Disruption and isolation marred the final years of Boulanger and Stravinsky's dialogue. Old age made it difficult for them either to write to others or to read letters they received, drawing into question the fidelity of texts they dictated. During this time, Boulanger remained an avid collector of Stravinsky's compositions, though for the most part his affectionate messages no longer adorned them. And Boulanger continued to attend performances of his works, but nothing comparing to the detailed parsing of the Parisian premiere of The Rake's Progress appears in these letters. Instead, Boulanger becomes rather taciturn regarding Stravinsky's music, remarking often that in each piece there resided “a great lesson” or that each work “spoke better for itself.” Ultimately, her words reveal a dedication to her imagined concept of Stravinsky and an abiding devotion to their friendship that extended until Stravinsky's final years.

In his letters, Stravinsky becomes increasingly abrasive and at times defensive. Gone is the playful, kind man of the 1940s. In its place is an officious professional, occupied predominantly by tours and commissions. There are brief moments where one senses the Stravinsky of the past, such as in his telegram to Boulanger that Jean Cocteau had died (October 11, 1963). But otherwise Stravinsky's letters become a laundry list of places he has committed to visiting and concerts he has agreed to perform, even more so than before. Questions of who is behind the words found in these letters echo throughout this chapter.

Certain moments stand out as remarkable in this section. Among them is the discussion of Pierre Boulez from April to May 1967, as well as Stravinsky's palpable rage following the bungled Parisian premiere of Threni on November 14, 1958—and Boulanger's anticipation of his wrath. Similarly, Boulanger's despair at the passing of Prince Pierre of Monaco (November 14, 1964) and her disappointment at Stravinsky's refusal to accept a commission for the concert in celebration of Winaretta Singer, the Princesse de Polignac (November 7–24, 1964) are poignant moments in this last portion of the letters. Also present is the theme of coming together, and there are numerous references on both parts to in-person visits.

The first piece of correspondence kept by either Boulanger or Stravinsky appears in Boulanger's archives and is a single calling card, dated December 19, 1929, sent to her by Stravinsky to wish her season's greetings. This small gesture suggests that Stravinsky and Boulanger had been in contact, however superficially, in the years preceding Soulima Stravinsky's studies with Boulanger. One wonders if Raïssa Boulanger, who had previously corresponded with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, may have in some way aided or encouraged the connection between her daughter and Stravinsky. The first steady trickle of documents begins nine months after this greeting card, with Stravinsky's request that Boulanger oversee his son's musical education. During the course of his first year of study, Soulima became romantically involved with one of Boulanger's American students, Diantha Walker (May 9, 1930). Soulima's affection for Walker grew increasingly intense, and a year later Boulanger found herself trying to smooth matters over with his mother (April 8, 1931). Though sympathetic to the couple, Boulanger yielded to the wishes of Catherine Stravinsky, who clearly articulates her vision for her son and for married life in general in this first chapter.

Upon growing closer with the family, Boulanger found herself invited to attend the world premiere of Stravinsky's mature neoclassical work, the Symphony of Psalms. The concert took place in Brussels, Belgium, under the baton of Ernst Ansermet on December 13, 1930. Following this concert and through her role as teacher to Soulima, Boulanger gained increased access to the music of Igor Stravinsky. She attended rehearsals for the symphony in Paris as well as the work's Parisian premiere on February 24. She also began teaching courses on the symphony at the École normale de musique, promoting the Symphony of Psalms as a true modernist masterpiece.

Likely dating from a few months after the composition's premiere is the first piece of correspondence of Boulanger's present in Stravinsky's archives. Rather than a prose letter, the document is instead a list of inconsistencies Boulanger documented between Stravinsky's recording of the symphony and his piano/vocal score, prepared by Soulima.

THOMPSON'S DIRECTORSHIP BEGINS

Following President Bok's address at the beginning of the fall term, Thomp¬son led the student body in singing Bach chorales plus music by Mozart and Palestrina. During his years at Curtis there were two choral groups: a Madrigal Chorus of twenty-five students begun the year before he came conducted by Barber, and an Institute Chorus that Thompson established and conducted. Unfortunately, both were disbanded before his brief tenure end¬ed. Noted Barber authority Barbara Heyman has written:

Musicologist and performer Alfred Mann, who sang in both groups, remem¬bered the Institute Chorus.

