Composers Datebook

At 2 p.m. on today’s date in 1855, the first in a series of afternoon chamber music concerts was given at Dodworth’s Hall in New York City. As a contemporary newspaper put it, “In consequence of the numerous evening engagements of the city, and to enable ladies to be present without escort, it is proposed to give matinees in preference to soirees.”

The concert was a great success, and many of the fashionably dressed ladies who attended were forced to stand, as all available seats were already occupied.

In addition to classics by Schubert and Mendelssohn, the audience heard some brand- new music, the American premiere of a recently published piano trio by a 21-year old German composer named Johannes Brahms. The New York Times opined the Brahms contained “many good points and much sound musicianship” but possessed also “the defects of a young writer ... The motives seldom fall on the ear freshly.”

It's doubtful that Brahms ever saw that review, or even knew that his new trio had been played in America, but in 1889, 35 years later, Brahms extensively revised his youthful work, transforming his first major chamber work into his very last.

Music—Beethoven’s music in particular—played an important role in the life of Schroeder, a piano-playing character in “Peanuts,” the comic strip created by Charles Schulz, who was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on today’s date in 1922.

But new music snuck in the strip on occasion, too. In a 1990 installment, Peppermint Patty is at a young person’s concert and when informed that the American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich had won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, stands up and yells, ''Way to go, Ellen!''

Turns out Schulz had been impressed by a piece by Zwilich that he heard at a concert, and the cartoonist and composer struck up a friendship. So when Zwilich was asked to write a new work for a young people’s concert at Carnegie Hall, the result was a suite entitled “Peanuts Gallery.”

Its 1997 premiere was acknowledged in a Sunday “Peanuts” strip that had Schroeder telling Lucy about the new work. ``We're all in it,'' he says, and goes on to list the movements: “Schroeder's Beethoven Fantasy,” “Lullaby for Linus,” “Lucy Freaks Out,” etc. Of course, Lucy's only comment is: “MY part should be longer.''

On today’s date in 2005, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the premiere performance of a brand-new Percussion Concerto by the American composer Jenifer Higdon. The soloist was Colin Currie, a Scottish virtuoso for whom the work was tailor made.

In program notes for her work, Higdon wrote, “When writing a concerto I think of two things: the particular soloist for whom I am writing and the nature of the solo instrument. In the case of percussion, this means a large battery of instruments, from vibraphone and marimba (the favorite instrument of soloist Colin Currie), to non-pitched smaller instruments like brake drums, wood blocks, or Peking Opera gongs.

“Not only does a percussionist have to perfect playing all these instruments, he must make decisions regarding the use of sticks and mallets ... not to mention the choreography ... where most performers do not have to concern themselves with movement across the stage during a performance, a percussion soloist must have every move memorized.”

Higdon’s new concerto proved popular with both audiences and the critics, and in 2010 the work won that year’s Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

On today’s date in 1949, at Carnegie Hall, Leopold Stokowski conducted the New York Philharmonic in the first performance of the last major work of the American composer Carl Ruggles.

In a letter to his friend Charles Ives, or “Charlie” as he called him, Ruggles hinted that in this piece, he was perhaps, "stumbling on something new.” Another composer-friend, Edgard Varèse, agreed, but wrote: “The use [of intervals of] 5ths and 4ths is very remarkable, because that was done hundreds of years ago—let’s call it ‘Organum’.” And so “Organum,” a word referring to an early medieval polyphony, became the title of Ruggles’ final orchestral piece.

After that, Ruggles, then already 73 years old, pretty much gave up on the musical establishment and devoted himself to painting. In 1966, he moved to a nursing home, where he died in 1971 at the age of 95.

Shortly before his death, Ruggles was visited by Michael Tilson Thomas, who recalls the feisty old man saying, “Now don’t go feeling sorry [for me]. I don’t hang around this place, you know. Hell, each day I go out and make the universe anew—all over!”

In 1834, the great violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini acquired a new Stradivarius viola. He approached the 30-year old French composer Hector Berlioz and commissioned him to write a viola concerto.

What Berlioz came up with, however, was a Romantic program symphony with a prominent part for solo viola titled “Harold in Italy,” inspired by Byron’s narrative poem “Childe Harold.” Paganini was disappointed. “That is not what I want,” he said. “I am silent a great deal too long. I must be playing the whole time.”

And so, when “Harold in Italy” was first performed, at the Paris Conservatory on today’s date in 1834, it was an old classmate of Berlioz’s, Chrétien Urhan, who was the soloist, not the superstar Paganini. The audience seemed to like the “Pilgrims’ March” movement of the symphony, which was encored, but otherwise the performance was one train wreck after another.

Four years later, however, Berlioz had the last laugh when Paganini, hearing the music he commissioned at a better performed concert, rose from the audience, mounted the stage and publicly declared Berlioz a genius, and, two days later, presented the stunned Berlioz with a check for 20,000 francs.

