Interpretation and appreciation

In 1896, an anonymous critic voiced his reservations concerning the opening of the Ninth Symphony in the Edinburgh Review. He complained of ‘the rather eccentric and certainly not happy device of anticipating the real subject by the weak and uninteresting tentative passage, as it may be called, which mystifies the hearer at the opening…. How far grander and more impressive would have been the immediate starting off with the broad and powerful unison passage which forms the real theme of the movement!’ But Antony Hopkins could not disagree more. He says:

It is not simply that the two writers hear the same music but judge it differently. It is as if they were not hearing the same music at all. In the face of such contradictions, it is tempting to conclude that people's responses to music are irremediably subjective: one person hears it one way, the next hears it another way, and that is an end to the matter.