Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but spent much of the 1920s and 1930s in Paris, where his circle included such artistic giants as James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, and especially Gertrude Stein, with whom he formed a legendary friendship. Much of Thomson’s early music, which comprises settings of Stein’s poetry and the Synthetic Waltzes, balances modernity and classicism; his Sonata for Violin and Piano is informed by the spirit of neo-romanticism that later spread in Paris. Yet all along his style also manifested truly ‘American’ qualities. Returning to the U.S. in 1940, he became the influential music critic of the New York Herald Tribune. His later compositions, bursting with lyricism, include his glorious settings of Thomas Campion’s poetry and the two contrasting vocal works of 1963, Praises and Prayers and Two by Marianne Moore.