|
Institute for Studies In American Music |
|
|
|
|
|
Inside
This Issue: Inside This Issue I.S.A.M. Matters [1992] by H.W.H. Mail from Wiley by Richard Crawford Everbest: Remembering H. Wiley Hitchcock by Susan Feder H.W.H., Cowell, and New Music by David Nicholls H.W.H. Reflections by Ellie Hisama and Nancy Hager |
Sitting
for a Virgil Thomson Portrait by H.W.H. In Spring 1996,
while serving as Guest Editor of this Newsletter, I managed to convince Wiley
to write of this remarkable experience with a longtime friend. It turned out
to be the last article he wrote for this publication. In addition, as Wiley
points out below, Two
Birds was Thomson’s last completed work (J.T.).
Excerpt from the manuscript for Wiley Hitchcock: Two Birds Reproduced with
permission of the Virgil Thomson Foundation, Ltd. I
saw Virgil Thomson often during his last years, and regularly every summer,
when I was in Florence and he came to nearby Montecatini Terme for a few
weeks, to take the baths, drink the water, and lose some weight. (He claimed their salutary effect held him
through the “silly season”—Christmas and New
Year’s.) We had lunches or
dinners together; I remember two memorable ones, one at his very grand and
tranquil hotel—in fact called the Hotel Grand e la Pace—when he
introduced me to Betty Freeman, the other when my wife and I took him to Da
Delfina in the hill town of Artimino, overlooking a great sixteenth-century
Medici villa, and he brought along David and Karen Waltuck, just beginning
their rise to fame as chef and hostess of the restaurant Chanterelle in
SoHo. And often, when Virgil’s
stay at Montecatini ended, I drove him to the airport at During one of those drives, in the summer
of 1986, Virgil murmured, “I’d like to do your
portrait.” Nothing could have
surprised or pleased me more. To join
such earlier sitters as Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Paul Bowles, Dorothy
Thompson, Lou Harrison, Dennis Russell Davies! Those were the last frantic days of
AmeriGrove’s preparation. I
happened to tell Susan Feder, linchpin of the dictionary’s editorial
overseers, about Virgil’s offer.
“Wonderful!” she said.
“Let’s get him to do it right away and have it premiered
at the AmeriGrove launch party in November.” Some Macmillan executive urged the idea on
Virgil, who—a famously practical man—struck a deal: OK, a
portrait of Hitchcock in return for a free set of the four-volume dictionary
and a featured appearance at its launch party. Back in On a spring day about a year and a half
later, Virgil called again about a portrait date, to my surprise (I thought
he’d forgotten all about the matter), and we made another
appointment. No bathrobe this time,
but a similar invitation to sit down in the living room and chat. We must have chatted for a good half
hour—I was beginning to think he had forgotten why I was
there—when suddenly he said, “Well, let’s get to work. Come on.” He led me to the dining room. There on his long, plain dining table was a
sheaf of blank music paper, a jar full of sharp pencils, an eraser or
two. He beckoned me to a chair and sat
down opposite me, inquiring if I had anything to read. Yes, I did: bound galleys of Tim and
Vanessa Page’s book of selected letters of Virgil Thomson. And he went to work, with total immersion
in the task, never looking up at me or at anything else except the music
paper, occasionally erasing and rewriting, totally silent. About forty-five minutes later he
paused and asked, “Are you getting tired?” No, I
wasn’t. Back to work he
went. After about another hour, he
gave a little cry of pleasure.
“Look at this! The end of
the page . . . and the end of the piece!
Here, you can look at it—but you can’t ask me any
questions about it. And excuse me, I
have to pee.” What I looked at was a one-page,
untitled piece of piano music, basically in two-voice contrapuntal texture
but with some octaves, a key signature of G major, no tempo indication but
the warnings “senza espressione” and “senza pedale.” My portrait! A few days later a package came,
addressed, as was Virgil’s practice, to “H. Wiley Hitchcock,
Esquire.” It bore the manuscript—now titled—and a note
dated I responded with my own note.
“Dear Virgil: I’m pleased
and proud to have been a subject for a portrait. The MS arrived yesterday. I can’t play it yet: it looks simple
but isn’t, rhythmically. It also
looks 100% G-major diatonic—not one accidental on the whole
page—but it’s surprisingly acrid. I assume you didn’t
necessarily intend me to identify with ‘Wiley’ but I do, and
there’s nothing you can do about it. Sincerely, Wiley.” Virgil didn’t rise to the
bait—so cunningly couched, I thought, not as a question but a provocative
comment. Nor did I ever learn what
sparked the subtitle “Two Birds.”
Only later did I discover the piece printed as a contribution to a
festschrift for me, published as A Celebration of American Music (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1990) two years later. By then Virgil
was gone. My portrait had been his
last completed composition. —H.W.H. ISAM home Who we
are Contact us
ISAM Conferences and Lectures Copyright © 2005 Institute for Studies in
American Music, Conservatory of Music, |
