Bill Pirkle:

>Could someone enlighten me as to what public service music critics perform.
>How is life better with them here? What kind of music world would it be if
>there were no music critics? Are music critics certified or accredited?
>Should they be taken seriously or is it just another amusement item in the
>paper like the cartoons and the horoscope.  Is there any politics
>involved?
>
>Seriously, I want to know - how would the music world be different if there
>were none.

Let me ask you:  Would the arts in general have been different if there had
been no critics at all of anything? Would the world have been any different
without teachers?

I think the answer is "yes." The first major critic, Aristotle, helped
to influence the course of literature for over a thousand years.  For one
thing, he made certain works accessible to posterity by giving us lessons
in how to read these works.  I don't really believe that music criticism
differs significantly in essence from any other kind of criticism.  George
Bernard Shaw helped form the modern perception of Mozart, who had been
regarded as a minor master of "tuneful little ditties." Shaw showed that
people under the influence of High Romanticism had forgotten how to listen
to an earlier idiom.  Mendelssohn in effect performed an act of criticism
when he revived Bach's St.  Matthew Passion.  I'd say that counts as
significant.

No music critics are certified or accredited as such, as far as I know.
I doubt that such certification or accreditation would be worthwhile in
any case.  If a critic's blowing smoke, does it really matter whether it's
certified smoke? Whether critics should be taken seriously depends on the
particular piece of criticism.  Criticism essentially argues a proposition
about art.  If the argument has decent support and tells you something just
or reasonable about the piece, then it's good criticism.  Great criticism
is another matter.  It usually tells you something you neither knew nor
guessed.

 From your remarks, I gather you're talking about US newspaper criticism.
Most of the time, this isn't criticism.  Criticism of any art normally
doesn't appear in US newspapers.  The difference is that most of the time
nothing is argued, merely asserted.  One doesn't find support for the
proposition.  On the other hand, try reading the criticism of Shaw or
Newman or Schumann or Debussy.

Are there politics involved in criticism? Sure, often.  I know the local
New Orleans music "critic" will not give a local organization or artist
a bad review, on the grounds that there's no point.  Given the precarious
nature of arts organizations in New Orleans, one might agree with him -
they need all the help they can get.  On the other hand, we have a lot of
rather complacent arts organizations in New Orleans who turn out (to put it
charitably) mediocre product, compared to what goes on in New York, Boston,
San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Cleveland, London, Berlin, and even Kansas
City.  I doubt it will get better if no one lights a fire under their
collective ass.

Steve Schwartz