Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1962, President John F. Kennedy received two memos regarding a dinner party at the White House scheduled the following evening honoring composer Igor Stravinsky and his wife, Vera. The Kennedys were famous for inviting the finest artists and performers to the White House for special presentations. Mrs. Kennedy was a true arts maven, but JFK was not, and needed background information on figures like Stravinsky, which the first memo provided. The Kennedy’s social secretary even worked out secret signals and cues for the president when he attended White House recitals so he wouldn’t applaud at the wrong time.

The second memo informed JFK that after a photo shoot with the Stravinskys, they would join the others invited that evening for cocktails in the Blue Room. After dinner, the 80-year-old Stravinsky expressed his gratitude and told the press that the Kennedys were “nice kids.”

Four months after Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, Stravinsky asked poet W.H. Auden for “a very quiet little lyric” that he might set to music in tribute to Kennedy’s memory. The resulting work, Elegy for JFK for medium voice and three clarinets, premiered in 1964.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Three Movements, fr Petrouchka; Louis Lortie, piano Chandos 8733

On today’s date in 1967, British orchestral trumpeter David Mason went to the famous Abbey Road Studios in London to record a high-flying solo for a pop recording.

A few days earlier, Paul McCartney had seen Mason on TV performing the Baroque piccolo trumpet part in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 and decided on the spot that sound was exactly what he needed for a new Beatles tune he was working on called “Penny Lane.”

And so, George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, gave Mason a call.

“I took nine trumpets along and we tried various things, by a process of elimination settling on the B-flat piccolo trumpet,” Mason said. “We spent three hours working it out: Paul sang the parts he wanted; George Martin wrote them out; I tried them. But the actual recording was done quite quickly. They were jolly high notes, quite taxing, but with the tapes rolling we did two takes as overdubs on top of the existing song.”

Some Beatles fans not familiar with the sound of the Baroque trumpet assumed the tape was speeded up to make the trumpet sound so high, but Bach fans knew otherwise.

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (David Moore, tpt; New Philharmonia; Raymond Leppard, cond). HMV SXLP-20110 (LP); the Beatles: "Penny Lane" Capitol Records SMAL-2835

Coming of age in the first half of the 20th century were two exceptionally talented children of the wealthy Austrian steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein: Ludwig Wittgenstein became a famous philosopher and Paul Wittgenstein a concert pianist.

Paul served in the Austrian army in World War I, and, for a concert pianist, suffered a horrific injury: the loss of his right arm. Undaunted, he rebuilt his career by commissioning and performing works for piano left-hand. The family fortune enabled him to commission the leading composers of his day, including Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel and Sergei Prokofiev.

Unfortunately, even the Wittgenstein fortune couldn’t protect the family from the racial laws of Nazi Germany, given the family’s Jewish heritage. In 1938, he left for the United States after Austria’s Anschluss with the German Reich.

In America, he commissioned a concert work from young British expatriate Benjamin Britten, also living in America at the time, and gave the premiere performance of Britten’s Diversions for piano left-hand and orchestra on today’s date in 1942, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. Wittgenstein later confessed that of all his commissions, Britten’s work came the closest to fulfilling his needs and wishes.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Diversions; Peter Donohoe, piano; City of Birmingham Symphony; Simon Rattle, cond. EMI 54270

On today’s date in 1923, the belated premiere of a new ballet score by French composer Gabriel Pierné took place at the Palais Garnier, the home of the Paris Opera Ballet.

The ballet was finished in 1915, but due to the turmoil of World War I had to wait seven years to be staged.  Also, its lighthearted, even frivolous subject matter would hardly have seemed appropriate during the trauma of wartime, but it perfectly suited the giddy post-war Paris of the 1920s. The ballet was titled Cydalise et le Chèvre-Pied (literally "Cydalise and the Goat-Foot" or "Cydalise and the Satyr") and, like Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloe, featured a cast of nymphs, satyrs and the god Pan.

One excerpt of the ballet, known as "The Entry of the Little Fauns," became a popular concert selection on its own, although the complete score, like most of the other music by Pierné, is rarely performed in concert these days.

Of late, however, more of Pierné’s melodious, well-crafted and oh-so-French scores have found their way to recordings. So anyone curious can sample more of his operas, his choral and symphonic works, and his solo piano and chamber music.

Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937) – The Entry of the Little Fauns, from Cydalise et le Chèvre-Pied (Orchestre National de Lille; Darrell Ang, cond.) Naxos 8.5736090 

On today’s date in 1932, an all-Maurice Ravel concert was given in Paris by the Lamoureux Orchestra at the Salle Erard. Ravel was on hand, conducting some of his works, including the premiere of his new Piano Concerto in G with pianist Marguerite Long the soloist.

The critics were enthusiastic about the music, but less so about Ravel’s conducting skills.

“Once again,” one wrote, “I wish to protest against the habit, more and more frequently indulged in, of attempting at all costs to bring a composer before the public in a part which he is incapable of filling. Monsieur Ravel is continually brought out as a pianist or as a conductor, whilst he cannot shine in either of these two specialties. ... His Pavane was unutterably slow, his Bolero dry and badly timed, and the accompaniment of the concerto lacked clarity and elasticity. ... But there can only be praise for the composer of all these delicate, subtle works, the orchestration of which abounds in amusing and profound inventions. ... The new concerto,” the review concludes, “is worthy of the other masterpieces we owe to Ravel.”

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Piano Concerto in G; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano; Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, cond. London 452 448

Late in 1941, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was living in Hollywood — at 1260 N. Wetherly Drive, to be precise.

