Composers Datebook

What’s your favorite season? And how would you describe it in words? And if you’re a composer, how would you describe it in music?

The most famous musical depiction is The Four Seasons, a set four violin concertos by Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi, but other composers have evoked the mood and sounds of the seasons. On today’s date in 2009, American composer Philip Glass tossed his hat into the ring with the Toronto Symphony premiere of a new work, The American Four Seasons.

Glass’ seasonal tone painting, like Vivaldi, is a set of four concertos, written for violinist Robert McDuffie, who also performed the premiere. But when McDuffie finally saw the finished score, he felt Glass’s view of some of the seasons did not quite match his own, so they came up with an unusual solution: In the published score, Glass did not provide titles for any of the four concertos, letting each listener (or performer) decide for him- or herself which concerto matched which season.

So, in this case of this Four Seasons, it’s all up to you.

Philip Glass (b. 1938) The American Four Seasons (Violin Concerto No. 2); Robert McDuffie, vn; London Philharmonic; Marin Alsop, cond. Orange Mountain CD 0072

At Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 1908, Gustav Mahler conducted the New York Symphony, the 200-voice Oratorio Society chorus and two vocal soloists in the American premiere of his Symphony No. 2, his Resurrection Symphony.

These days, Mahler’s Second ranks among his most popular works. But how was this new music received by New Yorkers back in 1908? An unsigned review in the New York Daily Tribune noted:

“It was by demonstrations of far more than mere politeness that the large audience found vent for its feelings of interest and pleasure in this new music. ... After the Schubertian second movement, there was long continued applause, and at the close of the composition … there was cheering and waving of handkerchiefs until Mr. Mahler was compelled to appear several times to bow his thanks and appreciation.”

As for the music itself, the review opined: “Of the beauty and insight of certain episodes, there can be no doubt. … There seems, however, a lack of significant and commanding originality. It is more cerebral than passionate, more intellectual than compellingly emotional.”

Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection"); New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, cond.

On today’s date in 1975, the Oakland, California, Youth Orchestra gave the first performance of a symphony by a Bay area resident, American composer Lou Harrison. He began sketches for this symphonic score back in 1942 and tinkered with it off and off until the day of its premiere performance, even stapling in 15 additional measures to the young players’ parts at their final dress rehearsal.

The commission for Harrison’s Fourth Symphony, subtitled The Elegiac, came from the Koussevitzky Foundation, and in part was written as a tribute to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky, two of the 20th century’s greatest new music patrons. But the intensely personal tone of this elegiac symphony was prompted by the death of Harrison’s mother, which was followed by the death of his close friend, iconoclastic American composer and instrument inventor Harry Partch.

The symphony’s first movement is titled “Tears of the Angel Israfel” — the angel of music in Islamic lore — and the score also bears two inscriptions. The first reads “Epicurus said of death: where death is, we are not; where we are, death is not; therefore, death is nothing to us.” The second inscription is a quote from Horace: “Bitter sorrows will grow milder with music.”

Lou Harrison (1917-2003) Symphony No. 2 (Elegiac); American Composers Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, cond. MusicMasters 60204

On today’s date in 1998, two new Christmas carols debuted in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the “Welcome Christmas” choral concert of VocalEssence conducted by Philip Brunelle.

The two carols, “Sweet Noel,” by Joan Griffith, and “The Virgin’s Cradle Hymn,” by Richard Voorhaar, were the prize-winning submissions entered in a contest arranged by the Plymouth Music Series and the American Composers Forum. The idea was to inspire contemporary composers to create new carols that — who knows? — might turn out to be classics over time.

As Brunelle put it, “The Christmas carols that we love to sing and hear have a timelessness about them wrapped in their music and words. Out of submissions from all across the USA, [we] selected two that we felt captured this feeling.”

Since 1998, the “Welcome Christmas” Carol Contest has continued as an annual tradition, and hundreds of worthy carols have been submitted. Each year, two are selected and premiered in December by Brunelle’s choral ensemble. These “Welcome Christmas” concerts are recorded by American Public Media for both regional broadcast and national distribution.

Richard Voorhaar - The Virgin's Cradle Hymn; Vocalessence; Philip Brunelle, cond. Clarion 939

On today’s date in 1998, at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Orchestra, led by Eiji Oue, premiered a new symphony by American composer Libby Larsen. This was her Symphony No. 4, a work scored for strings alone.

Larsen explained her decision to do without winds, brass and percussion as follows: “This symphony is both homage to strings and an essay about them. Strings, the core of the symphony orchestra, are supremely lyrical and supremely emotional. Yet, throughout the 20th century, perhaps marked by the performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, orchestral compositions have tended to become more and more rhythmic and percussive and less lyrical.”

Larsen goes on to make this interesting observation: “In each century since the 1600s, the orchestra has added a new choir of sound to its ensemble: the Baroque orchestra consisted chiefly of strings; woodwinds were added during the 1700s; brass during the 1800s. The 20th century has added the percussion section.”

Larsen said her new symphony was an attempt to capture something of the melody and inflections of 20th-century American English, as it is spoken and sung, through orchestral strings alone.

Libby Larsen (b. 1950) Symphony No. 4 (String Symphony); Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Joel Revzen, cond. Koch International 7481

On today’s date in 1693, a new opera based on an old legend had its premiere performance at the Académie de la Musique in Paris. The new opera was by French Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The old legend was that of Medea, the sorceress who murdered her children to avenge her abandonment by their father, the Greek hero Jason.

