Dinu Lipatti, music critic – the MENTOR traits behind his chronicles

Dinu Lipatti – music critic

Dinu Lipatti (1917–1950) combined the gifts of composer, performer, and teacher with a less widely known talent: music criticism. For two years, from 1938 to 1939, as a member of the International Association of Art Critics, he served as the Paris correspondent for the newspaper Libertatea, publishing reviews and musical chronicles. Through his column, Romanian readers encountered international figures such as Fritz Kreisler, Charles Münch, Hephzibah and Yehudi Menuhin, Leon Szighera, Wanda Landowska, and Hermann Scherchen.

Lipatti proved himself a complete artist in the Debussian sense—composer, performer, pedagogue, and critic. His critical output coalesces around six salient traits: minuteness, elegance, neutrality, talent, honesty, and responsibility. Together, these qualities form the acronym MENTOR.

Introduction

Some individuals die before truly being born; others are born and never die. Still others throw stones at the immortals, only later to erect monuments in their honor. Dilettantes may call such people critics, but genuine critics fight under the banner of truth and become monumental themselves. For those able to grasp it, "art is a grave thing." What did Lipatti mean by invoking the gravity of art? Was he alluding to society, authority, power, status, the sacred, or alienation?

In Latin, gravis denotes something heavy, burdensome, painful, annoying, oppressive, and also very important. Art draws its essence from the perimeter of a city, from the meanders of a river, and like a firebird, teaches humanity the essence of flight. Lipatti was such a man.

His renown as composer, performer, and pedagogue established him as a genuine genius. Yet his interests also turned toward the less trodden path of music criticism. For the skeptic who might consider the 1938–1939 period too brief for a twenty-one-year-old to gain meaningful experience in this contentious field, one may note that Theodor Adorno, whose life was twice as long, wrote for the Viennese journal Anbruch for only four years (1928–1931), beginning at age twenty-five. Six characteristics define Lipatti's critical writings, which aimed to shape public taste through the power of his pen.

1. Minuteness

According to Tudor Vianu, a critic needs "an all-encompassing spirit and attention to detail." Theodor Bălan observed the exactness and scrupulousness with which his faculty colleague Dinu organized his life:

"A trait that dates from his childhood days was an excessive proclivity to order, pushed to meticulousness. During his youth and maturity, his desire for order also involved certain aspects of pedantry."

An example from a chronicle published on May 20, 1939, reveals the careful attention with which Lipatti examined performance:

"Kreisler mesmerized us with his recital, especially with the short pieces, with a special effect, in the performance of which he remains an unsurpassed maestro. There were, however, a few 'tempo' accelerations that took away from the majestic effect of Bach's chaconne, while in Mozart's concerto in G major we would like to have seen a little more spirit put into it. The rest of the program was nevertheless wonderful, especially the Spanish music that Kreisler played with a rare verve and fantasy."

2. Elegance in expression

Aphoristic language, concision, and beautifully polished phrasing—wherein "the letters of fire and letters forged" merge into "an entire possibility of future perfection"—make Lipatti an elegans formarum spectator, a discerning judge of beauty. Florica Musicescu, who guided him with "affectionate tyranny," described the artist as a seeker of "gladdening light," urging him to "look for light higher in others and even deeper in yourself." Her phrases remain gracious, unemphatic, natural, sometimes poetic, sometimes locutionary.

"With the sobriety of an artist who is fully confident in his expressive means, Münch manages to attain a maximum of expression with a minimum of gestures."

"All my gratitude to these honest musicians who can be looked upon as prototypes of the true performer: one who never sacrifices his musical thinking on the altar of instrumental technique."

"Schumann's Hallucination was a true flutter of wings."

3. Neutrality

In the eighteenth century, Nicolae Filimon drew a fine line between subjectivity and objectivity, insisting that the critic must offer valid value judgments: "we will provide a just and fair criticism of each artist's performance, of the beautiful and the ugly, of the good and the bad." This exercise for the benefit of art is called neutrality. On May 20, 1938, Lipatti wrote of the concert performed by the Menuhin siblings:

"I was extremely surprised to find that Hephzibah Menuhin, his sister [Yehudi's], is such an incredible pianist. In the concert they gave together, I did not know who to admire more. They played Mozart's sonata in F major in a style of remarkable purity, then Beethoven's Sonata in C minor and finally that of Lekeu, which, with all due respect, I find of poor quality. The two Menuhins nevertheless managed to play it admirably."

Had the critic claimed Yehudi's supremacy simply because of worldwide fame, his critique would have been heavily subjective. It is impartiality that grants a critic that title.

