The Two-faces of Classical Music: Criticism Good, Bad, and Ugly

“Why, after all, should it be ‘pro-test,’ and not ‘de-test’? Protest once meant to give testimony in pro of something good, over and against something corrupt.”

Editor’s note: This is intended as a follow-up to the author’s May 18th piece “The Two-faces of Classical Music: the Bureaucratic Tyranny of Music Schools.”

Consider this not so much a sequel to my previous article as a coda, the kind of “oh and by the way” postscript which is now necessary to append to any statement that is not either grovelingly orthodox or politely uncertain. Although it is no longer safe to say “Methinks you doth protest too much” (because if we have learned anything in the past year it is that there is no such thing as an excess of protestation), perhaps one might say we suffer from an excess of explanation. A joke is not a joke if it needs explaining, after all. As E.B. White quipped, an explanation of a joke is rather like the dissection of a frog: One may understand it better, but one kills it in the process. Similarly, an argument is hardly an argument if the argument itself needs arguing. (One is catching on to the tedium of it, I think.) Such is the tedium of our society, in which even the lines dividing satire and sincerity have dissolved, as reality becomes ever more absurd while humor dies the death of a thousand qualifications.

Still, this social obligation to explain oneself is not far from my main subject here. The obligation arises from a new presupposition that all are guilty until some explanation can be given—at which point the explanation becomes implacable proof of guilt. (Invariably, it will be considered some form of bourgeois-splaining.) The formula is as simple as it is impervious: We are all sick even if asymptomatic; we are all bigots even if silent philanthropists. If anywhere possible, here is where protest is indeed too much. (At this point one can almost hear Kafka guffawing over his typewriter.) Nevertheless, since no one can ever become unguilty—or put another way, quite unlike Yeats, once “all hatred driven hence” the soul does not recover innocence—our mumbling attempt at explanation is our only atoning act. Like dissections, our explanations serve to expose and criticize these corruptions, in ourselves and in our culture.

Good criticism, contrarily, arises always from a place of love—love for the good, true, and beautiful.

I long ago resolved never to criticize anything for the purposes of destruction. Any fool can declare something to be bad; or as my Appalachian ancestors would say, “Any jackass can kick down a barn.” It takes no wisdom, skill, or virtue to destroy. Good criticism, contrarily, arises always from a place of love—love for the good, true, and beautiful. Whether such criticism is directed toward a piece of art, or indeed an institution of art, it must have no intention to tear down but, rather, to identify precisely that which is worthy of love. Only on the strength of this should criticism expose whatever is, by contradistinction, worthy of rebuke. Any destructiveness in such criticism is, therefore, only the careful immolation of dross.