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Van
Denman Thompson served in the School of Music under six presidents
for a period of 45 years. University organist and a teacher of organ,
piano, and composition since 1911, he also directed the School of
Music from 1937 until his retirement in 1956. He was a graduate
of the New England Conservatory of Music and earned the degree of
B.Mus. from Lincoln-Jefferson University in 1919 and was elected
a fellow of the American Guild of Organists in the same year. DePauw
awarded him an honorary doctorate in music in 1935.
Outside of his work in the Music School and as organist and choir
director at Gobin Methodist Church, Thompson was best known for
his brilliant organ recitals and witty chapel entertainments. Diminutive
in stature and painfully shy, he revealed a remarkable sense of
humor in his public appearances. His colleague Jerome
Hixson has described him as a "lesson in the gentle art
of not taking himself too seriously." Seated at the console
of the Bowman organ in Meharry Hall he would improvise in the style
of Bach, "My girl's a hullabaloo; she goes to D.P.U.,"
exhibit his mastery of Boogie Woogie to the delight of the assembled
students, or hunt for the "Lost Chord," finally finding
it at the end of the performance. One morning word spread that a
second daughter had been born to his wife, and students shouted,
"Thompson, speech!" Slipping from behind the organ bench
and drawing himself up to his full height of about five feet, he
confirmed the report with the explanation that "we had rather
hoped for a boy, but we decided to name her Patience." (Patience
Thompson Berg grew up to become a concert performer and teacher
of violin and viola at the university.)
Van Denman Thompson was a prolific composer of hymns, anthems, cantatas,
and oratorios, and a principal contributor to the 1935 edition of
the Methodist Hymnal edited by Dean Robert McCutcheon of the Music
School. Commissioned in 1934 to compose an oratorio in the honor
of the 150th anniversary of American Methodism, he wrote the music
for "The Evangel of the New World" (with words by a faculty
colleague's wife, Ethel Arnold Tilden). Its premier performance
was given on the DePauw campus by the university choir under Thompson's
direction.
 
A devoted family man, vegetable gardener, and reader of encyclopedias,
the versatile organist was also a gourmet cook, specializing in
pastries. When he purchased a bright red convertible in his later
years, he justified its acquisition by the typical Thompsonism,
"We can only be young twice." He retired to his home in
Greencastle, where he died in 1969 at the age of 78. His wife, Eulamai
Bogle Thompson, who was blind and herself a musician and composer,
as well as a celebrated seamstress and mother of six, died in 1954.
Van Denman Thompson's portrait, painted by Harold McDonald, hangs
today in the Recital Hall named for him in the Performing Arts Center
on the DePauw campus.
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