Composers Datebook

Today we celebrate three legendary figures in American popular music.

The first is Stephen Foster, the great American songwriter of the 19th century who composed 189 classic songs including “Beautiful Dreamer” and “Old Folks at Home.” Foster was born on this date in 1826 in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania.

The second figure we honor today is the incredibly influential 20th century jazz trumpeter, Louis Armstrong, who claimed to have been born on this date in New Orleans in the year 1900.

It seems too good to be true that Foster and Armstrong should both have been born on the Fourth of July—in fact, Armstrong’s real birthday occurred on August 4, 1901. Apparently, Armstrong wasn’t sure of the exact details, so he and his agent decided that it would be good publicity for Armstrong to be born on the Fourth of July and at the start of the new century.

The great Vaudeville and Broadway song and dance man, George M. Cohan, also believed he was born on the Fourth of July, in 1878—a public misconception reinforced by the famous 1942 biographical film of Cohan’s life, “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” starring James Cagney as George M.

The belated discovery of Cohan’s birth certificate, however, proved that a Yankee Doodle Dandy he may have been, but one actually born on the THIRD of July.

Henri Vieuxtemps (1820-1881) – Souvenirs d'Amerique (Tchaikovsky Chamber Orchestra; Lazar Gosman, cond.) CBS/Sony 45529

George M. Cohan (1878-1942) – George M! Overture (New York City Opera Orchestra; Paul Gemignani, cond.) MusicMaster 67099

“Where to go for summer vacation?” That’s always been the question for any city-dweller fortunate enough to be able to escape to somewhere cool and green, with perhaps an ocean beach or at least a lake nearby.

In the summers of 1877 and 1878, Johannes Brahms abandoned urban Vienna for the rural Austrian district known as Carinthia and specifically the small town of Pörtschach on Wörthersee. Even today, this is prime vacation territory, with rolling green hills, dark pine trees, bright blue lakes, and the snow-capped Alps along the horizon. And the wildflowers have to be seen to be believed.

We can’t show you all that, but perhaps you can hear a sense of that landscape in the Second Symphony and Violin Concerto of Brahms —two works he composed during his summer holidays there.

In Carinthia, said Brahms, the melodies are so abundant that one had to be careful not to step on them. There just might be something in that, at least with respect to great Violin Concertos. In July of 1935, 57 years after Brahms wrote his Concerto in Pörtschach, the Viennese composer Alban Berg would finish his Violin Concerto in the same town, on the opposite shore of the Wörthersee from where Brahms stayed during his summer vacations. Berg’s Concerto even includes a quote from a risqué Carinthian folksong.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) – Symphony No. 2 (Concertgebouw Orchestra; Bernard Haitink, cond.) Philips 442 068

Johannes Brahms – Violin Concerto in D (David Oistrakh, vn; ORTF Orchestra; Otto Klemperer, cond.) EMI Classics 64632

Alban Berg (1885-1935) – Violin Concerto (Henryk Szeryng, vn; Bavarian Radio Symphony; Rafael Kubelik, cond.) Deutsche Grammophon 431 740

The American composer Elliott Carter lived to be 103 and remained amazingly productive, publishing more than 40 works between ages 90 and 100, and over 20 more AFTER he turned 100 in the year 2008.

On today’s date in 2012, a new chamber work by Carter with an odd title received its first performance at a concert in the New York Philharmonic’s CONTACT! Series. The work was titled “Two Controversies and a Conversation” and showcased the percussive aspects of the piano, highlighting that instrument alongside a solo percussionist. The premiere was an international triple-commission from the New York Philharmonic, the Aldeburgh Festival in England, and Radio France.

An earlier version of part of the new work, titled just “Conversations,” had been premiered in the UK the previous year. The composer explained the title as follows: “How does one converse?” asked Carter. “One person says something and tries to get the other person to respond, or carry on, or contradict a statement. Those conversing are also all the time playing a kind of game with each other. I tried to put all that into my music … After the premiere of ‘Conversations’ at the Aldeburgh Festival in June of 2011, [the British composer] Oliver Knussen suggested I expand this piece. I decided to add two more movements, which became the two ‘Controversies.’"

