by Richard Kostelanetz (September 2015)
Some years ago I judged that no American composer ever wrote as well about serious/classic music, whether measuring sentences. paragraphs, reviews, or extended essays, than Virgil Thomson (1896-1989). From 1924 to just before his death, in addition to composing music that is, alas, less memorable than his best prose, Thomson produced reviews and, especially, essays that are worth rereading and thus reprinting decades after their initial appearance. Because he was for fourteen years a newspaper journalist, Thomson became a model for later newspaper reviewers—among them, John Rockwell, Tim Page, and Anthony Tommasini. Nonetheless, few major writers have been so badly served, especially posthumously. more>>>
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One Response
I just saw this, three years late, and read it with curiosity then re-read it with compassion Of course, the Thomson works that Kostelanetz howls about missing here were published in a second volume that came out in 2016, a long-planned edition that he could easily have verified with a call to Library of America. I had no idea that Kostelanetz was still with us and commend the editors for their kindness in publishing him, even now. Don’t judge him too harshly — “MasterMinds” was a solid and engaging book when it came out in 1969.