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On the Reception of Vaughan Williams's Symphonies in New York, 1920/1–2014/15

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2020

Allan W. Atlas
Allan W. Atlas*
Affiliation:
The Graduate Center,The City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
*
*Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article considers the reception of Ralph Vaughan Williams's nine symphonies (and a few non-symphonic works) in New York City (and, occasionally, its suburban environs), from the American premiere of A London Symphony on 30 December 1920 to a performance of Symphony No. 6 on 10 December 2014. The author argues that the reception rolls out across five distinct periods: (1) 1920/1–1922/3: the New York premieres of A London Symphony, A Sea Symphony and A Pastoral Symphony (in that order), all to greetings that were lukewarm at best; (2) 1923/4–1934/5: Vaughan Williams's reputation grew meteorically, and A London Symphony became something of a staple; during this period Olin Downes of the New York Times became Vaughan Williams's most ardent champion among New York's music critics; (3) 1935/6–1944/5: Symphonies 4 and 5 made their New York debuts, and a rift opened between the pro-Vaughan Williams New York Times and the negative criticism of the New York Herald Tribune, one that would follow Vaughan Williams to the grave and beyond; (4) 1945/6–1958/9: premieres of Symphonies 6, 8 and 9, as Vaughan Williams's reputation in New York reached its honours- and awards-filled zenith; and (5) the long period from 1959/60 to the present day, which can be described as 20 years of decline (1960s–1970s), another 20 in which his reputation reached rock bottom (1980s–1990s) and, since the beginning of the new millennium, something of a reassessment, one that is seemingly unencumbered by the ideologically driven criticism of the past. Finally, Appendix I provides a chronological inventory of all New York Philharmonic programmes (along with those of the New York Symphony prior to the two orchestras' merger in 1928) that include any music (not just the symphonies) by Vaughan Williams. Appendix II then reorganizes the information of the chronological list according to work, conductor, venue and premieres.

Keywords

Ralph Vaughan WilliamsNew York Citysymphoniesreceptioncriticism
Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle , Volume 47 , 2016 , pp. 24 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 The Royal Musical Association

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Footnotes

This is the fifth and final instalment in a series of essays about the reception of Ralph Vaughan Williams's music in New York. Parts 1–4 appeared as follows: (1) ‘On the Reception of the Tallis Fantasia in New York, 1922–1929′, Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, 48 (June 2010); (2) ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes: Newly Uncovered Letters’, Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, 60 (June 2014); (3) ‘Vaughan Williams: The New York Obituaries’, Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, 64 (October 2015); (4) ‘Vaughan Williams in the New York Crossfire: Olin and Harold v. Virgil and Paul, forthcoming in The Musical Times. It is a pleasure to thank those who have helped me shape the ‘project’ as a whole. First and foremost are three scholars and friends who were kind enough to read an early draft of Parts 3, 4 and 5, which were originally conceived as a single unit: Paula Higgins, Julian Onderdonk and Simon Wright. Three others who went well beyond the call of duty: Devora Geller, a doctoral candidate in musicology at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, who helped with the research from beginning to end; and two associate archivists at the New York Philharmonic Archives, Gabryel Smith and his predecessor, Richard Wandel. Still further assistance came from: Chuck Barber, David Bojanowski, Zdravko Blažeković, Darren Britting, Bridget Carr, Hugh Cobbe, Jeni Dehmus, Rick Fox, Alain Frogley, Alan Gillmor, Susan Gonzalez, Glenda Goss, Jane Gottlieb, John Graziano, Richard Griscom, Barbara Haws, William Hedley, Mary Hubbel, Wayne Kempten, Marianne La Batto, Michael Maw, Izabella Nudellis, Julia Grella O'Connell, Carol Oja, María Ordiñana Gil, John Parkinson, Honora Rafael, Harold Rosenbaum, Edward Smaldone, Frank Staneck, Millicent Vollono, Janet Weaver, Channan Willner, María Edurne Zuazu and the two anonymous readers who reviewed the article for the Research Chronicle, all of whom contributed in important ways. Finally, twice during my last few semesters of teaching at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York (Spring 2012 and Autumn 2013), I was fortunate enough to lead seminars on Vaughan Williams. The ‘seminarians’ (I borrow the term from a friend and colleague, Barbara Hanning) were inspiring, and to say ‘thank you’ hardly hints at what they taught me: Adam Birke, Paulina Colón, Devora Geller, Julie Ann Hirsh, Mary Hubbell, Danya Katok, Melissa Khong, Dominique McCormick, Imani Mosley, Nils Neubert, María Ordiñana Gil, Austin Shadduck, Maksim Shtrykov and Serena Wang.

References

1 A note on the numbering of the symphonies: only upon reaching his next-to-last symphony, No. 8, in 1955, which was originally called ‘Symphony in D’ (eventually D minor) and which would, therefore, have caused confusion with an earlier symphony so ‘titled’, did Vaughan Williams retroactively number those that came before it; prior to that point he had either assigned his symphonies programmatic titles or simply ‘named’ them by key. The symphonies are: A Sea Symphony (= No. 1); A London Symphony (= No. 2); A Pastoral Symphony (= No. 3); Symphony in F minor (= No. 4); Symphony in D (= No. 5); Symphony in E minor (= No. 6); Sinfonia antartica (= No. 7); Symphony No. 8 in D minor; and Symphony No. 9 in E minor; see Michael Kennedy, A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (2nd edn, Oxford, 1996), 220, note 1 (hereafter Catalogue).

2 One aspect of the ‘New York experience’ that could have played out elsewhere is that accorded the large-scale choral works, which, even in New York, were mainly the province of amateur choirs and community orchestras spread out through the Westchester and Connecticut suburbs (see §5d.iii, Table 10).

3 This paragraph draws upon Howard Shanet, Philharmonic: A History of New York's Orchestra (New York, 1974), passim, and Barbara Haws, ‘New York Philharmonic’, Oxford Music Online; note that all references to Oxford Music Online are specifically to the former Grove Music Online.

4 The other five were the Brooklyn Eagle (folded in 1955), New York Journal-American (1966), New York Post (current), New York Sun (1950) and New York World-Telegram (1966). They are listed, though without the years in which they ceased publication, in Suzanne Robinson, ‘“A Ping, Qualified by a Thud”: Music Criticism in Manhattan and the Case of John Cage’, Journal of the Society for American Music, 1, no. 1 (2007), 79.

5 It lives on, as it were, through two still-flourishing offshoots: The International Herald Tribune (the name of which was changed to The International New York Times in 2013) and the widely read New York [Magazine], which began life in 1963 as a Sunday magazine supplement to the NYHTrib.

6 He does so in The Magic Mountain, trans. Helen T. Lowe-Porter (New York, 1955), ch. 6, p. 515 (reference to the McGraw Hill edition); originally Der Zauberberg (Berlin, 1924).

7 See Michael Kennedy, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (2nd edn, Oxford, 1980), passim (hereafter Works); Julian Onderdonk, ‘The Composer and Society: Family, Politics, Nation’, in The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams, ed. Alain Frogley and Aiden J. Thomson (Cambridge, 2013), 14, 20; Jenny Doctor, ‘Vaughan Williams, Boult, and the BBC’, The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams, 249–74; Simon Wright, ‘Vaughan Williams and Oxford University Press’, Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, 56 (February 2013), 3–15.

