The music was originally composed as a score to the one-reel immigration film Journey to America, which was made for the 1964 New York World's Fair by Thomson's frequent collaborator John Houseman.
"[3] In the score program notes, the composer wrote:In 1964, for the New York World's Fair I worked with John Houseman on a one-reel picture called Journey to America, to be shown four times an hour in the United States Pavilion.
Unfortunately, as also can happen with Houseman, his co-workers did not realize that my scoring was exact, for by slightly misplacing the music track in certain spots they threw some of my results just that much off.
"[2] However, at a 1986 Virgil Thomson retrospective commemorating the composer's 90th birthday, the music critic Bernard Holland was more favorable of the piece, remarking, "The modest ambitions of this music—its simplicity, its graceful assuredness, its disinterest in monumentality—bestow upon it a certain dignity if not a great size."
After listening to such music, one has the urge to seek out the composer, shake his hand vigorously and thank him for his lack of pretension - this in a profession otherwise dedicated to the creation of deathless masterpieces.