Innovation and reform in the theory and practice of musical criticism in late Victorian England to the 1920s

This project examines the European intellectual forces that facilitated innovation and reform in English musical criticism at the end of the 19th century until the 1920s. It studies a generation of music critics who altered the course of their profession and who shaped the role of the music critic as we know it today. The intellectual lives of these critics, their many role models and the controversies they created have never been told. This new project will deepen our understanding of the origins of the modern music critic, and will provide an innovative theory of the cultural transmission of musical criticism across nations. It will inform emerging music critics of the multifaceted intellectual heritage to which they belong.