We think of a well-known and extremely important personality of that period: Paul Rosenfeld. He was very friendly to young creative musicians, and a sympathetic promoter of everything they wished to accomplish. He was a passionate amateur, especially of music that was new, and above all of the music of the young Americans he knew. In this respect he stood virtually alone; he dared to write with great passion and enthusiasm of everything in the “new” music that interested him--of Schönberg, Stravinsky, Bártòk, Scriabine, and Sibelius--and he conducted a bold propaganda for new music in a period when the attitude of other critics, and certainly of the public, was at best cautious and hesitant. He was also a personal friend of Ernest Bloch, from the moment the composer, a completely unknown figure in the United States, arrived here in 1916; Rosenfeld worked tirelessly for the recognition of Bloch’s music and personality. It is impossible to overestimate Rosenfeld’s contributions as a writer and as an enthusiastic propagandist for the contemporary music of his period, and for the development of music in this country. It is not surprising that this contribution is still remembered. True, Rosenfeld had little understanding for the real and characteristic tendencies of the period between the two wars, and his ideas remained _au fond_ those of postromanticism, with a strong admixture of American nationalism. There is no doubt, however, that he played a significant role in the formation of the musical generation of the twenties. The present author belongs to that generation; Rosenfeld was not in complete sympathy with him, but Rosenfeld’s interest and his willingness to discuss issues were of the greatest possible value to all who came in contact with him. One found in him, as in few others of that time, a genuine awareness of the issues, and a desire to understand the motivating forces behind them. The foregoing notwithstanding, Rosenfeld was in no sense of the word a music critic. It may seem paradoxical to say that he possessed neither authentic musical knowledge nor, very probably, strong musical instinct. Not only did he shy away from acquiring technical knowledge which he considered an obstacle to feeling and intuition; he even refused to speak of music in concrete terms. If he made casual reference to facts, as occasionally happened, he often was in error; in speaking of the instrumentation of the _Sinfonia Domestica_ of Strauss, for example, he referred to the use of the _viola d’amore_ instead of the oboe--likewise _d’amore_, but hardly to be confused with the viola! His relation to music remained that of a litterateur to whom music furnished a stimulus for ideas, sentiments, and attitudes, and, in consequence, for words.