irgil Thomson (1896-1989), became, by way of both his music and his writings about music, a very influential figure on the American musical scene of the 20th century. He attended Harvard, went with the Glee Club to Europe, where he remained on a Traveling Fellowship for a year, studying with Boulanger and meeting Cocteau, Satie and Les Six. Back in the US, Thomson graduated from Harvard in 1923, then went to New York where he studied with Rosario Scalera (who was later to be Gian Carlo Menotti's teacher). From 1925 to 1940 Thomson lived in Paris, where he took up composition in earnest. His associations with the American expatriate artistic community there and especially with Gertrude Stein have become the material of legend. In 1940, Thomson returned to the US and was appointed music critic of the New York Herald-Tribune. During the fourteen years that he held that post he established himself as one of the most perceptive and articulate writers about music and musicians in this country.

Thomson's music for the ballet Parson Weems and the Cherry Tree is typical of his compositional method. The melodies and harmonizations, though dating from the Federal period of American history, get refracted through Thomson's ear into a music that is at once both reminiscent and original — and entirely engaging. Though a man of great intellect, wit and sophistication, Thomson retained throughout his life a deep affection for the music he learned in church and at home as a boy.

Erick Hawkins, who commissioned the score for Parson Weems and the Cherry Tree in 1975, has written, "Many years ago I was amused to read that Parson Weems, for the fifth edition of Life of George Washington, in 1805, invented out of whole cloth the story of George's cutting down his father's favorite cherry tree, and then confessing to it. George and the hatchet and the cherry tree formed a charming picture in my mind for the stage. But where it came from I have no idea — I one day thought with a flash, 'Why, George DIDN'T do it. He was really too good a boy for that. His alter ego, his angel, must have done it, so that George could go to heaven.'" He goes on to explain how he created a character for himself, an 18th century clown, with an orange wig, to be George's angel. "And so the angel-clown chops down the tree right on the stage. In the dance also are Parson Weems himself, and Martha Washington and Molly Pitcher, with the American flag in beautiful stripes of red and white and a circle of stars on her head."

The Boston Cecilia's is the first complete recording of this work in its original scoring.

© 2004 Donald Teeters. All rights reserved.

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