Notoriously unflappable, and eminently practical when it came to commissions, Stravinsky apparently did not even bat an eye when he received a phone call from choreographer Georges Balanchine with an offer from Barnum’s Circus to write a short musical work for a ballet involving elephants. Again, to be precise, for Barnum’s star elephant ballerina, Modoc, who would be accompanied by 50 other elephants and dancers, all in tutus.

“For what?” Stravinsky said.

“For elephants,” Balanchine said.

“How many?” Stravinsky countered.

“A lot,” Balanchine replied.

“How old?” Stravinsky asked.

“Young,” Balanchine assured.

”Well, if they’re young, I accept,” Stravinsky concluded.

Stravinsky’s work, Circus Polka, had its debut at Madison Square Garden in New York by the Barnum Circus and was performed by what Stravinsky once called Barnum’s “respectable quadrupeds” some 400 times. Stravinsky then arranged his Circus Polka for symphony orchestra and conducted the premiere of that version (minus the elephants) with the Boston Symphony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on today’s date in 1944.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Circus Polka; London Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. RCA 68865

Like everyone else, young composers indulge in daydreams from time to time. One can easily imagine a 15-year-old composer wanna-be staring out the window and fantasizing that one day her music will be performed by big-name virtuosos and heard coast-to-coast on a national broadcast.

That is exactly what did happen on today’s date in 2002, when 15-year-old composer Athena Adamopoulos heard Yo-Yo Ma and Christopher O’Riley perform her Soliloquy for cello and piano at a taping of From the Top — a nationally broadcast public radio program that showcases young classical musicians from around the country. Occasionally, the show also spotlights young composers, too, as it did the day Ma stopped by as a special guest.

Adamopoulos said, “When I heard the piece in my head originally, I heard it something like this, but this is about 10 times better! It’s the most touching feeling in the world.”

Even at 15, Adamopoulos was already a somewhat “experienced” composer. She had written several other chamber works by that date and had actually performed one of her first pieces on The Sally Jesse Raphael Show on TV when she was just 8.

Athena Adamopoulos (b. 1987) Soliloquy; Yo Yo Ma, cello; Christopher O'Riley, piano; live recording courtesy of ‘From The Top’ (PRI)

In 1953, the Louisville Orchestra was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant of $500,000 to commission, premiere and record 20th-century music to be issued on its own label, Louisville First Edition Records. By 1997, it had released nearly 150 discs, containing more than 450 compositions by living composers.

On today’s date in 1980, one of the Louisville commissions premiered and recorded by the orchestra was Tournaments by the then-41-year-old American composer John Corigliano.

“As the title implies,” Corigliano writes, “Tournaments is a ‘contest piece,’ a sort of mini-Concerto for Orchestra in which first-desk players and entire sections vie with each other in displaying their virtuosity.”

The Louisville Orchestra received many awards for its ambitious commissioning project, while Corigliano went on to win Grammys and an Oscar, not to mention the Grawemeyer and Pulitzer prizes.

Corigliano also is proud of his teaching positions at the Juilliard School and Lehman College in New York.

“I think it’s good for a composer to teach,” he says, “because you always have new students, and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.”

John Corigliano (b. 1938) Tournaments Overture; Louisville Orchestra; Sidney Harth, cond. Louisville First Edition LOU-771

Today, we note two anniversaries concerning Handel and his music in London.

On today’s date in 1710, the German-born composer’s music was performed in London for the first time when excerpts from his opera Rodrigo were used as incidental music during a revival of Ben Jonson’s comic play The Alchemist, written 100 years earlier.

It’s a nice historical touch that in addition to writing satirical comedies such as The Alchemist, Jonson had supplied the poetic texts for elaborate masques staged at the court of King James I. Masques were a kind of precursor of the lavish Baroque operas such as Handel’s Rodrigo, which debuted in Italy just three years before its tunes were recycled for use on the British stage.

By 1713, the vogue for Italian operas had reached London, and Handel was on hand to write and stage them. On today’s date in 1713, his opera Teseo had its premiere at the Queen’s Theatre in London. And, just to show that off-stage events could prove every bit as dramatic as those on-stage, the theater manager, a certain Owen Swiney, ran off to Italy with the box office receipts after the second night’s performance!

George Frederic Handel (1685-1757) Bourrée, from Rodrigo; Hallé Orchestra; John Barbirolli, cond. EMI 63956

George Frederic Handel (1685-1757) Overture to Teseo; English Concert; Trevor Pinnock, cond. Archiv 419 219

In the musical world, there are many creative people with innovative ideas, but far fewer with the ability and persistence to raise the funds necessary to realize their visions.

Today, a tip of the hat to American composer John Duffy, who, in 1982, was president of Meet the Composer, an organization that secured funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and other foundations for a large-scale residency program that paired rising American composers with major American orchestras. The composers included John Corigliano, Joan Tower, Stephen Paulus, Christopher Rouse, Libby Larsen and Alvin Singleton. Each wrote special works for their orchestras, works that were premiered and recorded as part of the program — a major career boost for any young composer.

For example, Singleton was the composer chosen for the Atlanta residency, and on today’s date in 1988, that orchestra premiered his work After Fallen Crumbs.

The unusual title doesn’t refer to arts funding, however apt that might seem, but derives from an earlier choral piece by Singleton whose text dealt with world hunger and closed with the lines, “An ant can feed a family with the fallen crumbs of an elephant.”

Alvin Singleton (b. 1940) After Fallen Crumbs; Atlanta Symphony; Louis Lane, cond. Nonesuch 79231