肯尼迪中心的荣誉1983 Kennedy Center Honors (获奖)
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 乔治·格什温, whose opera "Porgy and Bess" he termed "fake folklore." He earned the undying enmity of Toscanini for his reviews.
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.
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.