Virgil Thomson: 'Taste in Music'

I have been thinking about taste in art.

The topic came up in a discussion of literature. But I sometimes find it easier to talk about music than writing. I know just enough about writing to be dangerous. I don’t know enough about music to try to create it. Perhaps I can be a little more objective about it.

But questions of what is good and what is better in music interest me. I’d like to think that thinking about music would help me think about all art, including literature.

Virgil Thomson, a talented composer who also wrote some interesting criticism, made a couple of distinctions that I find interesting.

First, he distinguished between a taste for music and taste in music. A taste for music is the ability to consume it with enjoyment. A taste in music is preferential consumption. A taste for music is like a taste for ice cream. Some people don’t like it. Some people can take it or leave it. Some people have to have it all the time. Thomson said that while taste for music varies, everyone has a taste in it. If you listen to it at all, you probably have preferences.

Second, there is distinction, even a contradiction, between what you like and what you admire. Admiration is a judgment; it involves reason. Liking is inspiration; it knows no reason. I think that observation is helpful. I admire Bach but, given a choice of music from the Baroque era, always play Handel on the stereo.

Thomson said that we choose what we like, independent of judgment. He held that choosiness is capricious. We might prefer chocolate one day, strawberry the next. That remark is less helpful to me. As with Handel over Bach, some of my preferences seem ingrained.

Thomson thought we all have a role in “America’s musical growing-up.” (He was writing in the 1940s and ’50s.) People with influence — critics, college profs, etc. — try to shape opinion. But the average listeners, concert goers and record buyers have a bearing on how the American musical tradition evolves, just by the choices we make.

This is all interesting to me because I’ve made it a point to listen to American music. Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” is, on most days, my favorite piece of music, and I’m usually sure that William Schuman’s 3^rd is the best symphony written by an American. I’m intrigued by Morton Feldman. Thomson wrote a documentary film score, “The Plow that Broke the Plains,” that I enjoy. 

What have I learned in all this? Sadly, I’ve learned more about myself than about art.

I think I can say I have a taste for this art, but I can’t make heads or tails of my taste in it. I have no idea what I’d say if I were asked where I wanted American music to go. I can state which individual pieces I like and don’t like, but can’t make a general statement justifying those preferences.

It doesn’t seem fair. It would be like exploring physics and chemistry and discovering there were no general rules you could rely on.

• Source: Virgil Thomson’s essay “Taste in Music” is in Music Chronicles 1940-1954; New York: Library of America, 2015, pp. 5-8.