Chapter 39 - Nineteenth-Century Music Criticism

Summary

This chapter provides an outline of Wagner’s relationship with German-language musical criticism of his time from two related angles, i.e. Wagner as the subject and the object of musical criticism. First, I summarise the emergence of professional musical criticism in the 1700s and 1800s, dependent on aesthetic and societal changes, and assess the latest status of relevant source material, which proves problematic both in case of a reliable critical edition of Wagner’s own writings as well as the availability and completeness of nineteenth-century reviews of Wagner’s works. I then proceed to sketching Wagner’s early music reviews of the 1830s and 1840s and discuss his changing attitude towards criticism in general, before tracing broader trends and shifts in critical debates around 1848 as related to Wagner. Finally, I propose the need for a more fine-grained analysis of certain key topics of nineteenth-century musical criticism in terms of ‘camps’ and ‘party lines’.