1937–1938 (II)

After its debut season Ballet Caravan became an increasingly independent organization led by Lincoln Kirstein that pursued an aesthetic agenda more explicitly American than the productions of the American Ballet. Premiering works including Filling Station and Billy the Kid, the company toured from coast to coast and introduced audiences in both small towns and big cities to ballet. It provided choreographic experience for dancers Lew Christensen, Eugene Loring, and William Dollar and commissioned new music from composers Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson. Through his work with Ballet Caravan, Kirstein hoped to broach the entertainment monopolies of CBS and NBC and displace the dominance of the Russian ballet companies active in the United States. Kirstein’s father Louis was an active advocate for the company, using his connections in corporate America to make introductions for his son.

Thomson, Virgil (1896–1989)

Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri. During his childhood Thomson’s creative and intellectual gifts did not go unnoticed, and with the assistance of a scholarship financed by the Mormon Church, he enrolled in Harvard in 1919. It is safe to say that Virgil Thomson’s prestigious career as a composer, conductor, and music critic for the New YorkHerald Tribune would have unfolded differently had he refused a trip to Paris as accompanist with the Harvard Glee Club in June 1921. The Glee Club toured Europe, accumulating an assortment of favorable reviews in the process. When the Glee Club arrived in Italy, its conductor, Archibald Davison, fell ill and turned the concert reins at Pesaro over to the young twenty-four-year-old Thomson for what would prove to be one of the Glee Club’s most exciting performances. Having survived the demands placed on an American orchestra touring the artistic capitals of Europe, Thomson’s Harvard precociousness was transformed virtually overnight into an esthetic of maturity that his subsequent life and career would continuously validate afresh.

The Little Friends

Latouche had friendship with a circle dubbed by Virgil Thomson “The Little Friends,” which included Harry Dunham, Paul Bowles, Jane Bowles, and Latouche’s future wife Theodora Griffis, the scion of a distinguished and wealthy family. Latouche introduced Jane and Paul Bowles to each other. Latouche’s romantic relationship with Griffis led to marriage, although both were essentially homosexual. The Little Friends formed part of a larger group that included notable composers, such as Copland and Thomson, and artists, such as Kristians Tonny and Frederick Kiesler. Several of these artist friends drew Latouche’s portrait and photographed him. The social settings of these friends included the celebrated salon of Kirk Askew and his wife.

The Classical Music Mainstream

This chapter looks at how the American Symphony Orchestra League reported that thirty million people in the U.S. are actively interested in concert music. This does not mean jazz, popular ditties, hillbilly dance-bands, hymn singing, or wedding marches, but classical music. Writer Virgil Thomson noted in his column that whereas during the previous year ticket buyers had spent $40 million on baseball, patrons of classical music had spent $45 million. This passion for what Thomson called “serious music” had been stirred even as World War II was in progress, and by the end of the Fifties it was still going strong. Never before has there been such an interest in music in America. The changed atmosphere had been apparent even just a few years after the war's end. For composers, this made the future seem very promising.