Composers Datebook

Back in Bach’s day, there were churchmen aghast at the thought that composers were trying to sneak flashy opera music into Sunday services. Church music was meant to be simple, austere, and, well , NOT “operatic.”

So what would they have made of the three “church parables” – mini-operas, really, composed in the 20th century by the great English composer Benjamin Britten?

The third of these, “The Prodigal Son,” debuted on today’s date in 1968 at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Orford, England. All three impart Christian values and were meant for church performance – scored for a handful of soloists, modest choir, and a small ensemble that would fit in front of and on either side of a church altar where church music was normally performed.

But operas they are, and Britten himself let the “o” word slip when he commented in a 1967 interview that he was (quote), “doing another church OPERA to go with the other two, ‘Curlew River’ and ‘The Burning Fiery Furnace,’ to make a kind of trilogy.’”

Britten took these mini-operas seriously, and dedicated “The Prodigal Son” to his new friend, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who in turn would dedicate his 14th Symphony to Britten.

On today’s date in 1904, the London Symphony gave its first concert at the old Queen’s Hall in London. Founded as a musician-run ensemble, along co-operative lines, back then all its players shared the profits at the end of each season.

So, from the start, the LSO had to be entrepreneurial: it made some of the first acoustic recordings of major orchestral works, and in the era of silent movies, played in a London theater pit for major films of the day. By the 1930s, they were recording musical scores for early British sound films as well.

One famous film score venture occurred in 1946, for a British movie entitled “The Instruments of the Orchestra,” in which the LSO itself played a starring role, performing Benjamin Britten's “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra” -- a work specially-composed for the film.

But the LSO’s best-known film score recording dates from 1977. It was then that the LSO that recorded the John Williams score for the first of the “Star Wars” movies. The score became an instant classic, and the LSO became the “go-to” orchestra for John Williams film scores, including “Superman,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and Harry Potter.

Speaking of “titanically” successful films, in 1912, the LSO arranged a North American tour and was booked to sail on a brand-new ocean liner named the Titanic. At the last minute, their tour schedule had to be changed, and – fortunately -- they sailed on a liner named the Baltic instead!

On today's date in 1912 Maurice Ravel's ballet "Daphnis et Chloé" received its first performance at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, staged by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and choreographed by Michel Fokine.

Some three years earlier, Diaghilev had approached Ravel about composing a ballet, and Ravel started working with Fokine on a scenario based on an old Greek pastoral romance about two lovers separated by pirates and reunited by the intervention of the god Pan.

Ravel was a meticulous and slow worker, and his score for "Daphnis et Chloé" ended up taking three years to complete. By the time of its 1912 premiere, internal squabbles in the Diaghilev company and conceptual differences between composer and choreographer had dampened everyone's enthusiasm for the project. Even Diaghilev seemed to lose interest.

In his memoirs, Pierre Monteux, the conductor of the first performance, recalled, "At first Diaghilev had been very enthusiastic with Ravel's magnificent score, but for some reason, which I have always thought was due to the weakness of the choreography, his fervor for Ravel and his music diminished to such a low pitch that it became difficult to work as we should have on the premiere."

Monteux continued, "But all the musicians in the orchestra, and I might say all the musicians in Paris, knew that this was Maurice Ravel's greatest work."

On today's date in 1945, a month after the end of war in Europe, a new opera by the English composer Benjamin Britten debuted at Sadler's Wells Theater in London. Its title was "Peter Grimes," with its story based on George Crabbe's long poem, The Borough, published in 1810, which described life along England's North Sea coast.

In the early 1940's, Britten was living in America, and had read Crabbe's poem in California. The commission for the opera was also American, coming from Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony and one of the leading music patrons of the day.

But Britten's opera is intensely English—evoking, as it does, the images and sounds of the North Sea off the east coast of Suffolk. Britten was born within sight of this seascape, and lived, for the better part of his later life, a little farther down the coast at Aldeburgh—the "Borough," on which George Crabbe had based his poem.

From the start, "Peter Grimes" was an immediate success. Leonard Bernstein conducted its American premiere at the Tanglewood Festival, and within three years the opera was playing around the world. Within a week of its June 7th premiere, Britten conducted the London Philharmonic in an orchestral suite of "Sea Interludes" from his new opera, and these, too, have since firmly established themselves in the concert repertory.

On today's date* in 1727, the opera season of the Royal Academy in London ended early when rival Italian prima donnas, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, came to blows on stage during a performance of Bononcini's opera, "Astianatte." Londoners were shocked, but not surprised. Trouble had been brewing between the two temperamental divas even before they arrived in England. Once there, tension between them only accelerated, egged on by partisan behavior from their rabid English fans, who (depending on their preference) greeted them with either extravagant applause and bravos, or catcalls, hissing, and, as one contemporary put it, "other great indecencies." It was all terrific box-office, as Handel must have realized. He even worked their rivalry into one of his operas entitled "Alessandro," in which the hero finds it hard to decide between the attractions of the dueling divas. Handel prudently gave exactly the same number of solo arias to each soprano. After all, according to Handel's first biographer, a year earlier he had threatened to toss Cuzzoni out the window when, during a rehearsal, she refused point blank to sing one of his arias. "Madam," Handel is quoted as roaring as he dragged her towards the window, "I know you are a veritable devil, but I would have you know that I am Beelzebub, the KING of all the devils!" Not a very gentlemanly thing to do, perhaps, but apparently Cuzzoni DID sing the aria after all. * The Julian calendar was in use in England that year; the Gregorian calendar date for this same day would be June 17.

