MAKING A LIVING

WRITING REVIEWS

Lacking a permanent position Thompson cobbled together literary writing and composition to generate income. Several months before his marriage, he had started writing book reviews for the Saturday Review of Literature. Five were published between December 11, 1926 and November 5, 1927, all of which deal with musical subjects—three contain actual musical com¬positions, a fourth concerns Wagner's lovers, and the fifth muses about the future of music. In the course of these reviews published under the heading Ars Lyrica, Thompson reveals considerable erudition and an appropriately heady literary style of description skillfully designed to engage his audience. This is illustrated by the opening paragraph of his November 1927 review of Sigmund Spaeth's Read ‘em and Weep, The Songs You Forgot to Remember.

When he reviewed Robert A. Simon's Bronx Ballads—after his work on The Grand Street Follies of 1926 in which he had unfurled tunes by sev¬eral composers—Thompson's interest must have been piqued by Simon's clever parodies of Bizet's Carmen, Rachmaninov's Prélude in C-sharp minor, Wagner's Tannhäuser, and other works in the introductions to songs. Some¬times Simon even tantalized the pianist with phrases such as “Like something you’ve heard before”! He must have been equally amused by Spaeth's mastery of musical style and ability to parody music from widely divergent nationali¬ties in Words and Music: A Book of Burlesques in which, among other things, he sets “The Musical Adventures of Jack and Jill” as an oratorio version, a Schubert version, an Italian operatic version, a modern French version, and finally a jazz version! What remuneration he received is unknown, but these reviews helped get his name before a well-educated readership.

Following below are more detailed accounts of his activities at some of the festivals, competitions, and some conservatories. In some cases competitions are part of the festival. The information has been gathered from concert programs and printed material from the festivals.

NORTH AMERICA

1. UNITED STATES: Norfolk, CT, Garrett Lakes, Maryland, and the Harid Conservatory, Boca Raton, Florida.

Parisot enjoyed a long and fruitful association with the Yale Summer School of Music in Norfolk, CT, playing much solo repertoire in addition to his other duties. He often performed new works there before he performed them in larger venues. On occasion he brought his students to perform and sometimes invited illustrious colleagues. The relaxed and informal atmosphere made this festival a special place. And it was here that Parisot also nurtured his interest in art.

Parisot played his first concert at Norfolk with pianist Leopold Mittman on 19 July 1950, a solo program that included the Villa-Lobos Fantasia and the Quincy Porter Fantasy and Dance (the Porter written especially for Parisot)– both pieces that had been on his debut recital earlier in that year. Parisot also gave the premieres of two other solo works expressly written for him, one by Alvin Etler, the Concerto for Cello and Chamber Group, and the other the extraordinary virtuoso solo vehicle with which he had a tremendous success, as we have seen: Parisonatina by Donald Martino. In 1971 Parisot performed the piece that Yehudi Wyner wrote expressly for him, De Novo. And at some point he and Keith Wilson also performed the von Winter Concerto for Cello and Clarinet. Among the major solo concertos that Parisot performed at Norfolk are the Dvorak Concerto, in 1967, the Lalo Concerto, in 1970, and a Hindemith Concerto Op. 36, No. 2, also in 1970. And there were others.

From 1959-1975, a period of seventeen years, Parisot is listed on the faculty of Norfolk; then subsequently he is also listed from 1980-1982, 1985- 1986, and 1989-1990; and there are programs that confirm his continued activity in Norfolk to the late nineties.

EARLY FAMILY HISTORY

Randall Thompson's family roots extend deep into America's past. The Sturgis family on Thompson's maternal side can be traced back to the pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower in 1620. Subsequently they travelled from Cape Cod to Maine where they settled. In more recent times Randall's great-grandfather, George Le Baron Randall (1815-94), married Caroline Matilda Sturgis (1822-93) on October 16, 1845. Their son, Ira Hildanus Randall (1847-1919), married Adeline (Addie) Morse Webber (1847-83), and their daughter Grace Brightman Randall (1870-1932) became Randall's mother.

On the paternal side Randall's great-great-great-grandfather, Alexander Thompson (1761-1827), who had immigrated from Perth, Scotland in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, settling in Antrim, New Hamp¬shire, married Elizabeth Nutt (1772-1840), and their son, Daniel Thompson, was born in 1794. At this point the Ladd family—originally of English origin but for generations living in Haverhill, Massachusetts—came upon the scene when Daniel Thompson married Persis Matilda Ladd (1793-1879). Their son, William Ladd Thompson (1823-94), Randall's grandfather, married Sarah Bickford Varney (1837-1920), the daughter of Captain Samuel Var¬ney (1796-1875) and after her death Mary Archer (1801-83). William Ladd Thompson, a prominent doctor in Augusta, Maine for many years, purchased a farm on a mountain in Vienna (pronounced “Vy-enny” by locals), Maine called Scratch ‘n Scrabble where the family gathered during the summer. Their son, Daniel Varney Thompson, Randall's father, married Grace Bright¬man Randall in Augusta, Maine on September 5, 1893.