Elliott Carter (1908 – 2012) –“Conversation,” from “Two Controversies and a Conversation” (Eric Huebner, piano; Colin Currie, percussion; New York Philharmonic; David Robertson, cond.) NYP 20120112

Boston-born American composer Alice Parker is a respected figure in the world of choral music. She studied with the legendary choral conductor Robert Shaw and collaborated with him in a series of folk-song arrangements that are performed by choruses all over the world.

Parker was approached by the American Composers Forum to write a new work for their “Choral Quest” series specially designed for middle school children. Parker was intrigued by the challenge, realizing that many scores written for elementary schools would be too easy for middle schoolers, but works written for high school choirs might be too difficult. Also, parts written for middle school boys would have to accommodate voices in the process of changing from treble to tenor, baritone, and bass.

Parker collaborated with students from the Amherst Regional Middle School Choir in her home state, and found some Native American texts that intrigued her, including one that began “What I am, I must become.” That text seemed perfect, since, as Parker put it, “Children that age have so much ‘becoming’ to do… what they don’t realize—yet—is that is true for all of us, all of our lives!”

That text became the first of a three-part suite entitled “Dancing Songs,” premiered by the Amherst Regional Middle School Choir and their director David Ranen on today’s date in 2011.

Alice Parker (b. 1925) –Dancing Songs (Minnesota Boy Choir) ChoralQuest promotional CD

On today’s date in 2013, the Jamaican-American pianist and composer Donald Shirley died at age 86 in New York City.

His death set into motion a plan that had been long in the works: a movie based on Shirley’s concert tour to the deep South in 1962, accompanied by Tony “the Lip” Vallelonga, a bouncer at the famous Copacabana night club who Shirley hired for protection.

In the 1960s Shirley was at the height of his popularity as the leader of a jazz trio he founded after being told by the great concert impresario Sol Hurok a career as a classical pianist was impossible due to his skin color.

In the 1980s, Vallelonga’s son Nick told Shirley and his father he wanted to make a movie about the indignities they suffered during that 1962 tour and the life-long friendship that developed between them. Shirley agreed, but said only after his death. "'You should put in everything your father told you, and everything I told you,” said Shirley. "'You tell exactly the truth, but wait until I pass.'"

In 2018, five years after Shirley’s death, the film was released, titled GREEN BOOK, after a guide for Negro motorists listing hotels and restaurants open to them in segregated states. Fact-checkers confirm the film is largely accurate, and, yes, for over 50 years Shirley did live in an elegant apartment over Carnegie Hall, where his jazz trio often performed.

Richard Rodgers (1902 – 1979) arr. Don Shirely (1927 – 2013) — “This Nearly Was Mine,” from “South Pacific” (Don Shirely, p; Juri That, vcl; Ken Fricker, db.) Cadence LP CLP-25046

In Bucharest on today’s date in the year 1903, a 21-year-old Romanian composer named Georges Enescu conducted the premiere of two “Romanian Rhapsodies” he had written. These flashy orchestra showpieces quickly became his most popular works – a little to the composer’s later chagrin. He came to feel – and quite rightly – that the huge success of these toe-tappers had come to overshadow all his other compositions and accomplishments.

Enescu had good reason to be proud: In addition to being a fine composer and conductor, he was one of the great virtuoso violinists of his day. As both a conductor and violinist he appeared with most of the great orchestras of Europe and America. Enescu wrote impressive symphonies, chamber music, and even an opera based on the Greek legend of Oedipus. As a teacher and general musical mentor, Enescu could count the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin as one of his star pupils and most devoted admirers.

Enescu died in Paris in 1955. Even though he had severed relations with his now Communist homeland, the Romanian government revered him as their great national composer: His native village, a street in Bucharest, and the State Philharmonic were all renamed in his honor.

Georges Enescu (1881 - 1955) — Romanian Rhapsody No 1 (Dallas Symphony; Eduardo Mata, cond.) RCA/BMG 63586

The Viennese are notorious for the passion with which they can despise composers one moment – and lionize them the next. Here, for example, is one music critic’s reaction to the 1886 Viennese premiere of the Symphony No. 4 by Johannes Brahms:

“Conspicuous is the crab-like progress in the output of Brahms. It has, to be sure, never reached beyond the level of mediocrity, but such nothingness, emptiness, and hypocrisy as prevails throughout this symphony has not appeared in any previous work of Brahms so alarmingly. The art of composing without ideas has decidedly found in Brahms its worthiest representative. Just like the good Lord, Herr Brahms is a master at making something from nothing.”

