HRO-Glee Club Concert Honors Randall Thompson

The Music Department will lose one of its best-known composers in June when Randall Thompson '20, Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music, retires.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, the Harvard Glee Club, and the Radcliffe Choral Society will present a combined concert tonight in Thompson's honor, under the sponsorship of the Music Department.

Thompson will conduct a program of his own music, including "The Peaceable Kingdom," commissioned in 1949 for the Glee Club and Choral Society, and the world premiere of the orchestrated "Frostiana."

Thompson said he was "very pleased to have Harvard musical forces combining" to honor him, because "all my musical roots are in the Yard--or just across Kirkland St."

He received an M.A. from Harvard in 1922, and after teaching at Wellesley, the University of California, Curtis Institute, the University of Virginia, and Princeton, he returned to Harvard in 1943 as the first occupant of the chair he now holds.

"I failed my voice test for the Glee Club, and I've been compensating ever since," he noted.

Among Thompson's former students at Harvard are G. Wallace Woodworth '24, James Edward Ditson Professor of Music; David G. Hughes '47, chairman of the Music Department; and James E. Haar '50, instructor in Music.

In 1929 Thompson wrote the controversial Carnegie Corporation Report on the teaching of music in liberal arts colleges, which discouraged giving credit for practical music.

"I've found that in places where musical organizations were voluntary, extracurricular activities, practical music flourished and had a splendid spirit. People were loyal to their organizations and they worked with them well. Individual performance was often of a very high order. On the contrary, where practical music was accredited as a part of the curriculum, there was apt to be far less enthusiasm, and far less accomplishment and loyalty," Thompson said.

After his retirement, Thompson will devote his time to composing and will retain no formal connection with the University.