RANDALL THOMPSON'S FATHER AND MOTHER

Born in Augusta, Maine on May 10, 1867, D. V. Thompson, belonged to a family with strong ties to that city. His brother Frederic Lincoln Thompson and sister Mary E. Thompson (Aunt Mary [Mollie]), were also both born there. “Uncle Fritz” was chairman of Amherst's History Department, and Mollie, a nurse, maintained her own nursing home in Boston.

Daniel Varney Thompson's description of his early years and career up to 1923, entitled “Annals of a Schoolmaster,” sheds important light on a ca¬reer that had a considerable impact on the education of his three sons.

Thompson occasionally joked about his birth year remarking: “I was born in 1899 and Aaron Copland in 1900. That makes me a 19th-century composer.” For most of his career, he swam steadily against the tide of atonality, serial¬ism, electronic music, and other avant-garde manifestations that preoccupied so many of his 20th century contemporaries. This is not to say, however, that he was ignorant of such trends, that he did not admire some compos¬ers whose works used them, or that he failed to champion the performance of contemporary music of all types. Let us not forget, for example, that while in Rome during 1924-25 Thompson had flirted with astringent dis-sonances and rhythmic complexities influenced by Italian composers such as Malipiero and Casella with whose compositions he had come in contact. Simply put, in his own compositions once he returned to the United States in 1925, he consciously chose “the road not taken” by so many composers of his own generation. His position endeared him to some while inviting the disapproval of others.

As early as November 28, 1926 he commiserated with Leopold Mannes: “League last night and Guild [of Composers] tonight. Do you suppose we’ll ever get anything played at one of those concerts, Leo? I wish I thot that I had it in me to write a piece for 6 instr.s, 6 meas. long, such as was played last night!” For Thompson, who was thoroughly schooled in musical literature of the past and equally cognizant of that of his own time, the rhythmic, harmonic, and textural complexities and innovations that gained notoriety for many composers in the twentieth century, and which occupied so much of the ink spilled by critics and analysts, became foreign to his compositional style. His compositions, however, could not be mistaken for works of a previous century: the anthem Fare Well, for example, abounds in consecutive parallel fifths and successions of unresolved seventh chords, both of which would have incurred the ire of renaissance and baroque theorists.

SEARCH FOR A NEW POSITION (SPRING-SUMMER 1941)

Once President Bok's decision had been communicated, Thompson realized that a peaceful separation was more advantageous for his career than a protracted, bitter struggle. With Europe at war and with a wife and four children under the age of fourteen, he worried about finding employment before the fall 1941 academic term commenced. After the news of his resignation became public, and having consulted friends, he investigated several opportunities: primarily one at Harvard, the other at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Moreover, Bronson asked whether Thompson had any interest in returning west if such were possible. There was even an unsolicited overture from the University of Minnesota.

First, Thompson inquired of Woodworth, then Chairman of the Harvard Department of Music, about a possible appointment there. Discussion must have taken place during his February 7-8, 1941 trip to Cambridge for Visiting Committee meetings. Thanking Woodworth on February 11th he wrote:

Woodworth updated Thompson on February 20th writing in part: “I regret the long silence, but I assure you we have not been inactive. There have been consultations with the Dean and he in turn is occupied in taking up the ques¬tion with the authorities in the University… .” Five days later their commu¬nications crossed. Thompson notified Woodworth by telegram that another job possibility had arisen.

CURTIS IN 1939

During the late 1930s Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music (C.I.M.), founded by Mary Louise Curtis Bok in 1924, went through a rough patch that was not unlike the one that ended Randall's two-year tenure as Director of the Institute in June 1941. Josef Hofmann (1876-1957), who had headed the piano department from C.I.M.'s inception and was its Director from 1927-38, was being eased out of his position by Bok. Gregor Benko and Terry McNeill, who have written about Hofmann's demise as Director, described how it transpired.

Under these circumstances, and when no solution presented itself, Hofmann tendered his resignation on September 26, 1938. Then, after summarily re¬jecting Bok's effort to retain him as a piano instructor on an hourly basis, he moved his family to California where he eventually suffered a mental break¬down. Bok quickly saw to the removal of virtually every material vestige of Hofmann's lengthy association with the Institute. The account of his resigna¬tion contained in her President's Report to the Board of Directors on June 1, 1939, therefore seems rather ingenuous.