On today's date in 1998 at King's Chapel in Boston, a new work by the American composer Daniel Pinkham received its premiere performance. The work was titled "Three Latin Motets" for baritone and organ, and Pinkham intended it as a birthday offering to his fellow composer and colleague Ned Rorem. And so the work's dedication read, "For Ned Rorem and a half century of friendship."

But the premiere occurred on the 75th anniversary of Pinkham's birth, as a surprise for the composer at a concert in HIS honor. Organist James David Christie and baritone Sanford Sylvan had sneakily persuaded Pinkham to write the motets for Rorem, who was born in the same year as Pinkham, namely 1923, but intended all along to premiere the music as a surprise at a 75th birthday concert in Pinkham's honor.

Pinkham was especially noted for this church music, and once quipped, "I just like to hear my pieces more than once, and when you write music for the church you have a better chance at that… I [tell people] am available for weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs."

Pinkham died in 2006, and Christie and Sylvan performed his "Three Latin Motets" once again in January of 2007—this time at Pinkham's memorial service.

In the early years of the 20th century, a hauntingly beautiful piece of Grecian sculpture, the head of the goddess Aphrodite, was donated to the Boston Museum of Fine Art. There it inspired this orchestral work by Boston composer George Whitefield Chadwick. Chadwick's symphonic tone poem "Aphrodite" was—in the words of the composer—"an attempt to suggest in music the poetic and tragic scenes which may have passed before the sightless eyes of such a goddess."

Chadwick composed this music during East Coast holidays on Martha's Vineyard, inspired, he said, by the play of light and wind on the sea before him. It received its premiere at the Norfolk Festival in Connecticut on this date in 1912.

On today's date in 1999, at a summer musical festival on the opposite coast of America, another musical work inspired by ancient Greece received its first performance. This music was entitled "Five Images after Sappho," inspired by texts of the ancient Greek poetess Sappho, and written for the remarkable voice of a modern American soprano, Dawn Upshaw. It was premiered at the Ojai Festival in California, and written by the Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

LAUGH-IN was a popular TV comedy sketch program in the late 1960s and one of their recurring alliterative gag lines referred to “the fickle finger of fate.” Now, composers who enter – and lose – competitions, often mutter something similar – or stronger.

In London in 1703, three English composers, John Weldon, John Eccles, Daniel Purcell, and the Moravian-born Gottfried Finger took part in a competition organized by wealthy opera fans. All four composers were asked to set the same short English-language libretto, and the resulting works were all staged on today’s date for the audience to choose their favorite.

The grand prize of 100 guineas was won by Weldon, even though many bet on Eccles to win. Gottfried Finger came in dead last and was NOT happy about it. He left the country in disgust complaining that (quote), “He had thought to be judged by men, not boys,” and that the competition was rigged.

And in his defense, some recent recordings of Finger’s virtuoso viola da gamba works show him to have been, in fact, a very good composer.

Even so, as the old LAUGH-IN hosts might put it, “Fun fact: fickle fans found Finger faulty. Finished fourth. Forthwith fuming foreigner fled.”

You could say that when you listen to classical music, you are taking a trip in a time machine. Or, as Shirley MacLaine might put it, “Classical music is the soundtrack of your previous lives.”

The contemporary American composer Sebastian Currier goes even further, suggesting (quote):

“It's only a little bit of an exaggeration to say that music is made of nothing BUT time - well, and air too … melodic or rhythmic gestures are made of a series of events moving forward in time. … And the rest is air. A musician bows a string, blows air in a cylinder, strikes a metal object, and a series of sound waves take that information to our ears … It has always been fascinating to me that an art form that is so penetrating … is made of such ephemeral stuff.”

Sebastian Currier even gave the title “Time Machines” to one of his works, a piece for violin and orchestra, that received its premiere performance in New York City on today’s date in 2011 with the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter as the soloist, and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert. Each of the work’s seven movements explores some aspect of the relationship between the perception of music and time, ranging from “Fragmented Time” at its opening to “Harmonic Time” at its close.

On today's date in 1988, Zubin Mehta led the New York Philharmonic in a concert at Bolshoi Hall in a city that was then called Leningrad and in a country that was then called the Soviet Union. For their visit to the city we now call St. Petersburg in a country today known as the Russian Federation, the Philharmonic had commissioned a brand-new work by the American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and so her orchestral piece entitled "Symbolon" received its premiere performance there. It was the first American symphonic work to be premiered in the USSR, in fact. "The word 'symbolon' comes from the Greek," explained Zwilich, "and refers to the ancient custom whereby two parties broke a piece of pottery (or a stone, or a coin) in two, each party retaining half. Each half (or symbolon) thus became a token of friendship." "From the beginning," continued Zwilich, "I knew this piece would receive its first performance in the Soviet Union, and I found this profoundly moving. I am sure that my complex feelings, embracing both hope and sadness about the state of the political world, have found their way into this work." After its premiere, Zwilich's "Symbolon" was performed in Moscow, New York, London, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Paris, and the former East Berlin, making it one of Zwilich's "most-travelled" orchestral works.