Music criticism

Longview Community College, Lee's Summit, Missouri

Critical Thinking
Across the
Curriculum Project

Examples of Critical Thinking about Music:

contributed by Fred Albers
It may seem difficult to see how Critical Thinking can be applied to the study of music, but after all, what is a Music Appreciation class? A member of our Music Department here at Longview has found some examples of good music criticism and bad music criticism. In addition, there are many sites on the web which offer reviews of new musical releases or performances. Be sure to make your students aware that some sites are commercial in nature, which might bias their reviews. A good class exercise would be to find reviews like the following and then engage the students to discover who wrote the review and why - and what ties to the industry they might have which would change their reviews.

Good critiques:

"Poet, Musician, Artist - a critical commentary" by Robert Matthew-Walker, 1984 This is a great example of critical writing, on the subject of Simon and Garfunkel, and their place in the history of popular music.

On the other hand, here is an example of a very bad critique:
"Why comparing musicians is stupid" by Krishna Kunchithapadam This site contains an article written in response to a musical criticism of an Indian Raga artist. If you can wade through a bit of crass language and inflamed emotion, you may find some interesting ideas on the subject of music criticism.

Copyright © 1996
Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum Project
Longview Community College , Lee's Summit, Missouri - U.S.A.
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Inquiries to: michael.connelly@mcckc.edu
Last modified: 03/02/04