8 The situation is summed up concisely in Aidan J. Thomson, ‘Vaughan Williams and his Successors: Composers’ Forum’, in The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams, 299–300. On Britten and Walton in particular, see also Paul Kildea, Britten on Music (Oxford, 2003), 20, 60, 171, 252, 272; Stephen Lloyd, William Walton: Muse of Fire (Woodbridge, 2001), 262–3.

9 I know of only one occasion on which Vaughan Williams might have pulled strings for someone in New York. On 12 January 1939 he wrote a letter to the influential NYTimes critic Olin Downes in which he introduced Julian Gardiner, ‘an accomplished tenor singer and a talented composer’ who was in the process of moving to New York. By the end of April, Gardiner had landed a position at the Cathedral of St John the Divine, with which church Vaughan Williams had a working relationship dating back to 1934; see Allan W. Atlas, ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes: Newly Uncovered Letters’, Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, 60 (June 2014), 4. (Note that this journal adopted this title beginning with No. 46 [October 2009]; prior to which the title was Journal of the RVW Society).

10 The reception is mentioned under ‘Social Notes’ in the NYTimes, 30 December 1920, 11. Flagler (1870–1952), the only son of Henry Flagler (founder of Standard Oil and in large part responsible for the commercial development of Florida's Atlantic coast), was a major benefactor of musical life in New York; he served as President of the New York Symphony Society (1914–28) and then, when that orchestra merged with the New York Philharmonic in June 1928, headed the board of the newly formed Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York (1928–34). There is an appreciation of Flagler's contributions to the city's musical life in the NYTimes, 4 October 1932, 18. A useful compilation of excerpts concerning Flagler's music-related activities drawn from the New York press appears online at http://www.drbronsontours.com/bronsonharryflagler.html. There is an unpublished letter from Vaughan Williams to Flagler dated 1 February 1921 in which the composer thanks Flagler for his (Flagler's) letter and then writes: ‘I was indeed lucky to be presented to the New York public for the first time by such a great artist as Mr. Coates.’ My thanks to Hugh Cobbe for sharing this letter with me, a copy of which is in the database of Vaughan Williams correspondence that he maintains and to which he provides generous access to fellow scholars. The original letter is at the Morgan Library and Museum (formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library), New York, MFC V371.F574.

11 Unsigned, ‘Coates Appears as Guest Conductor of Symphony Society’, N-Y Trib, 31 December 1920, 8.

12 Richard Aldrich, ‘Mr. Albert Coates Conducts’, NYTimes, 31 December 1920, 13. Aldrich (1863–1937) was chief music critic at the NYTimes from 1902 to 1923 after having served as an assistant to Henry Krehbiel at the N-Y Trib from 1891 to 1902 (about Krehbiel, see note 21); among the New York music critics of the time, Aldrich stood out for his sympathy towards contemporary music; see H.C. Colles and Malcolm Turner, ‘Aldrich, Richard’, Oxford Music Online.

13 Even the New York Philharmonic programme notes are occasionally guilty. Thus the notes for the performances of both the Fantasia on Christmas Carols on 22–23 and 25 December 1938 and A Pastoral Symphony on 16–17 February 1939 give the name as ‘Williams’ (App. I, nos 30–31, respectively). What is surprising in these two instances is that the conductor on both occasions was John Barbirolli, a long-time friend of Vaughan Williams and, at the time, the Music Director of the Philharmonic. It is possible, of course – perhaps even likely – that neither Barbirolli nor other music directors/conductors bothered themselves with such matters. On the Vaughan Williams-Barbirolli friendship, see note 51. Even the British occasionally slipped in this respect: (1) amidst a slew of references to ‘Vaughan Williams’ in Joseph Holbrooke, Contemporary British Composers (London, 1925), there is one reference just to ‘Williams’ (p. 105—my thanks to one of the anonymous Research Chronicle reviewers for calling this to my attention); (2) there is ‘Williams’ in the index of Imogen Holst, Gustav Holst: A Biography (London, 1938), 200. One still finds ‘Williams’ in American publications as late as Eric Walter White, Benjamin Britten: his Life and Operas (Berkeley, 1970) 256, where, as in Holst's book, he appears as such in the index.

14 Completed in 1913, the symphony was revised three times: 1918, 1920 (the version heard at the American premiere in New York) and 1934, with each revision further shortening the work; see Kennedy, Catalogue, 67.

15 His programme notes for these occasions are printed in David Manning, ed., Vaughan Williams on Music (Oxford, 2008), 339–40.

16 The entire programme appears in Symphony Society Bulletin, 14, no. 6, 27 December 1920, [1–2] (see Fig. 1), issued by the Symphony Society of New York (the copy at the New York Philharmonic Archives appears online at http://archives.nyphil.org/). The programme is also included in Katherine Wright's preview article about the symphony, ‘An Invasion of Conductors within Next Three Weeks’, N-YTrib, 26 December 1920, B5. More recently, it has appeared in three ‘concert guides’: Robert Bagar and Louis Biancolli, The Concert Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to Symphonic Music (New York, 1947), 779–81; Louis Biancolli, The Analytical Concert Guide (New York, 1951), 650–4, where it is interwoven with Biancolli's own comments; Alfred Frankenstein, A Modern Guide to Symphonic Music (New York, 1966), 638–41, here fleshed out with music examples; it also appears in Atlas, ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes’, 12–13.

17 Though undated beyond month and year, the letter responds to and likely dates from soon after an article by Downes titled ‘Compositions with a Program’, which had appeared in the NYTimes on Sunday, 8 December 1940, 171. I give the entire letter in ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes’, 5.

18 The letter is unpublished, and I thank Hugh Cobbe for bringing it to my attention and sharing it with me. The original letter is housed at the National Library of Canada, Ottawa, Percy A. Scholes Collection, about which see Maria Calderisi, ‘An Unsung Treasure of the National Library of Canada: The Percy A. Scholes Collection’, Fontes artis musicae, 41, no. 1 (1994), 53–65.

19 Unsigned, ‘New Year's Gifts in Music World are Mostly Imported Conductors for Local Bands’, The Sun, 31 December 1920, 4.

20 H.F.P., ‘The New Symphony’, Musical America, 8 January 1921, 4.

21 Henry Edward Krehbiel, ‘Interpretation of City Life is not Real Music’, N-YTrib, 31 January 1921, 6. One day earlier, Krehbiel had written about the work alongside Gustave Charpentier's opera Louise in an essay titled ‘Street Cries of Two Great Capitals of the World’, N-YTrib, 30 January 1921, B8. Krehbiel (1854–1923) was chief music critic at the N-YTrib from 1880 to 1923; very much a Germanophile, perhaps his most lasting contribution was the completion of the first English-language edition of Thayer's Life of Ludwig van Beethoven; see Joseph Horowitz, ‘Krehbiel, Henry (Edward)’, Oxford Music Online.

