William Schuman, World War II, and the Pulitzer Prize

Abstract

In his April 4, 1943 review of the New York premiere of William Schuman's Secular Cantata No. 2, A Free Song, fellow composer and New York Herald Tribune critic Virgil Thomson dismissed the work as frivolous, unintelligible, and dull: The title … refers, I take it, since the composition is partly fugal in style, not to musical freedom but to freedom of some other kind, economic, social, religious, amorous, or political, no doubt. The times being what they are, one would probably be safe in betting it was the latter, though of certain evidence I have none, the chorus's effective enunciation of the text being zero in row U. The music's intrinsic interest seemed also to this listener to add up to a not high figure.1 The [Music] Advisory Committee for the Pulitzer Prize recommends that the award for 1942–43 be made to William Schumann [sic] for his SECULAR CANTATA NO. 2, A FREE SONG. The decision was unanimous and was arrived at after a careful consideration of compositions in the fields of orchestra, chamber music, chorus, opera and ballet first performed or published during the period from April 1st 1942 to April 1st 1943.2