Virgil Thomson

When, in October 1940, the New York herald tribune named the composer Virgil Thomson its chief music critic, the management of the paper braced itself for an uproar. Music chronicles 1940-1954 presents the best of Thomson's newspaper criticism as the author collected it in four books long out of print: The musical scene (1945), The art of judging music (1948), Music right and left (1951), and Music reviewed (1967). The volume is rounded out by a generous selection of other writings from the Herald tribune years and, in an appendix, eight early essays.