Arts and Letters

Randall Thompson, who died on July 9, 1984 in Boston, filled a place in modern American music that should always be occupied by someone—and someone with gifts equal to his. He provided music in traditional forms, based on American themes and rhythms, and adapted to particular occasions. He did write orchestral and chamber music out of his own desire for self-expression, but his best works, large and small, were commissioned and had a definite setting.

These assignments came from ranking musical institutions—the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the music departments of Stanford University and the University of California, the Handel and Haydn Society, the Koussevitzky Foundation, several church groups in New York and Cambridge, the League of Composers, and that very special musical institution, Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. The continuance of this patronage throughout Thompson's active life shows that the resulting works were not mere note-spinning time-fillers, but creations that were wanted. Considering the number of Thompson's contemporaries who, unlike him, were experimenting and capturing the attention of critics and students rather than of the untaught public, it seems fortunate that one composer at least should have measured his own talents accurately and justified his existence by producing music for immediate enjoyment.

How did he reach this self-knowledge and fulfill his mission? Randall Thompson was born on April 21, 1899 in New York City, the son of an English master at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. After preparing there himself, Randall went to Harvard, from which he received a B.A. in 1920. During these undergraduate years he was already composing a great deal under the eye of Davison, Hill, and Spalding and later, for one year, under Ernest Bloch. He was then named Walter Damrosch Fellow in music composition for postgraduate study and residence at the American Academy in Rome. It was there that he wrote skillful and agreeable settings to five odes of Horace in the Latin text.

On his return, he lived pretty much from hand to mouth in Greenwich Village, taking on musical odd jobs, including that of composing music for The Straw Hat and for the Grand Street Follies of 1926—a witty highbrow revue that some of us remember with delight. A year later, he married Margaret Quayle Whitney, of Philadelphia, who proved to be the ideal companion and sustainer of his ambitions. Her warm intelligence and unaffected charm complemented his reserve and apparent austerity of manner, just as her humor tempered his wit. Their four children made the household at once boisterous and musical, though music was not the sole topic of conversation for which their hospitality was notable.

In that same year, 1927, Thompson was appointed assistant professor of music, organist, and choir director at Wellesley College, and from then on his academic and directorial career followed a natural course. He was lecturer at Harvard, guest conductor of the Dessoff and Madrigal choirs and the Juilliard chorus in New York, and professor of music successively at Berkeley, the University of Virginia, Princeton, and Harvard.

In one interval he was for two years director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, but he disliked the administrative work that robbed him of time for composing. Also before his first full professorship, he devoted some three years to directing the investigation of music study in the colleges that was sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and the Carnegie Foundation.

This survey, published in 1935 under the title College Music, can be compared to Dr. Flexner's famous study of medical education: it was revolutionary. As a result of the detailed critiques, examples, statistics, and principles set forth in a very readable book, the place and quality of music-making and music-teaching on our campuses began their upward march toward seriousness and professional competence. Randall Thompson was the chief architect of this reform. If this very evening, the Columbia University Glee Club is singing Brahms's Liebeslieder Walzer and Orff 's Carmina Burana, instead of "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum," it is largely because of Thompson's masterly handling of a delicate investigation.

Though a number of assistants aided in the survey, the intellect is Thompson's throughout. It was he, the educated man, who affirmed about music that "There is no end to the relations to be established with other subjects in and out of college" and that "preparation for musical research requires a good general knowledge of History and Literature, of Theory and practical experience." As to history, he deplored the perfunctory, capsule-form teaching that was prevalent in music departments. He quoted as typical: "Then you get your Crusades…." As to music, he castigated the so-called "appreciation courses"—tidbits and clichés taught in the spirit of "dealing with barbarians." Nor were the theory courses as instructive as they should be: "Make exercises in Theory really musical." And he dealt with the bugbear of rules by pointing out "the beauty of submission and (when transcended) the beauty of revolt"; there is, he added, "no virtue in abiding or overriding" per se.

Off campus, Thompson held the various elective posts one would expect: director of the U.S. section of the International Society for Contemporary Music; director of the League of Composers; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and, in 1938, member of this Institute, on whose Council he served from 1959 to 1961, after membership on the departmental and award committees for music.

As a composer, Randall Thompson put himself explicitly among "the nationalists and eclectics." By nationalist, he meant the use of native themes, both musical and spiritual; by eclectic, he meant the use of any established methods and devices of composition. As his practice shows, this eclecticism was historical—for example, recourse to the methods of 16th century counterpoint, or preference for modal writing; Thompson was never eclectic in the sense of borrowing and combining schemes from his own contemporaries. The contemporariness that he sought he defined in a speech of 1946 entitled "Music: Popular and Unpopular": it was "to reach and move the hearts of his listeners in his own day."

