Excerpt from Concert Life in New York, 1902-1923

A volume containing a series of concert criticisms written by Richard Aldrich serves a double purpose. It is a tribute to the memory of one of the most respected and at the same time one of the most lovable and beloved figures in the world of journalism in New York City in the early twentieth century.

One who sits in judgment on the doings and the merits of his fellow beings is not usually regarded with affection by those whom he judges. There are probably few music critics who received from the objects of their critical faculty so much grateful acknowledgment and recognition as Richard Aldrich. And yet he was a just and unbiased judge. He knew no favoritism. He harbored no rancor. Broad and catholic in his own tastes, he was not the adherent of any school, nor yet a case hardened laudator temporis acti. More than with any of his con temporaries the kindly tone of even a severe criticism brought a readier acceptance of his judgment. Although, when the occasion demanded it, he could be pointedly emphatic and could lash out fearlessly and vigorously against a real abuse. All that he wrote, even on some minor or less significant occurrence in the daily round of a newspaper critic's work, was informed with an unusually wide literary, historical and musical knowledge and with a truly and sincerely artistic spirit. The shorter criticisms selected here out of his vast output are as convincing an evidence of this universal background as are the longer pieces, selected from his Sunday essays in The New York Times, some of which were published in 1928 by the Oxford University Press under the title of Musical Discourse.

But aside from their significance as a memorial to their author these selected criticisms have a specifically historical value. Nowhere is the musical life of a particular region more clearly recorded than in the columns of the daily press. The material for the complete annals of the concert life of New York City in the early nineteenth century can be gathered only by a systematic search through the columns of the newspapers, a tedious task at best, but necessary for the limning of a wholly satisfactory picture. The volume before us is an indication of one man's share in the recording of these annals. Even to a later gen eration, which may have no personal interest in Richard Aldrich and his Views, the book will remain a reliable historical document. There will be no time limit to its usefulness. The fact that the index includes references to practically all of the critic's significant utterances in the columns of The New York Times, many more than could be included within the covers of a single volume such as this, will greatly increase its value to the future historian of the concert life of New York City.

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