Thomson and Downes To Top List of Critics At Music Symposium

Critics Olin Downes and Virgil Thomson, British novelist E. M. Forster, and a host of widely-known composors and musicians will plunge into a three-day examination of the principles of music criticism at a large-scale symposium in Cambridge on May 1, 2, and 3, the Department of Music announced recently.

Speaking on "The Raison d'Etre of Criticism of the Arts," Forster, coming from England especially for the event, will be joined on the lecture stand of the first meeting by Roger Sessions, professor of Music at the University of California. President Conant will welcome the gathering.

A discussion of "The Art of Judging Music" by Thomson, music critic of the New York Herald-Tribune, will highlight the second session, with talks by Edgar Wind, Smith College art historian, and Madame Olga Samaroff, of the Juilliard School of Music also scheduled.

Downes to be Chairman

New York Times music critic Downes will be chairman at the final meetings, at which Otto Kinkeldy, Horatio Appleton Lamb, Visiting Lecturer at the University, and Paul Lang, editor of "Musical Quarterly' and professor of Music at Columbia University, will speak.

At the evening concerts which will climax each day's work, new compositions by Walter Piston, Arnold Schoenberg, Aaron Copland, and Paul Hindemith will be played by the Walden String Quartet, the Collegiate Chorale of New York.