Introduction

Critiques of music can be traced to texts dating back to antiquity, but it was not until the eighteenth century that these critiques became the distinct category of writing known as “criticism.”  In my dissertation, Sound Judgment: Ideologies of Listening and the Birth of English Music Criticism, I explore how this genre developed not through any emerging consensus over musical works, but through an intensifying disagreement over what qualified as authoritative judgment of those works. In eighteenth-century Britain, the rapid growth of print and performance multiplied the number of musical opinions and self-appointed arbiters of taste. The concept of “musical critic” and the genre of “musical criticism” emerged at this historical moment, when musical judges felt increasingly pressured to analyze not just the stage but also the growing number of opinionated listeners who used print to circulate their opinions more widely than ever before.