Paul Rosenfeld

“ The concert people do not make music with what they live outside the concert hall. That, never enters it. A vital criticism, however, would stomach no such shadowy music. It would demand a whole of life for the concert room. The critic no less than the performer is the champion of values. If the performer brings the meat to market, the critic sees to it that the meat is fresh. It is his work to insist that the standards of life remain undegraded. But the critic, to have a sense of values, must bring his sensibility with him into the hall ”

“ News is never that a dog goes mad and bites a man, but only that a man goes mad and bites a dog; and three hundred odd singers and players wading under the direction of Mr Bodanzky through a lengthy work devoid of all value, and the Philadelphia Orchestra muffling a Beethoven symphony under the baton of Mr Stokowsky, are events quite as banal as spasms of canine frenzy. ”

“ A true romanticist would not to-day be found attempting to write "romantic" music. There is not a fresh and expressive note in the long work. Throats, instruments, sound unending emptiness. First you wonder what is suddenly the matter with yourself. ”