The primary purpose of this study is to provide a transcription for solo organ of Virgil Thomson's Symphony on a Hymn Tune. The study is two-fold: first, to explore the early life and career of Thomson with a focused view on how his organ and composition studies influenced the composition of Symphony on a Hymn Tune; and second, to present an original transcription of the work in a performing score for solo organ. In addition to the final score, the study provides an analytical overview along with a description of methodology used to create the transcription, and a discussion of issues encountered by the performing organist in playing the transcription. Discussions encompass organ registration, tempi, manual suggestions, articulation, phrase markings, and dynamic expression. Musical examples both from the author's transcription and Virgil Thomson's organ works are included as necessary. Two appendices are included. Appendix 1 presents the specifications for the Aeolian Skinner organ of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, on which the transcription was originally performed. Appendix 2 itemizes the registration lists used for the original performance of the organ transcription.

Diss.--Philosophie--New Haven, Conn.--Yale Univ., 1999. / Contient de nombreux exemples musicaux. Bibliogr. p. 561-610.

The period from the end of World War I through the 1950s has been called “the Golden Age of Drama on Broadway.” Subsumed within this period is another sort of golden age, of music in the American spoken theater, Broadway and beyond, c. 1935-60. Unlike more familiar, and better-studied, genres of dramatic music such as opera, ballet, and the Broadway-style musical, music composed for spoken dramas is neither a definitive part of the dramatic form nor integral to the work’s original conception. Rather, it is added in production, like sets, costumes, and lighting. This study traces the roots of this rich period of spoken-dramatic music to the collaboration of producer John Houseman, director Orson Welles, and composer Virgil Thomson on the Federal Theatre Project, beginning in 1936. The musical ramifications of that collaboration eventually extended to include composers Paul Bowles and Marc Blitzstein, influential theater companies such as the Theatre Guild and Group Theatre, innovative directors such as Elia Kazan and Margo Jones, and major playwrights such as Lillian Hellman and Tennessee Williams. Following a consideration of the forces that gave rise to this musically rich nexus and the people, materials, and practices involved, three high-profile theatrical collaborations are examined, along with three scores that resulted from them: Thomson’s score for Houseman’s 1957 “Wild West” Much Ado About Nothing; Blitzstein’s score for Welles and the Mercury Theatre’s 1937-38 “anti-Fascist” Julius Caesar; and Bowles’s score for the original production of Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1944-45). Each score is located within the musico-dramatic history that produced it, and analyzed within the context of the production for which it was written. This work aims to begin to recover a vast body of forgotten American dramatic music, to limn the role of the spoken theater in the careers of these three noteworthy American musical artists, to probe a busy intersection of high and commercial art forms, and to suggest music’s important role in the development of the American spoken theater.

A study of the critical work of Virgil Thomson, critic for the New York Herald Tribune and of Olin Downes, music critic for the New York Times, will perhaps give a better understanding of how different emphasis on purposes may influence critical work. Each man wrote brief, journalistic reviews. They attended many of the same concerts; yet, their critical judgments differed in many respects.

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