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.

1920s American Ballets by Carpenter and Elwell

Continuing a series of LP issues from the 1950s American Recording Society label, here is a fascinating coupling of two disparate ballets of the 1920s - John Alden Carpenter's Skyscrapers and Herbert Elwell's The Happy Hypocrite.

As with many if not all ARS releases, the scores were shipped over to Vienna for recording. The conductors were Meinhard von Zallinger for Skyscrapers and Walter Hendl for The Happy Hypocrite. The anonymous orchestra is the Vienna Symphony, per A Classical Discography, with both sessions taking place in 1952.

Carpenter - Skyscrapers

Carpenter (1876-1951) was about the same age as Frederick Converse, whose The Mystic Trumpeter recently appeared here. But while that example of Converse's music looked back to the age of Wagner, Carpenter sought his inspiration in 1920s America.

Skyscrapers backdrop by Robert Edmond Jones

Here is a depiction of the Skyscrapers opening scene, as captured in a contemporary review by Oscar Thompson:

With the parting of the curtains, blinking red lights at either side of the stage represent traffic signals and are "symbols of restlessness." The backdrop is an "abstraction of the skyscraper." Girders in abstract confusion; workmen in overalls go through the motions of violent labor while human shadows move meaninglessly by. Suggestions in the music of fox-trotting - rhythms of industry, of building, of working - urgent haste and confusion of city life. Whistles blow, workers emerge and dance toward "any amusement park of the Coney Island type" with its Ferris wheels, street shows, fun-mad, dance-addled crowds – swirling through rhythmic gestures, glorifying American girls’ nether extremities.

This was not the first time the composer had used contemporary American life as a subject. In 1921, he had written a ballet score based on a comic strip - Krazy Kat: A Jazz Pantomine. (I should mention that Frederick Converse too was fascinated by the American scene, writing in 1927 an orchestral piece called Flivver Ten Million in honor of Henry Ford's Model T.)

John Alden Carpenter

So Carpenter was composing jazz-influenced works even before George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue premiered at Aeolian Hall. But while Carpenter wrote Skyscrapers in 1923-24, it was not heard until 1926. Here is the background, per Maureen Buja:

The actual motivator behind this extraordinary ballet was, unexpectedly, Serge Diaghilev. He asked Carpenter to write a ballet "on the theme of the chaotically energetic American metropolis." This wasn’t Diaghilev looking forward as much as he was looking over his shoulder. The up-and-coming Ballets Suédois, performing at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, whose ballets looked at contemporary life through dance, was causing Diaghilev concern. The Ballets Suédois had started the race with their 1923 ballet to Milhaud’s La creation du monde.

But when the impresario received the Carpenter score, he put it aside, possibly because it called for a chorus, which he did not want to pay for. (Neither did ARS - the choral sections are dropped from this recording.)

The Metropolitan Opera took up the ballet in 1926, slotting it into a bizarre triple-bill with Puccini's comedy Gianni Schicchi and Leoncavallo's verismo Pagliacci.

Elwell - The Happy Hypocrite

Herbert Elwell

While John Alden Carpenter is remembered today, Herbert Elwell (1898-1974) is not - a shame because his music is worthwhile. His most frequently performed composition is the ballet The Happy Hypocrite, based on a 1896 short story by the English writer Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), who was famous then, less so today.

The LP's liner notes are inadequate, so let me present a description of the Beerbohm work, whose full title is The Happy Hypocrite, a Fairy Tale for Tired Men. Here is Jonathan Rogers:

The Happy Hypocrite tells the story of Lord George Hell, the worst of the rakes who stalked Regency London. He is a spendthrift, a gambler, a glutton, a drunkard, a cheat, a liar, a philanderer, and a fop. His one "virtue" is that he doesn’t smoke, but that is only because he considers smoking to be unfashionable. His life of debauchery has left him bloated and purple - a terror to all who see him.

