Composers Datebook

In the 18th century, just like today, Roman tourists gravitate toward the Vatican to view the famous Sistine Chapel and its ceiling by Michelangelo. But during Holy Week in the 18th century, there was an added attraction: performances by the Sistine Chapel Choir of a hauntingly beautiful piece of music, the a cappella setting of the Latin "Miserere" by the Italian composer Gregorio Allegri.

Over the decades since Allegri's death in 1652, elaborate vocal embellishments have been added to the original score. The Vatican jealously guarded these and Allegri's manuscript score as its exclusive property. Rumor had it—under threat of excommunication—that the choir was forbidden to let the score be taken out of the Chapel, copied, or even seen by any outsider.

On today's date in 1770, Wolfgang Mozart, age 14, was visiting Rome with his father. The Mozarts attended an evening service at the Vatican and heard Allegri's "Miserere." That same night—after just one hearing—young Wolfgang transcribed the piece from memory, and the Mozarts returned three days later to check Wolfgang's transcription against a repeat performance of Allegri's music. The elder Mozart thought that letting people know about this feat of memory might be "good PR" for young Wolfgang.

In any case, the Mozarts were NOT excommunicated, and Roman society WAS suitably impressed when they learned of the teenager's remarkable musical talent.

On today's date in 1959, the Duke University Band, under its conductor Paul Bryan, gave the official premiere performance of a new work they had commissioned: the Symphony No. 3 for concert band by the American composer, Vittorio Giannini, a noted composer of vocal music including songs and operas.

With the growth of concert bands in the 1950's, and success of high-profile performing ensembles like Frederick Fennell's Eastman Wind Ensemble, composers like Giannini started getting commissions to write new works for these groups to play. In all, Giannini wrote five pieces for concert band, with his Symphony No. 3 the biggest and best known of the lot.

Paul Bryan and Duke University were certainly pleased with the new work. Its resounding success encouraged other band directors to continue persuading prominent composers to create serious works for wind band–and, in one fell swoop, the Duke Band achieved national recognition for its initiative.

As for Giannini, in his later years he turned to teaching a younger generation of composers, first in New York City at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, then in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute, and finally at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he served as that institution's first president. Giannini students included a number of successful composers, including David Amram, John Corigliano, Nicolas Flagello, Adolphus Hailstork, and Alfred Reed.

Today in 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas, a baby girl named Florence Beatrice Smith was born. She would grow up to be the first African-American woman to win widespread recognition as a symphonic composer. All that happened under her married name: Florence Price. Price studied at the New England Conservatory and with the noted American composers Frederick Converse and George Whitefield Chadwick. She settled in Chicago, and, in 1933, the Chicago Symphony premiered her First Symphony. In 1940, THIS music, from her Symphony No. 3, premiered in Detroit. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was in Detroit that week, and was so impressed by a rehearsal of Price's symphony that she altered her schedule to stay for that evening's performance, and even wrote about the premiere in her newspaper column, "My Day." And speaking of Eleanor Roosevelt, on today's date in 1939, which fell on Easter Sunday that year, the First Lady and then Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes arranged for the famous African-American contralto, Marion Anderson, to perform a free, open-air recital at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Anderson had been denied use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution. 75,000 people attended Marion Anderson's recital at the Lincoln Memorial. Marion Anderson admired Florence Price's work, and sang some of Price's songs and spiritual arrangements, including "Songs to the Dark Virgin," a setting of a text by Langston Hughes.

It's usually NEW music that gets terrible reviews in the press, but scanning old newspapers, you'll find that occasionally OLD music gets panned with equal venom.

On today's date in 1865, a concert by the Theodore Thomas Orchestra at Irving Hall opened with an orchestral arrangement of a Bach Passacaglia, followed by Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola.

The New York Times reviewer was not exactly thrilled with either selection:

"The Bach," wrote the Times, "is a fair representation of the treadmill. A culprit may travel on it for a day without advancing a step. It simply goes 'round and 'round in the most obvious style, and takes up threads with painful precision, and is generally DULL–like a superannuated church warden… The symphony for violin and viola by Mozart is a work generally avoided in Europe. The wearisome scale passages on the little fiddle repeated ad nauseam on the bigger one are simply maddening. On the whole, one would prefer death to a repetition of this production."

Thus spake the Times in April of 1865.

We should note in its defense that Americans had other matters on their minds that week. The Times headline for April 8th, the day of the concert, read: "Progress of the Rout of Lee's Army," and two days later, when the review appeared, the headline was: "Union Victory! Peace! Lee Surrenders His Whole Army!"

From 1951 to the time of his death in 1976, the Texas-born conductor Victor Alesandro led the San Antonio Symphony.

In addition to being a fine conductor, Alessandro had a very clever system for attracting talented players to his orchestra. He kept his eyes open for key players about to retire from all the top American orchestras and sent them tempting brochures describing San Antonio’s palm trees, old Spanish houses, and mild winters. Many accepted his invitations, settled in San Antonio, and served as models and mentors for the Symphony’s younger players.

