Louisiana Story: Acadian Songs and Dances

• This suite is extracted from Thomson’s score for the 1948 film Louisiana Story.¹
• Thomson’s score for Louisiana Story won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for music. 
• Thomson’s suite of Acadian Songs and Dances from “Lousiana Story” was published in 1951, and premiered on January 11 of that year, in a performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.²
• The work’s title refers to the French settlers of Acadia in Canada, whose descendants settled in Louisiana in 1755 and became known as “Cajun.”³
• This suite makes use of Cajun (Acadian) folk songs that Thomson found in the collections of John Lomax and Alan Lomax, and Irene Therese Whitfield’s Louisiana French Songs.⁴ 

Movements 

1. Sadness 
2. Papa’s Tune 
3. A Narrative 
4. The Alligator and the ‘Coon 
5. Super-Sadness 
6. Walking Song 
7. The Squeeze-Box⁵

1. “Works: Louisiana Story,” Virgil Thomson, accessed August 13, 2021, https://www.virgilthomson.org/works/louisiana-story/. 
2. “Works: Acadian Songs and Dances from ’Louisiana Story,’” Virgil Thomson, accessed August 13, 2021, https://www.virgilthomson.org/works/acadian-songs-and-dances-from-louisiana-story/.  
3. Christopher Palmer, “Louisiana Story – Acadian Songs and Dances,” Hyperion (1992), accessed August 13, 2021, https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/tw.asp?w=W617.  
4. Ibid.
5. “Acadian Songs and Dances from ‘Louisiana Story’,” Virgil Thomson, accessed September 10, 2021, https://www.virgilthomson.org/works/acadian-songs-and-dances-from-louisiana-story/.