Bernard Holland has been called no friend to new music. But I don't believe he is an enemy either. As one who has posited from the beginning of this venture that good criti­cism was utterly essential to the future of contemporary music, I was delighted to read his recent piece in the New York Times extol­ling our cause in his understated way. I take the position that his voice has been missing from the local journalistic scene for too long. But others don't see that at all. During the time he served as the chief music critic at the Times there were always complaints about his views, a certain grumbling that, I believe, often misunderstood his intentions. When he brushed off the achievement of bringing Carlisle Floyd's opera Susannah to the Met, it sounded to some like a pan. Not at all. He simply was saying that the Met was not the place for so intimate a theater piece. He has always been consistent about the element of size and he makes the point now that

Size does matter. How many famous pianists have I heard with reputations big enough to command full houses at Carnegie or Avery Fisher Hall who would be so much more effective in spaces seating 500 or fewer? Music is a business, and if you can sell more tickets, you do. The Metropolitan Opera House is bigger than it ought to be because, economically, it has to be.

Holland wrote some years ago that new music concerts are presented, performed and attended by the same people. He saw those in the audience serving as the mirror image of those on stage. But he was not taking a swipe at new music for its limited size nor at the occasional clubhouse atmosphere in which music was written for each other.

Well, perhaps these views just did not come across as particularly congenial. He was, in fact, being quite frank. But with the pass­ing of time one sees his outlook as seasoned and not the least ungrateful. Even though he wrote exactly the same thing back in the late 20th century, his comments now seem easier to take within the softer context, perhaps.

... more often than not, the composers and musicians onstage are being received by their colleagues sitting in the audience. A few weeks hence, perhaps in another place, the people onstage will be sitting in the audience, and the people in the audience will be up there playing.

One does not believe for a minute that Mr. Holland's opus for 12 (unnamed) American composers at the Thalia and the Tenri Gallery, will inspire them to pursue their craft with any more vigor than they are doing now. They have long been addicted to the pursuit of their art and are far less interested in boosts from members of the press corps.

Yet when we look back over some of the unsympathetic takes on modern music that have cropped up, those were much close to killer weeds than anything Holland ever wrote. One is reminded of that entrenched diatribe, the Agony of Modern Music , by Henry Pleasants. While it may be that Mr. Pleas­ants was simply reacting to a difficult time for contemporary music back in the 1950s, it was just too obvious that he had no ear and no use for any sort of dissonance or anything experimental or forward-looking. When he remarked to John Rockwell in the 1980's "We lost," he was in effect bowing to the tenacity shown by the advocates of contemporary art.

Bernard Holland no doubt accepted that same tenacity long ago. He knows that there have always been and always will be those who pursue an art form-any art form-to the nth degree, perhaps as a sort of adven­ture as to how far it can be taken. Seemingly that would put him far ahead of Mr. Pleasants in terms of understanding art.

But Holland has also come to see new music as limited by many constraints, not the least of which is the realization that his 12 composers may never have a shot at Carnegie hall or Avery Fisher. What bothers some is his inference that there is no shame in small and that pursuit of the highest level of music-making is what really counts

Concerts like the recent ones at the Thalia and Tenri are invariably played by young musicians of astonishing skill and evident devotion ... That these concerts go on-in­deed, thrive-tells us that music as an art keeps moving through time from generation to generation, from language to language and idea to idea. Such progress is usually unremarked by the serious music lover who looks to a Thomas Adès or the next grand premiere for signs of advances in music ... True greatness will always pursue universal­ity, but it is the very good and the local that keep music's blood circulating.

If his counter-critics find that assessment damning, I challenge them to take a deep breath, sit down and write a more truth­ful and reasoned analysis of the new music scene. Otherwise, they may as well play the ostrich and bury their heads in the sand.

(Quotes are from “Contemporary Music's Hope Is Writ Small, Not Large,” NY Times, July 5, 2006.)