Lord George Hell, as seen by George Sheringham
in the story's 1918 illustrated edition

Lord George Hell has never loved anyone but himself. But one day he meets a beautiful and saintly girl named Jenny Mere and loses his heart to her immediately. He makes a fool of himself - or, in any case, a different kind of fool - expressing his love to the girl on their first meeting. But she rejects him flat. She can see his wickedness in the lineaments of his face. She is saving her love, she says, for a man who has the face of a saint - a face that is a true mirror of pure love. 

Lord George catches sight of Jenny on stage

Lord George is heartbroken. But he is also rich. He is so rich, in fact, that he has made it his practice to get whatever he wants. He goes to the most gifted mask-maker in London and has himself fitted for a mask of a saint’s face. When he presents himself to Jenny Mere, she sees the face of the man she has been waiting for. She loves him and marries him. George leaves the debauched London scene behind to live an idyllic country life with his little wife.

Idyllic, that is, until the Lord's former consort, "La Gambogi," tracks him down and rips off the mask, only to find that Lord George's actual face has been transformed by true love into that of the saint.

So this fairy tale is indeed for the "tired men" who want to believe that they could live happily ever after with a young beauty. And the hypocrites are them, Sir George and even Beerbohm, who has concocted this immorality tale of money (and love) transforming the ugly and repellent into a saint.

Charles Weidman choreographed the ballet for the Humphrey-Weidman Company in 1931. That performance, however, used a piano reduction. It was not until 1932 that the orchestral version was heard, conveniently for the purposes of this post on a program with Skyscrapers. Both were part of a four-day Festival of American Music presented by Howard Hanson with Eastman School and Rochester Philharmonic forces.

The New York Times reviewer, John Martin, was none too happy with the stagings by Thelma Biracree and was of two minds about the music. His verdict on Skyscrapers:

Here is a composition that is not essentially choreographic for all that it has a valid pulse and in many spots utilizes actual dance rhythms. Lacking unified basis for action in its scenario, it becomes an assignment for a theatrical genius only. It proceeds on the simple fact, according to the program note, "that American life reduces itself essentially to violent alternations of work and play." This is an objective thesis, but remains to be dramatized. Lacking this creative dramatization, it sounds a good deal of the time like imitation Broadway.

The Happy Hypocrite was more to his taste, in part because he liked Beerbohm. He first complains that Elwell's music has not captured the author's "suave brilliance." He adds, however:

[Elwell] has succeeded eminently, however, in translating the Beerbohm mood into music. All the pseudo-rapture of this tongue-in-cheek moralizing is there, couched in the cleanest form and enlivened by instrumental color. For once we have an orchestral score for dancing that is neither too ponderous nor too self-contained to be danced to.

* * *

Skyscrapers has been recorded several times, which has helped me to cut the score into tracks (not done on the record). To my knowledge, The Happy Hypocrite has only been recorded otherwise in excerpted form by Louis Lane and the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, an LP that is available here. I was not able to track the Elwell piece for this reason.

Elwell taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music for many years, then at the Oberlin Conservatory. He also was the music critic of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. A private recording of his Blue Symphony is also available via the link above, coupled with Bloch's Piano Quintet.

The performances on the ARS disc are good, more so for the Elwell than the Carpenter. Skyscrapers lacks dynamic range, which gives the performance a relentless quality. Otherwise the sound is fine, and the Viennese performances are lively.

LINK

From the Back Room: Bloch and Herbert

No sooner had I posted Buster's Back Room, where I listed some of the many projects I had completed but never offered on this blog, than a few people asked for this record.

It's a good one - from 1952 and the American Recording Society, it includes two relatively neglected works: Ernest Bloch's Trois Poèmes Juifs and Victor Herbert's Cello Concerto No. 2.

Walter Hendl

The works are split between two conductors: Walter Hendl, an American who at the time was the music director of the Dallas Symphony, and Max Schoenherr, an Austrian whose recorded works tended to be on the lighter side, such as operetta. Both were accomplished musicians.

