Virgil Thompson on the Boston Symphony

Virgil Thomson was the Herald Tribune music critic. An acclaimed composer in his own right, Thomson was widely considered the top critic in the field both for his insights and for his literate and readable writing style. Other music critics of the day often get lost in technical jargon that only musicologists could follow. Thomson managed to write assessments that addressed technique but also were understandable to the layman. As a composer he was noted for his avant garde pieces like his operas written in collaboration with Gertrude Stein although he also wrote in a more accessible style at times, particularly in his film scores, which had references to American folk music.

He was fairly prototypical of the Modernist generation of writers, artists and musicians born around the turn of the century and now middle-aged and mid-career in 1946. He was born in the Midwest in 1896, educated at Harvard, served in World War One and went to Paris in the Twenties. Like his cohorts, he rebelled against the middle-class conventions with which he was raised. He lived in the ultra-Bohemian Chelsea Hotel. He was also gay and served as a mentor for the next generation of gay musical talent including Leonard Bernstein and Ned Rorem.

On April 14, the news section of the Sunday Herald Tribune carried his review of the Saturday afternoon concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. He commended conductor Serge Koussevitzky for presenting two new works and chided him slightly for having neglected this promise recently. Thomson gently dismissed David Diamond's "Rounds For String Orchestra" as "pleasant of sound but a little low in both expressive and musical interest." He was more appreciative of Samuel Barber's "Concerto for Cello and Orchestra," featuring cellist Raya Garbousova, for whom it had been written. Thomson wrote that it was "not quite a masterpiece" but a "fine, big work" that was "both adequate and suitable to a permanent place on our standard symphony orchestra programs." The concert concluded with what Thomson called "the usual Brahms."

Thompson also had a column this day in the arts and entertainment section.