Jocelyn Wang responded to David Cozy:

>>Thus I'd like to hear why, in Jocelyn's opinion, fine writing about the
>>arts is, ipso facto, so much less worthy than fine art.
>
>Art exists for its own sake.  Criticism exists to criticize.

This is a rather narrow and reducing definition of art's (and thereby
music's) raison d'etre.  For some composers this is true, for a lot not.
Music very often doesn't exist for its own sake but has functions:  some
composers want to entertain with their music, some want to teach, some want
to express certain programs, some write their music for God, some want to
propagate political truths, some want to shock and so on.  To say that all
art and thereby all music is l'art pour l'art means to fail to grasp a lot
of dimensions expressed by this music.  I am an agnostic but everytime I
listen to Bach's St Matthew Passion I remind myself that this music was
not written for its own sake or to entertain me but to create a religious
feeling in me.  It is music with a distinctive function.  (And
miraculously, it works!  As long as I listen I am a Christian...)

Jocelyn Wang tells a story by Brendan Behan in response to John Dalmas:

>>And what is the eunuch analogy?
>
>I believe it originated with Irish playwright Brendan Behan, although the
>analogy obviously caught on.  When asked what he thought of drama critics,
>Behan answered, "Critcs are like eunuchs in a harem.  They're there every
>night, they see it done every night, they see how it should be done every
>night, but they can't do it themselves."

Behan tried to be witty but supposedly only was drunken again.  A critic
is simply not there to "do it himself".  A critic is there to serve the
listener and the listener-to-be by explaining what music is up to, which
are the criteria for good and bad music, relevant and irrelevant music,
which performances are worthwile and which are not.  A football reporter
is not there to play football himself.  Behan plays the artistic genius
of the Romantic era who thinks it is a blasphemy to be critized.  Artists
shouldn't forget that they are human beings.

Robert