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.

American Music with Foldes and Winograd

Today's subject - as it often is around here - is mid-century American music. The sources are two albums that are not often seen. The first is an anthology of piano works by eight composers performed by an artist whom I did not associate with this repertoire - Andor Foldes. The second is the first recording of Aaron Copland's Music for Movies, coupled with a suite derived from three of Kurt Weill's American musicals, as conducted by Arthur Winograd on one of his many M-G-M LPs.

Andor Foldes Plays Contemporary American Music

I was surprised to discover this 1947 album of Andor Foldes (1913-92) playing American piano music. I associate his name with the music of his teacher Bartók and other stalwarts of the European canon. He was, however, a naturalized American citizen, having emigrated here in the 1930s, remaining until he returned to Europe in 1960 for professional reasons.

Foldes' 1941 debut in New York was devoted to Bach-Busoni, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Bartók and Kodaly, but by the time of his 1947 Town Hall program, he had added works by the Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson and Paul Bowles to the mix, likely the items on this Vox album.

In addition to the three Americans, the Vox collection includes short works by Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and William Schuman. These were among the first recordings of these compositions.

The album was also among the first from the now-venerable American Vox label. (There had been a German Vox earlier in the century.) The US company started up in 1945, and made this recording the following year, per A Classical Discography. The resulting set apparently did not come out until 1947, when it was reviewed late in the year both in the New York Times and Saturday Review. Both brief notices are in the download, along with reviews of Foldes' 1941 and 1947 recitals.

Andor Foldes

The album reviews were good; the recital notices were mixed. Foldes was praised for his accuracy, but at least in 1941, the recital reviewer found his sound hard and his playing loud. By 1947, this had moderated into the notion that his secco tone was well suited to the contemporary repertoire, borne out by these recordings.

Copland - Music for Movies; Weill - Music for the Stage

Conductor Arthur Winograd (1920-2010), once the cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet, made any number of recordings for the M-G-M label in the 1950s, when it was active in the classical realm. Quite a good conductor, Winograd these days is remembered primarily for his long tenure as the head of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

This particular recording dates from 1956 and was made with the "M-G-M Chamber Orchestra," probably a New York studio group. The LP combines two appealing scores, one prepared by the composer, the second by other hands following the composer's death.

Aaron Copland's Music for Movies, which comes from 1942, assembles themes he wrote for The City, Of Mice and Men and Our Town. The best - and best known - are "New England Countryside" from The City and "Grovers Corners" from Our Town. I believe this was the first recording of this suite in orchestral form, although "Grovers Corners" had been recorded on piano twice - including by Andor Foldes in the album above, under the name "Story of Our Town." The other recording, by Leo Smit, is available on this blog in a remastered version. It is from a 1946-47 Concert Hall Society album Smit shared with Copland himself.

Arthur Winograd at work

Kurt Weill's Music for the Stage was arranged for this recording by M-G-M recording director Edward Cole and composer Marga Richter, whose own music has appeared here. The arrangers followed Weill's own procedure, utilized in Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, of employing the theater arrangements while substituting a solo instrument for any vocal lines. It works seamlessly for this suite assembled from lesser-known (to me, anyway) items from Johnny Johnson (three pieces), Lost in the Stars and Lady in the Dark (one each).

Contemporary reviewer Alfred Frankenstein pronounced the Copland suite to be effective and the Weill "trash," strange considering that the latter composer influenced the former. Reviewers were more to the point back then, and held (or at least expressed) stronger opinions.

Frankenstein also opined that the "recording and performance are of the best." I can agree with the latter judgment, but the recording is another matter. It was close and harsh, so I have added a small amount of reverberation to moderate those qualities. [Note (July 2023): these files have now been remastered in ambient stereo.]

By the way, Winograd had almost no conducting experience when he began recording for M-G-M. Edward Cole had turned up at a Juilliard concert that Winograd conducted, was impressed, and offered him a recording session. This anecdote is contained in an interview with the conductor included in the download. Also on this blog, Winograd can be heard conducting music by Paul Bowles.

Both these recordings were cleaned up from lossless needle drops found on Internet Archive.

LINK

More Copland and Thomson Film Scores

Four years ago a post on this blog presented an American Decca recording of film music by Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson from the Little Orchestra Society and Thomas Scherman. Here is a companion post with more music by the same composers and the same performers, also from 1952.

This time around we have a 10-inch LP with music from Copland's score for the film Our Town, and a suite from Thomson's music for The Plow That Broke the Plains.

Thomas Scherman

Scherman was not terribly well regarded as a conductor during his lifetime (Ned Rorem tells the story of walking out on a Scherman performance of Rorem's own music), but in my view these are accomplished performances of most affecting music, beautifully recorded.

LINK to February 2026 remastering

Copland and Thomson Film Scores

This is a follow-up to my earlier post containing Virgil Thomson's music written for the film Louisiana Story, which came out in 1948. There are two suites pulled from this music - the one heard on the earlier post by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the composer's direction, and this one, called Acadian Songs and Dances, which contains music that Thomson derived from published folk collections.

