When I was a small child, The New York Times received every new creation of Igor Stravinsky with hostility, but even then I knew, like everybody else… - Charles Rosen
" "When I was a small child, The New York Times received every new creation of Igor Stravinsky with hostility, but even then I knew, like everybody else, that he was the greatest living composer-and I knew it even without having heard much Stravinsky or even any of the more recent works at all. It is a mistake of music historians to rely too much on journalists and music critics to assess a composer's reputation, as we generally find a certain delay in their transmission of the more influential professional judgments.
About Charles Rosen
Charles Welles Rosen (May 5, 1927 – December 9, 2012) was an American pianist and writer on music.
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There is a revealing sardonic comment by Leopold Godowsky on a well-known statement of Paderewski, who once boasted, "When I don't practice for one day, my fingers know it; for two days, and my friends know it; for three days and the whole world knows it." Godowsky added: "On the fourth day, the critics hear about it." In any case, poets and novelists are generally better reporters of the general state of musical opinion than music journalists, who most often have an ax to grind, or, quite reasonably and justifiably, a more limited set of prejudices to broadcast.