HARVARD BECKONS THOMPSON HOME

Harvard's invitation for Thompson to join its faculty was made with due consideration of the Music Department's needs and a careful look at a candidate pool winnowed over months to three finalists. Having met regularly during fall 1947 to discuss issues regarding an appointment, senior members of the Department authorized A. Tillman Merritt to forward their recommendation to Provost Paul H. Buck on January 15, 1948.

The Music Department consider that the candidate for this permanent post should have the following qualifications: wide cultural background, practical musicianship, scholarly knowledge, the regular production of cre¬ative work, extended experience in successful teaching and intellectual in¬dependence and curiosity. We believe that Randall Thompson has all these qualifications in a combination singularly suited to the needs of this Depart¬ment.

In 2010, Beatrice Heuser published a book entitled Thinking War: The Evolution of Strategy from Antiquity to the Present. In his review in the Journal of Military History, Andrew Lambert called the book “sophisticated and wise” – “epic,” even. But Heuser has little to say about the Middle Ages, covering the entire period in just four pages. She argues that there was “little medieval literature of relevance” to her book because, “how to wage war…was…for a thousand years largely confined to the work of Vegetius.” Apparently, after De re militari, the next “text on warfare that is no longer either a historical treatise or a legal one, nor a copy of Vegetius,” is Bouvet's 1385 Tree of Battles. She then asks the begged question: “Why was there relatively little writing on the way to wage war in the Middle Ages?” The answer she considers “perhaps the most conclusive” is that, because God determined the outcome of war, there was little use speculating how to influence it. She is thus compelled to conclude that there was little intellectual basis for strategy in the Middle Ages.

Heuser's understanding of medieval religion is quaint, but her book and others like it uniformly stand on the purported absence of extant medieval strategic texts in the West (be they called manuals, treatises, or textbooks). Those manuals that did exist were textbooks of ancient works like Vegetius's De re militari. In 1921, Frederick Taylor argued that “the Middle Ages had accepted such books as authoritative and had failed to improve upon them.” His opinion has stuck: in his very recent book, Strategy:A History, Lawrence Freedman claims, “the vital lessons [on warfare] were all still believed to be contained in classical texts.” Likewise, Azar Gat's 2002 History of Military Thought posits that “[m]ilitary theory was then simply the synthesis of the best military models of the cultural past, whether in Greece or Rome”; this is evidently because “very little had changed from the classical era to Machiavelli's time.”5 It is of little wonder that B. H. Liddell Hart could summarize the issue by mocking “the drab stupidity of [the Middle Ages’] military course.” Liddell Hart saw the Middle Ages as a rather inconsequential interlude in the history of strategy and seemed to lament being forced to acknowledge them at all.

The concept of knights and men-at-arms leisurely sparring against each other in the middle of a castle courtyard to pass the time of day is one which has often been taken for granted in modern fiction, yet a contradictory view that knightly combat was clumsy and brutish has arguably persisted within scholarship and amongst the general public for even longer. Such conflicting notions arise from problems regarding the veracity of when, where, and how men-at-arms trained for combat and practiced their fighting skills. Indeed, there remains significant doubt over whether or not military men actually did practice individual combat skills outside of battle or tournaments, reflected in the scant discussion of training and practice within the corpus of research on medieval warfare. This uncertainty is reflected in Michael Prestwich's comprehensive study of medieval warfare, which offers only brief comments about the training of archers in the fourteenth century, noting that practice was not necessarily highly regarded. John Beeler and John Carter have also expressed skepticism, asserting that for the early Middle Ages at least, the only training a knight usually engaged in was the practical business of actual battle. Further doubts have been raised by the observation that some men, particularly John Hawkwood and Robert Knollys, began their military careers as archers, presumably developing their skills in arms through a combination of talent and practical experience rather than regular exercise in knightly combat.

This lacuna in the study of chivalric training practices has largely stemmed from a lack of firm evidence in medieval sources for regular training, a problem that Helen Nicholson, Sydney Anglo, and Richard Barber have explored in some detail. However, the idea that men of the military elite were indifferent as regards regular training, even though their pride, status, or livelihood were closely related to martial prowess, has sat uneasily with a number of scholars. James Hester and John Clements have both sought to overturn this belief in the last decade, pointing out that the regular training of men-at-arms is an area that has long been neglected. Steven Muhlberger has remarked that “warriors in the fourteenth century must have talked endlessly and in detail about combats they had witnessed or about famous fights that had involved their friends, companions or relatives,” suggesting the popularity and importance of battle skills to men-at-arms.