If you’re a baby boomer, you probably remember exactly where you were and what you were doing on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

On that day, American composer Warren Benson was just beginning to work on a commission he had received for a new work for wind band. Maybe the trauma of that day unleashed some creative power in Benson, but whatever the reason, the resulting music is both intense and moving. He titled his piece “The Leaves Are Falling,” a line from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Autumn," a poem that evokes a sense of a passing season and a passing life. “The Leaves Are Falling” became Benson’s best-known work, and a landmark score in the wind band repertory.

Born in 1924, Benson grew up in Detroit, studied at the University of Michigan, and landed a job playing timpani in the Detroit Symphony. He served as a professor of percussion and composition at Ithaca College, and from 1967 until 1993, he taught composition at the Eastman School in Rochester, New York.

On today’s date in 1941, the famous Greek-born conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos led the Minneapolis Symphony in the premiere performance of a new symphony by German composer Paul Hindemith, who came to Minnesota for the performance.

Mitropoulos was an ardent promoter of new music, but few of the contemporary works he programmed were welcomed by audiences or the critics with much enthusiasm. Hindemith’s reputation as an atonal composer had preceded him, but, surprisingly, his new piece for Minneapolis was billed as a “Symphony in Eb Major” and, much to the delight of all concerned, featured recognizable tunes.

By chance, another famous composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff, was in Minneapolis that day, and was invited by Mitropoulos to attend the Hindemith premiere backstage, where he wouldn’t be annoyed by autograph seekers. Rachmaninoff had a very pessimistic view of modern music, but Mitropoulos was sure the famously dour Russian would like Hindemith’s resolutely tonal new symphony. Rachmaninoff was positioned just off stage, and after the end of the symphony, which was received with great applause, Mitropoulos passed him as he left the stage. “Well?” asked Mitropoulos. “No goooood,” was Rachmaninoff’s lugubrious response.

On today’s date in 1805, Beethoven’s opera “Leonore” had its premiere at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, after many postponements due to getting the opera’s libretto approved by government censors and the orchestral parts copied in time. There was also the little matter of the Austrian capital being occupied by French troops as Napoleon was sweeping across Europe.

The cream of Viennese society had fled by the time Napoleon arrived, so the skimpy audience for the premiere performance of Beethoven’s opera included a good number of French soldiers. What they made of Beethoven’s opera, which tells the story of a woman rescuing her husband from a political prison, is anybody’s guess.

As usual, the Viennese critics were not impressed. One wrote, “There are no new ideas in the solos, and they are mostly too long. The choruses are ineffectual and one, which indicates the joy of prisoners over the sensation of fresh air, miscarries completely!”

After several revisions and the eventual departure of the French, even the critics came to accept Beethoven’s opera– retitled “Fidelio”–and in particular the Prisoners’ Chorus, as one of Beethoven’s most moving creations.

The publisher of Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion, which received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1961 at New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall, states with refreshing honesty that it is (quote) “not one of Harrison's most frequently performed works” and that “The highly rhythmic violin line is pleasantly contrasted by the exceptionally varied percussion ensemble.”

Now, by an “exceptionally varied” percussion ensemble, they mean in addition to conventional instruments, Harrison asks for tin cans, suspended brake drums, flowerpots, plumber’s pipes, wind chimes, and spring coils.

Not surprisingly, it can be difficult to assemble the “heavy metal” called for in the score. For a 1965 performance, Harrison was forced to spend hours, as he put it, "chasing down pipe lengths and flowerpots in hardware stores."

But there was a method to his madness. Harrison was trying to imitate the sounds of the tuned bronze gongs of the traditional Indonesian gamelan orchestra by using distinctly American “found” materials. In performance, the set-up seems downright humorous at first sight, but at first sound, it works. In fact, one suspects Harrison WANTS the audience to chuckle at first, but then be charmed.

We all have our heroes and role models–people we admire and hope to emulate if we can. Composers, of course, are no different.

On today’s date in 1995, American composer William C. Banfield’s Symphony No. 6 received its first public performance by the Akron Symphony, the same ensemble who recorded the new work for a Telarc compact disc release that same year. Banfield titled his Symphony “Four Songs for Five American Voices,” and explained his title as follows:

“As creators, innovators, performers, and composers, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sarah Vaughan have made an incredible impact on my life and art. Their presence in American music and culture will never be forgotten, and the memory of them will always bring to [one's] mind a memorable melody, and to [one's] face, a smile."

“My Symphony is made up of four instrumental movements, titled ‘If Bernstein Wrote It...,” “In an Ellington Mood,” “I’m Dizzy Over Miles,” and “Someone said Her Name was Sarah.”

That last movement, says Banfield, “was simply written to pay homage to the sweet and lyrical facility of singer Sarah Vaughan who was ingenious in her vocal execution and style.”