Music journalism
Music journalism is a specialized branch of entertainment journalism — especially criticism and reportage about
music. Ranging from lengthy profiles of
singers and
bands to brief
album reviews, music journalism is at least several decades old. Magazines such as
Rolling Stone,
Urb,
New Musical Express, and
The Source are well known for their musical journalism.
Before about the
1840s, reporting on music was either done by musical journals, such as (in the areas that later became Germany)
Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (published by
Breitkopf & Hartel and then by Rieter-Biederman, from
1798–
1882) or the
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (founded by
Robert Schumann); in London such journals as the
Musical Times as of
1844 (
Musical Times and singing-class circular until
1906), and so on; which was its major competitor in Germany*, and which gradually supplanted it, or else by reporters at newspapers whose main interest was in politics, and which gave only slight attention to music. Several changes — possibly education, the Romantic movement generally and in music, popularization (including what some referred to as Lisztomania), among others, led to an increasing interest in music among the general papers, and an increase in the number of critics by profession (and of varying degrees of competence and integrity, of course. The situation here was distinguished from that before the
1840s, in that the critics now — on the whole — were not also musicians; and so this could be considered a turning‐point of a kind.)
The main source for the claim that music criticism underwent a fundamental change in the
1840s–
50s, is a letter by
Liszt, and admittedly, given the time and the context— the beginnings of the
War of the Romantics, the contrast he describes may be produced by nostalgia for a time when artists critiqued artists (his own ideal, as his writings are interpreted by
Alan Walker; of course, such a situation runs a risk of creating a guild mentality, though in that same context this might have seemed less true) However, the contemporary situation he describes can be independently confirmed.
The profession of music journalism, which started off without precedents, direction, or ground rules, found its feet in less than a century. The world of modern music journalism can be partially divided into — on the magazines’ side — recording and concert reviewers, interviewers, publishing staff, and editorialists and other writers. A record label or musician’s promoters will often send free recordings, or demonstration copy to the magazine to be passed on to its reviewers for audition. Announcements of future expected recordings might be made available by some recording companies and published by some magazines (by
Gramophone in classical music, for example).
*La Mara (Lipsius, Marie), ed.
Franz Liszts Briefe. 8 vols. (Volume 1,
Von Paris bis Rom, quoted.) Leipzig, 1893–1905. Translation by Constance Bache published by New York: Greenwood Press, 1969 (again 1995). ISBN 0837111048.
*Walker, Alan.
Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848–1861. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989, paperback (c) 1993. Pages 395–7. ISBN 0801497213.
*
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