Composers Datebook

It might seem odd to think of Max Bruch as a 20th-century composer. After all, his three greatest hits — his Violin Concerto No. 1, his Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra, and his setting of the Hebraic liturgical chant Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra — were all written in the 19th century.

But this archetypal German Romantic composer, who was born in 1838, lived to the ripe old age of 82, and kept producing new works up to the time of his death in 1920.

One of these, a Concerto for Two Pianos, was commissioned by an American duo piano team, Ottilie and Rose Suttro, who premiered it with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra on today’s date in 1916. The new work was well-received and its composer praised.

But there is a somewhat ironic historical footnote to this successful premiere: It appears the Suttro Duo drastically revised and even rewrote parts of Bruch’s score for their 1916 performance, unbeknown to the composer. It wouldn’t be until 1971 that the concerto was performed as he had actually written it.

Max Bruch (1838-1920) Concerto for Two Pianos; Güher and Süher Pekinel, pianos; Philharmonia Orchestra; Neville Marriner, cond. Chandos 9711

Decades before the Cuban revolution, some decidedly revolutionary sounds had their birth in that country’s capital city on today’s date in 1930 during a concert of ultramodern music presented by the Havana Philharmonic.

The concert offered the premiere performance of a new Piano Concerto by American composer Henry Cowell, who also was the soloist. Cowell’s concerto broke new ground — and perhaps a few piano strings — by employing what Cowell dubbed “tone clusters.” These dense, dissonant chords were produced by pounding the keys of the piano with the fist, palms or extended forearms.

Cowell also took his new techniques to the Old World in the 1920s and ‘30s, performing concerts of his works in Europe. These attracted the attention of Bela Bartok, who asked Cowell’s permission to employ tone clusters in his works, and Arnold Schoenberg, who invited Cowell to perform for his Berlin composition classes.

Cowell’s oft-stated goal was to embrace what he described as “the whole world of music,” whether dissonant or consonant, radical or traditional, Western or non-Western. Perhaps that ideal was even more revolutionary than his Piano Concerto must have seemed back in 1930.

Henry Cowell (1897-1965) Piano Concerto; Stefan Litwin, piano; Saarbrucken Radio Symphony; Michael Stern, cond. Col Legno 20064

Back in the 18th century, Frederick the Great of Prussia was a prolific composer of sonatas, concertos and even a few symphonies. In the 19th century, Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria, composed songs and choral pieces. There have been other composers who were members of the European nobility, but more often they crop up as patrons of music rather than creators of it.

But in our time, Belgian composer Jacqueline Fontyn, who was born in Antwerp on today’s date in 1930, was made an honorary baroness by the King of Belgium in 1993 in recognition of her contributions to music in her native country and around the world.

Now, Fontyn is probably a composer you never heard of until today, but she has a sizable body of orchestral and chamber works and enjoyed an international career as a composition teacher, holding positions at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland, as well as in Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Seoul and her native Belgium.

Her music might be described as “European modern.” Today, you can find all the manuscript scores of Fontyn in the Library of Congress.

Jacqueline Fontyn (b. 1930) Piano Trio (1956); Morgenstern Trio AVI Music CD 8553315

On today’s date in 1734, the second cantata from the Christmas Oratorio of Johann Sebastian Bach had its first performance in Leipzig, Germany. This cantata takes its inspiration from Luke’s Gospel describing shepherd keeping watch over their flocks and opens with a purely instrumental Sinfonia that sets the scene, evoking the sound of the shepherds’ rustic pipes.

In Bach’s day, a famous builder of wind instruments lived in Leipzig. His name was J. H. Eichentopf, and he is credited with inventing an oboe da caccia — that’s Italian for "hunting oboe." The instrument was curved with a big brass horn bell at its end. Bach calls for this instrument in his Christmas Oratorio, but after Bach’s time, it fell out of use, and knowledge of its exact sound and construction was lost.

In the 20th century, two well-preserved (but unplayable) hunting oboes built by Eichentopf survived in museums in Denmark and Sweden, and from their measurements, modern-day copies were made. These were used for the first time in over 200 years for the period-instrument recording of the Christmas Oratorio conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt that appeared in 1973.

J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Cantata No. 2 Sinfonia, from The Christmas Oratorio; Vienna Concentus Musicus; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond.

In the 1930s, many Americans had a hard time making ends meet. During the Great Depression, opera and concert tickets didn’t always figure into most family’s budgets, but thanks to live radio broadcasts, American families enjoyed a veritable Golden Age of operatic and symphonic music in the comfort of their homes.

On Christmas Day in 1931, NBC made radio history when it broadcast a matinee performance of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hansel und Gretel live from the stage of the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York City to radio listeners coast to coast. The on-air host was American composer Deems Taylor, whose opera Peter Ibbetson would be included in a live Met broadcast the following spring.

And on Christmas Day in 1937, music of Antonio Vivaldi opened the first live NBC Symphony broadcast conducted by legendary Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. Live NBC Symphony broadcasts under Toscanini would continue until the conductor’s retirement in 1954. Along with Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, Toscanini included a handful of American works in his programs and, in 1938, conducted the broadcast premiere of Samuel Barber’s well-known Adagio for Strings.

Englebert Humperdinck (1854-1921) Hansel and Gretel Overture; Bamberg Symphony; Karl Anton Rickenbacher, cond. Virgin 61128

Antonio Vivaldi (1674-1741) Concerto Grosso in D; Moscow Virtuosi; Vladimir Spivakov, cond. BMG 60240

On today’s date in 1871, the Opera House of Cairo, Egypt, presented the world premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida. The khedive of Egypt commissioned the opera for his new theater, which had opened in 1869 with a production of Verdi’s Rigoletto.

