Music Criticism At Its Best

FOR the benefit of his Herald Tribune readers, Virgil Thomson once described the Philadelphia Orchestra's tone as "smooth as a seashell, iridescent as fine rain, bright as the taste of a peach." These Thomson similes make a succinct description of his own writing. "Music Right and Left" is the third collection of his reviews, covering from 1947 through half of 1950, and ranging in content from Bach to Pravda. Each review is a slick, colorful, brightly polished little essay; the polish is all the more remarkable since each review was written in about an hour.

Music reviewing takes more than a technical knowledge of music. It requires translating a detailed, subjective impression into comprehensible terms. Thomson is a good critic and a sound musician. More important, he expresses himself pungently and clearly. He is particularly adept at the critics' most difficult task--describing sound. Only occasionally does he lapse into Downesian superlatives or vague adjectives like "good" and "adequate." His criticism of performance is objective and incisive; his evaluation and exposition of form is wonderfully clear. Thomson's brightness and wit ("Wagner's musical dramas are conceived for a theater of whales") make him very pleasant reading for the layman.

Most of the criticism is remarkably objective. Sometimes he sacrifices objectivity for color ("Chausson . . . is furniture of chromium and pigskin"), sometimes for a personal prejudice ("Roy Harris' concerto has all the virtues of Brahms and none of the faults"). But most of his evaluations are well-reasoned, well-illustrated, and well-founded, whether they are on a Toscanini concert or a ragtime revival.

Unlike its predecessors, "Music Right and Left" leaves the "name" conductors and orchestras pretty much alone: it exhibits more of Thomson the Crusader. One series exhorts various cities to support their respective orchestras, another hurls some stinging invective at movie music (he excepts Aaron Copland's "Red Pony" music), and a third series collects his caustic remarks about the Soviet ban on "bourgeois" music.

For the layman, the most valuable essays are the expository ones on forms--such as the musical drama--and analyses of particular works. Stokowaki's rendition of Mahler's Eighth Symphony, for example, prompts a particularly cogent study on "amorphousness."

"Music right and Left" is not a book to be read at one sitting. Like brandy, it is most stimulating in small quantities. Too much Thomson is stupefying.