Virgil Thomson

Trivia

• Always ready to demolish popular classical music "idols," Thomson was famous for his withering criticisms of conductor Arturo Toscanini, pianist Vladimir Horowitz, violinist Jascha Heifetz, and composer George Gershwin, whose opera "Porgy and Bess" he termed "fake folklore." He earned the undying enmity of Toscanini for his reviews.
• Thomson was one of the famous artistic habitues who resided at New York's legendary Chelsea Hotel, where documentary-film pioneer Robert Flaherty - whose Louisiana Story (1948) Thomson scored - also kept an office.
• Largely because Thomson was himself a composer, Thomson took conductor Arturo Toscanini severely to task for supposedly not devoting enough attention to twentieth century music.
• Thomson was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1988 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, DC.
• Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives." Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 830-832. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

Quotes

• “I let her alone and when she got that finished she left me alone. We trusted each other.”
• “They look better than we do; they can wear all colors on stage. We're sort of oyster-colored.”
• “I don't care what other critics say, I only hope to be played.”
• “Falsely conceived and rather clumsily executed crooked folklore and halfway opera.”
• “The description and explanation is the best part of music reviewing. There is such a thing, and you know it too, as a gift for judgment. If you have it, you can say anything you like. If you haven't got it, you don't know you haven't got it. And everything you say will be held against you.”
• “I don't have to worry No matter what they do to it, it works.”
• “You explain how it went, and as far as you can figure out how it got that way.”
• “Let your mind alone, and see what happens.”
• “I look at you and I write down what I hear.”
• “I said to my friends that if I was going to starve, I might as well starve where the food is good.”

Biography

Virgil Thomson

Last Updated: Tuesday, November 17, 2009

One of the driving forces, both as critic and musician, of 20th century American music, Thomson studied music at both Harvard University and elsewhere in the Boston area before moving to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger in 1921. After spending a short time in his native land, he returned to Paris and remained there until 1940, working with many of the major composers, writers, and artists of the period, most significantly Gertrude Stein, with whom he wrote the opera "Four Saints in Three Acts" (1927-28).

Upon returning to the US, Thomson became the music critic for the NY Herald-Tribune, earning himself a Pulitzer Prize in Music for his score for the film Louisiana Story (1948). Hated by many in the music world for his acerbic criticism, Thomson nevertheless won numerous accolades, including the Legion d'honneur (1947) and the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement (1983).