Among the commentators who responded to Goldstein's critique, composer Ned Rorem, writing in "The New York Review of Books", credited the Beatles with possessing a "magic of genius" akin to Mozart and characterised "Sgt. Pepper" as a harbinger of a "golden Renaissance of Song". "Time" quoted musicologists and avant-garde composers who equated the standard of the Beatles' songwriting to Schubert and Schumann, and located the band's work to electronic music; the magazine concluded that the album was "a historic departure in the progress of music – any music". Literary critic Richard Poirier wrote a laudatory appreciation of the Beatles in the journal "Partisan Review" and said that "listening to the "Sgt. Pepper" album one thinks not simply of the history of popular music but the history of this century." In his December 1967 column for "Esquire", Robert Christgau described "Sgt. Pepper" as "a consolidation, more intricate than "Revolver" but not more substantial". He suggested that Goldstein had fallen "victim to overanticipation", identifying his primary error as "allow all the filters and reverbs and orchestral effects and overdubs to deafen him to the stuff underneath, which was pretty nice".