Richard Aldrich

Two of the men who made musical criticism a high art in America, whose knowledge of the musical past and judgment of present-day music were no less remarkable than their style of writing, were Richard Aldrich and William James Henderson. When Henry Krehbiel died, fifteen years ago, Aldrich wrote of the older music critic that “Krehbiel had a place in America which corresponded to that of the great critics of the Nineteenth Century in Europe; a place of commanding influence and authority;” further remarking that “the soundness and discrimination of his judgment were based on profound knowledge of the history of music,” but that “this great learning was put at the service of the present,” that “he was no historical grubber for the sake of grubbing.” Whether the description does or does not in all respects fit Krehbiel, it certainly portrays Aldrich. His background was unquestioned. His criticism was notably fair and kind, but it was just. Much as Aldrich disliked to engage in outright condemnation of a musical performance, he always believed that his readers had a right to know the truth. But his reviews in the Times on such occasions were never bitter or contentious; much less were they characterized by pedantic lecturing or “smart writing”—qualities in which he never indulged.

Aldrich was one of those rare critics whose kindly pointing out of the faults into which singer or pianist or conductor might have fallen was seldom resented; indeed, such reminders often helped the performer’s future. Aldrich himself once expressed to a friend his own regret that the exactions imposed on a critic’s time, by the multitude of performances at the height of New York’s musical season, should have made it impossible for him to imitate Germany’s best musical critics of half a century ago, in publishing full and friendly reviews of débutant performances which might have drawn no house and which might themselves have been full of shortcomings, but which nevertheless had promise for the future. Aldrich’s next-morning reviews of a musical event suffered like all daily-newspaper articles from the briefness of their span of life before the public. But his amazing knowledge of all episodes in musical history, his imagination mixed with quiet humor, were abundantly displayed in his few published books, which the reader of the future can enjoy. Whoever reads in Aldrich’s “Musical Discourse” the chapters on “Shakespeare and Music,” “The Beggars’ Opera,” “Jenny Lind and Barnum,” “Folksongs in America” and “Adelina Patti,” will find himself delightfully translated into the musical past. But it is the personality of Aldrich the fellow-clubman that the Century will remember. The burly figure with the shock of gray hair, the bristling white moustache, the humorous, kindly eyes, and the interesting conversation which derived added piquancy from his occasional brief stutter, left to the Club-house, where he was a constant visitor, a picture quite its own.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1938 Century Association Yearbook