Virgil Thomson

Virgil Thomson (1896-1989), American composer whose work is often whimsical or irreverent, born in Kansas City, Missouri. He served in the U.S. Army in France during World War I and graduated from Harvard University in 1922. From 1925 until 1932 Thomson lived in Paris, where he studied composition with the important teacher Nadia Boulanger and came under the influence of the iconoclastic composer Erik Satie and his disciples, the group of young composers known as Les Six. Thomson also wrote deeply moving religious music, notably the Missa Pro Defunctis (Requiem Mass, 1960). His musical style was basically neoclassical (reinterpreting older forms in modern ways). His masterpiece is considered to be his opera Four Saints in Three Acts (1934; libretto by his friend Gertrude Stein). His musical score for the documentary film Louisiana Story in 1948 received the only Pulitzer Prize (1949) ever awarded for a film score. From 1940 to 1954 he was principal music critic for the New York Herald Tribune. He wrote his autobiography, Virgil Thomson (1966), American Music Since 1910 (1971), and Music with Words (1989).