22 Unsigned, ‘Tone Poem of London Played by Symphony’, N-YTrib, 29 January 1923, 6.

23 Aldrich, ‘The New York Symphony Orchestra’, NYTimes, 31 January 1921, 10. Madelon Coates's programme was slow to disappear; it still appears verbatim as late as the Philharmonic programme notes for 8–9 February 1940 (App. I, no. 34), and it is still being cited (though now only indirectly by Edward O.E. Downes [see note 101]) in notes for concerts on 20–22 and 25 March 1980 (App. I, no. 88). Not until the programme for 24–28 February and 1 March 1994 (App. I, no. 95), for which the notes were written by David Wright, do all traces of Mrs Coates finally disappear. Note that the New York Philharmonic has not performed London since then (more than 20 years).

24 The Canadian-born Fricker (1868–1943) had already participated in two other notable performances of the work: he was choir master at the world premiere at the 1910 Leeds Festival (conducted by Vaughan Williams) and he directed the North American premiere in Toronto on 11 April 1921 with the Mendelssohn Choir and the visiting Philadelphia Orchestra. On the latter performance, see Edward Johnson, ‘Stokowski and Vaughan Williams’, Journal of the RVW Society, 24 (June 2002), 12, who, however, cites the year only; for the precise date I am grateful to Darrin T. Britting of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

25 Krehbiel, ‘Toronto Choir Gives Williams's “Sea Symphony”’, N-YTrib, 6 April 1922, 10.

26 Oscar Thompson (signed ‘O.T.’), ‘First Performance of “Sea Symphony” in Metropolis Proffered by Canadians’, Musical America, 15 April 1922, 45. Thompson (1887–1945) began writing for Musical America in 1919 and edited the publication from 1936 to 1943; he also wrote for The Sun from 1937 to his death; his best-known work, of course, is The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, which, first published in 1939, reached its 11th edition in 1985; see Ramona H. Matthews, ‘Thompson, Oscar’, Oxford Music Online.

27 ‘The Listener’, ‘R. Vaughan Williams's Sea Symphony for a First Time’, The Sun, 6 April 1922, 20.

28 Unsigned, ‘“Sea Symphony” Given Here for First Time’, NYTimes, 6 April 1922, 17.

29 As Cecil Gray (1895–1951) put it in writing about the symphony: ‘[Vaughan Williams] flounders about in the sea of his ideas like a vast and ungainly porpoise, with great puffing and blowing […]’, after which he continues: ‘in the end, after tremendous efforts and an almost heroic tenacity, there emerges […] a real lovable personality, unassuming, modest, and almost apologetic’; cited after Hugh Ottaway, Vaughan Williams' Symphonies, BBC Music Guides (London, 1972), 14. As we will see in §5, though Sea has enjoyed some recent popularity in New York, it is due largely to the efforts of various choral groups, both professional and amateur.

30 Aldrich, ‘The Philharmonic Society’, NYTimes, 25 November 1922, 24.

31 Thompson, ‘New English Symphony’, Musical America, 2 December 1922, 33; Gilbert W. Gabriel, ‘The Philharmonic Society’, The Sun, 25 November 1922, 5. Stransky (1872–1936) conducted the New York Philharmonic from 1911 (he succeeded Mahler) to 1923, after which he became an influential art dealer (closely associated with the Wildenstein Gallery); see Michael Steinberg, ‘Stransky, Josef’, Oxford Music Online.

32 Unsigned, ‘New Symphony of Williams is Played by Philharmonic’, N-YTrib, 25 November 1922, 8.

33 These read, in part: ‘The salient and distinguishing feature of the music of the symphony is the extent to which its melodic and harmonic structure has been influenced by the modal character of much of the English folk-music […]. The influence of this old modal music is felt again and again […] at the very beginning […] where the first theme of the opening movement […] is in the Mixolydian mode, to the dying song of the solo voice at the end of the symphony, which suggests the Æolian; elsewhere he throws in the “dorian”.’ Programme notes, Philharmonic Society of New York, 24 November 1922, [3–4] (New York Philharmonic Archives).

34 Ursula Vaughan Williams, R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams (Oxford, 1964), 134. Two important articles that deal with the tension between the ‘pastoral’ and other threads in the symphony are Eric Saylor, ‘”It's not Lambkins Frisking at All”: English Pastoral Music and the Great War’, The Musical Quarterly, 91, nos. 1–2 (2008), 39–59; Daniel M. Grimley, “Landscape and Distance: Vaughan Williams, Modernism and the Symphonic Pastoral’, in British Musical Modernism, ed. Matthew Riley (Aldershot, 2010), 175–96.

35 Stoeckel (1858–1925) and his wife Ellen founded the Norfolk Music Festival in 1900 (it appears to be the oldest such festival in the United States). Stoeckel was also the first recipient of a Doctor of Music degree from Yale University and its first Professor of Music; on Stoeckel's patronage, see Paula J. Bishop, ‘Patronage [United States]’, Oxford Music Online.

36 Unsigned, ‘Vaughan Williams Guest of Honor—English Composer to Attend Norfolk Festival Next June’, The Hartford Courant, 19 March 1922, 10.

37 Philip Custiss, ‘R. Vaughan Williams’ Pastoral Symphony Wins Musical World’, The Hartford Courant, 8 June 1922, 1.

38 Completed in 1913, the Woolworth Building is located at 233 Broadway, in lower Manhattan, and stands 792 feet (241.1 meters) tall; it was superseded in 1930 by the Chrysler Building (1,046 feet = 365.8 meters) and then, a year later, by the Empire State Building (1,454 feet = 443.2 meters, and built in 410 days by some 3,400 workers!).

39 The references to Thaxted (Essex) and trombones were tailor-made for Holst, who had a cottage in Thaxted and was himself a professional trombonist. The entire letter appears in Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895–1958, ed. Hugh Cobbe (Oxford, 2008), 132–33, no. 130.

40 Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 134, no. 131.

41 My thanks to Hugh Cobbe for sharing this unpublished letter with me. Daniel Gregory Mason represents the third generation of a musical dynasty: his grandfather, Lowell Mason (1792–1872) was a prolific composer of hymns; his father, Henry Mason (1831–1890), was a founder of the Mason & Hamlin piano company. Vaughan Williams maintained an on-again-off-again correspondence with Daniel Gregory Mason for years to come.

42 Olin Downes, ‘New York Symphony Orchestra’, NYTimes, 26 January 1925, 15.

43 Downes, ‘The New York Symphony’, NYTimes, 3 April 1925, 22.

44 Lawrence Gilman, ‘Walter Damrosch's Fortieth Year as an Orchestral Conductor in New York’, NYHTrib, 3 April 1925, 12. Gilman (1878–1939) succeeded Krehbiel at the N-YTrib in 1923 and remained with its NYHTrib offspring until his death. He wrote programme notes for the New York Philharmonic and, prior to that, for the New York National Symphony Orchestra before its merger with the Philharmonic in 1921; see Wayne D. Shirley, ‘Gilman, Lawrence’, Oxford Music Online; Mark N. Grant, Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music Criticism in America (Boston, 1998), 275–7 and passim.

