Virgil Thomson

Virgil Thomson
Thomson in 1947, photographed by Carl Van Vechten
Born(1896-11-25)November 25, 1896
DiedSeptember 30, 1989(1989-09-30) (aged 92)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation(s)Composer, critic
Years active1920–1989
PartnerMaurice Grosser
AwardsNational Medal of Arts
Kennedy Center Honors
Pulitzer Prize for Music
External audio
audio icon Performance of Virgil Thomson's The Plow That Broke the Plains – Suite, Leopold Stokowski conducting the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in 1946

Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist,[1][2][3][4] a neoromantic,[5] a neoclassicist,[6] and a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment"[7] whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera Lord Byron which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion".[8]

  1. ^ Dickinson, Peter. 1986. "Stein Satie Cummings Thomson Berners Cage: Toward a Context for the Music of Virgil Thomson". The Musical Quarterly 72, no. 3:394–409.[page needed]
  2. ^ Lerner, Neil William. 1997. "The Classical Documentary Score in American Films of Persuasion: Contexts and Case Studies, 1936–1945". PhD diss. Duke University.
  3. ^ Kime, Mary W. 1989. "Modernism and Americana: A Study of The Mother of Us All". Ars Musica Denver 2, no. 1 (Fall): pp. 24–29.
  4. ^ Watson, Steven. 1998. Prepare for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism. New York: Random House, 1998; ISBN 0-679-44139-5 (cloth); reissued in paperback, University of California Berkeley Press, 2000; ISBN 0-520-22353-5 [page needed]
  5. ^ Thomson, Virgil. 2002. Virgil Thomson: A Reader: Selected Writings, 1924–1984, edited by Richard Kostelanetz. New York: Routledge; ISBN 0-415-93795-7. p. 268
  6. ^ Glanville-Hicks, Peggy. 1949b. "Virgil Thomson". The Musical Quarterly 35, no. 2 (April): 209–225, citation on p. 210
  7. ^ Glanville-Hicks, Peggy. 1949a. "Virgil Thomson: Four Saints in Three Acts". Notes, second series, 6, no. 2 (March): pp. 328–330.
  8. ^ Griffiths, Paul. 2001. "Thomson, Virgil", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaries.

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