Composers Datebook

Today’s date in 1922 marks the birthday of Héctor Campos Parsi, one of Puerto Rico’s finest composers.

Campos Parsi originally planned to become a doctor, but after a meeting with the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, ended up studying music at the New England Conservatory in 1949 and 1950 with the likes of Aaron Copland, Olivier Messiaen and Serge Koussevitzky, and between 1950 and 1954 with Paul Hindemith at Yale and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

Returning to Puerto Rico, Campos Parsi pursued a dual career: as a writer, he contributed short stories, essays, poems to Puerto Rican magazines, and wrote music reviews and articles for island newspapers. As a composer, he wrote instrumental and vocal works for chamber, orchestral, and choral ensemble. Two of his best-known works are Divertimento del Sur, written for string orchestra with solo flute and clarinet, and a piano sonata dedicated to Puerto Rican pianist Jesús María Sanromá.

As a musicologist, Campos Parsi wrote entries for music encyclopedias and served as the director of the IberoAmerican Center of Musical Documentation and as composer-in-residence at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, where died in 1998 at 75.

Héctor Campos Parsi (1922-1998): Divertimento del Sur; Members of the Casals Festival Orchestra; Milton Katims, conductor; Smithsonian Folkways COOK-01061

The old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” pretty much sums up the career of the French composer Georges Bizet.

Bizet died at 36 in 1875, the same year his opera Carmen premiered. Now, Carmen soon became acknowledged as one of the great masterworks of French opera, but poor Monsieur Bizet wasn’t around to experience any of that.

Moreover, Carmen was preceded by Bizet’s no less than 30 attempts writing a hit opera. Most never made it to the stage, and the few that did, achieved only modest success.

Set in exotic Ceylon, Les Pêcheurs de Perles, or The Pearl Fishers, the most famous of the “pre-Carmen” Bizet operas premiered on today’s date in 1863. 

It ran for 18 performances, and, although applauded by its first audiences, was roundly panned by the press. Only one music critic saw any merit in Bizet’s opera, and that critic just happened to be the great French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz.

Even so, Pearl Fishers wasn’t revived until long after Bizet’s death, and some 30 years after its premiere. Today, after Carmen of course, it’s his second most popular opera.

Georges Bizet (1838-1875): Prelude from The Pearl Fishers; Mexico City Philharmonic; Enrique Batiz, conductor; ASV 6133

Georges Bizet (1838-1875): Au Fond du Temple Saint, from The Pearl Fishers; Placido Domingo, tenor; Sherrill Milnes, baritone; London Symphony; Anton Guadagno, conductor; BMG 62699

Yes, Juliet, a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a catchy title alone can’t help a piece of music that’s uninspired or just plain boring. An intriguing title, however can sometimes help put audiences into a more receptive frame of mind — or at least pique their curiosity.

From the very beginning of his career in the 1980s, the young American composer Michael Torke had the knack of coming up with evocative titles. His early works had titles like Ecstatic Orange and Bright Blue Music. A piece composed for the 1994 Olympic Games in Atlanta was titled Javelin, and this music, an orchestral suite that premiered in Amsterdam on today’s date in 1997, was titled Overnight Mail.

And each of the three movements of his orchestral suite had an additional title, as Torke explains:

“The titles of the suite’s three movements, Priority, Standard, and Saturday Delivery present the options for expediency when sending things, but musically, they represent different reactions to an abstract compositional problem I set up for myself … for me this was important, because I want to write music that follows all the old rules of voice leading and counterpoint, but sounds fresh.”

Michael Torke (b. 1961): Overnight Mail; Orkest de Volharding; Jurjen Hempel, conductor; Argo 455 684

Today’s date in 1913 marks the birthday of American composer Vivian Fine in Chicago.

At the tender age of five, she became a scholarship piano student at the Chicago Musical College. As she grew up she became enthralled with the great composers and performers she heard at her regular visits to the Chicago Symphony. Fine initially intended to be a concert pianist, but theory studies with American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger nudged her towards composition. 

Fine became an avid follower of the emerging Ultra-Modern school of composers, including Henry Cowell, who proved to be one of her early mentors. Her debut as a composer came in Chicago when she was 16, and at 17 she moved to New York City to she studied composition with Roger Sessions and orchestration with George Szell.

When Roger Sessions saw her sketches for her Concertante for Piano and Orchestra in 1944, he commented, “Now we are colleagues,” and George Szell praised its orchestration. Teaching became an important part of Fine’s own professional life, first at New York University and Juilliard, and ultimately at Bennington College.

Following a traffic accident in Vermont, Fine died at 86 in March of 2000.

Vivian Fine (1913-2000): ‘Concertante’; Reiko Honsho, piano; Japan Philharmonic; Akeo Watanabe, conductor; CRI 692

On today’s date in 1956, the English composer Gerald Finzi died in Oxford at 55. Finzi suffered from Hodgkin’s disease, and shortly before his death had caught chickenpox from some children he had visited, an infection that proved fatal.

Finzi was born into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family. His mother was musical, and an amateur composer. Even with talent, wealth, support from the likes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and several golden opportunities for career advancement, Finzi proved to be a rather diffident soul who seemed to prefer to work in seclusion and relative obscurity.

He collected rare books and scores by 18th century English composers but is most famous for his settings of poems by Thomas Hardy, a contemporary of his parent’s generation.

Himself an agnostic, Finzi produced a small body of sacred choral works, as well as two instrumental pieces that have endeared him to clarinetists: a set of clarinet Bagatelles from 1943 and this Clarinet Concerto from 1949.

British critic Norman Lebrecht offers this assessment of Finzi’s appeal: “a confluence of Elgar without bluffness and Vaughan Williams at his most delicate. His concerto for clarinet and strings is a light and lovely lament for lost times.”

