Booklist 16:304 Je ’20
“Mr Rosenfeld knows how to write. This fact alone would make him of the minority among those who write at and about music. His style is nervous, clear, ironical if not humorous, and he uses words with precision. A well-written, interesting, sincere, exasperating book. In other words, a book worth reading.” Deems Taylor
+ − Dial 69:313 S ’20 3150w
“Each is a sort of snapshot of the essential personality of a musician, and all taken together make up a gallery of modern composers so penetrating, vivid and trenchant that no reader is likely to forget them. The method used is the impressionist. Inevitably, the special pitfall of a method like Mr Rosenfeld’s is over-subjectivity and sentimentalism, with its resultant turgidity and tendency to ‘fine writing.’ Mr Rosenfeld’s first book of essays at once establishes him as one of the few writers on music able really to illuminate their subject.” D. G. Mason
+ − Freeman 1:332 Je 16 ’20 1600w + Ind 102:374 Je 12 ’20 190w
“Many of the fundamental ideas set forth have been voiced at one time or another by the more penetrating of European critics. Yet Mr Rosenfeld has displayed a marked faculty for reinvesting these ideas in fresh and striking habiliments, embroidering them with such originality and skill that they take a new aspect. The whole book, in fact, is an astounding exhibition of virtuoso writing.” Henrietta Straus
+ Nation 111:sup411 O 13 ’20 1550w
“For its many good qualities, this book is deserving of unstinted praise. For one thing, it is, I believe, the first noteworthy attempt to take an accurate and full-size measurement of the music makers of our day, and for another, the critical yard stick is applied by a hand equally as artistic as it is dexterous. The only annoyance I experienced in reading the book was due to a feeling that, in parts, many of the pages were overwritten.” Max Endicoff
+ − N Y Call p10 Jl 18 ’20 260w