Quote of the Day (Virgil Thomson, on What Makes a Good Reviewer)

“Any reviewer who finds quickly the compact phrase…has clearly a talent for letters. If he has also a talent for judgment and no fear of using it, …then he is a good reviewer. A good reviewer does not have to be right; he has only to have a good mind and to speak it.”—Composer-critic Virgil Thomson (1896-1989), “A Free Critical Spirit,” New York Herald Tribune Books, Jan. 27, 1957, in Virgil Thomson: The State of Music and Other Writings, edited by Tim Page (2016)