45 I draw upon Irene Downes, ed., Olin Downes in Music (New York, 1957); Lloyd Weldy, ‘Music Criticism of Olin Downes and Howard Taubman in “The New York Times” Sunday Edition, 1924–1929 and 1955–1960’, PhD dissertation, University of Southern California (1965); Barbara Mueser, ‘The Criticism of New Music in New York, 1919–1929’, PhD dissertation, The City University of New York (1975); Glenda Goss, Jean Sibelius and Olin Downes: Music, Friendship, Criticism (Boston, 1994).

46 Downes published two books about Sibelius: Sibelius (Helsinki, 1945), a collection of articles about the composer, translated into Finnish by Paul Sjöblom, and Sibelius the Symphonist (New York, 1956). For his work on behalf of Sibelius's music, Finland made Downes a Commander of the Order of the White Rose in 1937.

47 I provide the entire letter in ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes’, 6.

48 Gilman, ‘Hans Lange Conducts Vaughan Williams’ “London Symphony”’, NYHTrib, 28 February 1935, 12.

49 Downes, ‘Hans Lange Triumphs with Philharmonic—Vaughan Williams Pastoral Symphony Revived’, NYTimes, 22 December 1933, 24.

50 The entire letter, dated 18 August 1953, appears in Atlas, ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes’, 7–8.

51 On the 1943 performance, see below, §3c. On the Barbirolli-Vaughan Williams friendship, which extended to their families as a whole, see Kennedy, Works, passim, and Barbirolli: Conductor Laureate (London, 1971), 240–5; Harold Atkins and Peter Cotes, The Barbirollis: A Musical Marriage (London, 1983), 143–52. Vaughan Williams dedicated his Symphony No. 8 in D minor (1955) to Barbirolli, inscribing the autograph score: ‘For glorious John with love and admiration from Ralph’; two years later, in October 1957, Vaughan Williams added another tribute: the 59-bar-long Flourish for Glorious John, in honour of the opening of the Hallé Orchestra's one hundredth season (Barbirolli was its conductor at the time).

52 He mentions this again in a letter to Diana Awdry postmarked 24 October; both letters appear in Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 204–5, nos. 215 and 216, respectively.

53 Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 205, no. 217; see note 38 above.

54 Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 206, no. 218.

55 W.J. Henderson, Review of National Music, The Sun, 22 December 1934, 10. William James Henderson (1855–1937) wrote for The Sun from 1902 to his death; ever the journalist, he famously said: ‘The critic […] is but a polite newsmonger’; see Oscar Thompson, ‘An American School of Criticism: The Legacy Left by W.J. Henderson, Richard Aldrich and their Colleagues of the Old Guard’, The Musical Quarterly, 23, no. 4 (1937), 428–39; Stephen R. Greene, ‘Visions of a “Musical America” in the Radio Age’, PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh (2008); Lars Helgert, ‘Criticism, §1’, Oxford Music Online; a number of Henderson's non-journalistic publications have recently appeared online at ‘Internet Archive’, https://archive.org, and ‘Project Gutenberg’, http://www.Gutenberg.org.

56 Downes, ‘Philharmonic Plays Ancient Music’, NYTimes, 27 December 1929, 28. On the reception of Tallis in New York during the 1920s, see my article, ‘On the Reception of the Tallis Fantasia in New York, 1922–1929’, Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, 48 (June 2010), 8–11.

57 The American premiere had occurred some weeks earlier, on 19 December 1935, with the Cleveland Orchestra led by Artur Rodzińsky; as we will see, it was also Rodzińsky who, after moving to New York and the Philharmonic, conducted the first United States performance of the Fifth Symphony. There is an announcement about Lange's having secured rights to the symphony in ‘Hans Lange Returns: Brings Rights to Present New Vaughan Williams Work’, NYTimes, 17 August 1935, 18.

58 The Fourth was first performed at Queen's Hall, London, on 10 April 1935, Adrian Boult leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra. For a survey of the reviews, which ranged from favourable (Edwin Evans and Eric Blom) through fence-sitting (H.C. Colles) to negative (Ernest Newman and Neville Cardus), see Kennedy, Works, 243–6. Though long thought to have been conceived in 1931 (the year of the earliest sketches), the symphony's initial inspiration dates from the Beethoven Centenary in 1927; see Atlas, ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes’, 7.

59 Howard Taubman (signed ‘H.T.’), ‘Sokoloff Directs Williams Novelty’, NYTimes, 17 January 1931, 23, noted that the concerto ‘reveals the British composer in a different light from […] his “pastoral” symphony’. Taubman (1907–96) enjoyed a long career with the NYTimes: music critic (1929–35), music editor (1935–55), chief music critic (1955–60), drama critic (1960–6), critic-at-large (1966–72); see Patrick J. Smith, ‘Taubman, H(yman) Howard’, Oxford Music Online; Weldy, ‘Music Criticism of Olin Downes and Howard Taubman’; Ellen P. Berk, ‘An Analysis and Comparison of the Aesthetics and Philosophy of Selected Music Critics in New York, 1940–1975’, PhD dissertation, New York University (1978). Note that the posts of ‘music editor’ and ‘chief music critic’ were distinct from one another at both the NYTimes and the NYHTrib.

60 Irving Kolodin (signed ‘I.K.’), ‘Vaughan Williams Symphony Played’, The Sun, 7 February 1936, 19. Kolodin (1908–88) wrote for The Sun from 1932 to 1950 (when the paper folded) and for the Saturday Review from 1947 to 1980; he was one of the first music critics to consider recordings and film music; among his many contributions there is The Metropolitan Opera, 1883–1996: A Candid History (4th edn, New York, 1966); obviously, the two better-known symphonies to which he refers are London and Pastoral.

61 ‘C’, ‘New Vaughan Williams Symphony Heard’, Musical America, 15 February 1936, 12.

62 Gilman, ‘Mr. Lange Presents New Music at the Philharmonic Concert’, NYHTrib, 8 February 1936, 8; Gilman also wrote the programme notes for the concert.

63 Downes, ‘Work by Williams has First Hearing’, NY Times, 7 February 1936, 15.

64 On Mitropoulos and Vaughan Williams's Fourth, see William R. Trotter, Priest of Music: The Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos (Portland, OR, 1995), 159, 319, 366, 378. The Mitropoulos recording appears on Columbia 5158 (1956), reissued on CD, Retrospective Records, RET 011 (2001); the other Philharmonic recording is by Bernstein: Columbia Masterworks MS 7177 (1965), reissued on CD, Sony Classical, ‘Leonard Bernstein: The Royal Edition’, No. 96 (1993). That Mitropoulos had a special affinity for the work is recognized in Howard Taubman's review of Mitropoulos's performance of the symphony at opening night of the Philharmonic's 1957 season: ‘He evidently has a feeling of identification with it and communicates it through the orchestra to the audience’, NY Times, 14 October 1957, 32.

65 On Thomson as critic, see Anthony Tommasini, Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle (New York, 1997), 319–52; Grant, Maestros of the Pen, 226–56; Robinson, ‘“A Ping, Qualified by a Thud”’, 79–139; Nadine Hubbs, The Queer Composition of American Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity (Berkeley, 2000), passim; the Library of America has recently issued a generous (1,178 pages) compilation of Thomson's criticism for the NYHTrib: Music Chronicles, 1940–1954, ed. Tim Page (New York, 2013).

