Commentary: What's Happening to Music Criticism?
"No statue has ever been erected to a critic." - Jean Sibelius
Times are tough for music criticism. Just this past year, one newspaper reassigned one of their two full-time music critics, offered the classical music editor a retirement buyout (with no intention of replacing him), and only runs half of the stories they assign. In their place, this same paper has taken to running dubious Top 20 composer lists and profiles of presenters that feel one way to attract new audiences is by turning concerts into fashion shows.
No, this isn't the Miami Herald or the Des Moines Register—it's our very own New York Times, once referred to as the "paper of record" and, for more than a century, this country's go-to arbiter of art and culture. As recently as 1978, the Times had five full-time classical music critics that contributed up to 40 reviews a week, but by 2002, that number had dropped to three full-time critics and two stringers (essentially, a regular freelancer).
Today, the Times has exactly ONE full-time critic: Tony Tommasini, who's still referred to as the "Chief Music Critic," even though there's no one else under him. And that's to say nothing of the Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and the half-dozen other New York City papers that once offered serious music coverage on par with the Times but have since either folded or fired their critics. The way things are going, it won't be long before there's zero classical music coverage in New York's mainstream media. Wow.
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