The man credited with setting the standard for “critical evaluation and journalistic thoroughness” of classical music criticism was Harold C. Schonberg, who worked at the New York Times from 1960–80 and before that at the New York Herald-Tribune . [1] His 1971 Pulitzer Prize was the first awarded to a music critic. Schonberg was a classically trained musician. His expertise as a pianist and his knowledge of classical music provided him with the background to write intelligent, thorough reviews. Schonberg wrote not only reviews of classical concerts and recordings, but also columns that discussed a wide spectrum of classical music topics. Schonberg described his job in a 1967 interview:

I write for myself—not necessarily for readers, not for musicians. I’d be dead if I tried to please a particular audience. Criticism is only informed opinion. I write a piece that is personal reaction based, hopefully, on a lot of years of study, background, scholarship and whatever intuition I have. It’s not a critic’s job to be right or wrong; it’s his job to express an opinion in readable English. [2]

Schonberg disliked it when some music critic colleagues who were also composers courted conductors in an attempt to get their own compositions played. “I refuse to believe that if a critic is friendly with a musician, he can be impartial,” he said. “If word gets around you are a friend of a musician, your opinion becomes suspect.” Schonberg even created a code of conduct for music critics that proscribed friendships with composers or performers.

Schonberg also stood firm when performers were upset by unfavorable criticism. Defending his coverage, he pointed out that good criticism was backed by research, but also subjective—a combination of the critic’s “background, his taste and intuition, his ideals, his literary ability. If style is the man, so is criticism, and his criticism always ends up a reflection of what he is.” [3]

As the Plain Dealer ’s music critic, Rosenberg says he adhered to this view. He notes, “The critic’s personality is going to come up naturally in the writing… It takes a lot of industry, and it takes a lot of courage because you’re putting yourself in front of the public and exposing what you believe.” A critic’s responsibility, he says, was to ensure that the reader absorbs “a real sense of what the art is like, what the artist is like, what the music is like, what the work is like… all the while knowing that most people who read reviews are not experts.”