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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
Virgil Thomson's music is foolishness to some, a stumbling block to others, but those of us who love it love it with all our hearts, through thick and thin (which often as not means through bad and unknowing performances). Those who don't love it, don't see that there's anything there at all. They just don't get it. The music can also seem cryptic to players, since although it has few notes, it is nonetheless not at all easy to play. On any number of occasions I have had people tell me that the music seems to them to be just harmony exercises. I have never been able to explain it to them. If they don't see the great beauty of The Mother of Us All or Mostly About Love or the Cello Concerto, nothing I can say can make them see it. I simply sadly resign myself to the fact that between them and me is a great, unbridgeable gulf.
1 Selected Letters of Virgil Thomson, ed. Page and Page (New York: Summit Books, 1988), p.357 Google Scholar.
2 Letters, pp.348, 356–7.
3 Letters, pp.368–9.
4 The last also features Martyn Hill. All are conducted by James Bolle. The orchestra for the Symphonies is the Monadnock Festival Orchestra; for the others the Budapest Symphony Orchestra.
5 New York: A.A. Knopf, 1966.