A Professional Oasis

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I should like to suggest that the CRIMSON make an endeavor to remove the schoolboy tone from its music reviews. There is no doubt that its reviewers have conscientiously taken Music I, that they are eternally aware of thematic structure, of the "Middle Period" in Beethoven, of the beauties of pre-Baroque music; let them also discover that the function of a music critic is not to review the Beethoven Violin Concerto, but to review its performance.

How shameful that the New Yorker-like, the mature, the cosmopolitan CRIMSON should sound like the newspaper of a whistle-stop: It must fairly be admitted that the latter at least spare their readers a diagram of form, unless they have by mischance become pretentious.

The happy performer who manages to play the notes at all my rest assured that not he, but the composer will be reviewed; should this become the style of the New York critics, much will have been done to eliminate stage-fright. Note, however, that our happy performer must be professional in order to merit this diversion of attention; only student performers have faults in the CRIMSON.

If Harvard develops the critical sense, let this be evident in your reviews, and the musicology be damned. Let your columns be a professional oasis amid the "academic stink" of college culture. And finally, shun the sweeping positive judgments which Downes, if not Cassidy, would tremble to make. Hugh Creighten Murray '54