Everitt Clark commented on my musical interpreter = art critic analogy:

I think you're right that the analogy isn't a very happy one: I took up
the Mona Lisa example from (I think) Bob Draper.  However, I'd like to make
a few points to clarify my position:

>If we go back to art, then the analagous position of a music critic in the
>realm of art would be a critic who critiques other critics!

That's not implausible.  Take a review of an art book which is about the
Mona Lisa.  The reviewer will be writing about the author's interpretation
of the Mona Lisa, but as he does so he'll also be going back to the Mona
Lisa itself, measuring the author's interpretation against his own.  Isn't
that what music critics do? I do think that music (ie concert or CD)
reviewers are, in a way, critiquing a critique, because they are assessing
not just the work itself, but what the interpreter thought about the work.

>I don't agree with the idea that going to read a score for
>yourself is an experience lower on the totem pole in basicness than going
>to a performance.  I guess my point (which has been made many times by many
>other people on this list) is that what's on the score alone is not quite
>music.

No, of course it isn't - but the notes on the page are all we've got.
You've also got a few expressive markings by the composer and a few
performance traditions - but as I've argued before, while those may help us
to a greater or lesser degree to understand the work, they don't represent
the work itself, just the composer's own interpretation of it - and even
that not always very clearly.  My point is that if you read the score (or,
better, play the music yourself), you can make your own decisions about how
you want to understand the notes.  If you listen to a performance, you hear
the work through the filter of another person's thoughts and imagination.
In that sense hearing a performance of a piece of music *is* like reading
an essay on the Mona Lisa - but you're right, the analogy only works up to
that point - the performance preserves much more of the musical composition
than the article, which can only evoke the Mona Lisa in words.  As you say:

>Whereas listening to a performance of a score without the score in hand
>will still give one a great deal of emotional and intellectual pleasure,
>reading the thoughts of an art critic on the Mona Lisa without viewing the
>Mona Lisa itself will not give one a comparable artistic experience.

Perhaps a better image would have been of a TV arts programme where the
camera shows you all of the painting, but focuses on some parts more
than others, while a voice-over is telling you what those parts mean.

Vielen Dank for your response!

Felix Delbruck
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