8 - Gatekeeping, Advocacy, Reflection: Overlapping Voices in Nineteenth-Century British Music Criticism

Summary

A basic tool for investigating nineteenth-century British journalism, including music criticism, has long been The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800–1900, issued in 1976. Among the 50,000 entries of its updated series 2 (2003) are more than 200 music titles. Most of those originated in London and had brief lives. They touch every conceivable topic from church music to Wagner, madrigals to music hall, string technique to theories of history. Add the several thousand literary magazines, art and theatre papers, and daily and weekly newspapers that carried essays, review articles and other music-evaluative discussion, and the bulk of British music criticism grows exponentially.