This article offers a series of experiments exploring the potential for ‘distant reading’ in French music criticism. ‘Distant reading’, a term first coined by literary theorist Franco Moretti, refers to quantitative approaches that allow for new insights into a large corpus of texts by aggregating data. While the main corpus employed here is the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (1831–1877), I also use secondary corpora of reviews of Félicien David's Herculanum in 1859, Berlioz's reviews of Gluck and Beethoven in the Journal des débats and reviews that mention Gabriel Fauré in the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America database. My experiments employ a text analysis tool named Voyant, built by Geoffrey Rockwell and Stéfan Sinclair, thereby also offering a basic introduction to the range of visualizations employed in distant reading. My experiments focus on areas in which quantitative methods are particularly well suited to generating new knowledge: corpus-wide visualizations and queries, moving beyond traditional text searching, investigations of music critics’ authorial styles and detecting sentiment in reviews, and finally, to geographies of music criticism.

The July 1860 Crystal Palace Brass Band contest brought brass bands out of their heartlands to London in unprecedented numbers, The Times (12 July 1860, 9), lauding its success as ‘quite extraordinary’. This landmark event was repeated in three successive years, but in 1863 it was abruptly terminated, and no cogent explanation has been established for its failure. The entrepreneur organizing the contests, Enderby Jackson, later wrote in his autobiography that other business dealings prevented him from further involvement in the series. Jackson had made full use of his talents and contacts to bring these remarkable working-class musical ensembles to the emergent national attraction that was the Crystal Palace. However, Jackson's manipulation of publicity and managerial style obstruct easy analysis of the contests. Moreover, Jackson later sought to protect his legacy by conjuring a smokescreen in his memoirs to obscure the real reasons for the failure of the Crystal Palace contests after 1863.

The entrepreneurial environment is never a stable one, and it should not be presumed that the accolades accorded to the opening contest would translate into its continuance on an annual basis. However, the fact that the contests were attended by many thousands of visitors each year and Jackson's assertion that they were a financial success stand in stark contrast to what is implied by their sudden end. This article demonstrates how close examination of previously unconsidered letters, surviving documentation, and other sources cast doubt on whether the contest series was ever an extraordinary success.

‘I only write music and let it speak for itself’ – such was Antonín Dvořák's attitude, according to Josef Kovařík, the composer's personal secretary in New York. Indeed, throughout his career, Dvořák seemed reluctant to share his views publicly. He did not contribute articles to Czech periodicals, his acquaintances were well aware of his dread of making public appearances and speeches, and contemporary critics often commented on his humble and unenterprising nature.

Yet Dvořák was not as passive as his alleged statement to Kovařík would imply. While visiting England during the 1880s, he became particularly concerned about forging a certain kind of image for himself in the Czech lands. Not only did Dvořák take an interest in English reviews of his music, he also sent several of these critiques to his contacts at home with the request that they be reprinted in Czech translation in the newspapers and journals of Prague. He proved to be equally strategic in some of his other professional choices, including the surprising decision to dedicate his patriotic cantata Hymnus: Heirs of the White Mountain ‘to the English people’, which can be understood as a clever tactical ploy, meant to signal the composer's international credentials to audiences at home.

Drawing upon various letters and the many excerpted English reviews that appeared in the Czech press, this article shows that Dvořák played an active part in determining which aspects of his reception in England would be relayed to the Czech public. More broadly, the article examines Dvořák's role as strategist – an aspect of the composer's career that has remained largely unexplored. Ultimately, Dvořák was mindful of what Michael Beckerman calls ‘the public-relations aspect of nationalism’, and the suggestion that he was content simply to let the music ‘speak for itself’ does not tell the whole story.

In memory of Nicholas Temperley

The title of John Fuller Maitland's article ‘Wanted – An Opera’, in which he argued for the establishment in Britain of a state-supported national opera house, could almost be read as a statement of desire for an operatic work of British origin itself. The perception that composers produced little opera of value in the period of the so-called ‘British Music Renaissance’ has become a trope, despite research in recent years showing the extent of activity, both in terms of composition and performance, during the 20 years either side of 1900.

For a certain subset of eminent Beethoven scholars, the celebration of Beethoven's 250th birthday in 2020 represented a challenge. In taking up the opportunity to communicate with a wider population of educated music lovers, the standard vehicle, a Beethoven biography, was off the table for them – because they had already written one. In the three books reviewed here, each author responds to this dilemma by focusing on themes in reception history. I will attempt to clarify their main points, comment on similarities and differences in their approaches, and evaluate how successful each one might be in in making recent Beethoven scholarship more accessible for the general reader. I will argue that all three of these books successfully target the more musically literate segment of lay readers, and that any weak points arise at the intersection between their academic content and the address to these members of their presumed readership.