October 21, 2021

A quirky piece by Marga Richter

2 minutes

Synopsis

Let’s face it. Brevity and wit are not always qualities one associates with new music.

But today we offer a sample: this comic overture is less than 5 minutes long, and opens, as you just heard, with a Fellini-esque duet for piccolo and contrabassoon.

The overture is entitled “Quantum Quirks of a Quick Quaint Quark,” and is a rather burlesque celebration of modern theoretical physics. Its alliterative title evokes those subatomic particles known as “quarks” that, we’re told, make up our universe. And, since this music changes time signature so often, perhaps Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” is thrown in for good measure.

The music is by Marga Richter, who was born on this date in 1926 in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. Richter received her early music training in Minneapolis, and then moved to New York’s Juilliard School. By the time of her death in 2020, she had composed over 75 works including an opera and two ballets, as well as two piano concertos and a variety of solo, chamber and symphonic works.

"Composing,” said Richter,” is my response to a constant desire to transform my perceptions and emotions into music … Music is the way I speak to the silence of the universe."

Music Played in Today's Program

Marga Richter (b. 1926) — Quantum Quirks of a Quick Quaint Quark (Czech Radio Orchestra; Gerard Schwarz) MMC 2006

On This Day

Births

1879 - French composer, pianist, and writer Joseph Canteloube, in Annonay (near Tournon);

1885 - Austrian composer and musicologist Egon Wellesz, in Vienna;

1921 - English composer (Sir) Malcolm Arnold, in Northampton;

1926 - American composer Marga Richter, in Reedsburg, Wisconsin;

1949 - Israeli composer Shulamit Ran, in Tel Aviv;

Deaths

1662 - English composer Henry Lawes, age 66, in London;

Premieres

1784 - Gretry: opera, "Richard Coeur de Lion" (Richard the Lionhearted), in Paris;

1858 - Offenbach: comic opera, "Orphée aux enfers" (Orpheus in the Underworld), in Paris;

1900 - Rimsky-Korsakov: opera "The Tale of Tsar Saltan," at the Solodovnikov Theatre in Moscow, with Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov conducting (Gregorian date: Nov. 3);

1921 - Third (and final) version of Sibelius: Symphony No. 5, in Helsinki under the composer's direction; Sibelius conducted the first performances of two earlier versions of this symphony in Helsinki on Dec. 8, 1915 and Dec. 14, 1916;

1926 - Nielsen: Flute Concerto (first version), in Paris, conducted by Emil Telmányi (the composer's son-in-law), with Holger Gilbert-Jespersen the soloist; Nielsen revised this score and premiered the final version in Oslo on November 9, 1926, again with Gilbert-Jespersen as the soloist;

1933 - Gershwin: musical "Let 'Em Eat Cake," at the Imperial Theater in New York City;

1941 - Copland: Piano Sonata, in Buenos Aires, by the composer;

1956 - Menotti: madrigal-fable "The Unicorn, the Gordon and the Manticore," at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.;

1984 - Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Double Quartet for strings, at a concert of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, by the Emerson Quartet and friends.

2004 - Danielpour: "Songs of Solitude" (to texts of W.B. Yeats), at the Kimmel Center's Verizon Hall in Philadelphia, by baritone Thomas Hampson and the Philadelphia Orchestra, with Daniel Robertson conducting;

Others

1739 - Handel completes in London his Concerto Grosso in D, Op. 6, no. 5 and possibly his Concerto Grosso in F, Op. 6, no. 9 as well (see Julian date: Oct. 10).

Links and Resources

On Marga Richter

An interview with Richter

...more

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By American Public Media

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