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Cover of Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles 1940-1954

Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles 1940-1954

by Virgil Thomson and Tim Page (editor)

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Revisit America’s Golden Age of classical music through the witty and wildly popular reviews of our greatest critic-composer For fourteen memorable years Virgil Thomson surveyed the worlds of opera and classical music as the chief music critic for the New York Herald Tribune. An accomplished composer who knew music from the inside, Thomson communicated its pleasures and complexities to a wide readership in a hugely entertaining, authoritative style, and his daily reviews and Sunday articles set a high-water mark in American cultural journalism. Thomson collected his newspaper columns in four volumes: The Musical Scene, The Art of Judging Music, Music Right and Left, and Music Reviewed. All are gathered here, together with a generous selection of Thomson’s uncollected writings.…

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NPR Books We Love
"Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) was in a select category of composers — including Robert Schumann and Hector Berlioz — who wrote as well with words as with notes. Thomson’s phrasing was original, irreverent, intriguing to a broad audience and spot on. One of his reviews begins: “Even through the mud and sugar of Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, it was clear in Carnegie Hall last night that Karl Krueger is a virtuoso conductor.” There’s more quantity than quality in music criticism now, so it’s bracing to read someone authoritative, curious, unbound by genre and able to tell general readers what old and new music sounded like and why they should care."
NPR Books We Love — 2014 · apps.npr.org