When the reviewer of a review says the review tells more about the author of the review than about the author of the work reviewed, this tells more about him than it does about them. Of course a review tells a lot about the man who writes it. If not, he is both bland and furtive. There is no such thing as an objective review, and if there were, it would be deadly. The composer in particular is partisan and remains partisan when he turns critic. Brahms was partisan when he signed the manifesto deploring and damning the New Germans led by Liszt and Wagner. Boulez was partisan when he wrote that remarkable essay, "Sch6nberg Is Dead." Giving this title to a critical attitude in The Score just a few months after Schoenberg's actual death was not gracious. It was shocking. But it arrested the entire world of Western composers and made them all think deeply about the master's legacy, what could be built on and what could not. If it was unsparing in probing for weakness, it was also an unquestioned tribute. All would have been lost if it had been called "A Re-Evaluation of Some Positive and Negative Aspects of the Late Professor Schoenberg's Method of Composing." In a more general way the question has been raised why a composer, reviewing the work of another composer, can be so surprisingly unsympathetic. Perhaps opposite camps are involved. Again perhaps the objective of the two composers is too nearly identical, like two explorers who have the same vision at the same time that Mount Everest is, as they put it, there. Two composers who set the same text, for example, usually find the other setting ridiculous. On the other hand one composer may treat the other with unpardonable delicacy, realizing that he too is subject to review. None of this matters as long as the composerreviewer gives the reader some little hint of where he stands himself. As far as the man whose score is being reviewed is concerned, he can take it. A composer is inured to brutality. However gloved, a rejection slip is a slap in the face. All the more resounding if delivered "not