He also remembered that the Madrigal Chorus had two projects: rehearsing Monteverdi's Book 2 madrigal Ecco mormorar l’onde (not well known at the time) and making a studio recording for broadcast on April 23, 1940 of Bar¬ber's 1939 A Stopwatch and an Ordnance Map about the death of a soldier in the Spanish Civil War.

WORKING IN NEW YORK CITY 1925-26

The years between his arrival stateside in late October 1925 and his marriage in early 1927 were challenging but exciting for Thompson. First he had to find work and establish an American reputation, cultivate a number of impor¬tant musicians upon whom he could rely, and learn about the business aspects of his profession.

Once back, Thompson stayed briefly with his parents in Boston, where his father was headmaster of the Roxbury Latin School, before renting an apartment in New York's Greenwich Village in a four-story 1899 building at 180 Sullivan Street and taking up residence there. Looking back years later he recalled:

He returned to a country in the middle of Prohibition (1920-1933), and a city, that was reported to have had more than 30,000 speakeasies to “ease the pain.” Moreover, 1926 was the year that saw the death of Claude Monet in France, the first use of 16 mm film in the United States, the publication of Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, the opening of Martha Graham's first dance studio, and the impressive debut of the canine Rin Tin Tin as the biggest box office draw.

In spite of pecuniary angst, he returned with a growing group of in¬fluential friends: Howard Hanson was now Director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York and a prominent conductor; Leopold Mannes's parents headed the Mannes School of Music; Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge continued to support composers and performers in the States and abroad; Elwell and Sowerby were gaining prominence as composers; and Malipiero would give him sage advice concerning his Second Symphony in the early 1930s. Contact had been established with BSO conductor Serge Koussevitzky, and New York City boasted numerous influential Harvard alumni including Daniel Gregory Mason who congregated at places such as the Harvard Club and the Century Association where Thompson became a member.

POST-STROKE RECOVERY

With Randall at home recovering from his stroke, Margaret flew from Kennedy Airport to Paris on October 2, 1975, and in the following days visited Giverny before going to London on the 7th to attend a number of theater productions. On the 19th she flew to Paris for fittings and by early November was back in Cambridge.

Meanwhile Randall was well enough by November 11th to resume occasional visits to several of his Boston clubs, where he enjoyed camaraderie and intellectual stimulation. In December he travelled to his first post-stroke conducting engagement, this in Lincoln, Nebraska at the First-Plymouth Congregational Church where Jack Levick was organist and choirmaster. Anticipating a return to what he loved, Thompson wrote:

While there, at a Sunday service he conducted the Plymouth Choir and the Nebraska Wesleyan University Choir in his Alleluia and Frostiana (nos. 1 and 6) among other pieces. Levick conducted performances of The Nativity on the evenings of December 12 and 13, 1975 before Thompson returned to Boston via United Airlines on the 14th. Almost immediately he was involved in rehearsals for the Tavern Club's December 18th production of Promotion, Oh Promotion (RT 105; play by Daniel Sargent) for which he wrote four brief numbers: a march and three songs.

In January 1976, growing in strength, he travelled to Cleveland for a concert at the Epworth-Euclid Church.

“I’m glad I’ve done more than compose. The other jobs make composing more interesting,” remarked Randall Thompson when interviewed in 1950. By then he was an eminent professor at Harvard University whose thirty-year career following graduation from Harvard in 1920 had already included study abroad, teaching, composing, conducting, accompanying, researching, writing, and work as an administrator. Although today Thompson is pri¬marily thought of as a composer of choral music sung by tens of thousands around the world, the simple fact is that the greater part of his career was spent as an academic. Teaching was his most important priority, one that often left him little time for composition. He was a distinguished and sought after music educator whose ability to lead as an administrator and whose superb educational vision and integrity have left an indelible mark on music education in the United States. He loved to travel, especially to his beloved Gstaad, Switzerland, and reveled in Italian culture.

