Composers Datebook

For the American conductor and composer Bernard Herrmann, 1940 was quite a year. On the East Coast, he had been appointed chief conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra, and on the West Coast, he was busy in Hollywood, composing music for an Orson Welles film titled "Citizen Kane."

Herrmann was 30 years old at the time, and recalled the experience as follows: "I was given twelve weeks to do my job. I worked on the film reel by reel, as it was being shot and cut. In this way I had a sense of the picture being built and of my own music being a part of that building. Many of the sequences were actually tailored to match the music."

The finished product was released to the public on today's date in 1941, and was an instant success, with The New York Times review the following day noting (quote), "the stunning manner in which the music of Bernard Herrmann has been used."

"Citizen Kane" was up for nine Academy Awards in 1941, but, although nominated for both "Best Picture" and "Best Musical Score," didn't win the Oscar in either category. No matter—for many filmmakers, film critics, and film fans, "Citizen Kane" rates No. 1 among the greatest films ever made.

And what does THE COMPOSERS DATEBOOK have to say on the subject? Just one word, of course: "Rosebud!"

At New York’s Alice Tully Hall on today’s date in 2003 the Avalon Quartet gave the first complete performance of a new four-movement string quartet entitled “Sun Threads,” by the American composer Augusta Read Thomas.

Each movement of the new work has its own evocative title and had been premiered previously as stand-alone pieces by a consortium of ensembles: the first movement, “Eagle at Sunrise,” by the Ying Quartet; the second, “Invocations,” by the Miami Quartet; the third, “Fugitive Star,” by the Avalon Quartet; and the fourth, “Rise Chanting,” by the Alexander Quartet.

As the poetic titles indicate, Thomas is not afraid of emotion in music, but insists on internal logic as well, and says:

“I believe my music must be passionate, involving risk and adventure, such that a given musical moment might seem like a surprise right when you hear it but, only a millisecond later, seems inevitable … One of my main artistic credos has been to examine small musical objects–a chord, a motive, a rhythm, a color–and explore them from every possible perspective. The different perspectives reveal new musical elements, which I then transform and which in turn become the musical development.”

On today's date in 1784, an Italian violinist named Regina Strinasacchi gave the second of two concerts in Vienna, and had the good sense to commission a new work for the occasion from an up-and-coming young Austrian composer named Wolfgang Mozart.

"We have the famous Strinasacchi from Mantua here right now," wrote Wolfgang to his father a few days earlier. "She is a very good violinist, has excellent taste, and a lot of feeling in her playing—I'm composing a Sonata for her at this moment that we'll be performing together on Thursday."

Wolfgang's papa must have been pleased to hear about the cash commission, but probably would have frowned to learn that Strinasacchi received her part barely in time for the performance, and that his son hadn't even bothered to write out his own part down in full—just a sketchy outline. It also comes as a shock for us to learn that Regina and Wolfgang never got together to rehearse prior to the concert, which meant that she was probably sight-reading her part, and he improvising his.

No matter—the new Violin Sonata was received warmly by Viennese audiences, and afterward Wolfgang had a whole month or so to dot all the musical "i's" and cross all the musicals "t's" in his score before it was printed. And, for the record, this Violin Sonata in B-flat Major is arguably one of Mozart's finest.

On today's date in 1865, the hottest ticket in Paris was for the premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer's long-awaited grand opera "L'Africaine," or "The African Maid," at the Paris Opera. And when I say "long-awaited," I mean long-awaited. Meyerbeer had begun work on "L'Africaine" some 25 years earlier. It had become something of a standing joke in the French press to rib Meyerbeer about the "imminent" completion of this long-standing project. There was no shortage of reasons for the delay. Meyerbeer was a slow-worker, a perfectionist; he was sidelined by ill-health, he was waiting for better singers, more sympathetic management at the Opera, etc. etc. etc. Many opera fans back then must have all but given up hope that Meyerbeer would ever finish "L'Africaine" when he finally did just that, and the work was slotted for production at the Paris Opera. At that point, as luck would have it, Meyerbeer died, and his widow entrusted another composer to supervise the rehearsals for the premiere on today's date in 1865. Meyerbeer's grand operas were the 19th century equivalent of the movies of Cecil B. DeMille. Both Meyerbeer and DeMille favored sweeping historical costume epics, lots of extras, and a tragic love story. "L'Africaine" was no exception: the hero is the explorer Vasco da Gama, and one of the opera's more spectacular scenic effects involved a Portuguese ship running aground on an exotic reef and being taken over by a swarm of natives.

