Practical Criticism II: There were two serious questions/points lurking behind yesterday’s (somewhat sarcastic) proposals.
1/ Assuming that the tiny-review model for published music criticism is likely to dominate for at least a while, how best can those 50 to 100 words be used?
2/ As Marcello points out in the comments box, contexts and uses for a piece of music are necessarily subjective. But it’s just this kind of subjectivity that I find so attractive in the blogosphere (and not just the music blogosphere). Details about where people have enjoyed certain music most, honesty about how they actually listen to music. The standard mode of even long-form writing about music seems to imagine a contextless listening experience – an idealised (and probably averaged over several concentrated listens) communion of writer and music. This may well be the best way of writing about music – but is it, and is anything gained by treating music as something to be used rather than contemplated?