Believe it or not, there is a job called ‘critic’ or reviewer.
It is basically describing someone who informs an audience if what they experienced was good or bad. A prerequisite here is that the audience cannot tell if the experience was good or bad. It is a priori deemed intellectually and esthetically under-developed kind of thing.
But rest assured, critics do not bother themselves with lesser professionals. They invariably turn their attention to the lions of any field. It automatically means that if you attract the attention of critics, even if they give you negative reviews, you must be doing something right. Now that you gained their attention, it is up to you to turn those negative reviews into positive ones.
I was one of the lucky ones. Most of the time, I got praising, favorable, or sympathetic reviews from all sorts of critics. And I believe to this day that it never really mattered.
It would be only logical to assume that such experts are far better performers when compared to those they scrutinize. Well, they rarely are. In fact, they would not even qualify as ‘performers’ by any standard. To put it plainly, the best of them have studied a specific area to such a degree that they could proclaim ‘expertise’ although never practicing the craft themselves.
Funny thing how ‘art’ works! For example, if a doctor makes a fatal mistake, the committee examining the processes will consist of other active doctors of similar stature. And if a SWAT officer miscalculated something even in the heat of the moment that resulted in the loss of innocent lives, it would be examined by qualified experts with field experience on the same level. Not by people who watched the SWAT TV series…
In the meantime, the arts and classical music in particular, becoming more redundant, proves that the numbers do not lie. We have reached a point where Art is becoming redundant even to artists! And it is because the industry is so far detached from the real world that it leaves the minds of general audiences without a vision and the minds of informed audiences without probing questions. Art always needed both, so far.
For living, breathing, dynamic Art to become relevant again, we need inventors and novelties in every artistic branch. Stick with the ‘I-know-it-all’ snobs, and ‘art’ becomes a museum item for curators, admired by a handful who think they know best because they never even tried to create something.
Art is not the servant of any class or clan. And young artists beaming with ideas and confidence are better off ignoring whoever proclaims authority but never even attempted to deliver results.