Background
Downes was born on January 27, 1886, in Evanston, Illinois, the son of Louise C. Downes and Edwin Quigley. After his parents' divorce, his mother used her maiden name for herself and her children.
(His repertory was small, but pleasing to him, since, than...)
His repertory was small, but pleasing to him, since, thanks to the records, he had become acquainted with some halfdozen pieces of fairly good music, and could even whistle scraps of them from memory. He never knew how musical he was until he chanced one day on a paragraph in a book his daughter was reading, about one of the compositions that he liked. He suddenly realized that this composition told the story of an episode in the life of another man, a human being who lived, struggled, rejoiced, and narrated his experiences in the language of tones. Having read the story, he played the record over again, and discovered that it meant far more to him than it ever had before. He wondered whether there were stories about his other records, and after much searching obtained a little information on the subject that now absorbed his leisure moments. He then invited a number of friends to his home and read them the stories of the records which he played. His friends were delighted and surprised to discover all that the music, thus explained, meant to them. When my friend told me this, he convinced me that a great need of to-day is a book which shall bring to every home the treasures of the musical world. It is to him and to his friends, and to all those who love music and wish to know its meaning, that this book is dedicated, in the belief that they will find in the messages of the masters the enjoyment, solace, and inspiration intended for every human heart. The A uthor. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology. Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserv
https://www.amazon.com/Depicting-Composers-Stories-Inspired-Creations/dp/B008CPJ696?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B008CPJ696
(Downes, Olin)
Downes, Olin
https://www.amazon.com/Symphonic-Masterpieces-Olin-Downes/dp/125833450X?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=125833450X
(book A Treasury of American Song)
book A Treasury of American Song
https://www.amazon.com/Treasury-American-Song-Siegmeister-Downes/dp/0895243164?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0895243164
Downes was born on January 27, 1886, in Evanston, Illinois, the son of Louise C. Downes and Edwin Quigley. After his parents' divorce, his mother used her maiden name for herself and her children.
Family economic circumstances limited Downes's academic education to the elementary level, although around 1899 he did study at the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. Later, in Boston, where his family had moved, he studied piano and theory privately, his analysis of scores with Louis Kelterborn proving particularly valuable to his future work.
After helping to support his family by giving piano lessons and by working as an accompanist in vocal studios, Downes in 1906 talked himself into the job of music critic for the Boston Post, a position he held for more than seventeen years. He early showed that he possessed the most fundamental qualification for being a newspaper critic: the ability to attend a performance and then produce, in an hour or two and against a deadline, a coherent review of the event.
On the side he assisted in university music courses and began giving public lectures. On January 1, 1924, Downes succeeded Richard Aldrich as principal music critic for the New York Times; he held this post for more than thirty-one years. During his first fifteen years on the Times, Downes was somewhat overshadowed by Lawrence Gilman, the critic of the New York Herald Tribune, who was Downes's superior in literary style and perhaps also in generalmusical sensitivity. But after Gilman's death in 1939, Downes emerged as the most powerful and influential music critic in the country. Both the reputation of the Times and its location at the center of American musical life gave Downes great influence and power, especially over the careers of performers; many concert managers around the country would engage vocalists and instrumentalists only if they had received favorable New York reviews. He never quite broke away from the practice of describing a composition in terms of extramusical connotations (such as the visual images that it evoked for him) and he quickly grew impatient technical analyses of works. Both his position as a newspaper critic and his personal philosophy inclined Downes to reject an elitist role for the music critic and to seek instead to interpret fine music for as broad an audience as possible.
His lectures brought him almost as much fame as his written criticism. For example, in the early 1930's Downes organized and participated in "The Enjoyment of Music, " a series of lecture-recitals, with elaborate musical examples, given at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Later he lectured at the Berkshire Symphonic Festival in Massachusetts and in many other parts of the country.
From 1930 to 1933, he was the radio commentator for the broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic, and later he was commentator for broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. During most of the 1940's he was chairman of the opera quiz held during intermissions of the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, a position that his son, Edward, held later. Downes's books on music also were essentially works of popularization. The climax of these various activities came when Downes was made director of music for the New York World's Fair of 1939. After the opening musical events, however, the management of the fair decided to abandon the elaborate programs of classical music, which were losing money, and to substitute programs of popular music. Downes then resigned his post.
He was still chief music critic of the New York Times when he died in New York City, on August 22, 1955.
(His repertory was small, but pleasing to him, since, than...)
(book A Treasury of American Song)
(Downes, Olin)
His political views, which involved Downes in a number of antifascist and left-wing causes in the 1940's, impelled him in a similar direction. It is not surprising, then, that he became a key figure in the important American movement of the 1930's and 1940's that attempted to bring "great music" to the masses.
Downes revealed his conservative tastes in his reviews of contemporary music. Steeped in nineteenth-century romanticism, he thought the principal function of music should be the expression of emotion, particularly through beauty of melodic line.
Downes regarded the atonal and twelve-tone music of Arnold Schoenberg as decadent, while the neoclassical works of Igor Stravinsky seemed to him artificially formal, cold, and expressionless.
Downes most admired those composers who, like the Russian Modest Petrovich Moussorgsky or the American Henry Gilbert, rejected foreign models and turned instead to their native folk music; he believed that such a process eventually produced a composerwhose art transmuted folk idioms to express the spiritual life of his people. His hero in the modern period was the Finnish nationalist composer Jean Sibelius, and Downes probably did more than anyone else to gain recognition for Sibelius in America.
In 1910 Downes married Marion Amanda Davenport; they had three children, of whom one, Edward, also became a prominent music critic and commentator. Around 1939 his marriage ended in divorce. A few months later, in January 1940, he married Irene Lenore Miles.
