Composers Datebook

In 1863, the price of The New York Times was three cents, and many plunked down their pennies to read front-page news about "the rebellion"—what we now call the Civil War.

But if you were a new music aficionado back in 1863, you probably turned to the concert listings on the "Amusements" page. One of Verdi's newest operas, "Un Ballo in Maschera," had just closed at the Academy of Music, and the contemporary composer-pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk had given a concert of his latest works the day before, too.

After all that "modern" music, maybe you were in the mood for some really OLD music. The enterprising duo of William Mason and Theodore Thomas was offering a "Soiree of Chamber Music" at Dodworth's Hall on April 21, 1863, and the program included the first public performance in America of the Concerto in C Major for Two Keyboards and Strings by J.S. Bach. Now this was REALLY old stuff—a work that predated the birth of America in 1776 by a good 50 years!

The Times did not review this Bach premiere, but the next documented American performance in Boston in 1877 was described in Dwight's Journal as a "cheerful, lightsome, everyday sort of composition," with the reviewer adding that (quote) "Bach's everyday is something finer than the common mortal's… the work [was] full of vigor and life, the best of tonics…"

Today in 1928, a French musician and inventor named Maurice Martenot gave the first public demonstration of a strange, new electronic instrument he had created. It was a gadget that had pull-wires, pointers and a keyboard diagram which produced eerie-sounding tones reminiscent of the human voice, but without the human limitations of voice range or lung power.

In addition to being a clever inventor, Martenot was also a savvy promoter of his new electronic instrument, which he took on a world tour, with his sister serving as its first virtuoso performer. The instrument came to be called the "Ondes Martenot"—which translates into English as "Martenot Waves."

A number of 20th century composers were quite enthusiastic. Arthur Honegger even thought the Ondes Martenot might replace the contra-bassoon in symphony orchestras, writing: "The Ondes Martenot has power and a speed of utterance which is not to be compared with those gloomy stove-pipes looming up in orchestras."

Well, contra-bassoonists needn't worry: their analog, breath-powered stove-pipes still provide the low blows in most modern orchestras, but the Ondes Martenot does figure prominently in several major 20th century scores, including the monumental "Turangalila Symphony" of the French composer, Oliver Messiaen.

In 1947, Martenot established classes in the Ondes Martenot at the Paris Conservatory, and, following Martenot's death in 1981, the French even formed an official society with the grand title of "L'Association pour la Diffusion et le Développement des Ondes Martenot."

Alban Berg's Violin Concerto had its first performance in Barcelona, Spain, on today's date in 1936, at the opening concert of that year's International Society for Contemporary Music Festival. Berg had died the previous winter, and the premiere was supposed to be conducted by his close friend and fellow composer, Anton Webern, but Webern withdrew at the last minute, reportedly upset with the quality of the Spanish orchestra. And so Hermann Scherchen conducted the first performance, with the violinist who had commissioned the work, Louis Krasner, as the soloist. Krasner was born in the Ukraine, but raised in America, and, in addition to commissioning Violin Concertos and premiering them, served for a time as the concertmaster of the Minneapolis Symphony under Dimitri Mitropoulos. He later taught at Syracuse University and the New England Conservatory of Music. In the spring of 1976, Louis Krasner was cleaning out his attic, and discovered he still had some private acetate discs he had made of the SECOND performance of the Berg Violin Concerto. The old discs documented a May 1st, 1936 radio broadcast of the new work by the BBC Symphony, with Krasner once again the soloist. This time the conductor WAS Anton Webern. The 40-year old discs were transcribed to tape, and eventually were released on CD in 1991, allowing posterity a chance to listen in as music history was being made.

The month of April in the year 1800 was an especially busy one for Ludwig van Beethoven. On the second of April at his first big orchestral concert in Vienna, Beethoven had premiered his First Symphony, a new Piano Concerto, and his Septet for winds. He had been planning for this concert all winter, and there was a lot of music to be worked up and written down for that occasion.

On today's date that same month, Beethoven appeared in Vienna once again, this time as piano accompanist for the popular Bohemian horn virtuoso, Johann Wenzel Stich, who went by the more marketable Italian "stage name" of Giovanni Punto.

The pre-concert announcements for the Punto recital promised that Beethoven would contribute a new work for the occasion—but, apparently preoccupied by his OWN concert, Beethoven didn't get around to writing the promised piece until the day before the recital!

Beethoven and Punto took the new Horn Sonata with them for a concert in Budapest the following month. The press in Hungary had heard of Punto, but not Beethoven, whose name they didn't even get right: "Who is this Bethover (sic)." One press notice read: "The history of German music is not acquainted with such a name. Punto, of course, is VERY well known…"

Early in April in the year 1845, a 15-year old American pianist named Louis Moreau Gottschalk performed at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. On the program was Chopin's Piano Concerto in E minor, and Chopin happened to be in the audience that day. Although already quite weak from the consumption that would eventually kill him, Chopin went backstage to congratulate the young American on his performance. What exactly Chopin said depends on whom you asked. Gottschalk's first biographer claims it was, "Very good, my child, let me shake your hand," while Gottschalk's sister insists it was, "I predict you will become the king of pianists!" In 1845, Parisian society was curious about anything American after experiencing other exotic specimens from the New World, including P.T. Barnum's circus and George Catlin's paintings of Native American life. The New World was definitely "in." Four years later, on today's date in 1849, Gottschalk returned to the Salle Pleyel, this time performing some of his own original compositions, including a work, entitled "Bamboula," after the name of a deep-voiced Afro-Caribbean drum. Gottschalk had been born in New Orleans, and was exposed from childhood to Cuban and Haitian rhythms and music. The Parisian audiences had never heard anything like it, and gave Gottschalk a standing ovation. Responding to demands for more of the same, Gottschalk wrote and performed a "Louisiana Quartet" of four original Creole-inspired piano pieces, works which anticipate by many decades both the rhythms and colors of American jazz.

