Virgil Thompson: Music Chronicles 1940 - 1954

“One of the best regular critics of any subject whatsoever who ever walked into any newspaper’s city room… . It is more fun reading Virgil Thomson today on subjects of scant general interest than it is to read the vast majority of designated dullards and snark-slinging trivialists currently employed… . Thomson, like much of Mencken, remains riotously readable.” — Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News“The present volume is valuable, of course, as a chronicle of a particularly rich period of musical life in this country. All the big composers and performers are here at their height. It was a Golden Age. But I think the book is even more valuable as a record of one deeply musical man’s listening experiences put into beautiful prose. It is a book that can teach us all how to be better listeners.” — Timothy Mangan, Orange County Register“Anyone with a passing interest in music and good writing needs to have this book. There’s an enormous amount to learn in these 1,000 pages—and your education will be painless, thorough and entertaining.” — Christopher Purdy, WOSU Classical Music 101“[Thomson’s] bracing attitude about the job of the music critic has never been more urgent than it is now, an era of unprecedented choice, a chaotic cultural marketplace, and scant curatorial guidance.” — Peter Dobrin, The Philadelphia Inquirer

TIM PAGE won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his writings in the Washington Post, for which he was a music critic from 1995 to 2008. A professor of music and journalism at the University of Southern California, he is co-editor of Virgil Thomson’s Selected Letters and editor of the Library of America edition of Dawn Powell’s novels.

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