In December of 2020, during the first, bleak winter of the worldwide Covid pandemic, The New York Times ran a story about the English Renaissance composer John Sheppard, who, as a member of the Chapel Royal, the household choir of the English monarchs, was buried in London on today’s date in 1558.

Shepard lived during the turbulent English Reformation, and as a church musician composed liturgical works in both English and Latin, probably reflecting whether the Protestant king Edward VI or the Catholic Queen Mary I was seated on the throne.

We know little about Sheppard’s life and nothing about his own religious inclinations. His most famous work, an elaborately polyphonic compline setting of a Latin text, “Media vita in morte sumus” (In the midst of life we are in death), might have been written for the funeral for a fellow composer who died from what was called the “new ague,” a pandemic that swept England in 1557, and returned the following year in a devasting second wave, killing one in ten Londoners.

One of them was John Sheppard. He died just after the strain claimed Reginald Pole, the archbishop of Canterbury, and probably Queen Mary as well.

John Sheppard (1515-1558): Media Vita; Tallis Scholars; Peter Phillips, conductor; Gimell 16

American composer John Harbison grew up listening to the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, so on today’s date in 1999 it must have been gratifying to celebrate his 61st birthday taking curtain calls there when his opera The Great Gatsby premiered at the Met.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, a devastating evocation of America’s Roaring 20s, is a regular contender for the title of the “Great American Novel,” but Harbison says when he told his mother he was writing an opera based on it she wasn’t very enthusiastic, arguing that the novel’s characters were an unsympathetic bunch. Gatsby, the novel’s anti-hero is a both a fraud and a crook. Daisy, Gatsby’s lost love and the object of his obsessive desire, is selfish, spoiled and shallow.

But Harbison saw it differently: “Yearning and despair are very big operatic themes,” he said. “As for the character of Gatsby, he takes a lot of risks and is steadfast and loyal to some vision that is not realistically possible. The opera provides many opportunities to look at to what degree he's an impostor, and to what degree his story is real, which is a big American theme in general.”

John Harbison (b. 1938): Remembering Gatsby; Minnesota Orchestra; Edo de Waart, conductor; Vol. 11, from Minnesota Orchestra at 100 special edition boxed CD set

On today’s date in 1930, Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms received its American premiere by the Boston Symphony. Russian-born conductor and new music impresario Serge Koussevitzky had commissioned the work to celebrate the Boston Symphony’s 50th anniversary.

Stravinsky said later that for some time he had been carrying around the idea for a choral symphony based on Psalm texts. Since Koussevitzky’s commission was for “anything Stravinsky had on his mind” that is exactly what emerged.

Even though Stravinsky is on record stating that “music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all,” in Symphony of Psalms, Stravinsky gave powerful expression to his own deep religious convictions. Koussevitzky’s performance was supposed to be the world premiere of the new work, but the conductor took ill, forcing the world premiere in Boston — originally scheduled for December 12 — to be postponed until the 19. By then, a European performance of Stravinsky’s new score conducted by Ernest Ansermet had already occurred.

No matter. Koussevitzky had the satisfaction of knowing that he had commissioned a masterpiece. Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms has come to be regarded as one of the great sacred works of the 20th century.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Symphony of Psalms; The Monteverdi Choir; London Symphony; John Eliot Gardiner, conductor; DG 436 789

Any movie buff knows composer John Williams is the usual choice for director Steven Spielberg. But for The Color Purple, which was released on today’s date in 1985, Spielberg turned to jazz great and master orchestrator Quincy Jones.

The Color Purple was based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker that tells the story of Celie Harris, graphically depicting the trauma of a young African-American woman during the early 20th century. Spielberg cast Whoopi Goldberg — better-known then for stand-up comedy — in the intensely dramatic role of Celie.

For Spielberg, it was a movie without dazzling special effects or space aliens; for Jones, who had just finished producing Michael Jackson’s Thriller, working on The Color Purple was, as he put it, “An amazing experience … the biggest of my life.”

Whoopi Goldberg was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress — Quincy Jones, for both Best Original Score and Best Original Song. Neither Goldberg nor Jones won an Oscar, but Jones says he felt honored to participate in a project that, despite the many warnings of nay-sayers, he had absolute faith in, inspired by the passion of all those involved in its making.

Quincy Jones (1933-2024): The Color Purple: Main Theme; Itzhak Perlman, violin; Pittsburgh Symphony; John Williams, conductor; Sony 63005

On today’s date in 1853, expectations both on stage and off must have been high when a 20-year-old German pianist and composer named Johannes Brahms made his public debut in Leipzig. Just two months earlier, the older composer Robert Schumann had published a glowing prediction that young Brahms was going to turn out to be the bright hope for the future of German music.

Brahms played his big Piano Sonata No. 1, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. He also met great French composer Hector Berlioz, who wrote, “Brahms has had a great success here and made a deep impression on me ... this diffident, audacious young man who has taken into his head to make a new music.”

When his Piano Sonata No. 1 was first published by Breitkopf & Haertel, along with some early songs, Brahms immediately sent copies off to Schumann, with this note: “I take the liberty of sending you your first foster children (who owe to you their citizenship of the world). In their new garb they seem to me too prim and embarrassed — I still cannot accustom myself to seeing these guileless children of nature in their smart new clothes!”

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Piano Sonata No. 1; Sviatoslav Richter, piano; Philips 438 477

In the spring and summer of 1921, Sergei Prokofiev was living in a quiet village on the coast of Brittany. He wrote, “I get up at 8:30, put on a collarless shirt, white pants, and sandals. After drinking hot chocolate, I look to see if the garden is still where it’s supposed to be. Then I sit down to work. I’m writing my Piano Concerto No. 3.”

