Music criticism

According to Richard Taruskin, the active concert life of late 18th-century London meant that "the role and the function of arts criticism as we know it today were the creations of the English public.

[1] In it, Avison claims that since the time of Palestrina and Raphael, music had improved in status whilst pictorial art had declined.

In 1798 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, edited by Friedrich Rochlitz (1769–1842), began publication in Leipzig, and this is often regarded as the precursor of a new genre of criticism aimed at a wider readership than qualified connoisseurs.

[17] In subsequent years several regular journals dedicated to music criticism and reviews began to appear in major European centres, including The Harmonicon (London 1823–33), The Musical Times (London, 1844-date), the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (Paris 1827–1880, founded by François-Joseph Fétis), the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung founded in 1825 by A.M. Schlesinger and edited by A.

B. Marx, and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik founded in 1834 in Leipzig by Robert Schumann and Friedrich Wieck, and later edited by Franz Brendel.

Other journals at this period also began to carry extensive writings on music: Hector Berlioz wrote for the Parisian Journal des débats, Heinrich Heine reported on music and literature in Paris for the Stuttgart Allgemeine Zeitung, the young Richard Wagner wrote articles for Heinrich Laube's magazine Zeitung für die elegante Welt and during his 1839–42 stay in Paris for Schlesinger's publishing house and German newspapers.