Critical Cop-out Or Reasoned Critical Perspective?

The following is taken from Nicolas Slonimsky's, Lexicon of Musical Invective from which volume we've posted several extracts in an ongoing series here on Sounds & Fury. This one struck us as something a classical music critic of today might write about any number of works of so-called New Music.

[This work] makes a cruel demand on the patience of the listener. Most of it is ugly, and consequently at variance with the well-founded principle that claims for high art a devotion to the beautiful. It is hardly wise to pass an adverse judgment on [this piece of latter-day music], for as time passes, it may turn out that this work is overflowing with charm that the future will make clear. One becomes accustomed to everything through prolonged acquaintance with it — even misery. All that the opponent of this latter-day music is safe in saying is that he does not like it.

—From the Boston Herald of 18 March 1900. The work in question was Strauss's, Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Critical cop-out or reasoned critical perspective?

You decide.