66 Downes, ‘Mitropoulos Seen in a Double Role’, NYTimes, 7 January 1943, 25; the ‘double role’ alludes to Mitropoulos as soloist in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C, op. 26

67 Thomson, ‘Music—Serious Workmanship’, NYHTrib, 7 January 1943, p. 15A; Thomson refers to Vaughan Williams as a ‘Welshman’ and hyphenates the name on a number of occasions (this review does not appear in Music Chronicles).

68 Ferruccio Bonavia, ‘V. Williams’ Fifth’, NYTimes, 15 August 1943, X5. Bonavia (1877–1950) was born at Trieste and settled in England in 1898; after playing violin in the Hallé Orchestra and writing the occasional article for The Manchester Guardian, he became the music critic for the Daily Telegraph in 1920 and remained there until his death; see Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. Centennial Edition, ed. Nicholas Slominsky and Laura Kuhn (New York, 2001), vol. 1, 387.

69 The entire letter appears in Atlas, ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes’, 7.

70 Downes, ‘Philharmonic Season Outlook’, NYTimes, 29 August 1943, X5.

71 I include the entire letter in ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes’, 7.

72 Unsigned, ‘In the World of Music: Premiere of Williams Fifth Symphony to be Given on All-British Program’, NYTimes, 26 November 1944, X5.

73 Downes, ‘Rodzinski Offers All-British Music: Works by Capt. Wooldridge, Williams, Walton and Elgar Performed’, NYTimes, 1 December 1944, 28. An anecdote about Captain Wooldridge as passed down in both the NYTimes and NYHTrib reviews runs as follows. At the time of the concert, John Wooldridge (1919–58) was serving in the RAF (a wing commander); he and Rodzińsky had agreed that if he (Wooldridge) downed a given number of German aircraft within a specified amount of time, Rodzińsky would perform Wooldridge's A Solemn Hymn. Wooldridge did his part, Rodzińsky did his and the RAF granted Wooldridge a leave in order that he might attend the concert.

74 Paul Bowles, ‘Philharmonic Presents Works by Walton, Vaughan-Williams’, NYHTrib, 1 December 1944, 19A. On Bowles (1910–99), who settled in Tangier in 1947 and became better known as a novelist than as a composer, see Gena Dagel Caponi, Paul Bowles: Romantic Savage (Carbondale, IL, 1994); Paul Bowles on Music, ed. Timothy Mangan and Irene Herrmann (Berkeley, 2003); Hubbs, The Queering of American Music, 103–16; Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, passim. Read against such analyses as those by Arnold Whittall, “‘Symphony in D Major”: Models and Mutations’, in Vaughan Williams Studies, ed. Alain Frogley (New York, 1996), 187–212, and Julian Horton, ‘The Later Symphonies’, in The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams, 204–6, Bowles's ‘anti-intellectual’ and ‘not of this century‘ strike one as being even more off the mark than they already were in 1944.

75 On the history of the Lewisohn Stadium concerts, see Jonathan Stern, ‘Music for the (American) People: The Concerts at Lewisohn Stadium, 1922–1964’, PhD dissertation, The City University of New York (2009); see also the introduction to Appendix I.

76 Downes, ‘Beecham Appears at Carnegie Hall’, NYTimes, January 1936, 13.

77 Downes, ‘Problems of Conductor: Sir Thomas Beecham Solves a Few as He Leads the Philharmonic Symphony’, NYTimes, 12 January 1936, X7 (should the ‘Conductor’ in the title be plural or is the word ‘a’ before it missing?).

78 Noel Straus (signed ‘N.S.’), ‘Other Music: Philharmonic Concert’, NY Times, 17 February 1939, 22; Gilman, ‘The Other “Pastoral” Symphony’, NYHTrib, 19 February 1939, E6. On Straus, who died on 6 November 1959 at age 78, see the notice by Harold Schonberg, ‘Mr. Straus’ “Book”: Late Critic's Reviews Now Available in Two Scrapbooks at Public Library’, NY Times, 26 February 1961, X11, who calls Straus ‘one of the greatest of American music critics’.

79 Thomson, ‘Pastoral Poetry’, NYHTrib, 26 February 1943, 15A; on Thomson's mistaken reference to the work's ‘English’ landscape, see §1b and note 34.

80 Alain Frogley, ‘Constructing Englishness in Music: National Character and the Reception of Ralph Vaughan Williams’, in Vaughan Williams Studies, 18–19; see also Aidan J. Thomson, ‘Becoming a National Composer: Critical Reception to c. 1925′, and Kennedy, ‘Fluctuations in the Response to the Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams’, both in The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams, 56–78 and 275–98, respectively.

81 This section draws upon my article ‘Vaughan Williams in the New York Crossfire: Olin and Harold v. Virgil and Paul’, forthcoming in The Musical Times.

82 Downes, ‘Juilliard School Gives New Opera’, NYTimes, 22 April 1937, 19; Jerome D. Bohm, ‘“Poisoned Kiss” in Premiere at Juilliard School’, NYHTrib, 22 April 1937, 14; on Bohm, see Tommasini, Virgil Thomson, 324, 346–7, 353, 424–5.

83 Howard Taubman (signed ‘H.T.’), ‘Columbia Offers “Sir John in Love”’, NYTimes, 21 January 1949, 24; Thomson, ‘Charm and Jollity’, NYHTrib, 22 January 1949, 9; Thomson specifically criticized Vaughan Williams's text-setting.

84 Thomson, ‘Contemporary Festival in Pittsburgh’, NYHTrib, 14 December 1952, D5 (a review of a concert by the Pittsburgh Symphony under William Steinberg); Harold Schonberg, ‘Records: “Portraits”—Vaughan Williams Choral Work Utilizes Five Tudor Poems by John Skelton’, NYTimes, 8 November 1953, X9 (a review of a recording of the very concert heard by Thomson). I consider the possible motives that may have contributed to Thomson's generally anti-Vaughan Williams stance in ‘Vaughan Williams in the New York Crossfire’.

85 Schonberg, ‘1872–1958: World Loses a Genius in Vaughan Williams’, NYTimes, 31 August 1958, X7. Among his many books are The Great Pianists (2nd edn, New York, 1987) and Horowitz: His Life and Music (New York, 1992); see Patrick J. Smith, ‘Schonberg, Harold C(harles)’, Oxford Music Online.

86 As I suggest in ‘Vaughan Williams in the New York Crossfire’, Lang may well have been on vacation and away from New York at the time Vaughan Williams died. Yet Lang surely recognized Vaughan Williams's importance: (1) bemoaning the number of composers who, he claims in the course of an editorial in the very next issue of The Musical Quarterly, were trapped in Schoenbergian ‘doctrine’, he names Vaughan Williams together with Bartók, Stravinsky, Ravel and others as having produced masterworks some 30 years earlier (vol. 44, no. 4, October 1958, 508); and (2) he opened the following issue of the journal with a moving appreciation of Vaughan Williams by the English critic A.E.F. Dickinson, ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams’, 45, no. 1 (January 1959), 1–7.

