A hostile New York Times critic mocked Stockhausen’s Originale as pretentious

Evidence

No supporter of Stockhausen or the avant-garde, the New York Times critic Harold Schonberg had little to say about the music, preferring to focus on what seemed the piece’s ridiculous pretensions. As the audience “soberly” left the hall, he reported, “there was whispered discussion as to what constituted the more sublime moments of this twentieth-century monument to drama.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 562

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how the mainstream press covered—and dismissed—the avant-garde; relevant to claims about cultural stagnation and the establishment gatekeepers.