Gertrude and Virgil Thomson
One popular success led to another. In the 1920s, Gertrude had begun a playful collaboration with the composer and pianist Virgil Thomson. He was part of the modernist music scene in Paris with Francis Poulenc and Nadia Boulanger. His partner was the painter and writer Maurice Grosser. Thomson set some of Gertrude’s poems, such as ‘Susie Asado’, to music:
What is a nail. A nail is unison.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Or from ‘Preciosilla’:
…allmost, a best, willow, vest, a green guest, guest, go go go go go go, go. Go go. Not guessed. Go go.
Toasted susie is my ice-cream
He played the piano and sang the words and found in doing so he revolutionized English musical declamation. He thought if a text was set judiciously, just for the sound of it, meaning would take care of itself.
And the Stein texts, for prosodizing in this way, were manna. With meanings already abstracted, or absent, or so multiplied that choice among them was impossible, there was no temptation toward tonal illustration, say, of birdie babbling in the brook or heavy heavy hangs my heart. You could make a setting for sound and syntax only, then add, if needed, an accompaniment equally functional. I had no sooner put to music after this recipe one short Stein text than I knew I had opened a door.
Thomson saw that a true creative union for Gertrude’s words was not with modern painting but with modern music. In 1927 he set to music a 3,000-word piece of Gertrude’s ‘Capital Capitals’. It evoked, he wrote:
Provence, its landscape, food and people, as a conversation among the cities Aix, Arles, Avignon and Les Baux which are called Capitals One, Two, Three and Four. It also reflects the poet’s attachment to that sunny region which she had first known as an ambulance driver in World War One.
He took Gertrude’s words
If in regard to climates if we regard the climates, if we are acclimated to the climate of the third capital…
The first capital is one in which there are many more earrings.
The third capital. They have read about the third capital. It has in it many distinguished inventors of electrical conveniences.
and set them to music for four male voices with him at the piano. This music went through many styles, none of which related to the words: Spanish rhythms, lyrical flights, church harmonies, fanfares, lines intoned on one note, chants… He described the piece as a cantata and it lasted eighteen minutes.
‘Capital Capitals’ had a one-off performance as a midnight entertainment at a costume ball given by Gertrude’s friend and Natalie Barney’s lover, Lily de Gramont, duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre, at her eighteenth-century house in rue Raynouard. At the last minute, one of the singers got ill, so Virgil Thomson sang his part as well as playing the piano.
The partygoers read into it what they would. Lily de Gramont lined her garden paths with blue candles. Concealed in the bushes was a quartet with hunting horns. The Polish-born opera singer Ganna Walska arrived in a six-foot-wide white satin decolleté dress with a ten-foot train. Lily met her at the door, said ‘you know the size of my rooms’ and sent her into the garden, ‘and there all evening she paraded like a petulant peacock’.
Gertrude adored the ‘Capital Capitals’ evening, as seemingly did everyone there. It was extravagant, stylized, theatrical, entertaining. Eighteen minutes of shared entertainment was different from 900 mystifying pages to read all on your own.
Four Saints in Three Acts
Gertrude and Virgil Thomson discussed producing a whole opera with her libretto and his music. Gertrude gave the ground plan:
I think it should be late eighteenth-century or early nineteenth-century saints. Four saints in three acts. And others. Make it pastoral. In hills and gardens. All four and then additions. We must invent them. Next time you come I will show you a little bit and we will talk some scenes over.
She wanted the saints to be Spanish. St Teresa of Ávila and St Ignatius Loyola were the main ones. She did not stick at four; she included at least twenty others, including a St Answers and a St Martyr, a St Plan and a St Settlement. And there were two Saints Teresa – a contralto and a soprano.
There were one-line scenes and Gertrude’s usual subversions: in one of the more than two scene twos of Act Three, ‘Pigeons on the grass alas’, became an aria for Saint Ignatius.
Pigeons on the grass alas.
Pigeons on the grass alas.
Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass.
Pigeons large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the grass.
If they were not pigeons what were they.
Virgil Thomson made ‘If they were not pigeons on the grass alas what were they…’ break into a chorus with the next lines ‘They might be very well, very well…’, while offstage was a celestial harmony, ‘Let Lucy Lily Lily Lucy Lucy let.’
As ever, Gertrude sent verbs, nouns and adjectives to the wind. Stage directions were fleeting and not easy to follow: ‘Saint Teresa half in and half out of doors.’ ‘Saint Teresa preparing in as you might say.’ There were mundane asides: ‘How do you do.’ ‘Very well thank you.’ ‘And when do you go.’ ‘I am staying on quite continuously.’ There were Gertrudian incantations:
How many saints can be and land be and sand be and on a high plateau there is no sand there is snow and there is made to be so and very much can be what there is to see when there is a wind to have it dry.
Gertrude finished the libretto in 1927. She then tried to find money for Thomson to live on while he worked on the music. He performed for the Cone sisters ‘to no great cash
