Composers Datebook

On today's date in 1950, at the Interlochen Summer Music Camp, the Michigan All-Star Band, under the direction of Dale Harris, gave the premiere performance of a new work entitled "George Washington Bridge." This music was written by the American composer William Schuman, who was experiencing an especially creative period in the early 1950's. Schuman was living in New Rochelle, New York, but as president of the Juilliard School, spent much of his time in Manhattan, and, as Schuman explained:

"There are few days in the year when I do not see the George Washington Bridge. I pass it on my way to work as I drive along the Henry Hudson Parkway on the New York shore. Ever since my student days when I watched the progress of its construction, this bridge has had for me an almost human personality, and this personality is astonishingly varied, assuming different moods, depending on the time of day or night, the weather, and, of course, my own mood as I pass by… I have walked across it late at night when it was shrouded in fog, and during the brilliant sunshine hours of midday… It is difficult to imagine a more gracious welcome or dramatic entry to the great metropolis."

The piece itself is in ABCBA form—a little like the rising and falling arch of a suspension bridge, in fact, and, since its 1950 premiere at Interlochen, Schuman's "George Washington Bridge" has won a secure place as a classic of the wind band repertory.

On today's date in 1962, the Symphony No. 5 for strings, by the German-born American composer Gene Gutchë, received its premiere performance at Chatauqua, New York.

Romeo Maximilian Eugene Ludwig Gutchë was born in Berlin in 1907. His father, a well-to-do European businessman, was not amused by the notion of his son "wasting" his time on music, even though the famous Berlin-based composer-pianist Ferrucio Busoni confirmed the young man's talent. So "Gene" Gutchë ran away from home, abandoning any hope of a sizeable inheritance in the process, and came to America.

He studied at the Universities of Minnesota and Iowa, and, in 1950, at age 43 produced his first symphony. Gutchë would go on to compose six symphonies in all, plus an hour-long symphonic work for chorus and orchestra titled "Akhenaten," premiered by Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony in 1983. For most of his life, despite fellowships and commissions, Gutchë lived modestly with his wife, Marion, in a cottage in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

"I like to think in each of us a greatness resides," wrote Gutchë. "Music is a reflection of what we are. Every artist is compelled to egomania—a delusion of grandeur—which hypnotizes him to express his ideas in the grand manner."

Gutchë died in the fall of 2001—one year after this Cincinnati Symphony recording of his Fifth Symphony was reissued on compact disc.

On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, effectively beginning the First World War.

Early in the course of that war, a French composer named Albéric Magnard became a national hero when he died defending his home against invading German troops. Maurice Ravel tried to enlist as a French pilot, but was refused because of his poor health. Instead, he became a truck driver stationed at the Verdun front. British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was too old to be drafted, but he enlisted as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Another British composer, George Butterworth, would be killed by a sniper during the Battle of the Somme.

The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I is estimated at 37 million. Empires fell. National borders were redefined. Old systems of values seemed shattered forever.

The Austrian violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler served briefly in the Austrian Army in 1914 before being wounded and honorably discharged. He arrived in then-neutral New York on November of 1914, and remained in America through the war years.

In 1915, Kreisler made a recording of Bach's Double Violin Concerto, performing with the Russian violinist Efrem Zimbalist. Austria and Russian may have been at war in Europe, but in a cramped New Jersey recording studio, at least, the music of Bach provided a brief island of peace and harmony.

When Alfred Hitchcock's 53rd feature film, a cold war spy thriller entitled "Torn Curtain," opened in New York Theaters on today's date in 1966, audiences did NOT hear this music over the title credits.

It was the swinging 60s, and Hitchcock had asked his long-time collaborator, composer Bernard Hermann, for a pop score that would be "with it." For the main title, Hitch wanted a pop song that might be successful as a hit radio single. What Hitch did NOT want was, as he put it, "more Richard Strauss." Hermann assured Hitch he knew exactly what was required—and then ignored him completely.

