Jacquelyn Helin
Portraits and other Works
Virgil Thomson's piano music can best be described as pure direct American plainsong. Hymn tunes get transposed, rhythms overturn or collide, often with comic results; cowboy songs turn into fugues. Thomson made use of all materials, from Sunday School ditties he learned as a child in Kansas City, to the tangos he heard in Paris in the Twenties, to the counterpoint of his formal musical education. Thomson's portraits often have the feeling of line drawings by a visual artist. This is because he …