiently expressed, that reconcilement and love are the subjects of the second, and, therefore, should conclude the performance. Typically, until the late eighteenth century, music criticism centred on vocal rather than instrumental music – "vocal music ... was the apex of [the] aesthetic hierarchy. One knew what music was expressing."
Age of Romanticism The last years of the eighteenth century reflected both a change of patronage of music from the aristocracy to the rising middle classes, and the rise of
Romanticism in the arts. Both of these had consequences for the practice of music criticism; "the tone of the critic was lowered as his audience expanded: he began to approach the reader as a colleague rather than a pedagogue", and a new generation of critics began to widen their consideration to other aspects of music than its pure representative aspects, becoming increasingly interested in instrumental music. Prominent amongst these was
E. T. A. Hoffmann, who wrote in 1809That instrumental music has now risen to a level of which one probably had no inkling not long ago and that the
symphony, especially following...Haydn and Mozart, has become the ultimate form of instrumental music – the
opera of instruments, as it were – all this is well-known to every music-lover. A further impetus to the direction of music criticism was given by the changing nature of concert programming with the establishment of the European classical music canon; indeed it is at this period that the word 'classical' is first applied to a received musical tradition. At the same time, the proportion of new music to 'canonic' music in concert programming began to decline, meaning that living composers were increasingly in competition with their dead predecessors. This was particularly the case in respect of the rise of
Beethoven's reputation in his last year and posthumously. This gave rise both to writings on the value of the 'canon' and also to writings by composers and their supporters defending newer music. In 1798 the
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, edited by
Friedrich Rochlitz (1769–1842), began publication in
Leipzig, and this is often regarded as the precursor of a new genre of criticism aimed at a wider readership than qualified connoisseurs. In subsequent years several regular journals dedicated to music criticism and reviews began to appear in major European centres, including
The Harmonicon (London 1823–33),
The Musical Times (London, 1844-date), the
Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (Paris 1827–1880, founded by
François-Joseph Fétis), the
Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung founded in 1825 by
A.M. Schlesinger and edited by
A. B. Marx, and the
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik founded in 1834 in Leipzig by
Robert Schumann and
Friedrich Wieck, and later edited by
Franz Brendel. Other journals at this period also began to carry extensive writings on music:
Hector Berlioz wrote for the Parisian
Journal des débats,
Heinrich Heine reported on music and literature in Paris for the Stuttgart
Allgemeine Zeitung, the young
Richard Wagner wrote articles for
Heinrich Laube's magazine
Zeitung für die elegante Welt and during his 1839–42 stay in Paris for Schlesinger's publishing house and German newspapers. The writer
George Henry Caunter (1791–1843) was called
"one of the first musical critics in the metropolis [London]". In 1835
James William Davison (1813–85) began his lifelong career as a music critic, writing 40 years for
The Times. ==See also==