Hans Keller is a London music critic whose aim is to stop most talk about music. This apparently self-destructive ambition is prompted by Keller's belief that emotions slip through the loom of language like herring through a cargo net. Keller's solution: analysis by music instead of by words. His criticism of Mozart's String Quartet in D Minor (K. 421) broadcast last week from Hamburg, convincingly demonstrated that a few snatches of music, pointedly juxtaposed, can make a sharper comment on a composition than a column of critical prose.
Aside from its tendency to jargon, the trouble with verbal music criticism, says Keller,...
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