A Critical Guest

Ernest Newman has for years been connected, in the capacity of music critic, with the London Sunday Times. He is one of the most thoroughly grounded and keenly sympathetic of living critics--certainly one of the most human and most readable. He has just arrived in this country and will serve for a year as visiting guest critic of the New York Evening Post.

Mr. Newman's opinions are varied and vigorous. Of Chopin he writes: ". . . one of the four or five great seminal forces in modern music"; of Debussy and Stravinsky : ". . . the frankness of an impressionable child"; of Beethoven: "In point of sheer intelligence and culture, Beethoven could probably not hold a candle to Saint-Saens or Weingartner"; of Tchaikovsky : ". . . the typical Weary Willie of Art"; of overtures ". . . the true problem of the overture was to abolish the overture."

Mr. Newman is the successor on the Post of Henry Theophilus Finck, whose chief enthusiasms were the composer Grieg, food, life, love. Finck originated the theory that romantic love is a modern sentiment unknown to savages and the ancients. He has written on Grieg, Wagner, Japan, Spain, gardening, food, Massenet, fat. He explains his authorship of Girth Control on the ground of professional association with opera singers. Next to collie puppies, says he, he finds girls to be the most adorable creatures in the world.