Delayed Echo?

Closing a piece he wrote for Slate that's a brief survey of some truly cutting classical music criticism of the past, composer, writer, and teacher Jan Swafford had this to say:

Really, this is a lament for a lost era. The great lousy reviews arose because critics and audiences truly cared about music and its future. Critics were sometimes reactionary, boneheaded, and cockamamie, but music mattered to them. If we no longer enjoy the uproars and the withering screeds of yesteryear, it's mainly because people no longer care passionately enough about what they hear in the concert hall to want to murder somebody over it.

Do we discern a delayed if brief echo here? Compare the above with this from the July 2005 S&F post, "Lack Of Critical Mass", a re-print of a July 2003 post of ours on a predecessor blog:

The generally debased, PC-contaminated, ultra-"civilized" crowd which today constitutes much of the mainstream classical music critical fraternity relishes nothing so much as engaging in discussion of classical music in ways more appropriate to genteel luncheon and dinner parties where it's considered the height of gauche to argue in any manner that might upset the digestion of those seated at table. Arguing in that "civilized," genteel way makes members of this critical crowd feel they've been winning, intellectually probing, stimulating, and "with it," when all they've managed to be is glib; nattering on about nothing of real substance or pertinence while at the same time keeping hands clean, hair un-mussed, and digestion undisturbed — theirs and their readers'.

Well, I've a bit of news for this critically "civilized" bunch: Your brother mainstream classical music critics of prior eras would have none of such "civilized," genteel pap, even in proper and oh-so-civilized Victorian England. When they discussed or wrote on matters musical they were not in the least afraid of dirtying hands, mussing hair, and disturbing digestion. They carried on their dialogues red in tooth and claw if need be as in those culturally more concerned eras we had in the mainstream media that healthy and vital mass of informed classical music critical ferment ... at the heart of which was a critical fraternity made up of courageous and erudite classical music critics who felt that anything in music or music related worth arguing about was worth getting bloodied for.

Lament for a lost era indeed.