Sacred and Secular America: Virgil Thomson's Symphony on a Hymn Tune

Abstract

Virgil Thomson's life and work are fascinating not only in themselves but because they represent America's musical coming-of-age. Along with Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions, Thomson brought international recognition to American music in the early part of this century. Like his colleagues, he wrote identifiably American music which was nonetheless attractive to music lovers of other lands. His Symphony on a Hymn Tune is one such work, brightly illuminating his achievement and epitomizing his native land. Written in Paris by a young man from Kansas City, the symphony manifested America's thoughts, feelings, and sophistication to the world. Like most Americans, Virgil Thomson came from widely mixed stock. His mother's family roots reached back to Jamestown in the early seventeenth century. His father's family name first appeared in American records in 1717, when a Scottish forebear immigrated to Virginia to become a planter. Virgil was born in 1896 to an upwardly mobile family in Kansas City. The young Thomson's musical interests were encouraged, and he rapidly outgrew several piano teachers. He eventually began collecting fees as a substitute church organist and piano accompanist. At the age of thirteen, Thomson told his parents that he planned to be a musician. Although they did not object, he was so surprised by the vehemence of his own announcement that, as he records in his autobiography, before there was time for any reply I burst out crying and fled upstairs.'