Film Music from Copland and Thomson

 Paris 1925: Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston, 
Herbert Elwell, Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, two of the leading American composers of the 20th century, wrote some of their most appealing works for films.

The film scores of Copland, the more famous composer, are actually not as well known as his popular masterpieces such as Appalachian Spring, while many of Thomson's most recognized pieces were for the cinema.

This post brings together newly remastered versions of works by both composers in the film realm. All appeared here originally many years ago.

Apropos of the photo above, there also are links to works by the Americans Walter Piston and Herbert Elwell. All four composers studied with Nadia Boulanger in 1920s Paris.

For the film compositions herein, Copland and Thomson worked in a relatively simple, accessible idioms for works that centered on rural life. Their music can be contrasted with the urban focus of John Alden Carpenter's ballet score Skyscrapers, which recently appeared here, or some of George Gershwin's works.

Copland - Our Town; Thomson - The Plow That Broke the Plains

This 10-inch LP from 1951 brings together suites from scores by the two composers under the direction of Thomas Scherman and his Little Orchestra Society. Both are treasurable and both are in very good performances.

Thomas Scherman

Copland's music is from 1940. Vivian Perlis has written: "With the threat of impending war, Thornton Wilder's play Our Town, with its look back at an America of homespun values, was tremendously appealing. Copland accepted the invitation to compose the musical score for the screen version of life in the small town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. He explained, 'For the film version, they were counting on the music to translate the transcendental aspects of the story. I tried for clean and clear sounds and in general used straight-forward harmonies and rhythms that would project the serenity and sense of security of the story.'" The orchestral suite is from 1944.

The Plow That Broke the Plains was a Pare Lorentz documentary from 1936 that was sponsored by the US Resettlement Administration. Its purpose was to provide the background for the dust storms then devastating the Southwest. The centerprice of Thomson's suite is a memorably sarcastic piece called "Blues (Speculation)," followed by "Drought" and "Devastation."

LINK to Our Town and The Plow That Broke the Plains

Copland - The Red Pony; Thomson - Acadian Songs and Dances

Decca soon would follow up the coupling above with a 12-inch LP that combined Copland's music for The Red Pony with Thomson's Acadian Songs and Dances from the film Louisiana Story. Both films are from 1948.

Vivian Perlis writes about The Red Pony: "The film was adapted from a novel by John Steinbeck and featured famous Hollywood stars. But it was not a commercial success, and Copland's practical nature led him to recast the musical material for concert purposes. The Suite is in six sections with titles that match the action of the film. Although the melodies have a folklike quality, they are Copland's own."

While Louisiana Story was directed by the documentarian Robert Flaherty, it is a fictional work. The film was sponsored by the Standard Oil Co., although its name does not appear in the credits. The story concerns a boy, his pet raccoon, and friendly oil drillers. Thomson's Acadian Songs and Dances, which make up one of the two suites from the film, are delightful. The second suite from Louisiana Story is below.

LINK to The Red Pony and Acadian Songs and Dances

Thomson - Suite from Louisiana Story and Five Portraits

Thomson's suite from Louisiana Story contains music that was not derived from folk sources. The Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy had recorded the score for the film, and these experts for Columbia. Thomson's music was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949.

The coupling is a suite of Five Portraits of the composer's friends, the best known of whom are Pablo Picasso and the composer Alexander Smallens. Thomson himself conducts the Philadelphians in this 1945 recording.

The transfer is from an early 10-inch LP. (Thanks to Joe Serraglio for the use of his transfer!)

LINK to Louisiana Story and Five Portraits

Thomson - Suite from The River; Luening - Prelude, Two Symphonic Interludes

Thomson's other famous film score is for another Pare Lorentz documentary, The River, from 1937. It was this score that particularly influenced Copland, who called it "a lesson in how to treat Americana." The river here is the Mississippi and the sponsor of the film was the New Deal's Works Progress Administration. The opening theme of the "The Old South" is perhaps the composer's most familiar music.

Walter Hendl, Dean Dixon

The performance here is a good one, by the Vienna Symphony and the American conductor Walter Hendl.

Otto Luening

This early American Recording Society LP also contains works by the American composer Otto Luening, who became known for his tape and electronic works but in earlier times wrote in an accessible style that produced the Prelude on a Hymn Tune by William Billings and Two Symphonic Interludes. Here, the unidentified orchestra is conducted by the American Dean Dixon. Again, the performances are good.

LINK to The River and music by Otto Luening

Music by Walter Piston and Herbert Elwell

The composer Walter Piston has appeared here a number of times:

Howard Hanson's recording of the Symphony No. 3 is here, along with works by Wallingford Riegger, Alan Hovhaness and Henry Cowell.

The Incredible Flutist, Piston's most famous score, can be found in two recordings, both by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler:

• The 1954 recording is part of a collection called The Ballet, with works by Meyerbeer, Stravinsky, Ravel and Weber.

• The 1939 recording is here, along with MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2 (with soloist Jesús María Sanromá) and Piston's orchestration of the Moonlight Sonata's first movement.

The blog featured Herbert Elwell's music very recently: a recording of his best-known work, the ballet score The Happy Hypocrite. That same score also appeared in suite form by the Cleveland Pops Orchestra and Louis Lane. The latter post also includes a private recording of Elwell's Blue Symphony.

Virgil Thomson and Otto Luening

Here is one of the early LPs issued by the American Recording Society, which started as a non-profit with a grant from the Ditson Fund to record works by American composers.

The first side of this album is devoted to what I believe is the initial recording of a suite from Virgil Thomson's The River. Thomson has appeared here previously with one of his lesser-known works, the ballet Filling Station. The River, one of the composer's best known works, is a suite derived from the music from Pare Lorentz's 1938 documentary on the Mississippi. Thomson was perfectly suited for the documentary approach and its subject, with his use of simple forms and popular songs, and his tendency to remain just a bit removed from his source material, commenting on it with gentle irony. (One of the key motifs in the first piece is "The Bear Went Over the Mountain"; I imagine Thomson found this droll.) The combination of his music, Lorentz's Whitmanesque narration and the images became one of the definitive statements of late Depression Americana. The music itself was a major influence on Aaron Copland, heard most directly in Copland's score for the documentary The City.

Otto Luening

While Thomson's music for The River is well known, the Otto Luening works herein are not. These days Luening is remembered as a pioneer of electronic music, but these orchestral pieces have little to do with those works. The Prelude on a Hymn Tune makes use of source material from William Billings, an early American composer. It was common for composers in the first half of the 20th century to base a work on a theme by composer of an earlier day. Luening pointedly made use of a theme by an American composer. The other works on the record, Two Symphonic Interludes, are from 1935. (I believe the Prelude is from the same period.) All this music is accessible and accomplished, but not memorable in the way that Thomson's work is.

Walter Hendl, Dean Dixon

These performances were recorded in 1951. The "American Recording Society Orchestra" was a Viennese group, probably the Vienna Symphony (definitely so for the Thomson work), and they play the music convincingly. The Thomson is conducted by Walter Hendl, mostly known among record collectors as an accompanist, and the Luening works are led by Dean Dixon, the interesting American conductor who mostly worked in Europe. In the download is a 1952 article on Dixon from The Critic, an NAACP publication.

As mentioned above, the American Recording Society was a non-profit. It was established in 1951, with the works to be chosen by an advisory board that included Luening. The ARS was a record club of sorts; after you signed up, each month you would be offered a new recording. The Society advertised heavily in magazines.

LINK to February 2026 remastering