Top 23 Quotes & Sayings by Virgil Thomson

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American composer Virgil Thomson.

Last updated on April 15, 2025.

Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassicist, and a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera Lord Byron which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion".

American - Composer | November 25, 1896 - September 30, 1989

Source: Wikipedia

Musicians own music because music owns them.

Virgil Thomson

I don't care what other critics say, I only hope to be played.

Virgil Thomson

I've never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

Virgil Thomson

In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise.

Virgil Thomson

I never learned to verbalize an abstract musical concept. No thank you. The whole point of being a serious musician is to avoid verbalization whenever you can.

Virgil Thomson

I don't have to worry No matter what they do to it, it works.

Virgil Thomson

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

Let your mind alone, and see what happens.

Virgil Thomson

Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.

Virgil Thomson

You explain how it went, and as far as you can figure out how it got that way.

Virgil Thomson

I don't go around regretting things that don't happen.

Virgil Thomson

I said to my friends that if I was going to starve, I might as well starve where the food is good.

Virgil Thomson

I look at you and I write down what I hear.

Virgil Thomson

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.

Virgil Thomson

Verbal communication about music is impossible except among musicians.

Virgil Thomson

I listened to the pure crystalline notes of one of Mozart's concertos dropping at my feet like leaves from the trees.

Virgil Thomson

The description and explanation is the best part of music reviewing. There is such a thing, and you know it too, as a gift for judgment. If you have it, you can say anything you like. If you haven't got it, you don't know you haven't got it.

Virgil Thomson

I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.

Virgil Thomson

Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

Virgil Thomson

I've never known a musician who regretted being one. Music itself is not going to let you down.

Virgil Thomson

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

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

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