The subjects that inspired him were popular in a very special sense. His early Americana (1932), for instance, is a satirical treatment paralleling texts from H. L. Mencken's American Mercury that show up current vulgarities of thought and behavior, including Prohibition and revivalism: "Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand." Later his Testament of Freedom, on excerpts from Jefferson's writings, celebrates the political thinker on the 200th anniversary of his birth. These are not exactly barroom or campfire themes, any more than the subject entitled Frostiana, also for a 200th, that of Amherst College. A Trip to Nahant is closer to folk music perhaps, but not the "Ode to the Virginian Voyage," from Drayton's poem.

Americanism or rusticity in Thompson is no raw product of the soil. Rather, it resembles the same trait in the poetry of Frost: they are filtered through the meditative intellect. (In the latter part of Thompson's life this meditation often took place far from America, in the Châlet les Trois Ours, in Gstaad, Switzerland.) To put it another way, all his work—the religious music, which ranges from a Passion According to St. Luke to a Requiem mass; the Second Symphony; the one-act opera; or the Suite for Oboe, Clarinet, and Viola—shows the mind of an artist who does not simply echo popular sentiment but distills meaning from popular experience.

The writer of Thompson's obituary in The New York Times was therefore very far astray when he compared Thompson to a well-known illustrator who made his name by drawing folksy covers for the Saturday Evening Post. The record is set straight by Quincy Porter, who wrote for Modern Music a study of Thompson in midcareer. Speaking of his melodies, Porter says they have a "surprising popular appeal," which "perplexes those who think Randall Thompson a musical aristocrat." (Vol. 19, No. 4, May-June, 1942, 237). This confirms the truth that only the aristocrat understands the people.

At any rate, that fusion of qualities is Thompson's distinctive mark as an artist and as a man: he combines simplicity with subtlety and elegance. Quincy Porter, whose aims differed radically from Thompson's, is perpetually astonished at the results of his subject's characteristic ways. He finds a "curious mixture of ideas very close to the soil coupled with superb craftsmanship"; and he notes Thompson's "sharp sensibility… great inventive ability… fascinating rhythmic ideas."

These musical powers are evident in the choral works, where the smooth melodic line never strains the voice and the rhythmic invention fits both the sense of the words and the accentuation of English, which—as Porter observes—“is often butchered by rhythmic formulas suited to other languages." Randall Thompson had a natural bent toward vocal composition and was an accomplished choral conductor. Granting these talents and preferences, Porter is surprised again when Thompson shows "no hesitation in using famous chords in their well-known relationships… and dares to write with a simplicity that startles his colleagues." But the critic winds up with the thought that Thompson's music "may survive those which startle and amuse us now." (240-1)

"Now" was 1942 and what is perhaps "curious" and "startling" today is the implied limitation on free speech—musical speech—so taken for granted then, that a critic had to use words like "dare" and "no hesitation" about the use of familiar compositional elements. This attribution of "daring" to the use of traditional methods was repeated in 1970 by a reviewer of the recording by Bernstein of Thompson's Second Symphony: "He even dared to write a songful slow movement that has, after nearly forty years, lost nothing of its songfulness…. it warms the heart." (Stereo Review, March 28, 1970, 62). This comical paradox by which Thompson is cast in the role of rebel who defied the conventions of the day is instructive, because it makes clear the difference between two types of artist, two aesthetics, of which one has been nearly forgotten.

For over a century, criticism has recognized as having merit only those artists or works that open up new paths. The cult of the new has been exclusive, in keeping no doubt with an unconscious urge to emulate progress of science and technology. Inventiveness has been thought to be only of one kind. From such a premise, it follows that the artistry of a Randall Thompson is of secondary interest and that his aim of giving pleasure to contemporary listeners, who bring only their ears to the concert, is but another proof of demerit.

What could be urged against his work is that it lacks the grandeur and violence of passion, which music is so well fitted to express. One critic rightly described Thompson's forte as "detached eloquence," and that too is a genre that deserves attention in its own terms. Without implying any detailed comparison, one thinks of an historical parallel: Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott—he the pioneer and creator on the grand scale and she no innovator but a user of the most common motifs—money and marriage, snobbery and snubs—with subtlety, elegance, and wit.

Scott in his wisdom acknowledged her mastery; Randall Thompson, on his side, acknowledged the importance of work unlike his own. In a letter of May 1941 to a committee chairman of this Institute, he wrote: "It is my impression that there are a good many pretty conservative members of the musical section and that for this reason, some of the most vital and significant young composers in the country have not been elected to the Institute, or even nominated." And he goes on to name names: "…there are men, notably Aaron Copland and Roy Harris, whose work is of more than purely contemporary interest and I do not understand their exclusion."

On this showing, it seems doubly regrettable that no one was found in the present music section to prepare before now an authoritative memorial tribute, so that the task finally devolved on an unqualified recruit from the department of literature. He can only apologize for the shortcomings of his effort and trust that, elsewhere and soon, Randall Thompson will receive from his peers the recognition he has already received from his countrymen.