Virgil Thomson on hearing music, making music, Mozart

From ``Repertory,'' Sept. 10, 1944: ``This age listens to a great deal of new music, likes practically none of it, but would not for the world forgo hearing it.'' From ``Life Among the Natives'':

``It takes three people to make music properly: one man to write it, another to play it, and a third to criticize it. Anything else is just a rehearsal.'' From ``Mozart's Leftism'':

``Mozart was not, like Wagner, a political revolutionary. Nor was he, like Beethoven, an old fraud who just talked about human rights and dignity but who was really an irascible, intolerant, and scheming careerist . . . unjust toward the poor, lickspittle toward the rich, dishonest in business, unjust and unforgiving towards the members of his family.''