Today is the birthday of Virgil Thomson (1896-1989), faux naïf composer and feared critic of the New York Herald Tribune.

I included two of Thomson’s “Five Blake Songs” on this week’s edition of “The Lost Chord” (which repeats tonight at 6 ET at wwfm.org), devoted yet again to recordings of American music by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The songs, written for baritone Mack Harrell, were originally recorded for Columbia Records in 1951. When the recording was reissued on CRI in the 1970s, Thomson himself suppressed the fourth of them, “The Little Black Boy,” which therefore was absent from the only CD issue, in 1989, on the Bay Cities label. I own both the original LP and the Bay Cities disc, but since I only had time for two songs anyway, I resorted to the more portable CD. Fortunately, another maniacal collector has posted all five on YouTube. Here they are for your enjoyment:

It’s wonderful to have a composer like Thomson born so close to Thanksgiving. Here’s probably his best-known work, the “Symphony on a Hymn Tune”:

And, for good measure, his concertino for harp, strings and percussion, “Autumn”:

Happy birthday, Virgil Thomson!

PHOTO: Thomson, in his “office”