| ORCHESTRA : Symphony on an American Hymn Tune; Second Symphony; Two Sentimental Tangos. | |
| CHORAL: Capital Capitals; Mass (for chorus and percussion). | |
| OPERA: Four Saints in Three Acts. | |
| CHAMBER MUSIC : Sonata da Chiesa; Portraits. | |
| Pieces for piano, organ, etc.; songs. |
About Virgil Thomson:
Howard J. T. Our American Music. Ménestral 93:284June 26, 1931.
ERNEST TOCH, an important Austrian modernist, was born in Vienna on December 7, 1887. He was brought up in a mercantile family where music was not very well known. Ernest proved to be the exception in his family by revealing alertness, aptitude and love for the musical art at a very young age. As a child, he learned to read music only by watching his friends play the piano, and it was not long before, with this elementary equipment in his grasp, he began to compose little snatches in the greatest of secrecy. As a child, too, he revealed an enormous interest in timbres of all kinds. "I can remember," he tells us, "as a child listening to the stone-cutter while he was making cobblestones and taking great pleasure from the different qualities which the ear perceived each time the hammer struck a fresh blow. I can also remember playing tunes for hours on the wooden boards of graduated lengths which formed the gate to our country-garden in Vienna."
His father wanted him to become a professional man, refusing to take his musical inclinations seriously. And so, Ernest Toch was entered in the Vienna University for the study of medicine. By this time, music had become sufficiently important in his life to compel him to follow its study seriously in leisure hours. This Toch did without the benefit of any systematic instruction from trained teachers. As a matter of fact, except for a few months spent at
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Publication information:
Book title: Composers of Today:A Comprehensive Biographical and Critical Guide to Modern Composers of All Nations.
Contributors: David Ewen - Editor, David Ewen - Compiler.
Publisher: H. W. Wilson.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 1934.
Page number: 279.
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