4. Talent

An old German proverb declares, Talente werden nicht gefunden sondern erschaffen—talents are not found, they are forged. A music critic must possess both literary and musical talent. Carmen Păsculescu-Florian has noted that "Lipatti had a distinctive writing style and his unbiased and competent analyses lend his criticism the weight of a document with manifold implications." Yet he never elevated his own talent into law, stating that opinions "in art should not be imposed, but rather proposed." His word choice reveals a fascination:

"Another musical evening that left me with an indelible impression was the Quartet's concert in Budapest. I cannot describe the admirable moments I had at this concert! The accuracy of the attack was so perfect that the four artists sounded as if they were one. Besides the technical perfection they displayed, I admired the respect that these exceptional musicians showed for the works they performed. The introduction of the first movement of this piece is utterly stunning."

5. Honesty

At the conference "Honesty as Art," held at the Romanian Athenaeum on March 7, 1893, Alexandru Vlahuţă observed:

"Artists are growers of ideas! Life never stops sowing, at random, wheat and chaff, perfumed flowers and poisonous weeds. The artist selects, fertilises, cultivates, weeds—and he especially weeds. It is therein that the honesty of the artistic harvest lies."

Lipatti's critical prose was straightforward yet free of malice. On July 18, 1938, he wrote about Stravinsky's compositions:

"I have recently heard Stravinsky's new Concerto for 15 Instruments. Upon my first listening I was not overly impressed. Then I started to get more into it and understand it better, although I don't think it will measure up to the perfection of his previous works (Le Sacre, Noces, Perséphone). Although, thematically speaking, Stravinsky has never been very inspired as a composer, there is an incredible force in everything he does."

Comparing the Viennese public to that of Berlin, he added:

"The public [of Vienna] would never want to go home. But that concert [in Berlin] reached even a higher standard. That majestic, fully sold-out hall seating 1,500 people, and those stern guys dressed in black and smiling with their eyebrows raised made a much stronger impression on me than the enthusiastic Viennese who would certainly carry their favourite artist on their arms, for choosing such a great program. Nevertheless, I took much more pleasure in warming up some glaciers."

6. Responsibility to art

The critic also bears a responsibility to art itself. Vlahuţă's earlier speech at the Athenaeum continues:

"We cannot emphasize enough how big and important a role a severe and ruthless critic has in evaluating the artist's powers and deciding on the selection of his thoughts. How could he not be mindful of what he chooses and grows on the plot allotted to him, when he thinks that his work will shed its ideas over so many heads, like seeds that will never stop growing, yielding crop after crop, energy after energy, in the eternal ripple of life."

Lipatti "never ceased to inculcate, through his performances and teaching guidelines, the principle of absolute respect for the text." He cherished authenticity and fidelity to the composer's intentions, time and again returning this sense of duty to art itself.

“Our true and only religion, our sole and unshakable point of reference is the written text. We must never do injustice to this text, as if we were continually answerable for our deed on this realm, before a severe and unbending jury. [...] The written text must be studied, assimilated and confronted with several editions of its own, until we can bring out into light the image that most faithfully corresponds to the author’s original thought.”

“We are at a time when, in order to please and attract an art‑loving public, concessions are unfortunately made by those on the stage, and not by those in the audience. One of the effects of this process is the paucity of imagination in selecting the programs of all the symphonic concerts in the world. Or, better said, the lack of the elementary courage to provide only quality music, and not a music whose only purpose is to pack the concert hall! [...] The same is true of an unknown artist: the public won’t bother going to a concert unless some famous American ‘stars’ perform.”

Equally revealing is his barb:

“The violinist Leon Szighera has swapped his bow for the conductor’s baton, which, however, he doesn’t hold with too much authority. On the occasion of his debut as a conductor in Paris, I was appalled by the total lack of discernment of the Parisian public who, like sheep, let themselves be impressed by a manager’s more or less scandalous advertising gimmicks.”

In summary, Dinu Lipatti the music critic was defined by six qualities: minuteness in analysis, elegance in expression, neutrality in evaluation, talent, honesty toward composer, performer and audience, and responsibility to art. These core traits, condensed into the acronym MENTOR, capture the essence of his personality.

“Being an educator of the masses is not a task for everyone.”

Insisting on that superior discernment that distinguishes the critic from the ordinary music lover, he argued: “Never look upon a work with a dead‑eye stare or with an eye of the past, or you may wind up with nothing but Yorick’s skull. Casella was right saying that we shouldn’t content ourselves with just respecting the masterpieces, but love them instead.”

Lipatti’s prose reveals an originality that confirms his authorship over the critical work. A true pater whispers to his creation the Augustinian formula amo: volo ut sis — “I love you: I want you to be.” His published writings therefore stand as a testament to his qualities as a MENTOR of music criticism.

“… Casella says somehow that masterpieces should not be respected, but loved, for respect is only for dead things [;] and a masterpiece is a thing that lives forever.”

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