Music: Critical Quips: Nov. 30, 1981

Sampler of Thomson’s writings:

On Beethoven’s Egmont Overture. An hors d’oeuvre. Nobody’s digestion was ever spoiled by it and no latecomer has ever lost much by missing it.

On Jascha Heifetz’s Mozart. [It] tries . . . to make out of the greatest musician the world has ever known something between a sentimental Pierrot and a Dresden china clock.

On the New York Philharmonic (1943). The sound of it has of late years been more like an industrial blast than like a musical communication.

On Die Meistersinger. It is unique among Wagner’s theatrical works in that none of the characters gets mixed up with magic or takes drugs.

On U.S. Vocal Music. [There are not] five American “art composers” who can be compared, as song writers, for either technical skill or artistic responsibility, with Irving Berlin.

On His Own Criticism. I thought of myself as a species of knight-errant attacking dragons singlehandedly and rescuing musical virtue in distress.