Word: criticizing
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...delighted to see this undergraduate interest. Better criticism goes hand-in-glove with better acting. The actor needs that criticism and I see your contest from the actor's point of view. My task is to improve the opportunities for undergraduates on the stage, your's to improve his opportunities in the critic's seat...
...seems to me that the Pierian could find much more valid and convincing arguments for its side of the question than the vituperation of Mr. Thompson's Philippie. I cannot agree that the question of the decline of the Pierian is without the domain of the critic (although I do not believe that the Harvard orchestra really is in such a bad way). To the critic all is pertinent that has any bearing on the quality of the performance. After all, the function of the critic, as Mr. Thompson has pointed out, is to comment as impartially as is humanly...
There is however, much to be said in favor of the Pierian that has been over-looked by its apologist as well as by its critic. The Pierian certainly holds a very high place among college orchestras. What though its programmes be drawn from familiar restaurant repertory? This is not likely to be objectionable to any but a sophisticated taste and restaurant music is usually decidedly pleasing. The Orchestra furthermore has had to hew its own way, fighting along with no help from the Music Department and selecting its conductors from its own ranks. Its programmes, its aims...
...point which I wish to mention is this: the connotation of Mr. Thomson's article is that the Pierian Sodality Orchestra is rapidly on the decline. This I know is not the case--in either case this matter would seem not to be within the jurisdiction of a "musical critic." It would seem that he draws his conclusion from the absurd caption "unskilled instrumentalists cannot rival professionals"--a statement the fallacy of which in connection with the Pierian Orchestra, made up of students, would at once be apparent to even an "adenoidial moron." Furthermore, were the Pierian Sodality...
...Criticism, nowadays, doesn't mean too much. No actor can please all the critics. But I'll venture that if all American critics were brought to one performance of my play, I could please 90 per cent of them. Most actors, however, don't read criticisms for any reason except that they are vain, and the critic praises them because it makes his job more pleasant than censure would...