MK-F: This is an interview with Virgil Thomson.

VT: Well, what can I tell you?MK-F: I wanted particularly to get your evaluation of the Project. What you think it accomplished, whether you think it had . . .

VT: Well, I am not writing a history book. I have no idea what it accomplished.MK-F: No?

VT: Well, which is the project? Is this the Music?MK-F: Yes.

VT: Because I was not on the Music Project. I could do anything I wanted to do. Because I was working with people I knew and liked. Jack Houseman and Orson Welles, and we did lots of shows—well, three or four shows— together. Then I did one for the Living Newspaper, for which Joe Losey was the show director, in that case Imunction Granted.MK-F: Injunction Granted?

VT: Yes.NK-F; And you did the music for it?,

VT: Yea. We opened the very first of the all Federal Theatres to open, which was the Negro one in Harlem. We opened it the day they fired Rock Ryder (?). That got us started, and then our second production was the famous Macbeth.MK-F: Yes, I'd like to know about that.

VT: Well, then for two years we toured. As a matter of fact, it ran for so long that we left it running and moved downtown to the Maxine Elliott Theatre on 41st Street. We did several shows, including a whale of a French farce, under the title of Horse Eats Hat.MK-F: Oh, I remember that title.

VT: Yea, yea. Well, actually it was a French farce called Le Chapeau de Paille d'Italle. And everybody in the world was in that: Orson Welles, Joe Cotton and Arlene Francis, and Paula Laurence and Chubby Sherman. Everybody you could think of was in that.MK-F: And you did the music?

VT: I orchestrated the music for Paul Bowles. We used the music by him, and he couldn't orchestrate at that time, and so I orchestrated it for him. We had a huge orchestra: about 35 men in the pit and grand pianos in the boxes, and trumpet players in the upper boxes, and everything you could think of.MK-F: 'That must have been quite a production. But, now, the orchestra people in the pit--did they come from the Music Project?

VT: Oh, yes, certainly. As a matter of fact, they had to be staggered, because, on account of the deal with the union, they could only work four days a week, and we were playing, I think, six performances a week, or seven, something like that. And so we had to stagger them and have lots of rehearsals. You see, we could have as many people as we wanted, because the object was to hire people.MK-F: Right, yes. Now, did you also do sone film--documentary—music for the government?

VT: That had nothing to do with the WPA. In 1936 I did film music for something called The Plow That Broke the Plains.MK-F: Yes, that's what I remember.

VT: By Pare Lorentz. That waa done for the Resettlement Administration. And another one that followed in a year called The River, also by Pare Lorentz.MK-F: What about other music projects?

VT: Well, the Music Project had an orchestra. At one point this orchestra got itself involved with a dance project, and they gave a—it was the first orchestral performance of a ballet of mine called Filling Station.MK-F: I remember that title.

VT: Yes. Well, that's still repertory. Then it was a Music Project that worked on Park Avenue about 38th Street, and the Composers' Forum started there.MK-F: Yes.

VT: I think the first of the Forums--they started out by having just two composers each time—and I think it was Roy Harris and me. That was in 1935. [The Composers' Forum-Laboratory in New York started with one or sometimes two composers on a program. Roy Harris was on the first program on Oct. 30, 1935. Thomson was on the second on Nov. 12, 1935.]MK-F: That was when it first started—the first year. And Ashley Pettis started it, I believe.

VT: Right, Pettis, yes. Ashley Pettis, so far as I know, still exists. He is now Father Pettis. He went to Rome and did a lot of schooling, and he became a clergyman and he is now retired. He lives somewhere in the neighborhood of New York.MK-F: Somebody told me recently that he is in California right now.

VT: Could be. I haven't heard from him in a couple of years.MK-F: I want to try to find out where he is. And, were you on other Composers' Forum programs?

VT: Well, we didn't repeat. We didn't repeat composers.MK-F: Oh, you didn't?

VT: No. Long after the Government Project was over, the Composers' Forum went on existing. I think I an still a member of the board. But we found other sources of support. They started other Conposers' Forums around the country in various places. I think San Francisco was one. But that goes on still. It was a successful operation, the Composers' Forum.MK-F: Did you get a great deal out of your appearance there? I mean did it show you things about your music that you were unaware of before you heard it played there?

VT: Well, this wasn't the only performance of my music that I'd ever heard. You learn from your music one way or another. And I don't remember whether on that particular program there was anything I had not heard before. I do remember, though that the performance of the Filling Station with full orchestra was the first time I had heard that score played orchestrally. It was three or four ballets. You see* the troupe there was the one that is now the New York City Ballet. It was then called the Ballet Caravan. It was organized by Lincoln Kirstein. And they had played this ballet before* but with two pianos. On tour. But all of a sudden they managed to do a deal with the WPA Orchestra, and we had an orchestra performance in New York. MK-F: Ballet Caravan was part of the WPA?