Back in the 18th century, if you were Haydn, there was a friendly Austrian prince or London impresario to pay you to write symphonies and provide an orchestra to play them. If you were Mozart or Beethoven, and no prince or impresario was handy, you could always hire your own orchestra, put on a concert featuring your latest symphony, and make a profit—depending how ticket sales went, of course.

But by the 21st century, this whole writing-a-new-symphony-and-getting-it-performed business has become MUCH more complicated and expensive.

American composer Peter Boyer had years of experience writing orchestral music for film, TV, and specially-commissioned occasional scores on various historical themes, but had never been asked to write a NON-programmatic symphony. "Commissions of this nature are rare," says Boyer, "so I was pleased when the Pasadena Symphony Association offered me the opportunity."

Programmatic or not, even in an "abstract" symphony, as BBC Music magazine noted, Boyer can (quote) "set a scene or create a mood rapidly and unambiguously; he writes with great flair for big orchestras."

On today's date in 2013, Boyer himself conducted the Pasadena Symphony in the premiere performance of his Symphony No. 1, a work with no overt program but dedicated to the memory of Leonard Bernstein, and Bernstein's daughter Jaime commented, "I know how deeply Peter relates to the music of [my father], as well as to the humanitarian spirit that infuses so many Bernstein compositions."

On today's date in 2002, Mariss Jansons led the Pittsburg Symphony in the premiere performance of the Second Symphony written by a then 32-year-old American composer named Michael Hersch. Hardly a child prodigy, Michael Hersch was introduced to classical music at age 18 by his brother Jamie, who showed him a videotape of Georg Solti conducting Beethoven's Fifth. That experience shook him. "It scrambled everything." Hersch recalled. "That's when I knew that I was to be a composer... My whole life started over at that moment." Hersch certainly made up for lost time, exhibiting an uncanny ability to master both the piano and the intricacies of contemporary compositional techniques in less than a decade. His first success as a composer came when his "Elegy for Strings" won a major prize and was conducted by Marin Alsop at Lincoln Center in New York in 1997. Since then his works have been commissioned and performed by many other leading orchestras and performers. Tim Smith of The Baltimore Sun described Hersch's work as, "music of astounding, even thrilling, complexity; music that can be hard to grasp, yet impossible to let go of; and music of stark, unsettling, seemingly implausible beauty." Hersch's Symphony No. 2 has no stated program, but it was composed shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, and knowing that, it's hard to disassociate the score's violent opening and subsequent elegiac mood from that tragic moment in American history.

If you were like Dr. Who with his Tardis, and a piano fan to boot, you might set your time machine for Paris, April 25th, 1841. That's when an all-Beethoven concert was given at the Salle Erard to raise funds for the proposed Beethoven monument in Bonn, the late composer's birthplace. Franz Liszt was the soloist in Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto, conducted by Hector Berlioz.

About a month earlier, Liszt had dazzled Paris with the premiere of his new piano fantasia on themes from the popular opera "Robert the Devil," by Giacomo Meyerbeer. So, as Liszt walked on stage—with the entire orchestra in place, all ready for Beethoven's Concerto—the audience clamored loudly for a repeat performance. They made such a racket that Berlioz and the orchestra had no choice but to sit idly by until Liszt first encored his Fantasia.

