MUSICALLY SPEAKING WITH MILDRED KAYDEN: VIRGIL THOMSON (RADIO)
Summary
One in this series of talk shows that aired on WEVD in the 1950s and 1960s in which composer/librettist/Vassar music professor Mildred Kayden interviews renowned performing artists about their musical influences. In this program, Kayden talks with composer and music critic Virgil Thomson.
Topics discussed include: Thomson's upbringing and musical background in Kansas City, Missouri, and the influence of Southern Baptist hymns on his music; his experiences with notable musicians during his time in Paris; Thomson's use of the “musical portrait” technique and the subjects to which he applied it; the nature of traditional American music and its use of humor; the lyrical particulars of the languages in Thomson’s opera “Four Saints in Three Acts,” with Gertrude Stein as librettist; how instrumentation and presentation serve as a means of moving the story forward; the nature of “source music”; the relationship between music and the works of William Shakespeare, and the sparing use of music in Shakespeare's plays; Thomson's use of traditional folk and Acadian music in scoring the 1948 Robert Flaherty film “Louisiana Story”; and whether classical music is experiencing a “decline.”
Includes the following musical selections: the finale of “Four Saints in Three Acts”; and “The Alligator and the Raccoon” from the score of “Louisiana Story.”
(The program is followed by part of another radio show, “The Language of Music,” hosted by Gerrard Darrow.)
Mildred Goldstein studied music at Vassar College under Ernst Krenek, from 1940 to 1942. After graduation, Goldstein worked as an instructor of music literature at Vassar College as well as a composer and lyricist. In 1950, she married Bernard Kayden, taking his name and composing under the name Mildred Kayden. During her career, Kayden wrote operas (including “Mardi Gras” and “The Last Word”) and scores for musicals such as “Call the Children Home,” “Storyville,” “Sepia Star,” and the hit 1974 Off Broadway show “Ionescopade” (revived in 2012 by the York Theater in New York City), as well as music and lyrics for the NBC television program “Strangers in the Land.”
Mildred Kayden’s weekly radio program, “Musically Speaking” -- in which she interviewed luminaries from classical music, opera, theater, dance, and jazz -- aired from 1956 to the early 1960s on WEVD in New York, followed later in the 1960s by the radio program “Forum of the Arts.”
Cataloging of this program was made possible by The Kayden Foundation.
Details
- NETWORK: WEVD
- DATE: November 30, 1999
- RUNNING TIME: 0:29:36
- COLOR/B&W: N/A
- CATALOG ID: 110134
- GENRE: Talk/Interview
- SUBJECT HEADING: Talk/Interview; Music - Analysis, appreciation
- SERIES RUN: N/A
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Mildred Kayden … Host
- Virgil Thomson … Guest
- François Couperin
- Gerrard Darrow
- Robert Flaherty
- William Shakespeare
- Gertrude Stein