In this performance, the Thomson is coupled with film music written by Aaron Copland, the Children's Suite from The Red Pony, from 1949.

Both suites were relatively new when this recording from the Little Orchestra Society and Thomas Scherman was issued in 1952. With the films' similarities in theme, setting and time, and the connection between the two composers, the two works make highly complementary companions on disc.

The performances from the New York-based ensemble are very fine, and the simple recording is excellent. It is a good example of what used to be called "hole in the wall" recording - that is, the recording is so coherent that it gives the impression of taking place behind the speaker. That's an effect I like, but the "hi-fi" crowd wanted things to be more close up, so the microphones got closer and more numerous and by the end of the decade multi-miked ping-pong stereo was in vogue.

The music here is simple, yet sophisticated in its own way, and the performance is highly sympathetic.

LINK to February 2025 remastering

More Virgil Thomson in Philadelphia

I feel fortunate to follow up last week's post of rare Virgil Thomson with more Thomson from Philadelphia, again courtesy of Joe Serraglio.

This is if anything even more worthwhile, with some of Thomson's most successful scores. The Three Pictures are simply superb - I suggest you read the composer's note for a lucid discussion of both his intent and his technique. On the latter topic, Thomson writes, "The value of the procedure lies, of course, not in its ingenuity but in whatever suggestive power it may be found to have." In the case of these works, that power is considerable.

The William Blake songs are just as successful, if in one case controversial. One of the songs here is a setting of Blake's The Little Black Boy, intended as a plea for racial equality, but at times interpreted as itself racist. With hindsight, it is easy to understand why - Blake's poetry contrasts the boy's black face and white soul, for example. These recordings have been reissued twice - in both cases without this song. Accounts differ about whether this was with the consent or against the wishes of Thomson. I certainly hope I don't offend anyone by posting the full set. I am sure, though, that everyone will agree that the music is exceptional - both simple and sophisticated, in Thomson's usual manner - while Mack Harrell's singing is faultless. The songs were written for him and it shows.

The Pictures were recorded in February 1954 with the composer conducting, and the songs in November 1952 with Eugene Ormandy on the podium - both in the Academy of Music.

Again, the transfer and scans are by Joe - I was on the clean-up detail. Thanks again, Joe!

Virgil Thomson in Philadelphia

I am bringing this file LP to you courtesy of my friend Joe Serraglio. I asked Joe if I could present it here because it is an important and somewhat rare record, and because I wanted to feature Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The first side of this record contains music from Virgil Thomson's score for Louisiana Story, a 1948 film by Robert Flaherty. The filmmaker was famous for documentaries, but this was a fictional treatment of a story involving an oil crew and a young Cajun boy. The film, funded by Standard Oil, was so successful in using the documentary style that it is still mistakenly called a documentary today.

Thomson himself had experience with Pare Lorentz's documentaries in the 1930s, and this music is in a somewhat similar style. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Thomson in 1949. The Philadelphians recorded both the soundtrack to the film and this suite, which uses an augmented instrumentation. The sessions for this recording were in May 1949 in the Academy of Music. In addition to the music captured here, Thomson also prepared a set of Acadian Songs and Dances from the film. I will be presenting these pieces at a later date in the the 1952 Little Orchestra Society/Thomas Scherman recording.

On the other side of the LP at hand, Thomson conducts the orchestra in five of the many "portraits" he composed of friends and associates for diverse instrumental forces. This set was recorded in May 1945 and originally issued on 78.

Joe has shared this recording elsewhere, so for those of you who have seen it before, the only difference here is that I have re-equalized Joe's excellent transfer a bit, and cleaned up the covers.

Thanks again to Joe!

LINK to February 2026 remastering

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

Hershy Kay and Virgil Thomson Ballets

Here we go with one of my favorite discs of American music. Ignore the clunky cover - it has nothing to do with the music.

The works inside are two ballet scores written for the New York City Ballet. Hershy Kay's Western Symphony on very familiar western tunes, and Virgil Thomson's Filling Station, one of his lesser-known pieces from the 1930s.

The cover cites the choreographers as well as the composers - George Balanchine along with Kay, and Lew Christensen along with Thomson. I don't recall another record doing this for ballet scores - after all you are not getting the ballet along with the music itself.

Kay was mostly known as an orchestrator, and this piece is delightful in that regard. Thomson's contemporaneous works were The River and The Plow That Broke the Plains, which have been recorded several times. There is a modern recording of Filling Station, but I don't think it could be much better than this 1954 version by Leon Barzin and his New York City Ballet Orchestra, which was made shortly after the premiere of the Kay-Balanchine ballet.

The back cover of the record has informative notes by Balanchine, which I've included in the file. It also has a fuzzy photo of Barzin smoking a cigarette and leading the band.

NEW LINK (JUNE 2014)