For some context on the historical development of music criticism, or one
view of that history anyhow, I suggest reading Alan Walker's rather flawed
but still interesting "Franz Liszt: the Weimar Years", esp.  pp.  392-6,
with its presentation of the coming-into-being of the first professional
newspaper music critics.  For one notes that before a certain point music
critics tended on the whole to be musicians themselves- and there is a
reason why this was the case.

I hope that this brief quote from a quote is fair use.  (p.  392, Cornell
U.  Press Edition, softcover, c 1989 rep 1993.  Quote originally from La
Mara, Franz Liszt's Briefe, vol.  1, pp.  271-72.  Translated by Alan
Walker.)

   "Twenty years ago there were hardly a couple of musical papers in
   Europe, and the political papers referred only in the rarest cases,
   and then briefly, to musical matters.  Now all this is quite different."
   (Perhaps written around 1854, when 'Les Preludes', the work he refers
   to as the object of criticism in the next sentence not quoted here,
   was premiered? I believe the work's parts and score were published
   even later, but since Liszt began working on 'Les Preludes' as early
   as 1848 - as the prelude to "Les Quatre Elemens"- it is just
   conceivable, if there were any public performances of the work in
   that form then, that the letter could date from then.  Walker does
   not note any such in his table (pp.  301-3) of orchestral and choral
   works, dates of composition, and dates of first performances, however.)

I find it droll that after years of garbage from Messrs.  Henahan and
Holland in the pages of the NY Times, some (equally stinky, it would seem,
I'll agree) goo by Tommasini should happen to appear on their pages that
actually _doesn't_ criticize something nontonal.  For once.  Could never
stand Henahan and still can't stand Holland, though, and others who appear
on occasion don't seem to raise their low average much.  Which is fine; it
leaves the Arts & Leisure section's standards on a par with their other
reporting in general low quality, though for other reasons.  (Example:
Waiting for decades on decades to report the very well-known fact that the
US supported the UK in arranging the coup that overthrew Mossadegh's
government isn't good reporting, Times-people.  It's _sad_.)

-Eric Schissel