In the audience was a 27-year old German named Richard Wagner, reviewing the concert for a Dresden newspaper. Wagner was outraged that the Beethoven was put on hold for Liszt's flashy solo. "Some day," fumed Wagner, "Liszt in heaven will be summoned to play his Fantasy on 'The Devil' before the assembled company of angels!"

We're not sure if Wagner attended a concert the following day at the Salle Pleyel, but any modern-day time traveler would probably want to stick around to hear Frederic Chopin give one of HIS rare Parisian recitals, performing, among other works, his own F-Major Ballade.

During the last 20 years of his life, the avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen concentrated on completing an ambitious cycle of seven operas, collectively titled “Licht” or, in English “Light.” Each opera was named for a day of the week, and inspired by familiar and obscure world mythologies associated with each day.

The opera titled “Montag” (or “Monday”), for example, is devoted to the Moon and the feminine architype of Eve as the mother of all creation. Two additional main characters that appear in the operas are Michael the Archangel, representing the creative force, and Lucifer, representing the destructive force.

Each opera begins with a “Greeting,” or overture, often an electronic piece designed to be heard in the theater lobby while the audience gathers, and ends with a “Farewell,” sometimes intended for performance outside the theater proper, to be heard as the audience disperses.

Story lines in Stockhausen’s operas draw on many sources, including the composer’s own childhood, and have more in common with symbolic Renaissance courtly masques and pageants than works by Verdi or Puccini, but might be considered a 21th century response to Wagner’s 19th-century cycle of four mythological “Ring” operas.

Portions of Stockhausen’s operas were premiered piecemeal starting in 1977, and only on rare occasions staged in their entirety. The last to be completed, “Sontag” (or “Sunday”) was performed complete for the first time in Cologne, Germany, on today’s date in 2011, more than three years after Stockhausen’s death.

During his stay in America, the Czech composer Antonin Dvořák became convinced that distinctive American music could be based on two, uniquely American sources: the plantation songs and spirituals of African-Americans and the chants and dances of the indigenous Native American tribes. By the early years of the 20th century, a number of American composers had taken his suggestions to heart.

One of them, an American composer, publisher, music editor and critic named Arthur Farwell, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on today's date in 1872. Farwell went to MIT intending to become an electrical engineer, and did, in fact, get his engineering degree in 1893, the same year Dvořák's views began appearing in the press, and Farwell eventually came to the conclusion that a musical career might be more interesting than engineering. Frustrated at his inability to find a publisher for his set of solo piano transcriptions entitled "American Indian Melodies," he formed his own publishing house.

In addition to pioneering work in arranging Native American themes, Farwell set Emily Dickinson poems to music, experimented with polytonality, and, in 1916, arranged for the first "light show" in New York's Central Park, decades before the psychedelic 1960s. His teaching career included stints at Cornell, UC Berkley and Michigan State, but Farwell never felt completely at home in academia, preferring to organize community-based musical pageants with audience participation. He died at the age of 79 in New York in 1953.

At London’s St. James’s Hall on today’s date in 1885, the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak conducted the London Philharmonic Society’s orchestra in the premiere of his Seventh Symphony, a work they had commissioned.

The Society had also commissioned Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony decades earlier, a fact of which Dvorak was quite aware, and just before starting work Dvorak heard and was bowled over by the brand-new Third Symphony by his friend and mentor Johannes Brahms. In other words… “No pressure!”

Dvorak felt he MUST do his very best, and, judging by the warm reception at its London premiere, the new work was a success, with one reviewer calling it “one of the greatest works of its class produced in the present generation.”

But not all reviews were glowing. Another wrote, “the entire work is painted grey on grey: it lacks sweetness of melody and lightness of style.” And Dvorak’s German publisher complained that big symphonies were not profitable and advised Dvorak write only shorter piano pieces that had a ready market.

But subsequent performances helped establish the new symphony as the masterwork it is, and although not as often-played as his “New World” Symphony, today Dvorak’s Seventh ranks among his finest creations.