One can hardly imagine the shock people felt when Four Saints in Three Acts was first produced. People shouted, jeered, and walked out while others yelled for decorum. They hinged on every word. Gertrude Stein’s words and Thomson’s music became one of the biggest hits the New York Stage ever witnessed. And when Gertrude attended, she walked up and down, changing seats and trying to take in the unusual opera from all vantage points. Four Saints in Three Acts had more than four saints and more than three acts. It was an opera about Saint Theresa of Avalon and Saint Ignatius Loyola in a Spanish setting. They were joined by Saint Settlement, Saint Theresa’s confidant, and Saint Chavez, the aide de camp of Saint Ignatius.The backdrops were made of cellophane and the cast was entirely black.
Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein were like ‘brothers’. He believed that music and words, in an experimental sense, had much in common. He had previously been intrigued by her work Tender Buttons (he carried this book in his back pocket) and he was intrigued by her odd arrangement of words and the distinctive reality and sound of each word (Critics say they stood naked on the page). He set out to put her opera to music. It was a gigantic task to put those words to music yet he did so in a little more than a year, rather successfully. Sound was more important than meaning. Like Gertrude’s words, the notes of Satie and Thomson had a reality and tone of their own.
Imagine the task of putting the following to music:
If a magpie in the sky on the sky cannot cry if the pigeon on the grass alas and to pass the pigeon on the grass alas and the magpie in the sky on the sky and to try and to try alas on the grass alas the pigeon on the grass the pigeon on the grass and alas. –excerpt from Four Saints in Three Acts
But it worked. Four Saints was a smash hit. It ran for sixty performances, a record for that era. Gertrude was becoming famous and Thompson was turning heads. He, Gertrude, and Alice became friends for life. Alice had some input into the score as she was musically trained. Virgil and Alice exchanged recipes. Thomson had come to Paris to fulfill a dream. At least he could ‘starve where the food was good’.Along with Stein, he was impressed with the compositions of Eric Satie. He saw them as dedicated craftsmen unlike the boozy crowd of the Mad Decade like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Unlike Satie, he remained purely American although he credits Satie’s Socrate with his metamorphosis and was
influenced by his simplicity and humor. For Thompson, Socrate was truly the 1920’s, similar to the works of Stein and Picasso.
Thomson became the center of a wide circle. He was friendly with Jean Cocteau, Les Six , which included Poulenc, Auric, Milhaud and Honniger, Gide, Hart Crane and Janet Flanner, Duchamp, Arp and a Harvard friend, Maurice Grosser, a painter who he lived with at 17 quai Voltaire. Gertrude Stein had found this apartment for him, a location where they would have lavish dinner parties on Friday evenings.
Thomson was often like a finicky old man, always neatly dressed and generally likeable. He was always ready with a quip or biting remark. He had befriended George Antheil but they had a falling out. Thomson had definite opinions about certain personalities. Like Stein, he shunned Ezra Pound who also saw Thompson as the enemy. Pound’s book about Antheil (Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony) was thought by Thomson to be nonsense.
During the years with Nadia Boulanger, when he was still studying, he met Aaron Copeland whose career Thomson may have helped launch. The group around this important composition teacher was called ‘the Boulangerie’ and she had a profound influence on him.
For a time, Thomson had been involved with Mary Butts. She was a heavy drinker, opium user, and amateur mystic. They were close for a while but the two were opposites in many ways and Thomson could not commit to her. She died in 1937.
The friendship with Alice B. Toklas remained and after Gertrude died and Alice fell on hard times, Thomson, being an old friend, helped take care of her needs.
The composer left Paris in 1940, along with Man Ray, as did most Americans. He went to work for the Herald Tribune as a music critic, a subject he knew so much about. He eventually suffered from a hearing loss and retired.
While in New York he lived on the ninth floor at the famous Hotel Chelsea where many literary figures resided including Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, and Tennessee Williams. The literati of America visited his apartment on many occasions. Thompson was always popular with creative giants whom he would play for on his grand piano.
He had self-organized his own memorial and died on September 30, 1989 at the age of 93.
The list of his awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Circle Award, the National Music Council Award, Kennedy Center Honors and twenty honorary doctorates.
Publications:The State of Music (1939)The Musical Scene (1945)The Art of Judging Music (1948)American Music since 1910 (1971)A recording of the opera was made in 1947
Time Magazine began its October 9, 1989 obituary of Virgil Thomson:
. . . noted for blending native melodies into sophisticated structure, as in his operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All; in New York City…
Double Deception is work of fiction recently published in serialization on the web. It is a story through the…
One can hardly imagine the shock people felt when Four Saints in Three Acts was first produced. People shouted, jeered, and walked out while others yelled for decorum. They hinged on every word. Gertrude Stein’s words and Thomson’s music became one of the biggest hits the New York Stage ever witnessed. And when Gertrude attended, she walked up and down, changing seats and trying to take in the unusual opera from all vantage points. Four Saints in Three Acts had more than four saints and more than three acts. It was an opera about Saint Theresa of Avalon and Saint Ignatius Loyola in a Spanish setting. They were joined by Saint Settlement, Saint Theresa’s confidant, and Saint Chavez, the aide de camp of Saint Ignatius.The backdrops were made of cellophane and the cast was entirely black.
Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein were like ‘brothers’. He believed that music and words, in an experimental sense, had much in common. He had previously been intrigued by her work Tender Buttons (he carried this book in his back pocket) and he was intrigued by her odd arrangement of words and the distinctive reality and sound of each word (Critics say they stood naked on the page). He set out to put her opera to music. It was a gigantic task to put those words to music yet he did so in a little more than a year, rather successfully. Sound was more important than meaning. Like Gertrude’s words, the notes of Satie and Thomson had a reality and tone of their own.
Imagine the task of putting the following to music:
If a magpie in the sky on the sky cannot cry if the pigeon on the grass alas and to pass the pigeon on the grass alas and the magpie in the sky on the sky and to try and to try alas on the grass alas the pigeon on the grass the pigeon on the grass and alas.
–excerpt from Four Saints in Three Acts
But it worked. Four Saints was a smash hit. It ran for sixty performances, a record for that era. Gertrude was becoming famous and Thompson was turning heads. He, Gertrude, and Alice became friends for life. Alice had some input into the score as she was musically trained. Virgil and Alice exchanged recipes. Thomson had come to Paris to fulfill a dream. At least he could ‘starve where the food was good’.
Along with Stein, he was impressed with the compositions of Eric Satie. He saw them as dedicated craftsmen unlike the boozy crowd of the Mad Decade like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Unlike Satie, he remained purely American although he credits Satie’s Socrate with his metamorphosis and was 
influenced by his simplicity and humor. For Thompson, Socrate was truly the 1920’s, similar to the works of Stein and Picasso.
Thomson became the center of a wide circle. He was friendly with Jean Cocteau, Les Six , which included Poulenc, Auric, Milhaud and Honniger, Gide, Hart Crane and Janet Flanner, Duchamp, Arp and a Harvard friend, Maurice Grosser, a painter who he lived with at 17 quai Voltaire. Gertrude Stein had found this apartment for him, a location where they would have lavish dinner parties on Friday evenings.
Thomson was often like a finicky old man, always neatly dressed and generally likeable. He was always ready with a quip or biting remark. He had befriended George Antheil but they had a falling out. Thomson had definite opinions about certain personalities. Like Stein, he shunned Ezra Pound who also saw Thompson as the enemy. Pound’s book about Antheil (Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony) was thought by Thomson to be nonsense.
During the years with Nadia Boulanger, when he was still studying, he met Aaron Copeland whose career Thomson may have helped launch. The group around this important composition teacher was called ‘the Boulangerie’ and she had a profound influence on him.
For a time, Thomson had been involved with Mary Butts. She was a heavy drinker, opium user, and amateur mystic. They were close for a while but the two were opposites in many ways and Thomson could not commit to her. She died in 1937.
The friendship with Alice B. Toklas remained and after Gertrude died and Alice fell on hard times, Thomson, being an old friend, helped take care of her needs.
The composer left Paris in 1940, along with Man Ray, as did most Americans. He went to work for the Herald Tribune as a music critic, a subject he knew so much about. He eventually suffered from a hearing loss and retired.
While in New York he lived on the ninth floor at the famous Hotel Chelsea where many literary figures resided including Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, and Tennessee Williams. The literati of America visited his apartment on many occasions. Thompson was always popular with creative giants whom he would play for on his grand piano.
He had self-organized his own memorial and died on September 30, 1989 at the age of 93.
The list of his awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Circle Award, the National Music Council Award, Kennedy Center Honors and twenty honorary doctorates.
Publications:
The State of Music (1939)
The Musical Scene (1945)
The Art of Judging Music (1948)
American Music since 1910 (1971)
A recording of the opera was made in 1947
Time Magazine began its October 9, 1989 obituary of Virgil Thomson:
. . . noted for blending native melodies into sophisticated structure, as in his operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All; in New York City…
Double Deception is work of fiction recently published in serialization on the web. It is a story through the memories of Dr Robert Bartlett Haas, a close friend of Gertrude’s,about the portrait of Gertrude Stein that had been done by Picasso before WWI. This portrait is now on view in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The story unfolds when Gertrude decides that she would like a copy of the painting done so she can keep a similar image in her summer home in Bilignin, near Belley not far from Aix Les Bains. She engages the copyist Morevna Vorobiev to do the job and when it is delivered even Picasso cannot tell the paintings apart since he sees them in a gas lit room.
After Gertrude dies, the painting is sent to New York where it is deemed a copy. Has the wrong painting been delivered? Through the work of two master art detectives it is determined that Miss Vorobiev, the lover of Diego Rivera, has copied the painting twice and has kept the original. The remainder of the story deals with the uncovering of the original, the solution of the mystery and the final hanging of the right painting at the Met.
It is, as Gertrude might have said, “a mystery with an ending”.
