ABSTRACT
If only for dealing seriously with the business of intelligent music reviewing, the strongest and most valuable chapter of Thomson's autobiography remembers “The Paper,” which is his epithet for the New York Herald Tribune. In stressing the importance of independence and intelligence, this memoir echoes his earlier appreciation of the other principal outlet for his best music criticism, the quarterly Modern Music (1924–46) edited by the legendary Minna Lederman (1896–1995). Just as nothing quite like Modern Music exists today, so no American newspaper (or other journalistic medium) has music reviewers as strong as those at the Herald Tribune between 1940 and 1954.
