Biography

Thompson started learning music at a very young age and was composing by the time he was in his teens.  He decided early on that he wanted his life to be in music, but it is telling that he attended Harvard University—a liberal arts school—to achieve this goal rather than a conservatory.  At Harvard he studied with Archibald T. Davison, Edward Burlingame Hill, and Walter Spalding; this last had studied himself with Joseph Rheinberger of Abendlied fame.  One of the defining events of his time at Harvard was failing his audition for the Glee Club.  He later claimed that “My [entire] life has been an attempt to strike back” for that failure.  He also lost out in the 1920 Boott Prize competition to Nathaniel Dett, who won for his popular Listen to the Lambs.

Such failures notwithstanding, he eventually earned his A.B. degree.  In case you are wondering why Harvard designates its bachelor’s degrees as A.B. rather than B.A. (the way normal places do), it is because the diplomas are written in Latin; ergo (to throw a little Latin around) students receive an “artium baccalaureus” degree rather than a Bachelor of Arts degree.  To be honest, many things at Harvard seem to be different just for the sake of being different.  Students do not live in dorms but rather in “houses;” they do not declare majors but rather “concentrations;” a course that lasts a full year (two semesters) is a “full course” while a one-semester course is a “half course,” and so on.  Or at least that’s how things were when I was there; perhaps some things have changed (students still live in “houses,” though.)

After graduation Thompson moved to New York where he studied briefly with Ernest Bloch, and then he was back at Harvard for a master’s degree.  This was followed by three full years at the American Academy in Rome, where his composition colleagues included Leo Sowerby and Howard Hanson, the latter soon to lead the newly established Eastman School of Music.  In Rome he also became close to composer and noted Monteverdi scholar Gian Francesco Malipiero, who instilled in Thompson the idea that choral writing “was an art form of the highest seriousness of purpose, not to be relegated to a second place in back of so-called ‘absolute music’“ (Urrows).

Back in the United States Thompson had a teaching career at a series of important places that included Wellesley College, Berkeley, the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia (where he was director, and where Bernstein was one of his students), the University of Virginia (where he was head of the Music Department in the School of Fine Arts), Princeton, and finally Harvard, where he served as chair of the Music Department.  A major achievement in that last position was establishing the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library, an absolutely superlative collection that is a musicologist’s dream.

In addition to his faculty positions, Thompson also held not one but two Guggenheim Fellowships.  Further, he undertook (on commission) a three-year study of collegiate music education.  This led to the publication of College Music in 1935, where he advocated strongly for a Liberal Arts approach to music, e.g. no course credit for lessons or ensembles (this practice held true until relatively recently at places such as Harvard, Williams, etc.)  Following this study, he proposed curricular revisions for Harvard, at their request.  Thanks to Thompson, Harvard began its course Music 1: The History of Music, which was a novelty at the time but was soon copied by other colleges and universities.  A more accurate title for the class would have been “A History of Western Classical Music,” although by the time I was a teaching assistant for the class, many decades later, it had broadened slightly to include jazz and musical theater.

Given Thompson’s very strong preference for a music education that downplayed technical facility, it is surprising that he was asked to be director of the Curtis Institute.  What is not surprising is that he was not successful in this position.  He tried various curricular changes; for example, all students had to sing in the (no credit) choir that he rehearsed (all students, not just voice majors) and he required all students to attend lectures by visiting luminaries.  Of course, this sounds great to me, but I’m a choral singer and a musicologist, not an aspiring concert pianist or violin virtuoso.  The one really positive thing that he attempted was offering a faculty position (with few obligations) to Béla Bartók, whose final years in America were plagued by terrible financial problems.  Sadly, Bartók declined his offer.

Thompson remained in Cambridge after his retirement from Harvard, which led to my one almost-encounter with him.  When I was a graduate student, he contacted the Music Department to find someone who could serve him as a general compositional dogsbody.  My initial reaction was “wait—Randall Thompson is alive?”  We were then told that, if we pursued this opportunity, we must be very careful never to address him with “hi.”  Evidently this slovenly alternative to “hello” was anathema to him, and possibly indicative of depraved youth.  In any event, I decided to pass on this chance to interact with Thompson, although one of my fellow graduate students, composer Roger Bourland, did end up working for him.

Works

It is somewhat amusing to read in the Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music that Thompson is “best known for his choral music, three symphonies...two string quartets...and the symphonic fantasy A Trip to Nahanti.”  A more accurate statement would stop at “best known for his choral music.”  As far as I can tell, the instrumental music has essentially vanished from the repertoire, although his “Wind in the Willows” string quartet does sound intriguing.  And perhaps the recent interest in mid-century American composers will stir up some of his non-choral works; for example, my mother’s The Concert Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to Symphonic Music from 1947 includes his second symphony, supposedly the most popular of his three.

Also amusing to read is the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Music, where, of Thompson’s “many choral works,” the only three mentioned by name are Americana, the Luke Passion, and the Requiem—three pieces that nobody else would list as his most significant.  These odd reference works notwithstanding, Thompson is a huge figure in American choral music.  He has been called “the Dean of American Choral Composers” (the equally unofficial position of “Dean of American Music” was reserved for Copland.) Thompson was certainly the most frequently performed American choral composer for close to 60 years, until Morten Lauridsen came along, and you would be hard put to find an American choral singer who has not performed something by Thompson.