Herrmann thought "Torn Curtain" was a dangerously weak film, and one that needed a strong orchestral score to make it effective. Herrmann's huge symphonic score featured an eerie choir of massed flutes and ominous, oppressive brass. When Hitch heard a Hollywood studio orchestra rehearsing Herrmann's main title music, he fired the composer on the spot and called in someone else to score the film.

Herrmann was crushed. He had thought his score would rescue a weak film, and that Hitch should have been grateful. "You call in the doctor to make you healthy," he later quipped—"Not to make you rich!"

Hermann may well have right. "Torn Curtain" is regarded as one of Hitchcock's lamest efforts, while Herrmann's rejected score has gone on to be recorded and admired on its own.

On today's date in 1882, the first performance of Richard Wagner's new opera "Parsifal" took place at the Bayreuth Festival in Bavaria. In the audience was a 25-year old American named Gustav Kobbé, an ardent opera fan who would go on to write "Kobbé's Complete Opera Book," a standard reference work on the subject still in print today.

But back in 1882, as Kobbé watched the opening scene of "Parsifal," his gaze became fixed on one spot of the painted scenery, depicting a pile of rocks. Was that Wagner's face painted on one of the rocks? Or was that Wagner himself, staring out at the singers on stage?

During the intermission, Kobbé asked others if they had seen what he had, but they just looked at him as if he were crazy. Perhaps the heat of the Bavarian summer had affected the young American's brain, they suggested.

"I was beginning to think that the appearance of Wagner's face was a mirage, resulting from lights behind the scenes," wrote Kobbé. "I mentioned the matter to one of the singers in the cast. He manifested surprise, not at what I had discovered, but at my having discovered it."

The singer told Kobbé that to insure that singers followed his specific directions where to stand and when to move, Wagner had, in fact, been standing on stage amid the painted rocks. To all eyes but Kobbé's, Wagner's craggy, sun-tanned face had blended in perfectly with the painted scenery.

On today's date in 1976, an opera premiered at the Théatre Municipale in Avignon, France, that had very little in common with the operas of Mozart or Puccini. For starters, it ran for five hours with no breaks between acts. The audience was invited to wander in and out as it pleased. The libretto consisted of numbers, solfege syllables and some cryptic poems written by a neurologically impaired pupil from a New York School for Disturbed Children. Even the title of this new opera was unusual, suggesting something at once serious and surreal.

The opera in question was called "Einstein on the Beach." As part of the action on stage, a violinist dressed up like Albert Einstein wandered in and out of its surreal scenes, a reference to the fact that, in real life, the famous physicist was also a talented amateur violinist.

"Einstein on the Beach" was collaboration between two Americans: composer Philip Glass and set designer Robert Wilson. It made the rounds in Europe, attracted a great deal of attention, and came to America in November of 1976 for two sold-out performances in New York staged at the Metropolitan Opera by Glass and his ensemble.

"Einstein on the Beach" has been something of a cult classic ever since. Its music was even referenced as a kind of "in joke" during a popular TV commercial in which Einstein debates the merits of Coke vs. Pepsi. For the record, in the TV commercial, Albert chooses Pepsi.

The composer of this familiar Olympic theme was born on today's date in 1904 in Lyon, France. He was christened "Noel" Arnaud, but is better known as "Leo" Arnaud, the name he adopted after emigrating to the U.S.A. in the late 1930's.

Arnaud studied music in his native France with two of its leading composers, Vincent d'Indy and Maurice Ravel, before coming to America. Arnaud settled in Hollywood, where he worked as an orchestrator and arranger for numerous films, churning out scores for everything from "Blondie Goes Latin" to "The Ice Follies of 1939." The high point of Arnaud's cinematic career was an Oscar nomination for his work as an arranger for the 1964 musical "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."

Some years earlier, Hollywood Bowl conductor Felix Slatkin commissioned Arnaud to write some music for a LP sonic spectacular designed to show off the new "stereophonic" recording process.

