Critic I

“If one is to be receptive to a work of art, and gain impression of it, one’s own imagination must play a creative part. […] A work of art bestows only the warmth one is able to dispense on one’s own account, and almost every artistic impression is, ultimately, a product of the listener’s imagination. It is indeed released by the work of art, but only if one has available receiving apparatus tuned in the same way as the transmitting apparatus. To convert an artistic impression into an artistic judgement, one must be practised at interpreting one’s own unconscious feelings; one must know one’s own leanings, and the way in which one reacts to impressions. As for dispensing artistic judgements: one must then be able to compare artistic impressions with each other; either through one’s nature, which must not lack characteristic qualities, or at least through one’s training (= education plus development) one must find a vantage point from which it is possible to gain a closer insight into the nature of the work concerned. One must have a sense of the past and an intuition of the future. Finally, one may indeed go wrong; but then at least one must be someone! How far from this our critics are!” (Arnold Schönberg, About Music Criticism, in Der Merker 1/1909)