Virgil Thomson used the phrase 'the Commando Squad' to describe a small band of American composers, including himself, who took collective action in the 1930s to establish that there was such a thing as an American composer.
Though Thomson was puckishly invoking militaristic imagery here, the cause was real, and he wrote about it vividly, especially in his 1966 autobiography. Decades later, I got the story directly from the source during my frequent visits to his apartment at the Chelsea Hotel when I was writing his biography.
Born in Kansas City, Mo., in 1896, Thomson came of age when American music, he believed, remained beholden to European models. Turning yourself into an American composer meant going to an American college or conservatory for basic training, then heading to Europe to immerse yourself in the great heritage.
By the 1930s, many American composers had had enough. They had to take control of their field, Thomson argued: set up associations to publish and perform their own works; finagle their ways into established institutions; and assert themselves with distinctive, if varied, American personalities. Hence his description of the five-member Commando Squad, loosely led by Aaron Copland and whose other enlistees were Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Roy Harris.
Asked to organize a fantasy festival, I would present overlooked symphonic and chamber works by this posse of Americans. When was the last time you heard a performance of Thomson's fresh, beguiling and wildly unconventional 'Symphony on a Hymn Tune' or Piston's elegant Viola Concerto, with its sublime slow movement?
I fret over the neglect of many Thomson works. The two wondrously daffy, oddly affecting operas he wrote with Gertrude Stein, 'Four Saints in Three Acts' and 'The Mother of Us All,' have found important champions and turn up in productions. But when will some major company do a full staging of his final opera, 'Lord Byron,' with a libretto by the poet, playwright and actor Jack Larson? Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera but never performed there, 'Lord Byron' could be a dream-come-true publicity project, if only because the charming Mr. Larson is a pop culture icon: During the 1950s, he played Jimmy Olsen in 'The Adventures of Superman' television series.
My debt to Thomson, who died at 92 in 1989, is something I think about every day. When I started writing reviews for The Boston Globe in the mid-1980s, Thomson, one of the most important, lively and stylish music critics of all time, became my mentor. I would send him photocopies of every review I wrote for The Globe, then report periodically to the Chelsea Hotel for Thomson's post-mortem analyses. I still have those copies with his penciled-in comments.
But back to the Commando Squad. Thomson overstated the cohesiveness of this group. There were real tensions among its members. The easygoing Copland became the leader because he was the one person everyone else trusted. Piston shared Thomson's conviction that American composers should work on their own behalf. But he was no rabble-rouser. By 1926, he was teaching at Harvard, where he remained for decades, thriving in academia. Thomson thought Piston a pompous pedant. Still, securing a beachhead in a major university was good for the cause.
Harris, a laconic Oklahoman, gave his music a homespun authenticity that audiences responded to. Sessions was the group's uncompromising intellectual. He had long supported Copland's efforts to organize composers. But he dismissed the idea that there could be an 'American school' and thought all works should be held to rigorous international standards.
Still, the Commando Squad, though short-lived, scored some victories, including publication ventures and the founding of composer alliances. Copland and Thomson believed that, besides turning out concert works, composers should be engaged with the real world and write incidental music for the theater, pieces for student ensembles, whatever was needed. Copland was proud that his original score for the 1949 film 'The Heiress' earned him an Academy Award. That same year, Thomson won the Pulitzer Prize for the suite from his film score to 'Louisiana Story.' He is still the only composer to have received this prestigious award for film music.
So, what about my festival? For one program, I would draft Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic to perform symphonies and film scores by Copland and Thomson. The concert could open with Copland's suite from 'Our Town,' the wistfully beautiful score he composed for the classic 1940 film version of the Thornton Wilder play. This would be followed by Thomson's Suite from 'Louisiana Story,' little heard these days. Audiences would be swept away by the plaintive beauty and folkloric character of the music.
After intermission would come Copland's vibrant Short Symphony, completed in 1933 when he was embroiled in Commando Squad activism. The final work would be Thomson's sui generis 'Symphony on a Hymn Tune.' Though completed in 1928, it languished until it was given its belated premiere by the New York Philharmonic in a 1945 performance conducted by Thomson. At the time, he was the chief classical music critic of The New York Herald Tribune, a conflict of interest that would be outrageous today.
For the other symphonic program, I would again draft the Philharmonic but present the concert at Carnegie Hall and ask Marin Alsop to conduct. It would open with one of Piston's smart, inventive Neo-Classical symphonies, perhaps the Second (1943) or the Sixth (1955), both of which I admire. I would couple a symphony with Piston's remarkable 1957 Viola Concerto, with the Philharmonic's superb principal violist, Cynthia Phelps, as soloist. After intermission? How about Harris's unabashedly American, big-hearted Third Symphony, composed in 1939?
In between, there could be a chamber music evening, maybe at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village to lend a little downtown atmosphere to my festival. How about the violinist Jennifer Koh and the pianist Benjamin Hochman, two exciting artists of the new generation (who happen to be married), in Copland's stirring Violin Sonata (1943) and Sessions's involving, intricate Duo (1942)?
After intermission, the brilliant pianist and contemporary-music champion Blair McMillen could play Sessions's bracing Second Piano Sonata (1946). To end, Mr. McMillen could be the soloist in an inexplicably neglected work from the mid-1920s: Harris's Concerto for String Quartet, Piano and Clarinet. I'd pick the clarinetist Anthony McGill and the Brentano String Quartet to join Mr. McMillen.
Harris's pulsing, restless chamber concerto exudes spunky vitality and romantic fervor. Here is the voice of a member of the Commando Squad in good standing.
Virgil would be pleased.
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