Max Schoenherr

The record did attract some notable critical acclaim. John Briggs of the New York Times led his column about recent recordings with these thoughts: "The American Recording Society, aided by a grant from the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, is continuing to turn up unusual and interesting works over-looked in the rush of ordinary commercial recording.

"Such a piece is the Victor Herbert Cello Concerto, newly available on records as performed by Bernard Greenhouse and the American Recording Society Orchestra, Max Schoenherr conducting.

Victor Herbert

"The concerto is a workable piece, designed for practical performance, affording the soloist ample opportunity to display his virtuosity. It is by no means a trivial work. The composer of Naughty Marietta and The Red Mill was also first 'cellist of the Philharmonic-Symphony and for some years conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony. His concerto is the work of a musician trained in the thoroughgoing nineteenth-century German school, writing for an instrument which he knows at first hand. Herbert’s manipulation of the orchestra is easy, fluent and unforced."

Bernard Greenhouse

Cellist Bernard Greenhouse, who was then a solo artist, would help found the famed Beaux Arts Trio in 1955, with pianist Menahem Pressler and violinist Daniel Guilet.

Ernest Bloch

Bloch's superb Trois Poèmes Juifs also received praise from the Times and the Saturday Review. The Times: "On the same recording is heard a fine performance of Ernest Bloch's sensitive and moving Trois Poèmes Juifs, played by the American Recording Society Orchestra under the direction of Walter Hendl." The Saturday Review added that the piece was "beautifully formulated" and "well-performed," and that Hendl directed with "eloquent effect."

The Bloch may be the sole recording of the work: A Classical Discography does not list another. Herbert's two Cello Concertos have each been recorded a few times.

Both of these performances are listed as being by the "American Recording Society Orchestra," which generally turned out to be a European ensemble. A Classical Discography lists the Herbert as being recorded by the Vienna Symphony, but does not have an ID for the orchestra heard in the Bloch composition.

The recording of the concerto was tubby (I've addressed that characteristic), although the cello was and is well caught. The Bloch is nicely done.

LINK

Robert Ward's Symphony No. 1; Alexei Haieff's Piano Concerto

Here are two fine mid-century works by two of the leading composers of the time, Robert Ward (1917-2013) and Alexei Haieff (1914-1994).

Robert Ward

Ward has appeared here before with his Third Symphony; today's work was his first effort in that form. This is the first time that I have featured one of Haieff's compositions on the blog.

Ward, born in Cleveland, attended the Eastman School as an undergraduate. His First Symphony dates from 1941, when he was a graduate student at Juilliard. It is a relatively brief, tonal but dramatic work, showing his early mastery.

Alexei Haieff

Haieff was born in Russia and came to the U.S. in 1931. He was a Juilliard student later in that decade, then went to Paris for work with Nadia Boulanger. He composed his piano concerto in 1947-48 while at the American Academy in Rome. It received its premiere in 1952 with Leo Smit as the soloist and Stokowski conducting.

This recording, made even before the premiere in October 1951, also features the excellent Smit. The conductor is Walter Hendl; discographer Michael Gray identifies the "American Recording Society Symphony" as the Vienna Symphony, which ARS often engaged for these sessions. Gray does not have a listing for the Ward symphony; however, it was likely recorded at about the same time, perhaps in 1951, when its conductor, Dean Dixon, was leading other ARS performances with the Vienna Symphony.

The orchestral work is very good for such unfamiliar scores, and the recordings are well balanced. The cover is unsigned, but appears to be by Peter Piening, a commercial artist who did much work for ARS.

Howard Swanson and David Diamond

Here is an early 10-inch LP in the American Recording Society (ARS) series mainly devoted to contemporary composers. It presents the first recordings of important works by Howard Swanson (1907-78) and David Diamond (1915-2005), both introduced by Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Swanson's Short Symphony, composed in 1948, was premiered by Mitropoulos with the New York Philharmonic in 1950. Here, the attractive work is performed by an orchestra directed by Dean Dixon. It is likely one of the Viennese ensembles that were busy in the recording studios throughout the 1950s.

