Research Catalog

Title

Interview with Virgil Thomson [sound recording].

Author

Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989.

Publication

1975.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Gruen, John.
• National Endowment for the Arts, 2010-2011.

Description

3 sound discs (ca. 162 min.) : digital; 4 3/4 in.

Summary

• Disc 1 (ca. 61 min.). John Gruen introduces his interview with Virgil Thomson [who is not yet present] by playing a recording of an excerpt from the music composed by Thomson for Lew Christensen's ballet Filling station and reading aloud the jacket notes for the recording, written by George Balanchine [break followed by Thomson's arrival]; Thomson speaks with Gruen about the Diaghilev company [Ballets russes], which he first saw in 1916, including performances by [Waslaw] Nijinsky; meeting various people in the dance and music world in Paris including Balanchine and Serge Lifar; dancers' attitudes towards their bodies; Pavel Tchelitchew including his relationship with Diaghilev as artistic adviser; Gertrude Stein including her relative lack of musicality; his work Four saints in three acts, in particular his collaboration on it with Frederick Ashton; briefly, his opera Lord Byron; working with Agnes de Mille on a production of Hamlet; Thomson's ballet training as a young man; working with Martha Graham in Berlin [ends abruptly but continues directly on disc 2].
• Disc 2 (ca. 38 min.). Virgil Thomson continues to speak with John Gruen about Martha Graham, including an anecdote about Graham and the portrait bust of Nefertiti; the relative independence of the music and the choreography in the ballets of the Ballets russes; Balanchine's developing of choreographers including Lew Christensen; more on Christensen's Filling station; Aaron Copland, in particular as a composer for ballet; Balanchine's attempt to choreograph a ballet to Thomson's composition Bayou [Louisiana story]; structure as essential for dance music; Agnes de Mille's ballet The harvest according; a later production of Four saints in three acts, choreographed by Alvin Ailey [ends abruptly].
• Disc 3 (ca. 63 min.). Virgil Thomson speaks with John Gruen about his opera The mother of us all; Erick Hawkins' work set to Thomson's Symphony no. 2; briefly, Balanchine; Lincoln Kirstein; Maurice Ravel; more on his opera Lord Byron in a production choreographed by Alvin Ailey; Edwin Denby including his activities in Europe before World War I and how he came to write about dance; briefly, Ida Rubenstein; Victor Seroff and Isadora Duncan; Nicolas Nabokov's music for Balanchine's Don Quixote; Igor Stravinsky and his works for ballet including as compared with his works for voice; other 20th century composers who wrote for dance, including Claude Debussy, William Schuman, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Erik Satie; briefly, Jacques D'Amboise and the revival of Filling station; briefly, William Dollar; briefly, Jerome Robbins, as a dancer and as a choreographer; briefly, modern dance in the U.S. prior to World War I including Maud Allan and Ruth St. Denis; briefly, Merce Cunningham.

Alternative Title

Dance Oral History Project.

Subject

• Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989
• Tchelitchew, Pavel, 1898-1957
• Ashton, Frederick, 1904-1988
• Graham, Martha
• Copland, Aaron, 1900-1990
• Denby, Edwin, 1903-1983
• Stravinsky, Igor, 1882-1971
• Filling station (Choreographic work : Christensen, L)
• Four saints in three acts (Choreographic work : Ashton)
• Music and dance
• Audiotapes > Thomson, V

Note

• Interview with Virgil Thomson conducted by John Gruen on May 1, 1975 at Gruen's home in New York City, as part of the Oral History Project of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
• Sound quality overall is very good. In the first two tracks of disc 1 (ca. 10 min.), the interviewer's voice is soft and not always easy to understand but thereafter the sound quality is very good. There are occasional short breaks and frequent extraneous noises, which however do not interfere with intelligibility.

Funding (note)

• Preservation was funded in part by National Endowment for the Arts, 2010-2011.

Call Number

*MGZTL 4-344

OCLC

757824979

Author

Thomson, Virgil, 1896-1989. Interviewee

Title

Interview with Virgil Thomson [sound recording].

Imprint

1975.

Original Version

Original format : 1 sound reel (ca. 162 min.; 1 7/8 in. per sec.; 5"; polyester, full track). Originally recorded in 1975. Handwritten notes on original container of original reel: "Copied from 2 cassette tapes."

Funding

Preservation was funded in part by National Endowment for the Arts, 2010-2011.

Local Note

For transcript of the audio recording, see *MGZMT 5-344.

Archive original: *MGZTO 5-344

Added Author

Gruen, John. Interviewee

National Endowment for the Arts, 2010-2011.

Research Call Number

*MGZTL 4-344