For the 1958-59 season of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, the orchestra's new music director, was eager to program as much new American music as he dared. As luck would have it, early in 1958, the 35-year old American composer Ned Rorem had just returned from Europe with a new symphonic score.

"I wrote most of my Third Symphony in France," recalled Rorem. "It's a big piece but not a commission—I was still writing for the love of it in those days… So I showed it to Lenny and he said 'OK, do it, but I wish you would re-orchestrate the slow movement entirely for strings.' I replied 'Sure,' but didn't, because he was always saying things like that, and then he'd forget about it."

The premiere of Ned Rorem's Third Symphony—as written—occurred at Carnegie Hall on today's date in 1959. The thrill of the premiere was tempered by some harsher realities for the composer, however.

Rorem recalls, "I remember coming late to the first rehearsal because in those days I was living off unemployment insurance. I had written music for a Tennessee Williams play that had closed, so technically I was on unemployment, and I had to go down and stand in line to pick up my check. I guess they managed without me because Lenny conducted four wonderful performances."

It's the Romantic composer, Franz Liszt, who is usually credited with the invention of the "tone poem," defined as an orchestral piece that usually has some sort of "program" or story depicted in music. In the Romantic Era these stories were often, well, romantic in nature. Enchanted huntsmen, water fairies, and tales of thwarted lovers were popular, as were depictions of mountains, rivers, and other evocative natural scenes. On today's date in 1927, the Boston Symphony premiered a modern tone-poem on a modern subject. The music was by the American composer, Frederick Converse, and the complete title was: "Flivver Ten Million: A Joyous Epic Inspired by the Familiar Legend 'The Ten Millionth Ford is Now Serving Its Owner.'" "Flivver" was a slang term appropriated by the Ford Motor Company for its inexpensive, mass-produced cars. The advertising tag-line about the "10 Millionth Flivver" must have struck Converse as poetic, in a modern American sort of way, and so fit material for a tone poem. "I set about it for my own amusement," wrote Converse. "I wondered what Mark Twain would have done with such a theme if he had been a musician. He who wishes to express American life or experience must include the saving grace of humor." As a "road map" for this musical Flivver, Converse provided descriptive titles for sections of the tone-poem, like "Dawn in Detroit," "The Din of the Builders," "The Joy Riders," and (perhaps predictably) "The Collision."

On today's date in 1789, Mozart was in Dresden, performing his new Piano Concerto at the Royal Saxon Court. Mozart was pretty good at documenting his own compositions, and we know from a catalog of his works that he finished this Concerto in late February the previous year.

Unfortunately for posterity, Mozart was less dutiful in copying out all of the solo piano part, which he no doubt just kept in his head. The surviving manuscript score contains just a shorthand version of the solo piano part, with the music for the left-hand hardly there at all.

Modern performers have to rely on their own wit and imagination to fill in the blanks, as it were… and, who knows: maybe Mozart played it differently each time himself, improvising around his own sketchy outline as the mood took him?

In any case, Mozart must have been proud of this Concerto. He played it again at the festivities surrounding the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt in October of 1790. Ever since, this Concerto has been known as the "Coronation" Concerto.

Over the centuries, many composers have set verses from the Bible’s Book of Psalms to music, often in response to times of turmoil and trouble.

One unusual Psalm setting had its premiere performance on today’s date in 2013 at Bethel University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Entitled “Seven Psalms,” the new work was scored for a jazz quartet of bass, drums, saxophone and piano accompanying a solo vocalist and 15-member choir, and was created by Minneapolis composer Jeremy Walker, who confesses the music was motivated by his own personal struggle.

Walker’s burgeoning career as a jazz saxophonist was sidetracked by an illness which stymied doctors for 12 years until finally diagnosed as Lyme Disease. Unable to continue as a saxophonist, Walker turned to the piano and composition, and found himself drawn to the Book of Psalms, where he heard echoes of African-American spirituals and the blues.

"The book is just dripping with human hope and suffering all intertwined so it seemed like blues material to me," he said. "It occurred to me to blend the jazz vernacular harmonic universe with the psalms. And right away the call and response between solo voice, or between the band and the choir, were sounds I could hear," he said.

Today in 1892, the Adamowski Quartet gave a concert in Boston that included two movements from a String Quartet by a 32-year old composer named Charles Martin Loeffler.

It was one of the young composer's earliest works, but Loeffler was already a familiar name in Boston music circles. For the past 10 years he had been the associate concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, and just the previous year that orchestra had premiered his first orchestral piece, called "Evenings in the Ukraine".

Loeffler told people he was born in the Alsace region of France in 1861, which would account for his French manners and the French titles he gave some of his pieces.

In fact, Loeffler was born in Berlin, but he never forgave the Prussians for the political persecution and imprisonment of his father, and left Berlin for Paris as soon as he could.

In 1881, at the age of 20, Loeffler came to the United States, where he found Americans "quick to reward genuine musical merit and to reward it far more generously than Europe." In 1887, Loeffler became an American citizen, and in short order established himself as one of the country's leading composers. His music was played by many of the major orchestras and conductors of his day.

After his death in 1935, Loeffler's music fell into neglect for many decades, but his elegant and well-crafted music is attracting renewed interest—and recordings—today.