The Fredösphere

Terry Teachout says Virgil Thomson's music criticism is violently prejudiced.  I'm reading Thomson's Twentieth-Century Composers:  American Music Since 1910 and I don't see any significant misjudgments.  Now, we all know I'm not biased, so if I agree with Thomson, then the only possible alternative is that Teachout is all wet--or is thinking of some other critical writings by Thomson.

It's refreshing to read Thomson's appropriately unworshipful evaluation of Charles Ives:

In remaining somewhat unimpressed by the Ives output in general--though there are certainly delicious moments and even perfect whole pieces, usually small, like the orchestral Housatonic at Stockbridge and The Unanswered Question, possibly also the third of the "Harvest Home" chorales--the present writer has no wish to underesteem the aspiration, the constancy, and the sacrifice that Ives's musical life bears witness to.  Nor to undervalue a create achievement that posterity may prize.  Actually, the man presents in music, as he did in life, two faces; on one side a man of noble thoughts, a brave and original genius, on the other a homespun Yankee tinkerer.  For both are there; of that one can be sure.  How they got to be there need not worry us, for every artist begins in a dichotomy.  But how this could remain unresolved to the very end of his creative life might be of interest to speculate about.

Really, is this opinion controversial?  I wonder if part of Ives's appeal is in the mythology of the lone artist, toiling away for years privately, needing none of the encouragement that comes from performance and applause.  Others may find this heroic; to me he looks like just another introverted composing geek who took a long time to learn how to play the self-promotion game.

Thomson also strives to deflate American music's greatest hot air balloon:

A lack of urgency has been characteristic of Cage's music from the beginning.  The instrumental sounds, whether altered or normal, are charming at the outset and agreeably varied from one piece to another, even in such delicate gradings of variety baas from one piano preparation to another.  But whenever I have played his recorded works for students I have found that no matter what their length they exhaust themselves in about two minutes, say four at most.  By that time we have all got the sound of it and made some guess at the "permanent" emotion expressed.  And there is no need for going on with it, since we know that it will not be going any deeper into an emotion already depicted as static.  Nor will it be following nature's way by developing an organic structure.  For if the mind that create it, though powerful and sometimes original, is nevertheless a narrow one, the music itself, for all its jollity, liveliness, and good humor, is emotionally shallow.

As I was proofreading this paragraph, I notices I typed "poserful" in the last sentence instead of "powerful."  A simple mistake--or my mind, channeling the Voice of Truth?  You make the call!  Cage's music belongs with other conceptual art, which has been wonderfully described by Hugh Kenner as that which, once described, need not be experienced.  I hope no one wants to argue with these manifest verities.

Thomson's criticism doesn't age perfectly; from our vantage point his praise of Copland sees a bit timid, and his admiration for Angels, a tasteful, but not terribly memorable, piece for brass choir by Carl Ruggles, seems out of proportion.  Still, I'd say he usually nails it, especially regarding Ives and Cage.