VIRGIL THOMSON
553
los t its foo ting during World War
1.
T he teachers a t H arvard and a t
Columbi a who were already using French methods were there before
World War I, like Archibald
T.
Davidson and Edward Burlingame
Hill
and Dani el Gregory Mason a t Columbia, but they would no t
necessaril y h ave been abie to implant a new pedagogical method ,
except tha t the who le power bas is of German groups came from their
Germanness. Once we got into a war against Germany, Germanness
became something they couldn 't rea ll y talk about or organize too
much . Before World War I, people went to Munich to study p aint–
ing just as often as
to
P aris, you know . Of course, after World War I
not onl y h ad German y los t credit wi th the intell ectual wo 'ld , but
Germany was impo veri shed , and continued to be so for a number
o f yea rs, so th a t German y could no t receive students. After World
War II German y had been impoverished intellectuall y because Hitl er
had des troyed the musical mo vement and much o f the o ther intell ec–
tual movements by hi s anti-Jewish poli cies, and anti-Social Demo–
crati c po li cies, a lthough the victims of that were less numerous,
certainl y less we ll-known to us all , than the J ewish victims. So the
prepara tion between the two wars - of the twen ties, sh all we say, and
earl y thirti es-fo r a new and stronger American literary and artistic
developmen t was furth er enriched by the German immigra tion o f
the thirties. By the time World War II was over, we had a new
German es tablishment. But thi s is a German-Jew ish es tablishment,
consc ious o f being Jew ish , no t so conscious o f being German-it
took German for granted-and very anti-French.
T ri lling:
Virg il , you came back to America and New York a t a moment
wh en the influence o f the radi calizati on o f the thirties was still very
strong des pite the considerabl e ground tha t had been los t by the
Communi st Party in the Naz i-Soviet Pact.
Thomson:
Yes, bu t our jo ining the war .. .
T rilling:
Yes, o f course, we were an all y and th at made it all right
aga in . How did this manifes t itself in your person al exper ience in
the musica l world ?
Thomson:
Well , I was much closer to the warfare tha t took place in
and around the Commun ist Party in the middl e thirti es than I was
la ter. I was in the Federa l T hea ter. I was in Amer ica, you see, from
1934 through 1935 and 1936. And the Communi sts were a lega l party;
th ey ran a candida te for p res ident in 1936. Every union had Com–
munist cells, and if I compl ain about the Jews squeezing me out ,
beli eve me the Communists would squeeze you out much worse.
Trzll ing:
T his is very hard for people to beli eve today. They think of
Communists as a h andful of innocent libera ls who exi sted onl y to be