The seminal event in his early career—one that drew great attention to him, both positive and negative—occurred when he returned to America in the early 1930s following a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship that saw the composition of his highly-regarded Symphony no. 2 in E minor. Thomp¬son had relinquished his untenured teaching position at Wellesley College in 1929 to accept the Guggenheim, which was subsequently renewed for a sec¬ond year. Married with two children and with a third due in July, he returned home in May 1931 staying with his wife Margaret's parents in Montclair, New Jersey while looking for a full-time academic position to support his family. None having materialized, he quickly accepted part-time positions as guest conductor of the Dessoff Choirs during Margarete Dessoff's leave of absence and of the Madrigal Choir and Supervisors's Chorus at the Juil¬liard Graduate School. For the Dessoff Choirs he wrote his satirical piece Americana (commissioned by The League of Composers) on texts by H. L. Mencken. He also published occasional articles in Modern Music, Musical America, and Musical Quarterly and contributed a number of book reviews to the Saturday Review of Literature. A significant opportunity came in late 1931 when an Association of American Colleges “Subcommittee on selec¬tion of director” unanimously nominated him “for director of the investiga¬tion of college music under the sponsoring committee.”

While College Music: An Investigation was wrapping up in February 1935, the Thompsons established residence in Peace Dale, Rhode Island about eight miles south of Saunderstown. From there, with a wife and four young children to support, he once again sought work, but no academic position ma¬terialized for the 1935 fall term. While doing so, he maintained his interest in attending concerts when he could, and on February 5th, along with a large group of composers, he was in New York City for a concert performance of Dimitri Shostakovich's new opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by the Cleve¬land Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski. He was once again in the city on the 18th to hear a League of Composers concert at the French Institute featuring Bartók's String Quartet no. 4 and Frederick Jacobi's String Quartet no. 2 (both Pro Arte Quartet), five songs by Nicholas Nabokoff sung by Anna Les¬kaya accompanied by Harrison Potter, and Roger Sessions's Piano Sonata no. 1 performed by John Duke. His informative review of the music was soon published in Modern Music. Ten days later he was in Washington D.C. to hear his own Second Symphony.

Over the next two years he wrote an occasional article, accepted an invitation to lecture again at Surette's Concord Summer School in 1935 as mentioned above, slowly resumed his compositional activity, was appointed secretary to the Harvard University Music Department Visiting Committee in 1934 and chair of a sub-committee on curriculum reform in 1935, had a growing number of performances of his compositions, lost his mother-in-law to illness in 1935 and his father shortly thereafter, and finally received an interim teaching position at Wellesley College for the 1936 spring semester. When pressures became acute in late 1935, he travelled to London and St. Anton, Austria to recover his equilibrium before starting the appointment at Wellesley. These years, immediately preceding his move west to the University of California at Berkeley in fall 1937, were the last before his academic career took flight, and he was never again unemployed until he retired.

Donald Martino's description of the Parisonatina.

Here follows the composer's own description of his work—a description that was often reprinted in the program when the piece was performed, as it was when the piece was performed on 6 June 1969 at the New England Conservatory of Music. (Parisot was on the faculty of the New England Conservatory from 1967 until 1971, under Gunther Schuller.) Credit: New England Conservatory Program.

“All those fjords—and sometimes there was just enough space for the pilot to go through those two mountains. My heart was going up and going down. I was so scared,” Parisot said of his unique tour of Alaska and nearby locations in Canada. The tour lasted from 17 February to 27 March 1958, and included Kitimat, Prince Rupert, Ketchikan, and many other locations. Parisot traveled to many areas on a small plane that went through the mountains, sometimes up at a steep angle. He had a fur covering and special case for his cello because of the danger that the cello might crack in the extreme cold. The tour was sponsored by the Alaska Music Trail, which had as its mission to bring great music to communities in Alaska.

