(Edwin) Olin Downes - Examples, Sources

Music critic, born in Evanston, Illinois, USA. Writing for the Boston Post (1906–24) and New York Times (from 1924), he became one of the nation's most prominent critics.

Olin Downes (Edwin) (January 27, 1886–August 22, 1955) was a significant American music critic.

He studied piano, music theory, and music criticism in New York and Boston, and it was in those two cities that he made his career as a music critic—first with the Boston Post (1906–1924) and then with the New York Times (1924–1955).

While conservative in many regards, he was a champion of some new music in the first half of the 20th century. According to some sources, the music of Sibelius became part of the standard orchestral repertory in the United States largely because of the championship of Downes.

He died in New York.

Examples

Occasionally his reviews could be blistering, especially regarding the music of the Second Viennese School and avant-garde music, as these examples demonstrate:

"Varèse's Hyperprism reminded us of election night, a menagerie or two and a catastrophe in a boiler factory." (The New York Times, 1924) "Symphony for Chamber Orchestra of ... (The New York Times, 1929) (On Berg's Lulu): "Rapine, suicide, murder, the prevailing flower of a highly diseased eroticism are, perhaps, just so much promising material for a musical Freud or Krafft-Ebing to work upon." (The New York Times, 1935)

Sources

Slonimsky, Nicolas (1965). In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed.