ONE AUDIO PIECE It was early in 1927 that Gertrude Stein and I conceived of writing an opera together. Naturally the theme had to be one that interested us both. "Something from the lives of the saints" was my proposal; that it should take place in Spain was hers. She then chose (and I agreed) two Spanish saints, Teresa of Avila and Ignatius Loyola. The fact that these two, historically, never knew each other did not seem to either one of us an inconvenience. Miss Stein loved these saints because they were Spanish. I liked them for being powerful and saints. She had traveled a great deal in Spain, loved its landscape and its people; I had been brought up in Missouri among Southern Baptists and spent my youth as a church organist. The music of religious faith, from Gregorian chants to Sunday School ditties, was my background, my nostalgia. So we made together, Gertrude Stein and I, an opera bout the Spanish landscape and about religious life. She gave me the libretto of "Four Saints in Three Acts" in June of 1927, and I completed the music the following year. In 1934 it was produced in Hartford, Connecticut (and also in New York and Chicago) by a group entitled The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music. --Virgil Thomson by Virgil Thomson In the meantime as I have said George Antheil had brought Virgil Thomson to the house and Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein became friends and saw each other a great deal...He understood a great deal of Gertrude Stein's work, he used to dream at night that there was something there he did not understand, but on the whole he was very well content with that with which he did understand. They saw a great deal of each other. Virgil Thomson asked Gertrude Stein to write an opera for him. Among the saints there were two saints whom she had always liked better than any others, Saint Teresa of Avila and Ignatius Loyola, and she said she would write him an opera about these two saints. She began this and worked very hard at it all spring and finally finished Four Saints and gave it to Virgil Thomson to put to music. He did. And it is a completely interesting opera both as to words and to music.--Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas "Pigeons on the Grass, Alas," Four Saints in Three Acts, Edward Matthews and Company, conducted by Virgil Thomson, RCA, 1946 [audio:pigeons]
Christopher Purdy is Classical 101's early morning host, 7-10 a.m. weekdays. He is host and producer of Front Row Center – Classical 101’s weekly celebration of Opera and more – as well as Music in Mid-Ohio, Concerts at Ohio State, and the Columbus Symphony broadcast series. He is the regular pre-concert speaker for Columbus Symphony performances in the Ohio Theater.