87 Schonberg, ‘Music: The Occasion, Bernstein Conducts—Hall is Assayed’, NYTimes, 24 September 1962, 32; Lang, ‘There was Sparkle, there was Music in the Night’, NYHTrib, 24 September 1962, 1, 14.

88 Robinson, ‘“A Ping Qualified by a Thud”’, 86, citing ‘Paul Bowles Meets with Ken Smith and Frank J. Oferi’, NewMusicBox, 1 December 1999, online at http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=459.

89 Robinson, ‘“A Ping Qualified by a Thud”’, 85, citing Leta A. Miller and Fredric Lieberman, Lou Harrison: Composing a World (New York, 1998). Parmenter (1912–99) was with the NYTimes from 1940 to 1966.

90 Cited after Kennedy, Works, 301, who summarizes the British reception in general (pp. 300–4).

91 Thomson, ‘English Landscape’, NYHTrib, 28 January 1949, 14.

92 Downes, ‘Stokowski Offers Premiere of Work – Leads Philharmonic in Debut Here of Sixth Symphony by Vaughan-Williams’, NYTimes, 28 January 1949, 26.

93 Miles Kastendieck, ‘Orchestras Stress New Compositions’, Christian Science Monitor, 5 February 1949, 6. On those associations, see Kennedy, Works, 301–2. Moreover, the New York critics would have been aware of this interpretation, for on 30 May 1948 (shortly after the London premiere), the NYTimes ran an article titled ‘Composer's Progress: A Retrospect of Vaughan Williams’ Work, Including his Sixth Symphony’, X7, by the British art and music critic Dyneley Hussey (1893–1972), where they would have read: ‘The new work […] states […] what [Vaughan Williams] feels about the war and turns towards the end to a meditation upon an ideal and otherworldy peace.’ On Hussey, see Martin Cooper, ‘Hussey, Dyneley’, Oxford Music Online. Kastendieck (1906–2001), who was the author of England's Musical Poet: Thomas Campion (New York, 1938—reprint: New York, 1963), wrote music criticism for the Christian Science Monitor, the Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Journal-American; see Andrew Friedman, ‘Students and Teachers Say Goodbye to the Mr. Chips of Bay Ridge’, NYTimes, 6 May 2001, CV10.

94 As quoted in Robert Bagar's programme notes for the Philharmonic concerts of 27–28 January 1949, New York Philharmonic Archives. Stokowski recorded the work in February 1949: Columbia Records, MM-838; reissued on CD: Retrospective Recordings RET 001 (2001).

95 Downes, ‘Symphony of Era Concert Feature’, NYTimes, 17 March 1949, 33.

96 Downes, ‘Morini Violinist, Concert Soloist’, NYTimes, 14 December 1949, 45 (the reference to ‘Morini’ is to the Austrian-born Erika Morini [1904–95], who settled in New York in 1938 and changed the spelling of her name to ‘Erica’); Perkins, ‘Concert and Recital: Philadelphia Orchestra’, NYHTrib, 14 December 1949, 23. Perkins (1897–1970) joined the N-YTrib in 1919, became music editor of the NYHTrib in 1940 (thus when Virgil Thomson became chief music critic – see note 59) and retired in 1962; there is an unsigned obituary in the NYTimes, 10 October 1970, 25; his 1925 article ‘Jazz Breaks into Society’ is included in Jazz in Print (1859–1929): An Anthology of Early Readings in Jazz History, ed. Karl Koenig (Hillsdale, NY, 2002), 372–3.

97 Reported in the NYHTrib, 21 May 1949, 6.

98 Unsigned, ‘Vaughan Williams Ends 8th’, NYTimes, 25 October 1955, 37.

99 Taubman, ‘A New Symphony – Vaughan Williams’ 8th has Local Premiere’, NYTimes, 10 October 1956, 46.

100 Lang, ‘Philadelphia Orchestra’, NYHTrib, 10 October 1956, 23.

101 Perkins, ‘Boston Symphony Plays Vaughan Williams Work’, NYHTrib, 17 November 1957, 62; Edward O.E. Downes (signed ‘E.D.’), ‘Boston Symphony Heard in Concert’, NYTimes, 17 November 1957, 80. This Downes (1911–2001) was Olin's son, and succeeded his father as the Metropolitan Opera's Quizmaster during the intermissions of the Met's live Saturday afternoon broadcasts, which have been on the air continuously since 1931.

102 Schonberg, ‘Records: Vaughan Williams’ Eighth’, NYTimes, 6 January 1957, D16.

103 Unsigned, ‘Critics Honor American Opera and Vaughan Williams Work’, NYTimes, 5 March 1957, 36; the opera to which the title refers was Carlisle Floyd's Susanna.

104 The world premiere had taken place on 2 April 1958, at Royal Festival Hall, London, under Malcolm Sargent; the first performance in North America was at the Vancouver International Festival on 11 August 1958. An unsigned notice titled ‘Ninth Symphony by Vaughan Williams Cheered at World Premiere in London’, NYTimes, 3 April 1958, 22, provides snippets from the reviews that appeared in the British press following the London premiere.

105 Lang, ‘Contemporary Concert’, NYHTrib, 26 September 1958, 73.

106 Schonberg, ‘A Vaughan Williams Premiere – Stokowski Leads Ninth Symphony in U.S. Bow’, NYTimes, 26 September 1958, 22; ‘Records: A Ninth—Last Symphony by Vaughan Williams Makes its Debut on New Label’, NYTimes, 30 November 1958, X17; the new label to which Schonberg refers was Everest.

107 Unsigned, ‘Music Critics Cite Piston and Moore’, NYTimes, 21 January 1959, 25. The winners in the two main categories were Walter Piston for his Viola Concerto and Douglas Moore for the opera The Ballad of Baby Doe.

108 Founded in 1898, the Institute merged with the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1976 (thus forming a two-tier organization) and gave way to the latter entirely in 1993.

109 Unsigned, ‘National Arts Body Honors 5 Foreigners’, NYTimes, 19 February 1949, 12; note that the number of ‘foreign’ (defined simply as a non-USA citizen) honorary associates could not exceed 25 at any given time.

110 Unsigned, ‘British Composer at 80′, NYTimes, 16 March 1952, X7.

111 Unsigned, ‘World of Music: Chamber Groups – Small Ensembles Provide Foundation of Modest Summer Festivals’, NYTimes, 22 June 1952, X7; it was at the Pittsburgh Festival that Virgil Thomson heard and excoriated the Five Tudor Portraits (see §3d).

112 Taubman, ‘A Composer Nears 80: Vaughan Williams will be Feted Next Month’, NYTimes, 28 September 1952, X7.

113 Ernest Newman, ‘An English and Universal Music’, NYTimes, 12 October 1952, SM 20, 28.

114 Unsigned, ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams Weds’, NYTimes, 9 February 1953, 36. For the record, we might note that the NYHTrib announced none of these six events.

115 The NYTimes did so on three occasions: Unsigned, ‘Visit to U.S. Planned by British Composer’, 6 May 1954, 45; Downes, ‘Vaughan Williams: Great English Composer will Visit Here in Fall’, 23 May 1954, X7; and Unsigned, ‘In Honor of Briton’, 26 September 1954, X9. The NYHTrib too announced his visit: Perkins, ‘Vaughan Williams’ Visit’, 9 May 1954, D5.

