Paul Leopold Rosenfeld was an American journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, best known as a music critic.

He was born in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 into a German-Jewish family. He studied at Riverview Military Academy, Poughkeepsie

Poughkeepsie (city), New York

Poughkeepsie is a city in the state of New York, United States, which serves as the county seat of Dutchess County. Poughkeepsie is located in the Hudson River Valley midway between New York City and Albany...

, and Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, graduating in 1912.

After further education at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...

, he became a prolific journalist, writing on literature and art as well as music. He was one of the Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...

 circle, and favoured an intellectually-heavyweight and quite European approach. His friend Edmund Wilson

Edmund Wilson

Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...

, writing two years after Rosenfeld's death, expressed the thought that his articles had become too uncompromising for the public taste, as time went by. Indeed, these days Rosenfeld is probably more famous for having inspired Wilson's tribute — republished in Classics and Commercials (1950) — than for anything he himself produced.

Magazines which published Rosenfeld's writing included The New Republic

The New Republic

The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

, Seven Arts, Vanity Fair magazine, The Nation, The Dial

The Dial

The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. In the 1880s it was revived as a political magazine...

and Modern Music

Modern music

Modern music may refer to:* 20th-century music* 20th-century classical music* 21st-century classical music* Contemporary classical music* Modernism * Modern rock* Popular music...

. He edited Seven Arts from 1916 to 1918, and was an editor of the American Caravan yearbooks.

The Boy in the Sun (1928) was an autobiographical novel.