His best-known work is surely his Alleluia, which, for most of the twentieth century, was the most frequently purchased and performed choral composition by an American composer.  Next in line would be Frostiana, a set of seven choruses (variously for mixed choir, women’s voices, and men’s voices) to seven of Robert Frost’s poems.  I personally prefer a little more bite in my music than these pieces offer, but it’s possible I was scarred by bad performances in High School.  Interestingly, these quintessentially American works were composed in Switzerland, where Thompson owned a home and where he considered becoming a citizen.  Having lived happily in Europe for several years, though, I can attest that one spends a certain amount of time contemplating one’s native heath.  Just think of American Henry James, resident in Britain, almost all of whose novels deal in some way with the Europe/America question posed to all who experience both.

Other popular works include the cantata The Peaceable Kingdom, the motet The Last Words of David, and of course The Testament of Freedom.

Thompson has been called the “Norman Rockwell of Music,” a designation not intended as a compliment, and Richard Dyer called him “A composer more often performed than honored.”  In fact, he received many, many, honors throughout his lifetime.  And surely the greatest honor a composer can receive is constant performance.  His choral works are unlikely to fall out of the repertoire anytime soon.

The Testament of Freedom

The Testament of Freedom sets four texts by Thomas Jefferson.  Today we look at Jefferson with a somewhat jaundiced eye.  The man was a slaveholder, after all, and it is now widely—though not universally—acknowledged that he had a decades-long sexual relationship with Sally Hemings that resulted in at least six illegitimate children.  It is extremely difficult to imagine that this relationship was consensual, given that (1) Hemings was enslaved and (2) she was only 14 when all of this began (he was 44).  Sadly, such “relationships” were all too common in antebellum America.

In 1943, however, Jefferson was one of the unquestioned greats of American history.  One of the Founding Fathers (taxation without representation = bad = time to break away from Britain), he was the main author of the Declaration of Independence as well as the Governor of Virginia, an ambassador (technically “minister”) to France, the first Secretary of State (under Washington), the second Vice-President (under Adams), and the third president of the United States, at which time he enabled the Louisiana Purchase that effectively doubled the country’s territory.  Fun fact: back in the day, the person who lost the presidential election became Vice President—yowza!  Jefferson’s own Vice President was the infamous Aaron Burr, who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel (thereby ruining his own life as well).  Jefferson is the subject of one of the most beautiful memorials in Washington (all those cherry blossoms!), his face is on the nickel as well as the $2 bill, and so on.  And hey, the guy’s on Mount Rushmore!  (along with Washington, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt).

More to the point, he was the founder of the University of Virginia, where Thompson was working in 1943 when he wrote this piece.  The composition was meant to mark not just the annual Founder’s Day (April 13), but more specifically the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth, and the premiere was on just that day, 13 April 1943.  The piece was written for TTBB chorus and piano; Thompson played the piano at the premiere.  The reason for the all-male chorus was that there were no undergraduate women on the Charlottesville campus in 1943, because everyone knew they had cooties.  Jesting aside, there weren’t any undergraduate women because they weren’t wanted.  Oh, women could get a degree from the University of Virginia, but they were safely sequestered on a separate campus so that they wouldn’t pollute the pure atmosphere of the real UVa (gorgeous campus designed by Jefferson).  And in case you were wondering, yes, this was an all-white school.  It took a lawsuit in the 1950s to integrate the campus, and women weren’t allowed until 1970.  So just stop to think about this for a minute.  This is a PUBLIC university, supported by everyone’s taxes (not just taxes paid by white men), that was exclusively for the use of white men.  Talk about taxation without representation!

The premiere of the work was a big deal.  It was recorded by CBS and broadcast, and then transmitted by short wave radio to the Allied Armed Forces in Europe (remember, we are in the middle of World War II at this point).  Afterwards Thompson orchestrated the work, which meant that following the unexpected death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1943, Serge Koussevitsky was able to use the piece to conclude Boston Symphony’s memorial concert in Carnegie Hall (or almost conclude; it was followed by the Star-Spangled Banner).  In 1960 Thompson created an arrangement for band, and he provided a version for mixed chorus in time for the bicentennial in 1976.

The four movements of the Testament use the following writings by Jefferson (all chosen by Thompson himself):

1. A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
2. Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775)
3. Ditto
4. Letter to John Adams (1821)

As numerous writers have noted, the composition follows a quasi-symphonic structure.  After the opening instrumental flourish, whose rhythm corresponds nicely to “Tho-mas Jef-fer-son,” we commence with a stately, hymn-like first movement (with its immediate reference to God) sprinkled with fanfare-like motives.  The attaca second movement corresponds to the slow movement of a symphony.  In this movement it is apparent to the chorus that we are singing prose, not poetry (the more common source of choral texts) as we scramble to get all of those polysyllabic words attached to the proper eighth notes.  The snappy third movement (the symphonic scherzo, as it were) is marked as “alla marcia,” and its dissonant bugle calls get us in the mood for our own bugle-like calls at “taken up arms.”  We are back to a majestic mood for the last movement, where Thompson ties the whole work together by bringing back text and music from the first movement.

Not everyone loves (or loved) this work.  Musicologist Elliot Forbes, a friend of Thompson’s, called it “popular rather than original,” while composer Donald Fuller thought it would “suit some child’s game with toy soldiers.”  But critic Olin Downes noted that it served as “reassurance...in a troubled hour,” and the first time I sang portions of this work was at a memorial concert after 9/11, certainly another troubled time.  As I write this essay in the run-up to the 2024 American presidential election, we should recognize that democracy can be fragile and that there are always people ready to be despots.  Thomas Jefferson was very much a flawed human being, but he wrote words that are still well worth bearing in mind today, and Thompson’s music brings them to life.

September 2024