Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1955, Leopold Stokowski gave his first concert as the new music director of the Houston Symphony — or, as Stoki pronounced it, the “Hooston Symphony.” It was a major cultural event in those days. NBC even televised a bit of the famously white-maned conductor rehearsing the Texans in a brand-new work that Stokowski had commissioned for the occasion: the second symphony of Alan Hovhaness, subtitled Mysterious Mountain.

At the time, Hovhaness explained his subtitle as follows: “Mountains are symbols, like pyramids, of man’s attempt to know God. Mountains are symbolic meeting places between the mundane and spiritual worlds.”

The new piece proved to be a terrific success for all concerned. The next day, the Houston Post’s music critic wrote, “The real mystery of Mysterious Mountain is that it should be so simple, sweetly, innocently lovely in an age that has tried so terribly hard to avoid those impressions in music.”

For his part, Hovhaness once said, “Things that are complicated tend to disappear and get lost. Simplicity is difficult, not easy.”

Before his death in 2000, Hovhaness would complete 67 symphonies.

Alan Hovhaness (1911 – 2000) Symphony No. 2 (Mysterious Mountain) - London Symphony; John Williams, cond. Sony Classical 62729

American opera composer Jake Heggie and his librettist Terrence McNally decided to follow their Dead Man Walking – a successful but harrowing opera about capital punishment – with a lighter, more comic work, Great Scott.

Now, McNally winced when people called Great Scott a “comic” opera, since it deals with a serious topic – for opera lovers, at least, namely, “Does opera still matter?”

Great Scott is set in a large U.S. city with a respected – but struggling – opera company. The city also has a powerhouse professional football team. In Great Scott, international opera star Arden Scott returns to her hometown to save the opera company by staging the world premiere of a long-lost Italian bel canto work, Rosa Dolorosa, Figlia di Pompei. Unfortunately, the scheduled premiere falls on the same day as the home team’s first Super Bowl.

Does the diva save the opera company? And who wins the Super Bowl?

Well, you’ll just have to listen to the opera to find out!

Fortunately, a Dallas Opera recording of Great Scott was made at its premiere on today’s date in 2015 – featuring the powerhouse American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in the title role.

Jake Heggie (b. 1961) “Rosa Dolorosa” Overture, fr Great Scott - Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Dallas Opera; Patrick Summers, conductor Erato 9029594078

On today’s date in 1739, George Frideric Handel took out an advertisement, announcing that he was now accepting subscriptions for his new set of 12 Grand Concertos for strings. He had, in fact, finished the first concerto one month before, on Sept. 29, and spent the next five weeks polishing off the other 11 at the rate of one every two or three days.

Handel’s publisher was John Walsh Jr., who had a shop in London at the sign of the harp and oboe in Catherine Street on the Strand. One hundred twenty-two copies of the music were to be printed and sold at a prepublication price of two guineas each. Among the initial 100 subscribers were three royal princesses and the duke of Cumberland, and two copies each were sold to the Academy of Music in Dublin and a certain Charles Jennens.

It was Jennens who was to provide the text for Handel’s next major oratorio, Messiah, and the city of Dublin the venue for its famous premiere.

So, in 1739, just as today, it pays to advertise!

George Frederic Handel (1685 – 1757) Concerto Grosso in D, Op. 6, no. 5 - I Solisti Italiani Denon 6305

In St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1893, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance of his latest symphony, his Sixth. From the beginning, this symphony has been commonly known by its French subtitle, the Pathétique, a designation suggested by the composer’s brother, Modest.

Now, by Pathetique, Modest meant something like “passionate” or “emotional,” with overtones of “pathos” and “suffering,” but in plain old English, “pathétique” translates as “pathetic,” a word with a slew of negative connotations. The French sounds much better, thank you. Tchaikovsky had originally wanted to call it A Program Symphony with, apparently, no intention of cluing anyone in on what that program might be.

In any case, nine days after he conducted the premiere, Tchaikovsky was dead. Was his death the result of a fatal glass of unboiled water recklessly drunk during the height of a cholera epidemic? Or was it a deliberate suicide to avoid the scandal of a homosexual affair becoming public? Did his Pathétique Symphony encode the answer?

Speculation has raged around Tchaikovsky’s last symphony ever since, surrounding this last work with what one critic has called “voluptuous gloom.”

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique) - Russian National Orchestra; Mikhail Pletnev, cond. DG 449 967

On today’s date in 1994, Dennis Russell Davies conducted the Chicago Symphony in the premiere performance of a 23-minute orchestral work by American composer Steven Mackey. The new piece was titled Eating Greens, after a painting of the same name that the composer purchased at an African art store in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Mackey’s Eating Greens is a colorful orchestral suite of seven movements. The fourth movement is only 46 seconds long and is playfully labeled “The Title Is Almost as Long as the Piece Itself.” Other movements’ titles acknowledge the influence of the colorful and playful visual artist Henri Matisse and the quirky but brilliant jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk.

In the liner notes for the recording of Eating Greens, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, Mackey writes, “On more than one occasion, Michael has used the word ‘wacky’ to describe my music. Composers usually blanch at such attributions — nobody wants to be captured in a single word — but I can live with ‘wacky.’ It is not a common adjective, does not end with ‘ism’ and clearly the rhyme with my last name personalizes it.”

Steven Mackey (b. 1956) Eating Greens - New World Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. RCA/BMG 63826

For composers of new operas, all too often, after the heady champagne of opening night comes the strong black coffee of “the morning after” — sipped anxiously while reading the first reviews.

