oboeinsight

It’s not a popular view among my colleagues, but I think most of the best critics—not all, but most—have had at least some professional experience in at least one of the arts about which they write. I know I try to write not as a lofty figure from on high, smashing stone tablets over the heads of ballerinas and prima donnas, but as someone who has spent his entire adult life immersed in the world of art, both as a critic and as a practitioner. I was also fortunate to have served my apprenticeship as a critic in a middle-sized city, because it taught me that criticism is not written in a vacuum. It touches real people, people of flesh and blood, and sometimes it hurts them. If you don’t know that—and I mean really know it—you shouldn’t be a critic. And you≠re more likely to know it when you’ve lived and worked in a city small enough that there’s a better-than-even chance of your meeting the people you write about at intermission.

-Terry Teachout (quote located here and I recommend reading the entire entry)
—–