On today’s date in 1921, Prokofiev was the soloist in the premiere of the new work, which took place in America, with the Chicago Symphony under Frederick Stock.

In a letter written to conductor Serge Koussevitzky before the premiere, Prokofiev wrote, “My third concerto has turned out to be devilishly difficult. I’m nervous and practicing hard three hours a day. But let the maestro be calm — there are no complicated meters, no dirty tricks. It can be conducted without special preparation — it is difficult for the orchestra, but not for the conductor.”

Chicago audiences and newspaper critics gave the new concerto a warm, if not overly enthusiastic, reception at its first performance in America, and in time, the Piano Concerto No. 3 — despite its difficulty — became one of Prokofiev’s most popular works with performers as well as audiences around the world.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Piano Concerto No. 3; Alexander Toradze, piano; Kirov Orchestra; Valery Gergiev, conductor; Philips 462 048

Swiss-born American composer Ernest Bloch was born in 1880 and was in his 30s when he first came to America, where he achieved remarkable success with both critics and audiences. His most famous work, Schelomo, subtitled Hebraic Rhapsody for cello and orchestra, premiered in New York in 1917. Despite his popularity in America, Bloch returned to Europe for most of the 1930s. By the end of that decade, the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Germany and Italy led the Jewish composer, then approaching 60, to reconsider making America his permanent home.

Bloch’s Violin Concerto premiered in America on today’s date in 1938, a month after he arrived, with violinist Joseph Szigeti and the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos. The main theme of Bloch’s concerto was supposedly based on a Native American theme, but the tone of the whole work echoes the Hebrew themes in his other music.

Bloch wrote: “Art for me is an expression, an experience of life, not a game or an icy demonstration of mathematical principles. In not one of my works have I tried to be ‘original’ or ‘modern.’ My sole desire and single effort has been to remain faithful to my vision.”

Ernest Bloch (1880-1959): Violin Concerto; Oleh Krysa, violin; Malmo Symphony; Sakari Oramo, conductor; BIS 639

Today’s date in 1906 marks the birthday of Alexander Naumovich Tsfasman, a Ukrainian composer from pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia who would become an important figure in Soviet jazz.

Jazz first came to the Soviet Union in 1922, four years after Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution, and at first was welcomed as the music of the oppressed African-American minority, and therefore considered an expression of the worldwide class struggle. Tsfasman encountered jazz while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory and formed his own jazz band in 1926, the first to be heard on Soviet radio. In the decades that followed, Tsfasman made over 140 records, composed music for films, and gave concerts during WWII for Red Army soldiers.

But after 1945, jazz fell out of favor in the USSR. During the Cold War, it came to be seen as a prime export of the decadent bourgeois West and performances were limited. “Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he’ll betray his country” was a widespread propaganda slogan in the Stalinist post-war USSR. Only in the 1960s did attitudes change, and we’re happy to report Alexander Tsfasman lived to see it before his death in 1971.

This music is from his Jazz Suite for piano and orchestra.

Alexander Tsfasman (1906-1971): Snowflakes and Polka (excerpts), from Jazz Suite;
Zlata Chochieva, piano; BBC Scottish Symphony; Karl-Heinz Steffens, conductor; Naïve V-8448

In 1935, when he was 25 years old, American composer Samuel Barber was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome. This meant that Barber could study at the American Academy in Rome for two years, with free lodgings and an annual stipend of $1,400 — a considerable sum of money in the 1930s. Barber found his Italian studio, a little yellow house approached through a garden, to be a good place to work.

While in Italy, Barber finished his Symphony No. 1. The premiere took place in Rome on today’s date in 1936, with an Italian conductor and orchestra. Years later, he recalled that the orchestra played well, but also that the Italian audience members were “not shy about expressing their feelings ... 50% applauded and 50% were hissing.” In Barber’s opinion, the Italians found the new work “too dark-toned, too Nordic.”

The Cleveland Orchestra gave the symphony’s American premiere early the next year, followed by a New York performance under the direction of Arthur Rodzinski, who was so impressed he conducted the work with the Vienna Philharmonic at the opening concert of the 1937 Salzburg Music Festival in Austria. That performance was more warmly received, and Barber was called back to the stage three times.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981): Symphony No. 1; Saint Louis Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; RCA/BMG 60732

On today’s date in 2001, the San Francisco Symphony, under conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, gave the first performance of Ice Field, a new work by American composer Henry Brant. The piece was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2002, the year Brant turned 89.

The prize was an acknowledgment of five decades of Brant’s work as one of America’s great experimental composers. In the 1950s, when he turned 40, Brant became fascinated with the possibilities inherent in spatial music — music that positioned various groups of performers in all the corners of performing space. Moreover, he felt his music should reflect a wide variety of musical styles. As Brant put it, “I had come to feel that single-style music… could no longer evoke the new stresses, layered insanities and multi-directional assaults of contemporary life on the spirit.”

Brant cites earlier American composer Charles Ives as his major model, but also credits the experience of hearing extravagant French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz’ Requiem Mass in Paris. In the 19th century, Berlioz positioned an orchestra, brass choirs, and vocalists around a vast cathedral for a unique “surround sound” experience.

Henry Brant (1913-2008): Western Springs; La Jolla Symphony and Chorus; Henry Brant, et. al. conductor; CRI 827