Here’s how Verdi described it to his publisher, in Verdi's customary laconic fashion: “I was invited to write an opera for a very distant country. I replied, ‘No’. I was approached again and offered a very large sum. I still said, ‘No’. A month later, I was sent a printed synopsis and told it was the work of a person in high authority (which I don’t believe). Even so, I found it excellent and replied that I would set it to music on such and such terms. Three days later, I received a telegram that read: Accepted.”

For his efforts, the 58-year-old Verdi received four times his usual fee — and the honorary title of Commendatore of the Ottoman Order. The Cairo premiere was a great success, even though Verdi chose to spend his Christmas Eve at home, arranging for the Italian premiere of his Egyptian opera at Milan’s La Scala opera house early the following year.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) Grand March, from Aida; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, cond. Sony 48226

Oh, to have been in Vienna on today’s date in 1785! Wolfgang Mozart had just finished a new piano concerto a week earlier and quite likely performed it himself for the first time as an intermission feature at a performance of the oratorio Ester, by Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, conducted by Antonio Salieri.

Now wouldn’t that have made for a good scene in the movie Amadeus?

Fast forward 11 years for another memorable concert at the Theater an der Wien, when on today’s date in 1806, it was Beethoven’s turn to premiere one of his new concertos in Emanuel Schikaneder’s Viennese theater. Alongside works of Mozart, Méhul, Cherubini and Handel, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was introduced to the world, with Franz Clement as the soloist.

Beethoven’s friend Czerny recalled that Clement’s performance was greeted with “noisy bravos.”

But a contemporary Viennese music critic wrote: “While there are beautiful things in the concerto … the endless repetition of some commonplace passages could prove fatiguing.” The reviewer’s final assessment? “If Beethoven pursues his present path, it will go ill with him and the public alike.”

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791) Piano Concerto No. 22; Mitsuko Uchida, piano; English Chamber Orchestra; Jeffrey Tate, cond. Philips 420 187

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791) Magic Flute Overture; Zurich Opera House Orchestra; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec 95523

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Violin Concerto; Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin; New York Philharmonic; Kurt Masur, cond. DG 471 349

Whether you live in sunny California or snowy Minnesota, the arrival of the solstice means, “It’s official: Winter is here!” And if you were born someplace sunny, but moved to someplace snowy, the arrival of winter is pretty hard to ignore.

Winter must have made an impression on the transplanted Italian composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, who was born in Florence but settled in Paris and ended up as the court composer for King Louis XIV.

One of Lully’s operas, Isis, had its premiere in the winter of 1676 and contains a chorus of “Trembleurs,” or “Trembling People from the Frozen Climes,” whose teeth chatter in slurred tremolos. This chorus became particular famous for the wintry pantomime ballet that accompanied it, as well as for its evocative music.

Of course, the most famous of all Baroque winter music was served up by another Italian, Antonio Vivaldi, who was born in Venice but traveled widely in Northern Europe as well and died in Vienna.

Vivaldi’s “Winter” from The Four Seasons includes its own musical shivers, not to mention a musical depiction of slipping and sliding on icy streets.

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) Isis; Philippe Caillard Chorale and Orchestra Erato 20983

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) Winter, from The Four Seasons; Enrico Onofrio, violin; Il Giardino Armonico Teldec 97671

On today’s date in 1934, on a radio broadcast from Moscow, the orchestral suite Prokofiev culled from his film score to Lt. Kije received its first performance. The original film recounted the efforts of 18th-century Russian bureaucrats to invent a suitably impressive life and death for a nonexistent Russian solider, whose unusual name, actually a typographical error on a list of real soldiers’ names, caught the attention of the czar.

If the fictional Russian bureaucrats in Lt. Kije were terrified lest they displease the czar, real-life composers living in the Soviet Union of the 1930s were desperately anxious to keep on the good side of their ruler, dictator Joseph Stalin. It was, to put it mildly, a matter of life and death.

For Stalin’s 60th birthday, which fell on Dec. 21, 1939, Prokofiev composed a choral tribute, “Zdravitza,” which translates as “A Congratulatory Toast.” It, too, was broadcast on today’s date, this time booming over loudspeakers throughout Moscow’s squares and side streets.

Prokofiev’s son Oleg recalls running home through the swirling snow eager to tell the big news: “Daddy! They’re playing you outside!”

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) Lieutenant Kije Suite; Chicago Symphony; Claudio Abbado, cond. DG 447 419

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) A Toast!; St. Petersburg Philharmonic Choir; New Philharmonia Orchestra; Alexander Titov, cond. Beaux 38

On today’s date in 1738, a once-successful French composer died destitute in an asylum of Charenton. It was a lamentable end for the 56-year-old Jean-Joseph Mouret, who had once served the French king at the Palais Royal and whose operas had once graced the stage of the Paris Opéra.

How ironic, then, that Mouret would achieve belated fame in 20th-century America when the “Rondeau” from his Symphonies and Fanfares for the King's Supper was chosen as the theme for the Masterpiece Theatre TV series on PBS. Christopher Sarson, the original executive producer of Masterpiece Theatre, recalls how this came about.

“In 1962, my future wife and I went to one of the Club Med villages in Italy. We were in these little straw huts and every morning we were summoned to breakfast by that theme. It was just magic. ... I wanted to use it for Masterpiece Theatre but there was no way I could bear to put a French piece of music on something that was supposed to be English. I went through all kinds of English composers and nothing worked. So, Mouret became the theme.”

Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682-1738) Rondeau; Wynton Marsalis, trumpet; English Chamber Orchestra; Anthony Newman, cond. Sony 66244