Composers Datebook

Today we celebrate the birthday anniversaries of two notable baby boomers.

The American composer John Adams was born on this date in 1947 in Worcester, Massachusetts. After studies at Harvard, Adams moved to California in 1971, and in 1978 he became new music advisor to the San Francisco Symphony. With music director Edo de Waart, created the Symphony's “New and Unusual Music” series, and around that same time, Adams began composing some “new and unusual music” of his own.

Our second birthday anniversary today is that of the American composer Christopher Rouse, born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1949. After studies at Oberlin and Cornell, Rouse taught at Eastman, where, alongside courses on theory and composition, he offered students his scholarly spin on the history of rock ‘n’ roll. Rouse’s interest in rock was genuine, and, in 1988, he wrote a piece for eight percussionists entitled “Bonham”—a tribute to the Led Zeppelin drummer of that name.

On a more introspective note, the following year the St. Paul Chamber orchestra premiered work by Rouse entitled “Iscariot,” which quotes a Bach chorale. John Adams conducted that SPCO premiere, and it was to Adams that Rouse dedicated the score “in friendship and admiration.”

Today is St. Valentine’s day, one of the most popular of all saints’ days—not for any religious reasons, but because it has been associated for centuries with love and romance.

It was a nice touch for Italian composer Riccardo Zandonai to get his new opera, “Giulietta e Romeo,” based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” premiered in Rome on Valentine’s Day 1922. Today, Zandonai’s music is seldom heard outside of Italy, but the classic story of Romeo and Juliet has attracted a remarkable number of different musical settings.

Many other operas on “Romeo and Juliet” have been written; the most famous being that by the French composer Charles Gounod, first staged in 1867. First runner-up, some distance away, is probably Bellini’s “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” of 1830.

It’s intriguing to speculate what might have been if Tchaikovsky had ever followed through on his idea to write his own “Romeo and Juliet” opera. He made a few sketches, but instead of an opera he turned to the idea of a symphonic “fantasy-overture.” That became one of his most beloved concert pieces and is often quoted in movies and TV commercials as an instantly recognizable musical cue for love and romance.

Today we observe an important anniversary for what we now call “intellectual property.”

On today’s date in 1914, ASCAP—the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers—was founded in New York City. Its first director was the composer Victor Herbert, who, the story goes, once heard a hotel orchestra playing some of his music. Now, you might think Herbert would be pleased, but actually he was furious. His music was supposedly protected by copyright, but Herbert realized he wasn’t receiving royalty payments from the hotel or the performers.

Long before Muzak and other recorded background music, live musical performances in commercial settings like hotels and restaurants were common, but enforcement of copyright law and the collection of royalty payments woefully rare. Helping to found ASCAP was Herbert’s way of improving the chances that his fellow composers, songwriters, lyricists, and music publishers could earn a decent living from their creative works.

Herbert was 55 years old in 1914, and a string of Broadway hits such as “Babes in Toyland” and “Naughty Marietta” had made him the early 20th century equivalent of Stephen Sondheim or Andrew Lloyd Webber – and Herbert would probably be very gratified that both Sondheim and Lloyd Webber would later become ASCAP members themselves.

Just to show that political spin and manipulation is nothing new, consider this tune by Franz Joseph Haydn, first heard on today’s date in 1797, which happened to be the birthday of Franz II, the Hapsburg Emperor.

And so an Austrian poet was commissioned to write some verses that would inspire patriotic support for Franz, since Austria was at war with Napoleon Bonaparte at the time. Haydn was asked to set the verses into music.

The new song premiered in the Emperor’s presence at Vienna’s Burgtheater, between a comic opera and a tragic ballet. But contemporary spin-meisters saw to it that copies had been sent to all playhouses, opera houses and concerts halls in the Hapsburg Monarchy, so that it could be heard during any performances occurring on February 12. After the defeat of Napoleon, Haydn’s little tune became the Austrian national anthem.

Long before that happened, Haydn recycled his hit tune into one of his String Quartets—a work now called the “Emperor” Quartet. And long AFTER that happened, 40 years after Haydn's death, in fact, a German nationalist poet wrote new verses for the tune, which began “Deutschland, Deutschland, ueber alles.”

But THAT’s another story entirely…

On today’s date in 1840, a new opera by Gaetano Donizetti debuted at the Opéra Comique in Paris. This was “La fille du régiment,” or “The Daughter of the Regiment.” Other operas by the popular Italian composer were already playing in Paris, and others scheduled. Despite being tailor-made to Parisian tastes, “The Daughter of the Regiment” was not well received.

Apparently French composers, Berlioz among them, felt threatened by the Donizetti blitz. “Monsieur Donizetti seems to treat us like a conquered country,” wrote Berlioz.” It is a veritable invasion. One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of Donizetti!”

Well, eventually Donizetti did win over French hearts and minds, and, it’s ironic to note that one hundred years after its 1840 premiere, Paris WAS indeed an occupied country. In 1940, German tanks rolled into Paris, and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the patriotic French soprano Lily Pons used her starring role in a revival of Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment” to express her solidarity with the French Resistance. She added a rousing version of the “Marseilles” to the finale of Donizetti’s score, which brought sympathetic American audiences to their feet.

A question: what do you SEE when you HEAR music? An odd question perhaps, but sometimes composers themselves confess that particular places, persons, and scenes play a role in how music is created.

On today’s date in 1994, in San Antonio, Texas, for example, a new symphony for wind ensemble by the American composer David Maslanka received its premiere performance during a convention of the Texas Music Educators Association.

In program notes, Maslanka confessed two major inspirations: The first was “the powerful voice of the Earth that comes to me from my adopted western Montana, and the high plains and mountains of central Idaho.” The second, he said, was his fascination with President Abraham Lincoln. Maslanka explained that reading about a Civil War brass band playing the “Old Hundreth” hymn tune at sunset as Lincoln’s coffin was transferred to a waiting funeral train was an image that haunted him.

“For me,” wrote Maslanka, “Lincoln’s life and death are as critical today as they were more than a century ago… My impulse through this music is to speak to the fundamental human issues of transformation and re-birth in this chaotic time.”

Composers have always been fascinated by the sea, and, if you’re curious, Spotify offers a playlist of 50 sea-inspired classical works from composers ranging from Mendelssohn to Debussy to Takemitsu.

On today’s date in 2012, conductor Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony premiered a new sea-inspired work by the London-born composer Anna Clyne, who was then the orchestra’s composer-in-residence. Clyne’s piece is titled “Night Ferry,” and was, as she described, "music of voyages, from stormy darkness to enchanted worlds. It is music of the conjurer and setter of tides, the guide through the ungovernable and dangerous.”

The Chicago Symphony took Anna Clyne’s “Night Ferry” on tour that year, with Pacific Coast stops in San Francisco and San Diego, and also, perhaps for thematic contrast, to Palm Desert, California, for good measure.

Composer Anna Clyne is bit of a traveler herself. She studied music formally at at the University of Edinburgh, then at the Manhattan School of Music, and in addition to being named composer-in-residence in Chicago, she has held similar positions with Orchestre National d'Île-de-France, the Baltimore Symphony, the Berkeley Symphony, and coming full circle, with the Edinburgh-based Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

For a magic golden ring, the dwarf Alberich was willing to renounce love to become master of the world. At least, that’s the story in Richard Wagner’s four operas entitled “The Ring of the Nibelungen,” which premiered in 1876 at Wagner’s specially-constructed theater in Bayreuth, Germany.

And for $1 million, Wagner was prepared to renounce not only Bayreuth, but Germany, and settle in America, offering in exchange the premiere and exclusive performance rights to his latest opera, “Parsifal.”

That was the offer Wagner outlined in a letter to his American dentist on today’s date in 1880. Wagner’s wife, Cosima, recorded in her diary that Wagner seemed obsessed with idea of settling in Minnesota, of all places.

Dr. Jenkins dutifully passed the proposal on to wealthy music patrons in the states. But even the most ardent Wagnerians among them said if his operas couldn’t sell in Germany, they wouldn’t fare any better on the banks of the Mississippi.

Well, Dr. Jenkins broke the news that a) the million dollars was not going to materialize, and b) there were such things as mosquitoes and blizzards in Minnesota. Wagner prudently decided to give Germany one more chance.

You might say that Eubie Blake flunked retirement.

In 1946, with a five-decade career as a successful performer and composer behind him, Eubie Blake retired at the age of 63. The son of former slaves, Blake’s religious mother objected to ragtime music on principle, but in 1899, while still a teenager, Blake penned a classic: “The Charleston Rag.” In 1915, he formed a songwriting partnership with a talented young singer named Noble Sissle, and, in the 1920s the two men fused ragtime and operetta into a series of smash Broadway shows.

During World War II, Eubie Blake toured with USO shows, and, after retiring in 1946, studied composition formally at New York University, collecting and editing his works for posterity.

In the 1950s, a revival of interest in early jazz coaxed Blake out of retirement, and the use of ragtime music in the film “The Sting” transformed that interest into a pop culture sensation.

On today’s date in 1973, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, Blake was honored by ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and in 1981, at the age of 98, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In St. Petersburg, Russia, on today’s date in 1909, Alexandre Siloti conducted the first performance of a new orchestral work by a 26-year-old composer named Igor Stravinsky. The work was billed as “Scherzo fantastique,” but Stravinsky’s original title was “Bees.”

Stravinsky had just completed his studies with the great Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whose “Flight of the Bumblebee” was already a famous musical depiction, so perhaps he wanted to impress his teacher – or try to outdo him.

In 1907, Stravinsky wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov, “Just now [my wife] Katya and I have read Maeterlinck’s 'Life of the Bees', a partly artistic, partly philosophical book that pleased me, as they say, down to my toes.”

Maeterlinck’s book offered an anthropomorphized description of the lifecycle of bees describing (quote) “the innumerable agitations of the honeycomb, the perpetual, enigmatic and crazy jiggling of the nurses on the brood chamber … the invading spirals of the queen, the various and incessant activities of the crowd … the comings and goings overwhelmed with ardor.”

Stravinsky’s scoring includes three harps and multiple woodwinds, but omits timpani, trombones, and tuba, resulting in a light, nimble, and air-born orchestral sound for his busy bees.