Four Centuries of Great Music November 23, 2024 Forgotten American Composers of the Twentieth Century

Four Centuries of Great Music 11-23-24

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are remembering four forgotten American composers William Schuman, Roger Sessions, Louise  Talma and Virgil Thomson.  I call these forgotten composers because many classical music patrons will not know their names and because those who program music in concert halls ignore these wonderful composers from the recent past. But it is here on Four Centuries of Great Music that I am sharing their stories and music with you.  Just as a reminder, this series of episodes were inspired by a conversation I had will Gil Rose founder and conductor of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project on my show Contemporary Classics.  Along with presenting the music of new composers, one of the goals of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project is to present the music of American composers whose music is being forgotten.

We open with the music of William Schuman.  William Schuman was born in Manhattan, New York City on August 4, 1910.  His family called him Bill.  He played the violin and banjo as a child but his real passion was baseball.  While still in high school, he formed a dance band, "Billy Schuman and his Alamo Society Orchestra", in which Schuman played string bass, that played local weddings and bar mitzvahs.

In 1928 he entered New York University's School of Commerce to pursue a business degree, at the same time working for an advertising agency. However, around that time, Schuman met lyricist Frank Loesser and wrote some forty songs with him including Loesser's first published song, "In Love with a Memory of You”.  But it was a concert of the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Arturo Toscanini on April 13, 1930 that convinced him to become a composer of serious art music.  He later wrote “The visual thing alone was astonishing. But the sound! I was overwhelmed. I had never heard anything like it. The very next day, I decided to become a composer.”  He dropped out of school and quit his part-time job to study music.

He is best known for his ballet music, symphonies and other orchestral music and chamber music.  He composed 10 symphonies but the first two were withdrawn so today we will be listening to his first published symphony, his symphony no. 3.  This symphony was complete in January 1941 and premiered in October of that year by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitsky, to whom it is dedicated.  It is in two movements, each with two parts that are played without pause and each part is marked to indicate they are slow and fast reflecting the baroque tradition.  But there is little about these movements that follow baroque forms. The first movement is marked Passacaglia and Fugue and the second movement is marked Chorale and Toccata.

Here is a performance of
William Schuman: Symphony no. 3 - I. Passacaglia and Fugue
William Schuman: Symphony no. 3 - II. Chorale and Toccata
Gerald Schwartz conducting the Seattle Symphony Orchestra
Schuman: Symphonies Nos. 3, & 5; Judith
Naxos Records

The next “forgotten” composer on today’s Four Centuries of Great Music on which we are remembering four forgotten American composers is Louise Talma.

Louise Talma was born on October 31, 1906 in Arcachon, France to an American mother a professional operatic soprano and to a American father, a pianist who died while Louise was an infant.  Louise grew up surrounded by music in New York City to which her mother moved at the beginning of World War I in 1914.  Louise was also a very good science student so studied chemistry at Columbia University while also studying piano and composition at the Institute of Musical Arts (which is now Juilliard). She received her bachelor's degree in music from New York University and masters from Columbia University.  She studied piano at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, every summer from 1926 to 1935 and composition with Nadia Boulanger every summer from 1928-1939.  She began a piano concert career in 1926 but in the mid-1930s took up composition full time due to the influence of Boulanger.  Although most known for her chamber and piano works, she also composed several orchestral pieces and two operas.

Today we will be listening to her Piano Sonata No. 1 written in 1943 and is in three movements  I. Largo-Allegro; II. Larghetto and III. Presto

Here is a performance of

Louise Talma: Piano Sonata No. 1 - I. Largo-Allegro
Louise Talma: Piano Sonata No. 1 - II. Larghetto
Louise Talma: Piano Sonata No. 1 - III. Presto
Theresa Bogard, piano
Music of Louise Talma
Archive of Recorded Music

We will close this first hour of Four Centuries of Great Music focused on four forgotten American composers with music by Roger Sessions.

Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 28, 1896.   A musical prodigy, Sessions studied music at Harvard University from the age of 14. There he wrote for and subsequently edited the Harvard Musical Review. Graduating at age 18, he went on to study at Yale University under Horatio Parker and Ernest Bloch before teaching at Smith College. Most of his first major compositions came while he was traveling Europe between the wars in his mid-twenties and early thirties.

Returning to the United States in 1933, he taught first at Princeton University (from 1936), moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1945 to 1953, and then returned to Princeton until retiring in 1965.  