116 Ursula Vaughan Williams, R.V.W., 348. Sir Donald Keith Falkner (1900–94) sang the role of the Constable in the first production of Vaughan Williams's Hugh the Drover (at the Royal College of Music, July 1924) and taught at Cornell from 1950 to 1960, after which he returned to England to head the Royal College of Music; see Unsigned, ‘Falkner, Sir Donald Keith’, Oxford Music Online, and Cobbe, Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 213.

117 See Atlas, ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and Olin Downes’, 10.

118 Downes, ‘Vaughan Williams: Great English Composer’, X7 (note 115).

119 Rockwell, ‘Arnold Bax Dowdy, Yes, but Dazzling’, NY Times, 22 March 1987, 92. Rockwell (b. 1940) was associated with the NYTimes in one capacity or another from 1972 to 2006, with a four-year sabbatical (1994–8) during which he served as the first director of the Lincoln Center Festival. Equally at home in both classical and popular music, he is the author of Sinatra: An American Classic (New York, 1984).

120 Rockwell, ‘Previn as Composer and Conductor’, NY Times, 15 May 1988, 55.

121 Helgert, ‘Criticism, §5, Since 1960’, Oxford Music Online.

122 Henahan (1921–2012) wrote for the NYTimes from 1967 to 1991; in 1986, he won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism; see Robert D. McFadden, ‘Donal Henahan, 91, Critic Who Liked to Spur Debate’, NYTimes, 20 August 2012, B15.

123 Holland, ‘Beethoven Sets the Stage for Gloomy Hues of War’, NYTimes, 5 April 2008, B9. Holland (b. 1933) joined The New York Times in 1981 and remained there until he retired in 2008; see ‘Holland to Retire’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 15 May 2008, online at www.post-gazette.com (for which paper he wrote in 1979–80).

124 Taubman, ‘Music: Song of Whitman’, NY Times, 4 May 1959, p. 56. The event was scheduled as a benefit concert for the Society, with part of the proceeds going to ‘commission new choral works by contemporary composers’; as it happens, the concert took place just two days shy of the sixty-ninth anniversary of the Oratorio Society's participation in the inaugural concert of the New York Music Hall (or Carnegie Hall, as it soon came to be known) on 5 May 1891; see Unsigned, ‘Oratorio Society Plans a Concert in Carnegie Hall’, NYTimes, 10 April 1960, 108.

125 Perkins, ‘Oratorio Unit in Season's Last Concert’, NYHTrib, 4 May 1960, 19. Both Taubman and Perkins state that the work had not been performed in New York since 1922. Yet on 29 May 1957, both the NYTimes and the NYHTrib announced that the Symphony of the Air would present A Sea Symphony during the 1957–8 season. According to the NYTimes, the orchestra would be joined by the Dessoff Choirs (founded in 1929), both ensembles under the baton of William Strickland (1914–91); the NYHTrib seems somewhat confused: the orchestra ‘will accompany the Desoff [sic] Choirs under Paul Boepple and perform Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Sea Symphony” with the Oratoria [sic] Society under William Strickland' (two choirs and two conductors?). In any event, a search through the 1957–8 seasons of both the Symphony of the Air and the Dessoff Choirs has turned up nothing further about the concert. Unsigned, ‘Symphony of Air Plans 8 Concerts: Orchestra's Programs for Next Season Listed – New U.S. Works Scheduled’, NY Times, 29 May 1957, 25; unsigned, ‘Symphony of Air Lists 10 Concerts’, NYHTrib, 29 May 1957, 17 (note the discrepancy in the number of concerts cited). From 1937 to 1968, the Dessoff Choirs, which introduced a great deal of choral music both ‘early’ and new to New York, was directed by the Swiss-born Paul Boepple (1896–1970 – there is an obituary notice in the NYTimes, 22 December 1970, 36).

126 Schonberg, ‘Music: “Sea Symphony” – Augmented Oratorio Society is Heard’, NYTimes, 11 May 1964, 34.

127 Schonberg, ‘Music: “Sea Symphony”’, NYTimes, 10 March 1972, 45.

128 Tim Page, ‘Music: Ensemble from St. Cecilia’, NYTimes, 19 May 1985, 70; on Page (b. 1954), who served as music critic with the NYTimes (1982–7) and Newsday (1987–95) before moving to The Washington Post (in 1995) and who won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1997, see Helgert, ‘Criticism: §5, Since 1960’, Oxford Music Online.

129 Announcements in NYTimes, 10 April 1997, H33, and 29 March 2009, AR25.

130 Josephine Bonomo, ‘Amateurs to Play Montclair Concert: Laughter at Rehearsals—A 225-Voice Chorus’, NYTimes, 11 March 1972, 94.

131 Henahan, ‘Cox Leads American Symphony with Stephen Bishop as Soloist’, NYTimes, 13 April 1970, 51. We can only wonder if Henahan might have heard things differently had he known Michael Beckerman, ‘The Composer as Pole Seeker: Reading Vaughan Williams's Sinfonia antartica’, Current Musicology, 69 (2000), 181–97, and Daniel M. Grimley, ‘Music, Ice, and the ‘Geometry of Fear’: the Landscapes of Vaughan Williams's Sinfonia antartica’, The Musical Quarterly, 91, no. 1–2 (2008), 116–50.

132 Allan Kozinn, ‘English Pastoral Style and Sugarplum Fairies’, NYTimes, 22 December 1995, C39; James Oestreich, ‘Classical Music in Review’, NYTimes, 19 March 1994, 14. Kozinn (b. 1954) was on the staff of the NYTimes from 1991 to 2014; Oestreich (b. 1943) wrote for the NYTimes from 1989 to 2013 and served as editor of the Sunday Arts & Leisure section.

133 Holland, ‘Concert: Academy of St. Martin Plays at Festival’, NYTimes, 28 July 1987, C16.

134 Clive Barnes, ‘City Ballet Performs John Clifford’, NYTimes, 24 January 1969, 24. Born in London, the influential Barnes (1927–2008) wrote drama and dance criticism for the NYTimes from 1965 to 1977; he moved to the New York Post in 1978, to which he continued to contribute reviews almost until his death. See William Grimes, ‘Clive Barns, who Raised the Stakes in Dance and Theater Criticism, Dies at 81’, NYTimes, 19 November 2008, A41.

135 Jennifer Dunning, ‘Eglevsky Dancers at a Turning Point’, NYTimes, 8 February 1980, C1.

136 Anna Kisselgoff, ‘Ballet: A New Work by Miss Taylor-Corbett’, NYTimes, 18 May 1983, C19.

137 Kisselgoff, ‘Love is Theme in Two Alvin Ailey Dance Premieres’, NYTimes, 27 April 1972, 48.

138 Kisselgoff, ‘Expanding the Trite to Reveal New Poetry’, NY Times, 27 February 1997, C13. The company revived Eventide on 2 March 2005; see NYTimes, 5 March 2005, B13.

