I'm not familiar with this publication, so it might just be that I'm not the target audience, but it throws me that there are a bunch of French phrases used in the article without translations being provided. Is this intended to just be for people who can read them, or am I supposed to just keep reading and pretend that I understand what's being said?
This sort of thing is (forgive me) _de rigeur_ in cultural criticism. It's possible to infer the rough meaning of many from context clues. The article also settles down quickly, with subsequent usages of French or Italian being titles of works.
Sometimes it's nice to be exposed to new things, n'est-ce pas?
I think it’s mostly for effect, but you’d be hard-pressed to find people in the classical music sphere who don’t understand some French. Oh also Google Translate exists?
I think its intended to enrich your literate senses in that, you probably could google these phrases and learn something new, while at the same time expanding your own perception of the subject of the article. I mean, there is a time and place for "I don't have time to look that up" and there is also a time and place for "I will take the time to look that up", and the only divider between is whether the source material is coming from a high-brow, intellectually stimulating source .. or not.