Charpentier’s Médée (to give his opera its French title) was well received by its first audiences. The most celebrated French soprano of her day sang the title role, but one contemporary critic, impressed by Charpentier’s achievement, wrote, “The emotions are so vivid, that even if the role were only spoken, the opera would not fail to make a great impression.”

In the three centuries following Charpentier’s opera, many other musicians have taken up the Medea legend as well. In 1980, American composer Jacob Druckman took themes from three famous Medea operas and worked these into a three-movement orchestral suite, Prisms, with Charpentier’s version of Medea having pride of place and quoted in the first movement of Druckman’s score.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1635 – 1704) Médée; Les Arts Florissants; William Christie, cond. Harmonia Mundi 90.1139/41

Jacob Druckman (1928 – 1996) Prism; New York Philharmonic; Zubin Mehta, cond. New World 335

Parents are not supposed to have favorite children. By analogy, maybe composers aren’t supposed to love some of their pieces more than others — but they often do.

In the case of Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, his little Sonatina for violin and piano was one of his proudest creations. He wrote it for two of his older children, 15-year-old Otilie and 10-year-old Antonin Junior.

The Sonatina was composed in 1893 while Dvořák and his family were living in America. In the fall of that year, Dvořák had paid a visit to the Czech community in St. Paul, Minnesota, and while there had visited Minnehaha Falls, a local tourist attraction. After viewing the picturesque little waterfall, Dvořák jotted down a musical idea, a bit of rippling water music that found its way into the Sonatina’s slow movement.

The Sonatina was finished in New York City on today’s date in 1893 — less than two weeks before the premiere of Dvořák’s New World Symphony at Carnegie Hall. Despite the tremendous success of that symphony, Dvořák liked to say his proudest premiere was when his children played the Sonatina for him in the family parlor.

Antonin Dvořák (1841 – 1904) Sonatina in G; Ivan Zenaty, violin; Antonin Kubalek, piano; Dorian 90171

For the last 30 years of his life, Aaron Copland lived in a ranch-style house built in the 1940s on Washington Street in Cortlandt Manor, New York. After his death in 1990, the house became a National Historical Landmark and also the site of a residency program for composers. In 2017, one of them was Juri Seo, a composer and pianist based in New Jersey.

Now, there was a lot of snow in Cortlandt Manor that year, and maybe that had something to do with it, but the chamber work Juri Seo worked on there was titled String Quartet - Infinite Season. As she explains:

“After each snow, golden sunlight hinted at the spring’s coming warmth. The turbulent fluctuation of the weather made me acutely aware of the passage of time. The seasons seemed to alternate by the day, yet the certainty of spring never faltered. … This was my solace: The seasons, with their infinite gradations of difference, will return again, and the birds and insects will carry on, cycle after cycle, an infinite rebirth.”

This new work was written for the Argus Quartet, which gave its premiere performance on today’s date in 2017 at Princeton University.

Juri Seo (b. 1981) String Quartet - Infinite Season; Argus Quartet Innova 1-022

On today’s date in 2006, the Minnesota Orchestra did something quite unusual: it gave a public concert consisting of nine works that had never been performed by a major orchestra, all written by young composers at the start of their careers. The new pieces had been workshopped and rehearsed the previous week as part of the Orchestra’s annual Composers Institute for promising new works by promising new composers. The public concert was billed as “Future Classics,” suggesting that though the pieces were new, they would have staying power.

One of the works on the program that chilly December night in Minneapolis was selected as the audience’s favorite, and has also gone on to be programmed again by not only the Minnesota Orchestra, but others around the world.  The work was by a Pennsylvania-born composer named Missy Mazzoli titled These Worlds In Us. Dedicated to her father, it ruminates on his service in the Vietnam War. 

Blogging after its 2006 performance in Minneapolis, Mazzoli wrote: “Participating in the [Composer] Institute was the single most important thing I have ever done as a composer, not only for the performance but also for the long love affair with the orchestra this week has inspired.”

Missy Mizzoli (b. 1980) – These Worlds in Us (Arctic Philharmonic; Tim Weiss, cond.) Bis 2572

On today’s date in 2000, the Boston Symphony gave the premiere performance of the Second Symphony of American composer John Corigliano. For strings alone, the symphony was a reworking of a string quartet that Corigliano had composed for the farewell tour of the Cleveland Quartet in 1996.

The symphony was well received, and the following year was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music.

“I am more than shocked. ... I don't know what to say,” Corigliano said upon receiving the news. “It's one of the great surprises of my life.”

Perhaps doubly surprising, since, as a young man, Corigliano pretty much ruled out writing even one symphony, let alone two.

“My thought then,” he said, “was that there were so many great symphonies [already]. I could satisfy only my ego by writing yet another. Only the death of countless friends from AIDS prompted me to write my Symphony No. 1. ... A world-scale tragedy, I felt, needed a comparably epic form.

“Then the Boston [asked] that I write a second symphony to honor the l00th anniversary of their justly famous Symphony Hall. At first I declined, stating my earlier reservations, but they were quite insistent.”

John Corigliano (b. 1938) String Quartet; Cleveland Quartet Telarc 80415