Minna Daniel (1896-1995), longtime editor of Modern Music magazine, grew up studying music, drama and dance in Manhattan. She graduated from Barnard College in 1917, and helped establish the League of Composers in 1923, a society dedicated to bringing quality musical performances to the United States. Upon realizing a lack of knowledge among music critics and reviewers in New York City, Daniels decided to start a magazine. The first issue of The League of Composers’ Review was published in February 1924. In 1925, the name was changed to Modern Music. For the next 20 years, Daniel oversaw publication of the magazine, which covered concert music, jazz, musical theater, film, radio and dance in the United States, Europe and Latin America. Modern Music was regarded highly, and often featured contributions from artists and composers such as Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, John Cage, Elliot Carter, Roger Sessions, and Leonard Bernstein.
Modern Music stopped publication in 1946, but Daniel continued to have a great influence on the music scene in the United States. She edited the anthology Stravinsky in the Theater (1947) and contributed to American Mercury, Saturday Review, The Nation, and other periodicals. She established the Archives of Modern Music in the Library of Congress in 1974 and assembled The Life and Death of a Small Magazine in 1983, a compilation of articles from Modern Music that won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for distinguished music criticism in 1984. Daniel passed away in 1995, at the age of 99, but her contributions to American music live on.