139 Dunning, ‘Pain Eased and Ennobled by Soaring Human Esprit’, NYTimes, 2 May 2003, E5.

140 Gia Kouras, ‘In a Swirl of Limbs, a Bird Takes Flight’, NYTimes, 2 August 2014, C3.

141 My thanks to Alain Frogley for calling my attention to the revisions and to Simon Wright for bringing me up-to-date about the appearance of the corrected edition (communications of 30 August and 5 September 2014, respectively). The first New York performance of the original version of the work is likely to have been that by José Figueroa on 17 November 1957 at Town Hall; see W.F., ‘Jose Figueroa in Violin Recital’, NYHTrib, 18 November 1957, 16. On Fuchs, who co-founded and directed the Musicians' Guild from 1943 to 1956 (the Guild promoted chamber music) and taught at Juilliard from 1946, see Boris Schwarz, ‘Fuchs, Joseph’, Oxford Music Online.

142 Schonberg, ‘Rare Vaughan Williams Sonata’, NYTimes, 18 November 1969, 43.

143 Raymond Ericson, ‘Fuchs and Sister Join in Mozart Sinfonia’, NYTimes, 14 November 1979, 37; Schonberg, ‘At 88, Fuchs is Still Going his Own Way’, NYTimes, 13 November 1988’, H23. Ericson (1915–97) wrote for the NYTimes from 1960 to 1990.

144 Eric Salzman, ‘Museum Concert Stars a Violinist’, NYTimes, 11 December 1961, 43; John Gruen, ‘Music: Weekend Events’, NYHTrib, 11 December 1961; Rockwell, ‘Recital Joseph Fuchs’, NYTimes, 24 January 1979, C22. On Salzman (b. 1933), see James P. Cassaro, ‘Salzman, Eric’, Oxford Music Online; on Gruen (b. 1926), critic, photographer and author of Callas Kissed Me—Lenny Too (Brooklyn, 2008), see Ariella Budick, ‘John Gruen, Whitney Museum, New York’, online at http://www.ft.com/cmsls/0/472d-11df-aade-00144/eadbc0.html.

145 Kozinn, ‘Going on 90, Joseph Fuchs Goes on Playing the Violin’, NYTimes, 1 February 1990, 15. Though Fuchs sheds no further light on his acquaintanceship with Vaughan Williams, the composer's 1954 visit would have been a likely time for a meeting (see §4f).

146 Schonberg, ‘Lillian Fuchs is Viola Soloist’, NYTimes, 29 November 1959, 35; on Lillian Fuchs (1902–95), who often performed the Mozart Sinfonia concertante, K.364(320d), with her brother, see Schwarz, ‘Fuchs, Lillian’, Oxford Music Online.

147 Schonberg, ‘The Menuhins Play Music of Old Friends’, NYTimes, 29 January 1979, C13.

148 Will Crutchfield, ‘Choral Music: Oratorio Society’, NYTimes, 8 May 1995, C10. Crutchfield has been director of the Caramoor International Music Festival since 1997; see Fletcher Artist Management at http://www.fletcherartists.com.

149 Schonberg, ‘Double-Bill of English Operas: One-Acters by Holst and Vaughan Williams’, NYTimes, 28 January 1970, 44; see also Ericson, ‘National Orchestral Association Plays 2 Nonrepertory Novelties’, NYTimes, 29 January 1970, 45.

150 Leighton Kerner, ‘Two English Operas’, The Village Voice, 12 February 1970, 32. Kerner (1927–2006) was the classical music critic for The Village Voice from 1957 to 1998; unsigned, ‘Leighton Kerner, 91, Classical Music Critic’, NYTimes, 4 May 2006, 29.

151 The production consisted of three performances (20–22 January) by the Columbia University Opera Workshop under the direction of Willard Rhodes (best known in academia as an ethnomusicologist) and with a piano substituting for the orchestra. On Rhodes's less well-known activities in the field of opera, see David McAllester, ‘Obituary: Willard Rhodes (1910–1992)’, Ethnomusicology, 37, no. 2 (1993), 251–62.

152 Bill Zakariasen, ‘Sir John Captivating’, New York Daily News, 15 May 1989, 28; Zakariasen (1930–2004) was chief music critic at the Daily News from 1976 to 1993; he was a frequent contributor to Opera News, which noted his passing in vol. 69/7 (January 2005), 77.

153 Andrew Porter, ‘Musical Events: Thunder to the Tune of “Greensleeves”’, The New Yorker, 29 May 1978, 87–8. Porter (1928–2015) wrote for The New Yorker for 20 years, 1972–92.

154 Crutchfield, ‘Opera: “Sir John in Love,” at Lehman College’, NY Times, 11 January 1998, C14.

155 For the reasons behind her change in mind, see Cobbe, ‘The Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust’, Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, 54 (June 2012), 16–17; Wright, ‘Vaughan Williams and Oxford University’, 14–15.

156 Tommasini, ‘Soaring with Abandon and a Touch of Impish Glee’, NYTimes, 18 January 2005, E5; Ms Blythe's accompanist, Warren Jones, played the piano part by memory.

157 Holland, ‘Ephemeral but Powerful, with Tinges of France’, NYTimes, 15 March 2006, E5, reviewing a performance of the previous evening by Ian Bostridge, the Belcea Quartet, and the pianist Julius Drake.

158 Kozinn, ‘Elegiac Trio and Song Cycles in Festival of English Music’, NYTimes, 15 February 2007, E5. The performers were Russell Thomas, tenor; Gilbert Kalish, piano; and the Society's resident string quartet.

159 Paul Griffiths, ‘Ringing in Words Along with Fierce Spirit’, NYTimes, 9 March 2002, B 14; note that even Terfel can be kept waiting four days for a review. Griffiths (b. 1947) joined the NYTimes in 1997 after serving as music critic for The New Yorker (1992–7).

160 Vivien Schweitzer, ‘The Dissonance of Everyday Life, the Harmony of Nature’, NYTimes, 9 June 2007, B15. Silence and Music, for mixed a cappella chorus, is No. 4 in A Garland for the Queen, a compilation of music by ten British composers and poets in honour of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953; the words are by Ursula Vaughan Williams (then still Ursula Wood); see Kennedy, Catalogue, 214. Silence and Music is also the title of a collection of poems by Ursula Vaughan Williams (London, 1959). The performance on June 7th was likely a New York (and perhaps even a United States) premiere; I cannot find an earlier performance of the work.

161 Steve Smith, ‘A Composer Forever English, Cows and All’, NYTimes, 13 July 2008, 51. The Parker documentary is issued by Isolde Films/Voice Print Records, TPDVD 106 (2007). I might note that another celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Vaughan Williams's death took place on 14 November 2008 at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York: Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958): Fifty Years On. Conference & Concert. Eight papers spread across the morning and the afternoon by Stephen Connack, Julian Onderdonk, Bryon Adams, Deborah Heckert, Julian Rushton, David Stern, Eric Saylor and Alain Frogley were followed by an evening concert that featured the Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano, performed by two Graduate Center alumni, Yavet Boyadjiev, violin, and Jin-Ok Lee, piano.

162 Zachary Woolfe, ‘The Sadness of Bugles as Soldiers Head Home’, NYTimes, 22 June 2014, E22.