“Musicians’ opinions influence nothing; they simply recognize, with a certain delay but correctly, the history of music. Lay opinion influences everything—even, at times, creation. And at all times it is the pronouncements of persons who know something about music but not too much, and a bit more about what they like but still not too much, that end by creating those modes or fashions in consumption that make up the history of taste.”
Virgil Thomson, “Taste in Music”