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ETHNIC MUSIC

The Science of Music

The Scope of the
Science of Music

The Inner Breath of Music

The Function of the
Inner Breath in Music

The Scientific Aspect
in Music

The Perfect Musical
Description

The Twofold System
of Music Analysis
of the Composer

The Aspect of
Humanities in Music

The True Field of
Science in Music

The Sociology of Music

The Ecology of Music

The Physics of Music

The Physiology of Music

The Economy of Music

Music Critique

Dance in Music

 

Peter Hübner
Founder of the
Micro Music Laboratories

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  The Science of Music
       
 
Music Critique


   
 
Mu­sic cri­tique is the criti­cal strife for the knowl­edge hid­den in mu­sic.

   
 
The pur­pose of mu­sic cri­tique is to awaken, or to deepen, the in­ter­est of the reader for a par­ticu­lar piece of mu­sic, or to keep the gen­eral in­ter­est for mu­sic alive in the popu­la­tion.

 
The Purpose of Music Critique
 
 
As a means of its criti­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion mu­sic cri­tique em­ploys the word in its spo­ken or writ­ten form. The ob­sta­cle, which mu­sic cri­tique there­fore imposes upon it­self, is the fact that the sound­ing mu­si­cal event, or even the mu­sic it­self, can only vaguely be de­scribed by the words of our col­lo­quial lan­guage, but can­not pos­si­bly be rep­re­sented sat­is­fac­to­rily.

 
Means of the Music Critique
 
 
Through the mean­ing of words, the com­pe­tent mu­sic critic can at least draw the mu­sic lis­tener’s at­ten­tion to cer­tain ele­ments of a mu­si­cal work and, thereby, to some ex­tent stimu­late the lis­tener’s mu­si­cal-ana­lyti­cal think­ing, thus facilitating his ac­cess to the mu­si­cal truth.

 
Stimulating the Musical-Analytical Thinking
 
 
Good mu­sic cri­tique de­scribes the in­ner world of the mu­si­cal sound-space with words in a clear and very sen­si­tive man­ner – be it re­gard­ing a piece of mu­sic in gen­eral, or the suc­cess of a spe­cific mu­si­cal per­form­ance.

 
Good Music Critique
 
 
Mu­sic cri­tique, there­fore, de­mands a high de­gree of self-dis­ci­pline from the critic him­self; be­cause a mu­sic critic not only must have an out­stand­ing mu­sic-pro­fes­sional quali­fi­ca­tion, but also a com­pletely neu­tral hu­man at­ti­tude to­wards what he de­scribes – be­cause any sort of emo­tional out­burst, be it posi­tive or nega­tive, is far from the true un­der­stand­ing of mu­sic.

 
Requirements for the Music Critic
 
 
“One shall speak the truth and
thereby not waste words.”

Demokrit


   
 
In the genu­ine com­pre­hen­sion and dis­cus­sion of mu­sic, feel­ing and un­der­stand­ing are so highly co­or­di­nated and har­moni­cally in­ter­woven that any as­sess­ment which is ex­clu­sively domi­nated by the un­der­stand­ing, but also any state­ment overchar­ged with emo­tions, can­not but lead the reader away from the es­sence of mu­sic.

 
The Basis of Successful Music Critique
 
 
Suc­cess­ful mu­sic cri­tique al­ways has its basis in the deep love of mu­sic on the part of the mu­sic critic him­self – in his pro­found un­der­stand­ing of mu­sic, in his clear knowl­edge about the proc­ess of cre­at­ing mu­sic, and fur­ther­more in his prac­tice-re­lated ex­per­tise on the pos­si­bili­ties of how to real­ize mu­si­cal ideas.

   
 
“With­out fan­tasy no art and, in­deed,
not even sci­ence,
and con­se­quently also no cri­tique.”

Franz Liszt


   
     
     
                                 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                     
                                     
  With kind permission of AAR EDITION INTERNATIONAL
© 1998 –  MICRO MUSIC LABORATORIES



 
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