[Ed. note: Prof. Tim Page’s latest book, Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles 1940–1954, is a collection of what Page considers to be Thomson’s best music critiques during his tenure as chief critic at the New York Herald Tribune.] At the very beginning, of course, many a highly complex work is taken by the naive reviewer for pure spontaneity. That happened to the work of Arnold Schoenberg; it happened to Debussy; it happened to Beethoven. The ignorant reviewer likes to think that since he is judging hastily, the work was hastily created. And when his lack of preparation makes him unable to understand, he thinks that the work was written as casually as it is being listened to, which is not necessarily the truth at all. Let me come back to the matter of courtesy in the statement. It enables you to make the really deadly attack, because the specific adjective is practically never actionable, neither in court or in public opinion. The noun, yes. Gertrude Stein was right when she said that nouns are the bane of the language, because if you use nouns in talking about somebody, before you know what you have done you have called him a name. But the specific adjective is merely descriptive. Verbs are dangerous, too, because the verbs of motion and the verbs of action all have overtones of approval and disapproval, as the nouns have. But the adjective, the specific adjective is virtually neutral. — Prof. Tim Page, from, Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles 1940–1954, COURTESY LIBRARY OF AMERICA.