Thomson, Virgil, 1896-

Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri on November 25, 1896. As a boy, he took lessons in piano and organ, and soon found work as a church organist. He attended public schools and then Kansas City Polytechnic Institute, a junior college. In 1917 he enlisted in the Army, but World War I came to an end before he could be sent to Europe.

After his discharge from the military, Thomson attended Harvard, where he sang in the Glee Club and studied with Edward Burlingame Hill and Archibald Davison. His college career was interrupted by a fellowship that enabled him to spend a year in Paris, where he studied counterpoint and organ with Nadia Boulanger, and became a lifelong Francophile. After his Harvard graduation in 1923 and some additional training at the Juilliard School, Thomson moved to Paris, where he befriended many prominent musicians, artists, and writers, including his fellow expatriate Gertrude Stein. She provided the libretto for Thomson's first opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, which created a sensation when it was first performed in 1934. Although it never entered the standard repertory, Four Saints made Thomson a celebrity, and it remains his best-known work to this day.

In the spring of 1940 the German invasion compelled Thomson to leave France. He settled in Manhattan, renting an apartment in the Chelsea Hotel that would remain his home until his death nearly six decades later. From 1940 to 1954, Thomson was a staff writer for New York Herald Tribune . His unconventional opinions, elegantly clear prose, and devastating wit made him the most admired music critic in America, and he was often compared to earlier composer-critics such as Berlioz and Debussy.

Thomson continued to compose throughout his years at the Herald Tribune and after. In 1947 he produced a second opera, The Mother of Us All, again to a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Thomson wrote his last opera, Lord Byron (libretto by Jack Larson) in response to a commission from the Metropolitan Opera, but it received its first performance at the Juilliard School, in 1972. Thomson composed in many other genres, ranging from symphonies and film scores to songs and choral works. He was also known for his musical "portraits"--short works inspired by specific persons and rapidly sketched in their presence.

Thomson received many awards, including the 1949 Pulitzer Prize (for his film score Louisiana Story ), the Kennedy Center Honors, the French Légion d'honneur, and at least nineteen honorary doctorates.

Virgil Thomson died in New York on September 30, 1989.

From the guide to the The Virgil Thomson Papers, 1804-1990 (inclusive), (Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University)