VT: No, not at all. We only used the WPA orchestra.MK-F: Oh, you just used the orchestra.

VT: Yes, yes. I supposed there must have been dance projects, because there was the painting project, the sculpture project.MK-F: Yes, and writers!

VT: And the Theatre Project had lots of units. And did lots of very, very good performances. And you asked for, like, results. The most extraordinary result to me of the Theatre Project was the opening up of a new audience, an audience of professionals. People who were on the Projects came to one another's performances, and so it was a lively, intelligent, and, oh quite wonderful, audience—much better than the carriage trade or anything like that.MK-F: I remember it was an exciting period—the things that were done in the theatre were so interesting.

VT: Well, actually during the several years that it lasted, I think the New York Federal Theatre was the most striking and advanced, if you wish, theatrical operation that was going on anywhere.MK-F: And can you comment also on the Music Project, because certainly. . . VT: No, because I don't know that much about it.MK-F: Oh, you didn't attend their concerts?

VT: Well, maybe I did, and maybe I didn't. I don't remember. They started orchestras all across the country, you know. And what I do now about them is that these orchestras quite naturally played a great deal of American music, because they hadn't been told not to, and the American public likes American music until it's been told not to. It all worked very nicely. The New York WPA orchestra was honored by a half-a-dozen first-class conductors, you know. Thomas Beacham conducted them, Bruno Walter, I think and . . .MK-F: In fact, Otto Luening told me that when Thomas Beacham came to conduct sone Haydn, I believe it was, that there were such rave reviews that the New York Philharmonic began to perk up its ears.

VT: Sometime around around then Stokowski organized a Youth Orchestra and took it all over South America. I don't know whether that was a Federal project or not.MK-F: I don't think so, but . . .

VT: But it was a boon time in orchestral organization.MK-F: Were many of your works performed by the WPA symphony here?

VT: Many of my works?MK-F: Yes.

VT: Oh, I don't think an enormous number. But soae were.MK-F: But soae were, by the symphony—the WPA.

VT: Yes.MK-F: And what about other works of yours?

VT: I don't remember. I did things for the Theatre Project, and then during that same time I did a number of shows for the Broadway theatre, which had nothing to do with WPA. And I did the music for a Hamlet production of Leslie Howard's, and, oh, I don't know, two or three more. Oh, yes, Anthony and Cleopatra with Tallulah Bankhead. It didn't last very long, that one, Tallulah, was a marvelous comedienne, but she couldn't play tragedy. . . novel enterprise, was the Living Newspaper.It was very original. It was a nest of commies and the government was always scared to death of it. But there it was, and it was an original and very powerful fora.MK-F: Did you say you did music for some of the shows?

VT: Well, one of them, yes. That was the one called Injunction Granted, which was a history of labor relations in the United States courts. The very first of the shows, I think, was called Triple-A Ploughed Under. A very famous piece.MK-F: But you weren't involved in that one?

VT: No. No. They didn't know what to do with me, because everything I'd done kept running for so long, and so Joe Losey borrowed me for a production he had undertaken to do. The director of that project was a man named Norris Watkins.MK-F: That was which project?

VT: The Living Newspaper. Lehman Engel, who you've seen, was involved with a production of Murder in the Cathedral. I don't remember what else. In the middle of the 1930a, Local 802, the Musicians' Union (the New York Local) had a relief budget of a million dollars a year for its members. Musicians at that tine were attacked not merely by the Depression, but by what waa known as technological unemployment: The substitution of allmechanical music in dance halls and theatres for hand-made music. They were a great, great many union members out of work, and they needed help. MK-F: How long did the union have such a budget? You have any idea?

VT: They still have a quite large one. It isn't as large as that now. You can find that out by asking somebody up there. MK-F: I haven't talked with anybody there yet.

VT: You see, there are two union offices in New York. There's the national office, and then there is the New York local office. Local 802. And you will find it in information. They did a great deal. They were extremely active in helping out and relieving musicians. Mr. James C. Petrillo, formerly of Chicago, was the national head at that time, a very strong man, he was. And it was he who caused the start of the thing which still goes on, known as the Musicians' Recording Fund, in which a large number of millions of dollars every year are paid into a kitty by the recording companies to compensate for musicians on recording dates who get no further royalty from their performance of their work--the playing of their work. And this goes on. Actually the Composers' Forum in New York City is at least half supported by that Recording Fund. They give money for the performance or the music for the engagement of union musicians, on condition that no admission is charged. And it's administered regionally, too, so that musicians all over the country get . . . MK-F: Is that when it started?

VT: It started during the Thirties, yes. And it was Petrillo who got that going. It's usually administered by about one person, some highly responsible character who has a small office up on Fifth Avenue. It used to be Sam Rosenbaum. He's now dead. He was a Philadelphia lawyer. (End of Interview)