Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,077

This is the grave of Randall Thompson.

Born in 1899 in New York City, Ira Randall Thompson grew up pretty well off. His father was an English teacher at a fancy academy called the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. So a teacher, but a special kind of teacher. Basically, upper middle class, big emphasis on education. Unsurprisingly, a kid in this circumstance who had some intelligence and ambition would do well. His brother became a famous art historian, for additional context. He went to Harvard and majored in music. He was interested in composition from early in his studies. Among the composers he studied with at Harvard or in private lessons include Edward Burlingame Hill and Ernest Bloch, important people for their time if not so remembered today, though Bloch still gets some play.

Thompson studied and got advanced degrees at the University of Rochester and took a job teaching at Wellesley. He would support himself teaching, as does most anyone trying to make a living in classical music (or jazz). He moved to the University of Virginia and then back to Harvard. But his real interest was in composing, not teaching. His speciality was choral music. His most famous piece is “Alleluia.” This was commissioned by none other than Serge Koussevitzky for the opening of the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, where I need to visit at some point (there are some composers buried there in addition to wanting to see some great musical performances). This was in 1940, as part of the fanfare of American musical voices Koussevitzky wanted for the opening. Now, Koussevitzky wanted him to write some big festive piece. But Thompson decided there was no way he could do that, not with the Nazis having just taken Paris. So it’s a quite introspective piece.

That hardly means though that Thompson wasn’t going to write music that might be inspired by an American past or present. For example, one of his more well-known pieces is 1943’s “Testament of Freedom.” That’s a choral piece drawing from the writings of Thomas Jefferson and first performed, naturally enough, at the University of Virginia, the school Jefferson founded. CBS recorded the premier and used it as propaganda for the troops. The Office of War Information had it broadcast across Europe for the troops. Whether a bunch of GIs really found a composition of choral music based on Jefferson inspiring seems less likely to me, but I’m sure at least some people did like it, probably the officers, if we’re being honest here. The piece hit pretty hard though. Serge Koussevitzky directed the Boston Symphony Orchestra to play at the memorial service for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945.

Choral music based on texts was one of Thompson’s go-to compositional forms. Another of his most popular pieces is 1959’s “Frostalia: Seven Country Songs,” with words borrowed from Robert Frost. This was commissioned by the city of Amherst, Massachusetts to celebrate its 200th anniversary of founding. Thompson then reworked it to a more definitive version first performed in 1965. Frost and Thompson knew each other. Frost could a difficult person, to say the least, but he did appreciate that Thompson would write something based on his poems. He would return to Frost’s work in 1975’s “A Concord Cantata,” though that also borrowed from Edward Everett Hale and Allen French, the early twentieth century historian of the American Revolution.

Thompson wrote a few symphonies too, two in 1931 and then a third over a couple of years in the late 40s. He also had two major string quartet pieces, one in 1941 and the other in 1967. But it was primarily the vocal work that moved him.

Thompson had a zillion students over the years. The most prominent? Leonard Bernstein, who freely acknowledged Thompson’s influence on him. He was so influential on male vocal music that the University of Pennsylvania Glee Club created an Award of Merit to give to Thompson in 1964. Evidently, he was driven by resentment. While at Harvard, he was denied entrance into the glee club. So, as he later said, “My life has been an attempt to strike back.”

Thompson died in 1984. He was 85 years old.

Let’s listen to some of Thompson’s work:

As you can see, his work seems especially popular with college choruses.

Randall Thompson is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

If you would like this series to visit other composers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Amy Beach is in Boston and George Crumb is in Media, Pennsylvania. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.