Lawrence Gilman

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (June 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Lawrence Gilman (July 5, 1878 in Flushing, New York – September 8, 1939 in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire) was a U.S. author and music critic.

Lawrence Gilman was the son of and , and the grandnephew of educator Daniel Coit Gilman. Lawrence Gilman studied art at in Hartford, Connecticut under William M. Chase. He also taught himself music in theory and practice on several instruments, including organ and piano.

From 1896 to 1898, he worked for the New York Herald, then from 1901 to 1913 as a music critic for Harper's Weekly, where he advanced to the position of managing editor. From 1915 to 1923, he worked as a critic in multiple arts for the North American Review, and for the Herald Tribune from 1925 on.

On August 1, 1904, he married , with whom he had one child, "Betty" in 1905.

Gilman earned later notoriety for his scathing negative reviews of compositions that later became known as classics. He described George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, for example, as trite, feeble, conventional, vapid, fussy, futile, lifeless, stale, derivative and inexpressive.^[1] He was similarly dismissive of Gershwin's later Porgy and Bess.

Works[]

Gilman wrote several books:

• "Phases of Modern Music" (1904)
• "The Music of Tomorrow" (1906)
• "Stories of Symphonic Music" (1907)
• "A Guide to Strauss' 'Salome'" (1907)
• "A Guide to Debussy's 'Pelleas et Melisande" (1907)
• "Edward MacDowell: A Study" (1909)
• "Aspects of Modern Opera" (1908)
• "Nature in Music" (1914)
• "A Christmas Meditation" (1916)
• "Music and the Cultivated Man" (1929)
• "Wagner's Operas" (1937)
• "Toscanini and Great Music" (1938)
• "Orchestral Music" (1951)

He also wrote musical works:

• "A Dream of Death" (1903)
• "The Heart of a Woman" (1903)
• "The Curlew" (1904).

References[]

External links[]

• Works by Lawrence Gilman at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Lawrence Gilman at Internet Archive
• Lawrence Gilman Papers, Georgetown University Library, library.georgetown.edu

This biographical article related to opera is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

• v
• t

This biographical article related to music journalism in the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

• v
• t