Imagine yourself as American composer Robert Ward, whose opera The Crucible was premiered by the New York City Opera on today’s date in 1961. Here’s what he would have read in the New York Times the following morning:

“Last night, the audience heard an opera that, in philosophy and workmanship, could have been composed at the turn of the century, or before. And, judging from the response at the end of the work, the audience loved it.”

Hmm. Not all that bad, so far.

But down a few more lines comes this zinger: “Mr. Ward is an experienced composer whose music fails to bear the impress of a really inventive mind. Melodically, his ideas had little distinction. ... [The opera’s] powerful subject cried out for intensity, for brutality and shock. ... Instead, we had musical platitudes.”

Ouch!

Oh, well, despite the nasty review, Ward’s opera did well at the box office, and, for the record, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music the following year.

Robert Ward (b. 1917) The Crucible - New York City Opera; Emerson Buckley, cond. Albany 25/26

On today’s date in 1970, a new chamber work by American composer John Corigliano received its premiere performance at a concert given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the group that had commissioned it.

The new piece, Poem in October, was scored for tenor voice and eight instruments and was a setting of poetry by Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet who died in 1953.

“The thing that most appeals to me is the sound of his words,” Corigliano explained. “Phrases from Poem in October like ‘a springful of larks in a rolling cloud’ and ‘the blue altered sky streamed again a wonder of summer’ are in themselves musical.”

“The music itself,” Corigliano says, “is unabashedly lyrical. I sought to convey a pastoral feeling that would match the directness and simplicity of the text, to deal in understatement and succinctness rather than in complexity and theatrical effect.”

Corigliano’s chamber scoring includes three “pastoral” wind instruments — flute, oboe and clarinet — plus strings, and, perhaps to give the work a slightly archaic feel, a harpsichord.

John Corigliano (b. 1938) Poem in October - Robert White, tenor; Thomas Nyfenger, f.; Humbert Lucarelli, ob.; Joseph Rabbai, cl.; American String Quartet; Maurice Peress, cond. and hc. RCA 60395

On today’s date in 2002, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Leonard Slatkin conducted the National Symphony in the premiere of a new symphony by American composer Cindy McTee.

McTee subtitled her Symphony No. 1, Ballet for Orchestra, saying: “Music is said to have come from dance — [and] the impulse to compose often begins as a rhythmical stirring and leads to a physical response — tensing muscles, gesturing with hands and arms, or quite literally, dancing. … There is also much pleasure to be gained from observing the gestures of a conductor, or from seeing the coordinated bowing of the string sections within an orchestra. My Ballet for Orchestra emerged out of a similar kinesthetic/emotional awareness and a renewed interest in dance music.”

McTee’s symphony makes passing allusions to earlier works by Stravinsky, Ravel, Barber and even Penderecki, tossing in some jazz and folk fiddling allusions for good measure. But Allan Kozinn, reviewing the new symphony for the New York Times, wrote: “Ms. McTee's sense of organization kept the work from becoming a pastiche: As diverse as its ideas were, they seemed to unfold naturally within an orchestral fabric that used the ensemble's full coloristic range.”

Cindy McTee (b. 1953) Symphony No. 1 (Ballet for Orchestra) - Detroit Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, cond. Naxos 8.559765

On today’s date in 2008, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, soprano Dawn Upshaw and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra gave the first performance of a new song cycle, Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories. Its composer, Maria Schneider, conducted the premiere.

Drummond was one of Brazil’s greatest poets, and Schneider came to know his work through English translations by Mark Strand. “Drummond’s poetry struck me as deeply Brazilian, and Brazil is a country for which I’ve long felt an affinity,” she said.

The Minneapolis premiere was something of a homecoming for Schneider, who was born in Minnesota and studied composition at its university before heading off to the Eastman School and after graduation being hired by the great jazz orchestrator Gil Evans as his assistant. In 1992, she formed her own jazz orchestra and won a Grammy with it in 2004.

Upshaw is a big fan of Schneider’s work, and in 2011 they collaborated on the premiere of a second song cycle, Winter Morning Walks, based on poems of Ted Kooser.

"I knew that no matter what she was going to write,” Upshaw said, “it was going to be a joyful experience."

Maria Schneider (b. 1960) Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories - Dawn Upshaw, soprano; St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Maria Schneider, conductor ArtistShare AS-0121

Royalty was often flattered by the composers of the Baroque age. Handel wrote glorious ceremonial music for British monarchs, and Bach was not above working up an obsequiously complimentary cantata or two for some German prince. At the French Court of Versailles, King Louis XIV appeared on stage for cameo appearances during operas and ballets whose stories complemented Louis’ wisdom, talent and impeccable good taste.

On today’s date in 1987, at the Houston Grand Opera in Texas, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Chairman Mao didn’t come on stage in their own personas, but did appear as characters in the premiere of a new opera by American composer John Adams. Nixon in China was a somewhat surreal and not necessarily flattering dramatization of a real event: President Nixon’s ground-breaking trip to communist China in 1972.

One can only guess at the former president’s reaction to being portrayed on stage. Adams did report that Nixon’s lawyer, Leonard Garment, attended a performance of Nixon in China, most likely on the former president’s behalf. No lawsuit followed, and, Adams notes with some amusement, Garment even became something of a fan of his music!

John Adams (b. 1947) Nixon in China - Orchestra of St. Luke's; Edo de Waart, cond. Nonesuch 794543