He had initially started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but in the 1930s he gradually moved further towards more complex harmonies and postromanticism.  His friendship with Arnold Schoenberg influenced his writing and the works from 1946 onwards are atonal and, beginning with the Solo Violin Sonata of 1953, serial although not consistently employing Viennese twelve-tone technique.   Only the first movement and the trio of the scherzo of the Violin Sonata, for example, employ a twelve-tone row strictly.  Sessions’s usual method was to modify the twelve-tone technique to develop a unique style involving tone rows to supply melodic thematic material, while composing the subsidiary parts in a free and dissonant manner.

Today I will be featuring his Six Pieces for Violoncello written in 1966.

Roger Sessions: Six Pieces for Violoncello
I. Prelude. Allegro Energico
II. Dialogue- Andante
III. Scherzo - Allegro
IV. Berceuse - Lento a Dolce
V. Fantasy - Con Fantasia
VI. Epilogue - Adagio Molto
Matt Heimovitz
The 20th Century Cello
Deutsche Grammophon


Next on this exploration of the music of forgotten American composers with music by Virgil Thomson.  We listened to music from his soundtrack to the movie “The Plow That Broke the Plains” just last week when we celebrated the anniversary of his birth  which was November 25, 1896.  Yes that is just a month before Roger Sessions.  As mentioned last week, along with Aaron Copland, he was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music.

He was born in Kansas City Missouri and grew up playing the piano and organ.  He attended Harvard University.  And while at Harvard this eventual creator of the "American Sound" in classical music, Thomson focused his studies on the piano work of Erik Satie. He studied in Paris on fellowship for a year, and after graduating lived in Paris from 1925 until 1940. While studying in Paris he was influenced by several French composers who were members of "Les Six" including: Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, and Germaine Tailleferre.  He eventually studied with Nadia Boulanger and became a fixture of "Paris in the twenties”.

In Paris in 1925, he cemented a relationship with painter Maurice Grosser, who was to become his life partner and frequent collaborator. Later he and Grosser lived at the Hotel Chelsea, where he presided over a largely gay salon that attracted many of the leading figures in music and art and theater, including Leonard Bernstein, Tennessee Williams, and many others. He also encouraged many younger composers and literary figures such as Theodor Adorno, Ned Rorem, Lou Harrison, John Cage, Frank O'Hara, and Paul Bowles.

His most important friend from this period was Gertrude Stein, who was an artistic collaborator and mentor to him. After meeting Stein in Paris in 1926, Thomson invited her to prepare a libretto for an opera which he hoped to compose. Their collaboration resulted in the premier of the groundbreaking composition “Four Saints in Three Acts” in 1934. At the time, the opera was noted for its form, musical content and the portrayal of European saints by an all-black cast.  Years later in 1947, he collaborated once again with Stein on his provocative opera “The Mother of Us All” which portrays the life of the social reformer Susan B. Anthony. Thomson incorporated musical elements from Baptist hymns, Gregorian chants and popular songs into both scores while demonstrating a restrained use of dissonance.

Today I am sharing with you the music he wrote for the film “The River” made in 1938.  This short documentary film shows the importance of the Mississippi River to the United States, and how farming, mining and timber practices had caused topsoil to be swept down the river and into the Gulf of Mexico, leading to catastrophic floods and impoverishing farmers. It ends by briefly describing how the Tennessee Valley Authority project was beginning to reverse these problems.  The suite based upon Virgil Thomson’s music from the film is in 11 movements entitled: Prelude, First Forest, A Big River, Cotton Pickers, Ruins, Logging, Coal, Floods, Requiem, Tenancy and Finale.

Here is a performance of Virgil Thomson:  The River


Virgil Thomson:  The River - Prelude
Virgil Thomson:  The River - First Forest
Virgil Thomson:  The River - A Big River
Virgil Thomson:  The River - Cotton Pickers
Virgil Thomson:  The River - Ruins
Virgil Thomson:  The River - Logging
Virgil Thomson:  The River - Coal
Virgil Thomson:  The River - Floods
Virgil Thomson:  The River - Requiem
Virgil Thomson:  The River - Tenancy
Virgil Thomson:  The River - Finale

Angel Gil-Ordonez   conducting the Post-Classical Ensemble
Virgil Thomson: The Plow That Broke the Plains/The River
Naxos Records
Let’s close today’s episode of Four Centuries of Great Music  featuring an exploration of the music of forgotten American composers with  two more pieces by Louise Talma

Louise Talma:  Variations on 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird for Tenor, Oboe and Piano
Louise Talma:  7 Episodes for Flute, Viola and Piano

Ambache Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble
Talma: The Ambient Air - Soundshots - Full Circle
Naxos Recordings