Success Quote by John Eaton

Eaton is basically swatting away the fussy impulse to treat music like an audit: Is it perfectly in tune? Does it pass a technical inspection? For a 19th-century politician, that’s a slyly democratic claim. He’s arguing that music isn’t chiefly a test of correctness; it’s a public experience meant to move people, bind them, and communicate something larger than mechanical precision. If the listener’s primary relationship to a performance is forensic, Eaton suggests the performance has already lost the crowd.

The subtext is about authority. “In tune” stands in for all the ways elites police taste: rules, gatekeeping, a narrow idea of refinement. Eaton’s line quietly flips the hierarchy: the audience isn’t a jury of specialists; they’re participants. When the listener can’t help focusing on whether the notes are “right,” that’s not just a bad performance, it’s a failure of communication. The art has forced the crowd into the role of inspector instead of being swept into the role of citizen.

Context matters. Eaton lived in a period when American public culture was expanding fast - more concerts, more civic ceremonies, more arguments over what counted as “proper” culture in a young republic still borrowing heavily from European standards. A politician framing music this way is really talking about public life: technique without persuasion is sterile. The most telling word is “missed.” He doesn’t blame the audience for being philistine; he blames the music for not earning attention beyond its own machinery.