Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle
Best known for an opera he set to Gertrude Stein's text,Four Saints in Three Acts(1934), and for the Pulitzer Prize-winning score of the documentary Louisiana Story (1948), composer  Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) was also an unswerving champion of modern American classical music  during his tenure as the powerful music critic of theNew York Herald Tribune(1940-54). His  works' tonality, stress on simplicity, and skillful use of traditional American tunes strongly influenced  Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and many others. Lively prose evokes the crusty character of an  American original in this enjoyably opinionated biography.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.