Just over 75 years ago, the Harvard Music Department hosted the 1947 Symposium on Music Criticism, which brought 800 attendees from across the country to hear reflections on the topic from prominent art critics, musicologists, and composers, as well as world premieres of works by many of the most successful classical composers of the era. At the time this symposium was conceived—an “adventurous undertaking,” as the organizers deemed it—the classical music critic was well-represented in the local, national and international press. This is no longer the case. And in the intervening decades, the landscape of music criticism has shifted dramatically, expanding in terms of musical genre, genres of writing, publication venues, access, and public interest, including the rise of popular YouTube channels, blogs and podcasts on music-related topics.
As the organizers of the 1947 Symposium remarked, music criticism can never hope to be “a panacea to all our musical ills” (whatever those may be). But in light of the enormous musical, social and media developments since the mid-1940s, we take the opportunity of this anniversary to return to the topic of music criticism explored at Harvard 76 years ago. We seek to revisit existential questions about the practice and purpose of public writing about music, though with a critical eye, and ear, to the subsequent transformations in music, media, and the cultures that consume them, and to the many peoples and musical traditions the original symposium neglected.
Visit the conference website for more information.