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| Composers Biography |  |
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Virgil Thomson
[ Life | Works | Photo Gallery | Home Page] |
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| Virgil Thomson, born in Kansas City and long resident in Paris and New York, is one of the few true modernists in America, since most of our moderns turn out Romantics in Disguise. Over and over, he demonstrates that nobody knows more about modern Europe, in pieces that taught Europe a lot about the U. S. and the U. S. a lot about Europe. He's an adept in two arts, for he also happens to be a major American prose writer, specializing in music criticism. Thomson's music is almost disconcertingly spare and direct. In the consciously American pieces especially, there is a kind of aural equivalent to Cubist collage, as ragtime, waltzes, tangos, two-steps, fiddle tunes, and hymns get pasted into the texture. Unlike Charles Ives, there's an unsentimental distance and clarity to it all, like someone without illusions able to state exactly what's on his mind; Thomson gets this effect in his prose, too.Although overshadowed by Aaron Copland (who, by the way, always acknowledged his debts to Thomson), Thomson achieved far more in the realm of opera and vocal music, in which almost everyone acknowledges him a master.
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| The most important works of Thomson are the 5 Songs from William Blake, the beautiful Feast of Love for baritone and chamber ensemble, 4 Southern Hymns (a choral classic), the sinewy cello concerto, the Symphony on a Hymn Tune, Acadian Songs and Dances, Louisiana Story, Praises and Prayers, the delicate 4 Songs to Poems of Thomas Campion for voice and chamber group, and the heartbreaking Stabat Mater for mezzo and string quartet.
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