Saturday, May 21, 2005
Stop Presses!
The first ever survey of classical music critics in North America was released yesterday and a 54-page report, analyzed by Princeton University's Lawrence McGill, is available in PDF format at www.najp.org, or by link from www.mcana.org. I haven't taken a good look at it yet but it appears to have information about the numbers, demographics, educational backgrounds, work situations, ethical beliefs and musical tastes of Americans and Canadians writing about classical music today.
The report is called "The Classical Music Critic: A Survey of Classical Music Critics at General Interest and Specialized News Publications in America" and was sponsored by the Music Critics Association of North America and Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Program.
Some of the teaser findings in the press release: The average classical music critic is a white, 52-year-old male with a graduate degree. BUT, 26% of all critics writing are female, and their numbers are equally spread from the youngest to the most experienced in the field.
Four out of five critics agree that "we can be proud of the new classical works that we have created in Canada and the U.S. over the past 25 years." However, more than half of the critics surveyed disagreed that "composers are breaking genuinely new ground these days."
There is a generational gap between younger critics - those 46 and younger- and older writers. In a word, "modern" and "American" are in among the younger writers, who tend to be more open to a wider range of contemporary composers, while masters like Handel, Wagner, Dvorak and Schumann are out.
John Adams was the most liked contemporary composer; Mozart was the most liked historical composer. I find the Mozart bit incredibly discouraging but I plan to take a closer look at the report after I've had my coffee. Why don't you take a look, too, and come back and leave some comments.
posted by Jerry Bowles
5/21/2005
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