Henry Taylor Parker
Encyclopedia
Henry Taylor Parker "known for many years largely by his initials H. T. P.",, was a Boston
-born theater and music critic. Time
said Parker's "review
s were famed" and for "29 years he had been Boston's
oracle
on theatre and music." The magazine
also said Parker was a "great critic" as was Philip Hale
who died around the same time. Parker was "one of the most distinguished critics of his era, respected for his long, thoughtful, and open‐minded reviews." His biographer said “This remarkable little man of fine perceptions, with his dark eyes burning quizzically in a head bent forward with a sleuthing thrust and emphatic in its nods, was a giant among critics.”
Parker attended Harvard University
but was said to have left in displeasure over the number of courses in drama
and literature
available to him. He worked for several papers newspaper
s as a correspondent until the 1900s when he became drama and music critic for the New York Globe. In 1905, Parker returned to his native Boston and worked as a critic for the Boston Evening Transcript
for the rest of his life.
Parker worked during the era when Boston – a city founded by Puritan
s – had extreme censorship
law
s causing many artistic works to be "Banned in Boston
". But the theater scene in Boston remained vital helped by "excellence of its theatrical criticism as exemplified by the renown of Henry Taylor Parker and Henry Austin Clapp." In 1922, Parker wrote the book
Eighth Notes: Voices and Figures of Music and the Dance.
Parker was a distinctive character. According to Time:
Ernest Bloch
wrote to Henry Taylor Parker how it "is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul that I feel vibrating through the Bible." Parker met Virgil Thomson
before the young composer
left Cambridge, Massachusetts
for Paris
. Parker arranged for Thomson to critique musical events in Paris for the Boston Evening Transcript, thus starting Thomson's career as a professional critic.
Parker died from pneumonia
at age 66 three days before the opening of a Metropolitan Opera
visit to Boston that he helped promote. In his obituary
it was said the "little man was missed at the Friday afternoon Symphony
where for years he had sat in the front row of the balcony
, the seat beside him vacant. Some of Parker's correspondence with Ray Henderson
is kept by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
.
Parker's biography
H. T. P.: Portrait of a Critic by David McCord was published the year after his death. Some of Parker's reviews were collected and posthumously published in 1982 as Motion Arrested: Dance Reviews of H. T. Parker edited by Olive Holmes.
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
-born theater and music critic. Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
said Parker's "review
Review
A review is an evaluation of a publication, a product or a service, such as a movie , video game, musical composition , book ; a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance, or computer; or an event or performance, such as a live music concert, a play, musical theater show or dance show...
s were famed" and for "29 years he had been Boston's
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
oracle
Oracle
In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....
on theatre and music." The magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
also said Parker was a "great critic" as was Philip Hale
Philip Hale
Philip Hale was an American music critic.An 1876 graduate of Yale University, Hale practiced law upon leaving college, also studying piano with John Kautz and playing the organ in a church...
who died around the same time. Parker was "one of the most distinguished critics of his era, respected for his long, thoughtful, and open‐minded reviews." His biographer said “This remarkable little man of fine perceptions, with his dark eyes burning quizzically in a head bent forward with a sleuthing thrust and emphatic in its nods, was a giant among critics.”
Parker attended Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
but was said to have left in displeasure over the number of courses in drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
and literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
available to him. He worked for several papers newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s as a correspondent until the 1900s when he became drama and music critic for the New York Globe. In 1905, Parker returned to his native Boston and worked as a critic for the Boston Evening Transcript
Boston Evening Transcript
The Boston Evening Transcript was a daily afternoon newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts, published from July 24, 1830, to April 30, 1941.-Beginnings:...
for the rest of his life.
Parker worked during the era when Boston – a city founded by Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
s – had extreme censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
s causing many artistic works to be "Banned in Boston
Banned in Boston
"Banned in Boston" was a phrase employed from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century to describe a literary work, motion picture, or play prohibited from distribution or exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts, USA...
". But the theater scene in Boston remained vital helped by "excellence of its theatrical criticism as exemplified by the renown of Henry Taylor Parker and Henry Austin Clapp." In 1922, Parker wrote the book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
Eighth Notes: Voices and Figures of Music and the Dance.
Parker was a distinctive character. According to Time:
Critic Parker's initials, all he ever signed, gave him the nicknames of "Hard-to-Please" and "Hell-to-Pay." But he was seldom vitriolic. His reviews were famed chiefly for their length (1,250 words, at least), their ornate, old-fashioned sentencesSentence (linguistics)In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
, their freshness and independence of viewpoint. Boston knew him for a sputtery, gnomeGnomeA gnome is a diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature...
like person who wore a flowing cape for evening, carried a stout bambooBambooBamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....
stick, shunned conversationConversationConversation is a form of interactive, spontaneous communication between two or more people who are following rules of etiquette.Conversation analysis is a branch of sociology which studies the structure and organization of human interaction, with a more specific focus on conversational...
. He did most of his writing between 3 and 5 a. m., always in longhand on yellow ruled paper. Afternoons saw him in his musty, little Transcript office, painstakingly correcting proof, sorting and editing the world's stage newsNewsNews is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.- Etymology :...
. No one ever dared to call his page provincial.
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...
wrote to Henry Taylor Parker how it "is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul that I feel vibrating through the Bible." Parker met Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
before the young composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
left Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
for Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Parker arranged for Thomson to critique musical events in Paris for the Boston Evening Transcript, thus starting Thomson's career as a professional critic.
Parker died from pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
at age 66 three days before the opening of a Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
visit to Boston that he helped promote. In his obituary
Obituary
An obituary is a news article that reports the recent death of a person, typically along with an account of the person's life and information about the upcoming funeral. In large cities and larger newspapers, obituaries are written only for people considered significant...
it was said the "little man was missed at the Friday afternoon Symphony
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
where for years he had sat in the front row of the balcony
Balcony
Balcony , a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade.-Types:The traditional Maltese balcony is a wooden closed balcony projecting from a...
, the seat beside him vacant. Some of Parker's correspondence with Ray Henderson
Ray Henderson
Ray Henderson , was an American songwriter.Born Raymond Brost in Buffalo, New York, Henderson moved to New York City and became a popular composer in Tin Pan Alley...
is kept by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center houses one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four research centers of the New York Public Library's Research library system, and it is also one...
.
Parker's biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
H. T. P.: Portrait of a Critic by David McCord was published the year after his death. Some of Parker's reviews were collected and posthumously published in 1982 as Motion Arrested: Dance Reviews of H. T. Parker edited by Olive Holmes.
Further reading
- H. T. P.: Portrait of a Critic by David McCord (1935)
- Motion Arrested: Dance Reviews of H. T. Parker edited by Olive Holmes (1982) ISBN 978-0819550583
- Eighth Notes: Voices and Figures of Music and the Dance by Henry Taylor Parker (1922, 2008) ISBN 978-1436636773