Whatever their identity, the orchestra plays well for Dixon, particularly in the beautiful slow movement.

Howard Swanson

This circa 1952 recording was quickly succeeded by a Vanguard LP with Vienna State Opera Orchestra under Franz Litschauer, a reading I have not heard.

ARS followed up on this Swanson composition with another LP that included his Seven Songs, along with works by Roger Goeb and Ben Weber. I have that album and will transfer it later, along with a recording of Swanson's "Night Music" conducted by Mitropoulos.

David Diamond, 1955

David Diamond's Rounds for String Orchestra is possibly his best known work, commissioned by Mitropoulos when the conductor was still in his 20s. The ARS recording is, I believe, its first, and would be soon be joined by competing versions led by Vladimir Golschmann and Izler Solomon. The ARS recording is conducted by the underrated Walter Hendl, leading what is likely another Viennese orchestra.

The music is fascinating, with the formal structure providing ample opportunity for both extraordinary lyricism and exhilarating orchestral virtuosity.

The sound is very good. [Note (June 2023): this recording has been newly enhanced by ambient stereo.]

Deems Taylor and Paul Creston

Recently I asked the readers of this blog if any of a selection of my half-finished transfers would be on interest. I should have asked if any of them were not of interest, because all of them received votes, most of them several.

But the exercise was not without merit - it elicited far more comments than anything else I have ever published here! So I am going to go ahead and share various items as I finish them off. I started off this AM with a post on my other blog of two EPs by a fairly obscure vocalist, Bob Carroll. I had thought that only I would remember him, but no, a few of you did ask for his work.

Taylor in 1931

I suspected that the present post would be more desirable, and sure enough, many of you requested it. This 10-inch LP is one of the American Recording Society series from the early 1950s, combining highly accessible works by contemporary composers Deems Taylor and Paul Creston.

If Taylor's name lives on today, it may be primarily as the narrator of Disney's Fantasia. But he was a formidable presence on the American music scene for several decades, as critic, composer and broadcaster.

"The Portrait of a Lady" is an attractive suite from 1925 that veers between Delius and light music. Taylor, in his capacity as the representative of the New York World, reviewed the premiere himself, commenting, "The audience, probably composed of the composer's relatives, greeted the piece with what seemed to us highly disproportionate cordiality."

Creston

Paul Creston's Partita is from 1937, a relatively early work. Creston was a conservative like Taylor, although his music is less romantic than that of Taylor.

These performances by an anonymous orchestra led by Walter Hendl are better than some of the ARS recordings heard here. Michael Gray's discography claims that the orchestra is actually the Vienna Symphony, and dates the recording to sessions in June 1952. The sound is very good.

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

First Recording of Ives' Three Places

It's been a while since we had a post of American music. This is a notable one - it includes the first recording of Charles Ives' best known composition, Three Places in New England. This was one of the few Ives recordings to be made in the composer's lifetime.

The orchestra, which may be the Vienna Symphony under another name, plays this difficult music quite well under the leadership of the talented Walter Hendl. His fluid approach seems to suit this music, which can sound overblown with so many things are going on at once.

Walter Hendl

With Ives' music, it helps to have a scorecard, and there is an excellent article on this composition on Wikipedia.

The violin concerto by Robert McBride is a complete contrast. Breezy and virtuosic, it is nicely played by Maurice Wilk, who was active as a soloist, chamber player, and studio musician. This surely must be the only concerto whose three movements are subtitled in show-biz lingo a la Variety - "Sock 10-G," "Lush PixWix," and "B.O. Hypo." McBride taught at the University of Arizona and is perhaps best known for the Mexican Rhapsody that Howard Hanson recorded. He passed away only last year, as did Hendl.

A Classical Discography does identify the orchestra for the McBride as the Vienna Symphony. The sessions were in 1952.

This disk was issued in the same grant-funded American Recording Society series as the first record we featured on this blog a few months ago.

LINK to Ives and McBride