Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles 1940-1954

About this book

Revisit Americas 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 Thomsons uncollected writings. The result is a singular chronicle of a magical time when an unrivaled roster of great conductors (Koussevitzky Toscanini Beecham Stokowski) and legendary performers (Horowitz Rubinstein Heifetz Stern) presented new masters (Copland Stravinsky Britten Bernstein) and re-introduced the classics to a rapt American audience. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nations literary heritage by publishing and keeping permanently in print Americas best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date authoritative editions that average 1 000 pages in length feature cloth covers sewn bindings and ribbon markers and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.