Biography
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and music critic. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, on 25 November 1896, he died in New York on 30 September 1989. He studied at Harvard University and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
Thomson composed scores for documentary films including The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), The River (1938) and Louisiana Story (1948). The score for Louisiana Story received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1949. He collaborated with Gertrude Stein on operas such as Four Saints in Three Acts (1934). From 1940 to 1954 he was music critic for the New York Herald Tribune.