Parisot wrote of his experience in a piece in the Reader's Digest, which was translated into several languages. He got many concerts from this publicity. The piece was titled, “A Matter of Communication,” and in it he spoke of the importance of performing in small towns as well as in large communities, and of the importance of knowing audience reaction to his performance. This is something he lived as a performing artist and also wants to pass on to his students–something that defines him as a performing artist.

Parisot was welcomed by the local fishermen, who invited him to their homes and made him dinner. “Going up, I never paid a dinner or lunch. I remember King Crab—it was one leg for twenty people.” He described the warmth of the people—and the cold outside.

Parisot gave the “Keynote Address” at the Harid Conservatory Commencement Exercises in Boca Raton, Florida, on 6 May 1994. He is listed as being on the “Board of Advisors.”

[Handwritten document, by Aldo Parisot, in the possession of Aldo Parisot]

Harid Commencement 1994

Class of 1994, Faculty and Friends,

I am honored to be here today as guest speaker at Harid Conservatory's commencement ceremony. But rather than give a formal commencement address, I would like to offer you something more like a talk about the joys as well as the trials of a career in music. In the language of today, I'd like to share with you the good news as well as the bad news.

Although English is not my native language—which I'm sure you never could have guessed—I discovered at a very early age that my real native language is music. And that wordless language has a power unmatched by any other. Those of us privileged to learn it are blessed, indeed, even though learning it presents an immense challenge that can be daunting, sometimes discouraging and occasionally even tedious. But becoming fluent—truly fluent—in this wonderful language can contribute to a life of uncommon happiness and fulfillment. It certainly has for me and I want nothing less for each of you.

Of course I am talking mainly about fluency as a “speaker” of the language, although listening with well-trained ears is ultimately almost as important. Ears that are quite unlike those of the legendary American General Ulysses S. Grant, who once bragged that he knew only two songs. “One,” he said, “ is Yankee Doodle, the other one isn't.” Although a few concertgoers may fit into this category, we as musicians must train our ears to detect every nuance of sound, phrasing, tension and release—the entire musical landscape. While it may go without saying, don't ever underestimate the power and importance of solfège. Being able to hear the music in your head before you've played a note—no matter if it's “Yankee Doodle” or a Bach suite—is just as necessary to a musician as being able to imagine the sound of the spoken word is to a poet.

BACKGROUND AND FOUNDING OF MUSICAL FELLOWSHIPS AT THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

The idea of establishing a place in Europe where American architects, paint¬ers, and sculptors could congregate and study had taken root when a group was planning for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. A temporary American School for Architects in Rome was established in 1894, but this was dissolved after two years and reformed as the American Acad¬emy in Rome. Just after the turn of the century, with the financial assistance of founding members from New York including J. P. Morgan, J. P. Morgan Jr., John D. Rockefeller Jr., and the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations among others, an endowment was established. After functioning in various locations, the Academy was finally situated at the Villa Aurelia on Rome's Janiculum Hill and in buildings on adjacent land subsequently purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, Sr. and transferred to the American Academy. Eighteen years later, the American School of Classical Studies merged with the Acad¬emy thus combining fine arts and classical studies under the auspices of a single administration.

In 1915 Academy Secretary C. Grant La Fargue cogently summarized the Academy's intent.

At home, Parisot continued to seek out new challenges, including newly composed works and works of extreme difficulty, such as the Schoenberg/ Monn Concerto. Other composers were attracted to his warm, colorful sound and beautifully phrased playing and wanted to write for him.

He took the triumph of the Parisonatina to the prestigious venue of Alice Tully Hall in New York on 14 January 1970. The concert included premieres of new works dedicated to Parisot: a composition by James Drew (The Maze Maker, for solo cello and tape) and also one by Joan Panetti (Small Pieces for Gregory).

A new work by Alvin Etler was written especially for Parisot and was for an unusual combination of woodwinds, strings, brass, and one percussionist. Parisot requested a moto perpetuo at the quick tempo of metronome marking 144 for the last movement. (Etler was on the faculty at Yale—in 1942 he came to Yale as conductor of the University Band.) Parisot had suggested in the summer of 1970 when the two met during the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival that Etler write a piece for him. From Etler:

Parisot has written on the back of this letter, perhaps as a draft: