Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1755, “Montezuma,” an opera by the German Baroque composer Carl Heinrich Graun, had its premiere performance at the Berlin Court Opera of Frederick II, King of Prussia. Frederick himself supervised the rehearsals, which isn’t all that surprising, since he had drafted the opera’s libretto.

Despite his well-deserved reputation as a military leader, Frederick the Great was also a talented musician and composer. As a young prince he had tried to run away from home to pursue a musical career. His royal father was not amused. Heads rolled – one of them belonging to Frederick’s favorite music teacher – and thereafter Frederick focused on his military studies until he could ascend the throne. As King, Frederick built an opera house in Berlin and called some of Europe’s finest composers to his court – but also transformed Prussia into the military superpower of Europe.

Some speculate that Frederick’s choice of Montezuma as an opera subject might be psychologically revealing. Perhaps Frederick saw the artistic, peace-loving, passive side of his nature in the tragic Mexican King Montezuma, and his aggressive, military side in the Spanish invader, Cortez.

As Freud might have said a century or so later: “Very interesting…”

On today’s date in 1973, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center premiered a new work by Pierre Boulez for solo flute and seven instruments, plus interaction with an electronic computer program, which generated sounds that reacted to (and interacted with) the solo flute. The piece was titled “explosante-fixe,” which translates as “exploding-fixed.”

At the time, however, Boulez was frustrated by the still primitive computer technology. “You still had connections with wires and so on,” he recalled. “It was clumsy and unreliable.” Twenty years later, Boulez presented a new version of “explosante-fixe,” employing updated computer technology and midi-flute, controlled by a computer. This version was recorded, in effect “fixing the explosion.”

Boulez once quoted with approval the French dramatist Antonin Artaud, who described music as “collective hysteria and spells.” Yet Boulez carefully plotted out his compositions in obsessively meticulous detail.

And, speaking of explosions, Boulez once suggested that as a radical break with the past, all opera houses should be blown up. Yet, as a conductor, Boulez was a devoted interpreter of some past composers, such as Debussy and Stravinsky—and, if you listen closely, echoes of their music can be heard in his own.

In essence, the music of the 18th century was an international, cosmopolitan language, but just as “nationalism” in language, culture, and politics came to the fore in the 19th century, so did the radical new idea that each nation should develop its own, distinct, “national” style of music.

On today’s date in 1840, a dramatic manifestation of this new trend occurred in the city of Pest. The Hungarian-born piano virtuoso and composer, Franz Liszt, returned in triumph to his native land for a gala concert at the Hungarian National Theatre. After the performance, several Hungarian aristocrats, decked out in lavish native costumes, presented Liszt with a bejeweled “Sword of Honor,” and delivered speeches in Hungarian praising him as an artist and patriot. For his part, Liszt delivered an equally impassioned speech calling for Hungarian cultural and political independence. The patriotic audience went berserk with joy and began a torchlight procession of some 5000 people through the city, with Liszt at the front.

It’s one of those nice, ironic touches of history, however, that Liszt, the standard bearer for Hungarian national music, didn’t really speak Hungarian very well, and, for the record, delivered HIS patriotic address in French.

On today’s date in 1941, the final orchestral work of the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff received its premiere performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Eugene Ormandy.

It was an orchestral suite, entitled “Symphonic Dances,” and was originally planned as a triptych depicting the passage of time, with its three sections to be titled: Midday, Twilight, and Midnight. For this new work, Rachmaninoff recycled some music from older one: an unfinished ballet from 1915.

Rachmaninoff was an unabashed and unrepentant Romantic at heart, with his musical style grounded very much in the late 19th century tradition. Oddly enough, in all other matters Rachmaninoff was very modern — even trendy. When living in Russia, he owned the first automobile in his rural part of the country. After settling in Switzerland, the home he built on Lake Lucerne was designed in the ultra-modern Bauhaus style, and Rachmaninoff liked to zoom around the lake in a snappy little speedboat.

And, when in New York City, rather than sipping borscht at the Russian Tea Room, Rachmaninoff would more likely be seen at a corner drug store, indulging in a quintessential American treat: ice-cream sodas.

In one of his letters, the German poet Goethe dropped this memorable and frequently quoted line: “I call architecture frozen music.”

If that’s the case, then this music might be accurately described as “unfrozen architecture,” since it was music inspired by the famous Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi, whose unfinished Temple of the Holy Family in Barcelona is an internationally famous landmark.

This “Concert de Gaudi” for guitar and orchestra premiered in Hamburg, Germany, on today’s date in the year 2000, and was commissioned by guitarist Sharon Isbin from the American composer Christopher Rouse.

Rouse explained its title as follows: “I was not thinking of specific Gaudi structures (with the exception of the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia, which was in my visual memory), but rather of the spirit that inhabits his work. It would be difficult for me to put into words what I think that spirit is. I would say only that Gaudi’s taking of a basic and accepted structural design and applying a host of unexpected twists, curves, drips of a highly fantastic, phantasmagorical type, make him one of the few dreamers to have ever been allowed to actually build his dreams.”

Today we celebrate hopeful beginnings – and happy endings.

In Leipzig, on New Year’s Day 1724, Johann Sebastian Bach led the first performance of “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied“ (or “Sing to the Lord a New Song” in English) – a work we now know as his Cantata 190.

About 200 of Bach’s church cantatas have survived, and for the Millennium Year 2000 the British conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner decided to perform and record of all of them in the space of one liturgical year in historical churches in Europe and America. Starting on Christmas Day 1999, in Weimar, Germany, Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir, and English Baroque Soloists set out to do just that.

It was an ambitious undertaking, and Gardiner commented, “Just as in planning to scale a mountain or cross an ocean, you can make meticulous provision, calculate your route and get all the equipment in order, in the end you have to deal with whatever the elements – both human and physical – throw at you at any given moment.”

Gardiner’s Bach Cantata Pilgrimage came to its triumphant conclusion on New Year’s Eve, 2000 at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, with a performance of Bach’s Cantata 190.

These days, “musical piracy” can mean anything from illegal downloads to bootleg compact discs pressed in China.

But back in 1878, the smash success of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “HMS Pinafore” resulted in a flurry of unauthorized “pirate” productions in the United States. The two resourceful Englishmen decided the best way to put a stop to it was to premiere their next collaboration in New York, thereby establishing its copyright under American law.

And so, on today’s date in 1879, it was Arthur Sullivan himself who conducted the pit orchestra of the Fifth Avenue Theater in Manhattan for the first full performance of their latest creation, entitled, perhaps not coincidentally, “The Pirates of Penzance.”

The New York Times review was glowing in its praise, but did point out that the new work was strikingly similar to “Pinafore,” but opined, “There is genuine musical merit in several of the numbers,” and, “A chorus of policemen was the most musically humorous number of the evening, and provoked more amusement than anything else... In response to repeated calls, the author and composer appeared before the curtain and bowed their acknowledgments.”

Now, 18th century opera is supposed to be a rather staid and stuffy affair. These operas invariably had happy endings, with all the messy human passion and conflicts amicably resolved by the opera’s finale.

But 18th century, opera could arouse some serious emotion off-stage. In 1704, an 18-year-old composer named Georg Friedric Handel was employed as a violinist and harpsichordist in the orchestra of the Hamburg opera house. He made the acquaintance of another young composer, the 23-year-old Johann Mattheson. The two became fast friends until, that is, a December performance of Mattheson’s opera “Cleopatra,” during which Handel refused to turn over the harpsichord to Mattheson.

“Hey, it’s my opera, after all—move over!” Mattheson must have said, but to no avail. One thing led to another, and the result was a duel; it is said that Handel’s life was saved by a button on his coat that deflected one of Mattheson’s more lethal sword-thrusts.

Thankfully, in the best tradition of 18th century opera, the two reconciled on today’s date in 1704, dining together and attending a Hamburg rehearsal of Handel’s first opera, “Almira,” becoming, as Mattheson put it, “better friends than ever.”

It might seem odd to think of Max Bruch as a twentieth century composer. After all, his three “Greatest Hits”—his Violin Concerto in G Minor, 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, unbeknownst to the composer. It wouldn’t be until 1971 that the Concerto was performed as he had actually written it.

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 ultra-modern music presented by the Havana Philharmonic.

The concert offered the premiere performance of a new Piano Concerto by the American composer Henry Cowell, who was also 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 own 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.