art for humanity’s sake – The Homebound Symphony

Good arts criticism–not just about music–is important because its job is to put the music in context and as a result, broaden the listener's enjoyment and understanding.

For all its good intentions, art that tries to minister to its audience by showcasing moral aspirants and paragons or the abject victims of political oppression produces smug, tiresome works that are failures both as art and as agitprop. Artists and critics—their laurel bearers—should take heed.

At its best, cultural criticism is love and art that exists to give love to other expressions of art. It's beautiful in its indulgence.

Yet one of art’s most compelling features is how it showcases the disjuncts between the time of composition, the time of dissemination, and the time of consideration—disjuncts that can summon us to humility and wonder. Such temporal amplitude understandably falls out of favor in politically polarized times, in which the pressure to make clear “whic

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