Virgil Thomson

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Virgil Thomson

Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 - September 30, 1989) was an American composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, usually in the medium of musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music....
and critic

Critic

The word critic comes from the Greek language ' , "able to discern", which in turn derives from the word ' , meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation....
from Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson County, Missouri, Clay County, Missouri, Cass County, Missouri, and Platte County, Missouri counties....
. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music.

son displayed an extraordinary intelligence at an early age.

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Encyclopedia

Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 - September 30, 1989) was an American composer

Composer

Critic

Kansas City, Missouri

Biography

Thomson displayed an extraordinary intelligence at an early age. As a child, he befriended Alice Smith, granddaughter of Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith, Jr.

Joseph Smith, Jr. was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormonism, and an important religious and political figure during the 1830s and 1840s....
, founder of the Mormon faith. He attended Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, United States, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher learning in the United States....
, and his tours of Europe with the Harvard Glee Club helped nurture his desire to return there. He eventually studied with Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was an influential French composer, conducting, and music professor. An outstanding music educator at the highest level, she taught many of the most important composers and conductors of the 20th century....
and became a fixture of "Paris in the twenties." His most important friend from this period was Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and Modernist literature....
, who was an artistic collaborator and mentor to him. Following the publication of his book The State of Music he established himself in New York City

New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
as a peer of Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland was an American classical music composer of concert and film music, as well as an accomplished pianist. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as "the dean of American composers." Copland's music achieved a balance between modernism music and American folk styles....
and was also a music critic for the New York Herald-Tribune from 1940 through 1954. His writings on music, and his reviews of performances in particular, are noted for their wit and their independent judgments. His definition of music was famously "that which musicians do," and his views on music are radical in their insistence on reducing the rarefied aesthetics of music to market activity. He even went so far as to claim that the style a piece was written in could be most effectively understood as a consequence of its income source.

In the 1930s, he worked as a theater and film composer. His most famous works for theater are two operas with libretti by Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and Modernist literature....
, Four Saints in Three Acts
Four Saints in Three Acts

Four Saints in Three Acts is an opera by United States composer Virgil Thomson with a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Written in 1927-8, it contains about twenty saints, and is in at least four acts....
, especially famous for its use of an all-black cast, and The Mother of Us All
The Mother of Us All

The Mother of Us All is an opera by Virgil Thomson to a libretto by Gertrude Stein. It chronicles the life of Susan B. Anthony, one of the major figures in the fight for History of women's suffrage in the United States....
, as well as incidental music

Incidental music

Incidental music is music in a Play , television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack."...
for Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles , better known as Orson Welles, was an Academy Award-winning United States actor, director, writer and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television, and radio....
' Depression-era production of Macbeth

Macbeth

Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest Shakespearean tragedy and is believed to have been written some time between 1603 and 1606, with 1607 being the very latest possible date....
, set in the Caribbean. He collaborated closely with "Chick" Austin

Arthur Everett Austin, Jr.

Arthur Everett "Chick" Austin, Jr. was the Innovation and Avant-garde director of the Wadsworth Atheneum from 1927 through 1944. Austin's visionary gift included persistence in the introduction of then-modern theater and modern design and especially contemporaneous art....
of Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum

Wadsworth Atheneum

The Wadsworth Atheneum is the oldest public art museum in the United States, with significant holdings of French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School landscapes, modernist masterpieces and contemporary works, as well as extensive holdings in early American furniture and decorative arts....
in these early productions. His first film commission was The Plow That Broke the Plains
The Plow That Broke the Plains

The Plow That Broke the Plains is a short documentary film which shows what happened to the Great Plains region of the United States and Canada when uncontrolled agricultural farming led to the Dust Bowl....
, sponsored by the United States Resettlement Administration, which also sponsored the film The River
The River (1938 film)

The River is a short documentary film which shows the importance of the Mississippi River to the United States, and how farming and timber practices had caused topsoil to be swept down the river and into the Gulf of Mexico....
with music by Thomson. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music

Pulitzer Prize for Music

The Pulitzer Prize for Music was first awarded in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer did not call for such a prize in his will, but had arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year....
in 1949 with his film score for Louisiana Story
Louisiana Story

Louisiana Story is a 78-minute black-and-white American film. it is a docufiction. Although the events depicted are fictional, it is often misidentified as a simple documentary film....
. In addition, Thomson was famous for his revival of the rare technique of composing "musical portraits" of living subjects, often spending hours in a room with them before rushing off to finish the piece on his own. Many subjects reported feeling that the pieces did capture something unique about their identities even though nearly all of the portraits were absent any clearly representational content.

Later in life, Thomson became a sort of mentor and father figure to a new generation of American tonal composers such as Ned Rorem

Ned Rorem

Ned Rorem is an American composer and Personal journal. He is best known and praised for his song settings.He was born in Richmond, Indiana, Indiana and received his early education in Chicago at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, the American Conservatory and then Northwestern University....
, Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles

Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris in the 1930s....
and Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein was a multi-Emmy-winning and Academy Award for Original Music Score nominated American Conductor , composer, author, music lecturer and Piano....
, a circle united as much by their shared homosexuality as by their similar compositional sensibilities.

Thomson's score for The River was used in the 1983 ABC made-for-television movie The Day After
The Day After

The Day After is an United States television movie which aired on November 20 1983, on the American Broadcasting Company Television Network....
.

Virgil Thomson's personal papers are in a repository at the Archival Papers in the Music Library of Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, Yale is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher education in the United States and is a member of the Ivy League....
and also additional effects regarding Thomson are included in the Ian Hornak

Ian Hornak

Ian Hornak was an American painter and draughtsman....
repository at the Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its Financial endowment, contributions, and profits from its shops and its magazine....
's Archives of American Art in Washington D.C.

He was a recipient of Yale University

Yale University

Virgil Thomson

Biography

External links