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Joseph Kerman

Joseph Wilfred Kerman -- born Zukerman -- (1924 - 2014) was an American critic and musicologist. One of the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (published in the UK as Musicology) was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field." He was Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of California, Berkeley.


“Concerto soloists need applause. Though virtue is said to be its own reward, no one ever said that about virtuosity.”
Joseph Kerman
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“Schoenberg came to the crisis of modernism from a standpoint diametrically opposed to that of Schenker and Tovey: not with his finger in the dyke but with his whole frame spreadeagled on a board swept along by the surf of history.”
Joseph Kerman
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