Was one of the famous artistic habitues who resided at New York's
legendary Chelsea Hotel, where documentary-film pioneer Robert Flaherty - whose
Louisiana Story (1948) Thomson scored - also kept an office.
Always ready to demolish popular classical music "idols," Thomson was
famous for his withering criticisms of conductor Arturo Toscanini, pianist
Vladimir Horowitz, violinist Jascha Heifetz, and composer George Gershwin, whose opera "Porgy
and Bess" he termed "fake folklore." He earned the undying enmity of
Toscanini for his reviews.
Largely because he was himself a composer, Thomson took conductor
Arturo Toscanini severely to task for supposedly not devoting enough
attention to twentieth century music.
He was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1988 by the
National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, DC.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives." Volume
Two, 1986-1990, pages 830-832. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1999.