And yet, 11 years later, on today’s date in 1897, when this same symphony was performed again in Vienna, each movement was greeted by prolonged cheers from the audience. Not only had the Viennese come to admire the music, but they knew the now-beloved Herr Brahms was dying. And so, when the gaunt and sickly composer attended a matinee performance of his 4th symphony at the Vienna Philharmonic’s Golden Hall, the audience took the opportunity to acknowledge him and his music for the very last time.

Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) — Symphony No 4 in e (Vienna Philharmonic; Carlos Kleiber, cond.) DG 457 706

On today’s date in 2000, the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen gave the premiere of The Handmaid’s Tale, a new opera based on the dystopian novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood.

The book and opera tell of a nightmarish future: following a nuclear disaster in the United States, infertility rates have soared, and a religious sect has staged a military coup, enslaving the few fertile women who remain as breeders, or “handmaids,” for the military and religious commanders of their sect. Said Atwood, “There is nothing new about the society I depicted in The Handmaid's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about have been done before — more than once, in fact.”

Despite its grim subject matter, Danish composer Poul Ruders said he saw “huge operatic potential” when he first read the book back in 1992.

The original production in Copenhagen was sung in Danish, but Ruders says he conceived the work in English. The opera was staged in that language first in London at the English National Opera, and subsequently, at the opera’s American premiere, in St. Paul by The Minnesota Opera, to great critical acclaim.

Poul Ruders (b. 1949): The Handmaid’s Tale; Royal Danish Orchestra; Michael Schonwandt, conductor; DaCapo 9.224165-66

The German composer Richard Wagner tried to limit performances of his final opera, “Parsifal,” to his own theater in Bayreuth, hoping it would provide a source of income for his family after his death. “Parsifal” premiered at Bayreuth in 1882, and after Wagner died the following year, his widow forbade rental of the music for performances elsewhere.

Naturally, Wagner enthusiasts all over the world were eager to hear the new work. One of them was a German-born American named Walter Damrosch, who, at the tender age of 23, headed both the New York Symphony and Oratorio Society, and was a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera.

While visiting London in 1885, Damrosch had bought a miniature score of “Parsifal.” The purchase gave him no right to perform the work, but he discovered the monetary fine for doing so was so small that he hired copyists to prepare orchestral parts for a concert performance in America at the old Metropolitan Opera House on today’s date in 1886.

Unfortunately for Damrosch, Anton Seidl, a close friend of Wagner’s widow was hired as the new music director of the Met. Seidl apparently took offense at Damrosch’s audacity, and so limited Damrosch to only non-Wagnerian repertory!

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) — Parsifal (excerpt) (SW German Radio Symphony; Erich Leinsdorf, cond.) Hannsler 93.040

Today’s date marks the birthday of a 20th century Czech composer you perhaps have never heard of. Viktor Kalabis was born in 1923 and by age 6, was giving public piano performances. All the signs pointed to a brilliant career. But first Kalabis had to face – and surmount–two major political hurdles.

First, his formal musical studies were delayed by the Nazi occupation of his country in 1938, when he was forced into factory work; then, after the war, Kalabis met and married a young harpsichordist named Zuzana Ruzickova, who was a concentration camp survivor. Victor was a Gentile, but in Stalinist Czechoslovakia, anti-Semitism was rampant and marrying a Jew was frowned upon. To make matters worse, both Victor and Zuzana refused to join the Communist Party, hardly what one would call “a smart career move” in those years.

Even so, Kalabis began to attract commissions and performances of his music at home and abroad, and following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, Kalabis assumed a more prominent position in his country’s musical life.

His symphonies, concertos, and chamber works are now regarded as some of the most important contributions to Czech music in the late 20th century.

Viktor Kalabis (1923 – 2006) — Piano Concerto No. 1 (Zuzana Ruzickova, p; Czech Philharmonic; Karel Sejna, cond.) MRS Classics MS-1350