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956): Clarinet Concerto; Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Guildhall String Ensemble; Robert Slater, conductor; BMG 60437

On today’s date in 2000, King’s Chapel in Boston presented a festival of music by the early American composer William Billings, honoring the 200th anniversary of his death in 1800.  As the Chapel’s records of 1786 stated, Billings taught singing “to such persons of both sexes as incline to sing psalm-tunes.” They must have liked him, because in 1790, when Billings was in financial trouble, the Chapel held a benefit concert for him.

When Billings was born in 1746, America was still a British colony. The last record we have of him as a composer dates from 1799, when he wrote music for a memorial concert for George Washington, the first president of the United States, who had died in December of that year.

Today, Billings is regarded as America’s first truly original composer. His contemporaries agreed. The Reverend William Bentley of Salem was moved to write in his diary: “Many who have imitated him have excelled him, but none had better original powers … he was a singular man, short of one leg, with one eye, and with an uncommon negligence of person. Still, he spake and sung and thought as a man above common abilities.”

William Billings (1746-1800): Emmaus and Shiloh; His Majestie's Clerkes; Paul Hillier, conductor; Harmonia Mundi 90.7048

In the 1920s, German composer Paul Hindemith wrote a set of seven concertos, which he collectively titled Kammermusik or Chamber Music. This generic title was part of Hindemith’s goal to foster a more “objective” musical style, modeled on 18th century composers like J.S. Bach.

Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 4, a work for solo violin and chamber orchestra, had its first performance in Dessau on today’s date in 1925. The soloist was Licco Amar, the first violinist of the Amar String Quartet, an ensemble in which Hindemith played viola.

Hindemith’s father had been killed in World War I, and Hindemith himself had been called up, but avoided being sent to the front by forming a string quartet that played nightly to ease the nerves of his commanding officer. Then during the World War II, despite being considered a so-called “Aryan” composer, Hindemith fell out of favor with the Nazi regime and eventually emigrated to America, where he became a very influential teacher.

To address the role of music in society, Hindemith suggested composers should revive the idea of writing works amateur musicians could play at home with family and friends.

“People who make music together cannot be enemies,” he observed, “at least while the music lasts.”

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963): Kammermusik No. 4; Konstanty Kulka, violin; Concertgebouw Orchestra; Riccardo Chailly, conductor; London 433 816

Today’s date in 1914 marks the birthday of Polish-born composer and conductor Andrzej Panufnik, whose life was dramatic — and romantic — enough for a Netflix mini-series.

It involved resisting the Nazis in war-torn Warsaw, struggles with the Communist Party in the post-war years, a daring Swiss escape to Great Britain worthy of a John Le Carré novel, love affairs and marriages with beautiful women, the tragic death of one of his children, and long years trying to balance the demands of his conducting and composing careers. And, despite the admiration of some of the biggest names in classical music, for years his music met with indifference from the general public.

But at this point in the mini-series, cue the triumphant grand finale soundtrack theme. In the closing decades of his life, Panufnik won increasing recognition as one of the 20th century’s finest composers and was showered with high-profile commissions by major orchestras around the world.

Panufnik refused to return to Poland until democracy was restored in 1990. Shortly before his death in 1991, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and posthumously awarded the Polonia Restituta Medal by his native land.

Andrzej Panufnik (1914-1991): Old Polish Suite; Polish Chamber Orchestra; Mariusz Smolij, conductor; Naxos 8.570032

It was on today’s date in 1835 that Romantic opera composer Vincenzo Bellini died at a country home near Paris. He was only 34 but had achieved great fame in his brief lifetime. 

The long, elegant melodic lines Bellini spun out in his operas were much admired and proved to be a major influence on the solo piano works of his contemporary, Frederic Chopin.

Bellini’s first success was Il Pirata or The Pirate from 1827, and just three years later, he could truthfully report:  “My style is now heard in the most important theatres in the world …and with the greatest enthusiasm.” He settled in Paris, where his final opera, I Puritani di Scozia or The Puritans of Scotland premiered early in 1835.

If Bellini’s life had followed the Romantic story-lines of his operas, he would have been a dispossessed outcast who dies for love. In fact, Bellini was financially successful, moved in the highest social circles, and — rather than dying for love — was planning to marry for money at the time he succumbed to chronic gastroenteritis. 

At his requiem mass, four leading composers of his day, Paer, Cherubini, Carafa and Rossini, each held a corner of the coffin shroud. 

Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835): Sinfonia from Il Pirata; German Opera Orchestra, Berlin; Marcello Viotti, conductor; Berlin Classics 11152

Today we celebrate the birthday of Leonardo Balada, an American composer born in Barcelona on today’s date in 1933. After studying at the Barcelona Conservatory, the 20-something composer came to New York on a musical scholarship.

Balada recalls his arrival as both a cultural and climatic shock: “When I landed in New York — on a freezing day in 1956 — little did I know of the mental turmoil I would experience in the next few years. That city had become the focal point for the latest music and arts. New York shook my musically conservative upbringing to its roots.”

Like most composers of his generation, Balada had to decide whether to follow the path of the abstract serialists who dominated music at that time or find his own path.

“I felt a strong necessity to … look to the future and not be criticized as a reactionary,” recalls Balada. “How could it be otherwise for a liberal young fellow brought up in Spain, opposed to Franco’s conservatism?”

With encouragement from great Spanish guitarist Narciso Yepes, Balada began to draw on his own imagination and cultural heritage, blending contemporary techniques with elements of a more traditional language, often infused with Spanish themes.

Leonardo Balada (b. 1933): Concierto Magico; Eliot Fisk, guitar; Barcelona and Catalonia National Orchestra; Jose Serebrier, conductor; Naxos 8.555039