The album was titled "Charge!" and featured military style fanfares and suites, and included a cut entitled "Bugler's Dream." The original 1958 album notes described this music as: "derived from various bugle calls—suggesting perhaps a slumbering bugler's thoughts as they swirl in a fantasy of classical fanfares and radically modern cadenzas."

In 1968, when ABC television was looking for a musical theme for its Olympic coverage, they chose "Bugler's Dream." By 1988, when the NBC network secured TV rights for the Olympics, Arnaud's theme had become the instantly recognizable signature theme for the games. Its composer, Leo Arnaud, died in Los Angeles in 1991.

On today's date in 1757, the Italian composer and harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid. He was 71 years old, and for the last 38 years of his life had been employed at the court of Princess Maria Barbara, first in her native Portugal, and then, when the Princess married the heir to the Spanish throne, in Madrid. Although Domenico could very well have stayed in Italy and become a famous opera composer like his father, Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico spent the better part of his life composing over 600 virtuoso sonatas for Maria Barbara. Only a handful of these were published during his lifetime. In the 19th century, Liszt and Brahms took the trouble to hunt down additional Scarlatti sonatas in manuscript, but the bulk of them remained unpublished and unknown until a complete edition was published in the 20th century. While not coming anywhere close to matching Scarlatti's output, one 20th century American composer, the Philadelphia-born Vincent Persichetti, composed ten harpsichord sonatas of his own. Like Scarlartti, Persichetti was a virtuoso keyboard performer, and wrote showcase pieces for the piano and organ in addition to the harpsichord. The growing number of modern-day harpsichordists has meant that in addition to the wealth of old music for the instrument, an increasing number of contemporary composers have followed Persichetti's example, and are writing new works for this old instrument.

On today's date in 1847, Giuseppe Verdi conducted the premiere performance of his newest opera, "I Masnadieri" or "The Robbers," at Her Majesty's Theater in London. And speaking of her Majesty, Queen Victoria was in the audience, as were other state dignitaries, including the Duke of Wellington and Louis Napoleon of France. It was the first time in over twenty years that a world-famous composer had composed an opera specifically for London. As one of Verdi's young assistants put it, "Neither Rossini, Bellini, or Donizetti had ever pitched their tents on the banks of the Thames." As an added attraction, the 27-year old Swedish nightingale, soprano Jenny Lind, topped an all-star line-up of singers. It was Jenny Lind's London debut and the first time ever that an operatic role had been specially-written for her The premiere was a great success for all concerned, with Verdi and the singers called to the stage again and again to cheers from the audience. The critics, for their part, were less than kind. "We take this to be the worst opera that has been given in your time at Her Majesty's Theater," wrote one. "There does not exist an Italian composer more incapable of producing what is commonly called melody." "I Masnadieri" fared a little better back in Italy, but gradually faded from the active repertory until the revival of interest in all of Verdi's opera in the 20th century.

On today's date in 1938, the Ballet Russe of Monte Carlo presented in London a brand-new work based on the life of Saint Francis of Assisi entitled "Nobilissima Visione." The choreography was by Leonide Massine, and the music by Paul Hindemith. The idea of a ballet based on St. Francis may have been suggested by Hindemith's wife, who had recently converted to Catholicism. The Hindemiths had visited the Church of Santa Croce in Florence, and had been deeply impressed by its Renaissance frescoes depicting scenes from the life of St. Francis. In the 1930's, Hindemith was increasingly fascinated by music of the past, and originally intended to incorporate melodies from the French medieval composer Machaut into his St. Francis ballet, but ended up writing original themes in an archaic style. Whether presented as a staged ballet or in the composer's own concert suite arrangement, "Nobilissima Visione" proved to be one of Hindemith's most popular works, and a work that he often conducted himself. "My ballet is not an eye-catcher in the old style," wrote Hindemith in 1938, "It is not exactly full of sparkling wit, but all the same it makes a fine impression, with all the trappings of success that a composer greedy for recognition could wish. Even the earthshaking impresario Sol Hurok was so impressed that he pressed me to his smart businessman's heart and is insisting on my conducting the piece myself in New York and surrounding villages."