Allen Hughes

Allen Hughes (1921-2009) was a longtime music and dance critic for The New York Times who was known for his encouragement of experimental dance companies and his love of the 20th-century French musical repertory. Musical studies at George Washington University and the University of Michigan were interrupted by Naval service in World War II. He completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan in 1946 and studied choral conducting with Robert Shaw at the Berkshire Music Institute (now the Tanglewood Music Institute) in 1947. He was a lecturer and organist at the Toledo Museum of Arts, in Toledo, Ohio, in 1947 and 1948. He moved to New York in 1948 to pursue graduate studies in music history and theory at New York University and began his career writing reviews for Musical America from 1950 to 1953 before moving to Paris, where he wrote freelance articles. When he returned to New York in 1955, he joined The New York Herald Tribune as a music critic. He joined The New York Times in 1960. He also wrote a book review column for Chamber Music magazine from 1998 to 2002. Although he spent most of his career writing about music, Hughes regarded his dance criticism as his most important work. From 1963 to 1965, when he was the chief dance critic at The Times, he championed avant-garde groups, often to the consternation of mainstream ensembles, and advocated for multimedia presentations and other innovations. He also took up causes. When the Ford Foundation announced $7.7 million in grants to classical ballet organizations in 1963, he objected that the allocation unduly favored George Balanchine’s City Ballet. He was the music editor of the Arts and Leisure section in the early 1980s, then continued to write about dance for the paper after retiring in 1986.

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Allen Hughes

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