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Virgil Thomson Quotes
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Reviewing music or reviewing anything is a writing job. It's nice if you are experienced in the field you are writing about, but writing is what you are doing.
Virgil Thomson
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I got myself into a lovely little—shall we say controversy—with André Breton, by pointing out that the discipline of spontaneity, which he was asking his surrealist neophytes to adopt, was new for language but something that composers had been practicing for centuries.
Virgil Thomson
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The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.
Virgil Thomson
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This book is in every way except actual authorship Alice Toklas's book; it reflects her mind, her language, her private view of Gertrude, also her unique narrative powers. Every story in it is told as Alice herself had always told it. … Every story that ever came into the house eventually got told in Alice's way, and this was its definitive version.
Virgil Thomson
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A libretto that should never have been accepted on a subject that should never have been chosen bya man who should never have attempted it.
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Every composer's music reflects in its subject-matter and in its style the source of the money the composer is living on while writing the music.
Virgil Thomson
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Verbal communication about music is impossible except among musicians.
Virgil Thomson
Quote of the day
It may be that there is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.
Edmund Wilson
Virgil Thomson
Creative Commons
Born:
November 25, 1896
Died:
September 30, 1989
(aged 92)
Bio:
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music.
Known for:
The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936)
Louisiana Story (1948)
The River (1938)
The Goddess (1958)
King Lear (1953)
Virgil Thomson on Wikipedia
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