In 1966, for example, John Corigliano, Sr., facing mandatory retirement as the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, took up the same position with the San Antonio Symphony.

And so it came about that on today’s date in 1968, John Corigliano, Senior, then aged 67, served as the concertmaster for the world premiere performance of a new Piano Concerto written by his son, composer John Corigliano, Junior, then aged 30. The premiere performers, pianist Hilde Somer and the San Antonio Symphony under Alessandro, even recorded the new work for Mercury Records.

Although well received at the time, Corigliano’s concerto was rather neglected for many years thereafter, but more recently has been receiving new performances and recordings. Reviewing a 1996 recording of the work, Edward Greenfield of GRAMOPHONE magazine wrote, “If Corigliano unashamedly uses a freely eclectic style, his writing is consistently positive and energetic, never merely conventional.”

Carlos Salzedo, the most influential harpist of the 20th century, was born in Arcachon, France, on today’s date in 1885. Salzedo transformed the harp into a virtuoso instrument, developing new techniques showcased in his own compositions and that others like Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Britten adopted in theirs.

In 1921, Salzedo and Edgard Varese co-founded the International Composers Guild, promoting works by progressive composers like Bartok and Honegger. Salzedo’s own compositions for harp include both transcriptions as well as original works like “Scintillation,” probably his most famous piece, and “Four Preludes to the Afternoon of a Telephone,” based on the phone numbers of four of his students.

He taught at the Curtis Institute, the Juilliard School, and offered summer courses in Camden, Maine. Hundreds of Salzedo pupils filled harp positions with major orchestras around the world. Salzedo himself entered the Paris Conservatory at age nine and won the premiere prize in harp and piano when he was just 16. He came to America in 1909 at the invitation of Arturo Toscanini, who wanted him as harpist at the Metropolitan Opera, and—curious to note—Salzedo died in the summer of 1961, at the age of 76, while adjudicating Metropolitan Opera regional auditions in Maine.

Johann Strauss, Jr. dominated the dance hall scene in Vienna in the first quarter century of his musical career, but the "waltz king" was 45 years old before he tried his hand at writing an operetta. He was urged on by the management of Vienna's premiere light opera venue, the Theater an der Wien, which was anxious to replace the extremely popular French operettas by Jacques Offenbach with some new works by Vienna's own and equally famous purveyor of light music.

Even so, for Strauss's third operetta, the cagey theater managers hedged their bets by acquiring the rights to a French farce entitled "Le Réveillon," which just happened to be written by the librettists for several of Offenbach's biggest hits.

"Le Réveillon" was considered a little too French and a little too racy as it stood, so some substantial changes were made before Strauss set to work. The end result, re-titled "Die Fledermaus" (or "The Bat",) opened in Vienna on today's date in 1874.

Now, there is an oft-repeated myth that "Fledermaus" was initially a flop and that it closed after only sixteen performances. But blame that on the famous American soprano, Adelina Patti, who had booked the Theater an der Wien for a run of Italian opera performances shortly after "Fledermaus" was scheduled to open. When Patti and her troupe left Vienna, "Fledermaus" returned for more performances, and has rarely been absent from Viennese stages from that day to this.

Today we offer a special "Gong Show" edition of The Composer's Datebook.

On today's date in 1791, at the height of the French Revolution, the Panthéon in Paris was converted into a mausoleum for national heroes, and the first to be interned there, with great pomp and ceremony, was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, a tremendously popular personage of the day. For dramatic effect during the Count's funeral procession through the streets of Paris, French composer François Joseph Gossec added an unusual percussion instrument to his funereal wind band: an exotic instrument someone had brought to Paris from the Far East, and known as—you guessed it—the gong.

It was reported that whenever the gong was struck during Mirabeau's funeral procession, cries of terror and fright were heard from the crowd that lined the Parisian streets as the cortège passed.

And so, in addition to being known as "father of the French symphony," Gossec can also be called "the father of the gong"—at least in Western classical music.

Now terror and fright are bread and butter in the world of grand opera, and so the gong soon was adopted by 19th century composers like Spontini, Meyerbeer, and Wagner, and in the 20th century, composers like Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and George Crumb have also used gongs to—forgive us—striking effect!

But today's Gong Prize goes to Giacomo Puccini for putting the instrument right on stage for all to see at a climactic moment at the end of Act One of the opera "Turandot," in which the tenor lead, mallet in hand, gets to deliver several gong strokes to accompany his own ringing high notes.

In the 19th century, same as today, New Yorkers looking for fun had a lot to choose from. Can you blame them for being a little jaded, when, for example, on today's date in 1871, the options included these three musical offerings: First: at Lina Edwin's Theater, a musical burlesque entitled "Pluto," an entertainment The New York Times billed as an "Anglicized and condensed" version of Jacques Offenbach's racy operetta, "Orpheus in the Underworld," with, as an added attraction, interpolated comic sketches and monologues by the show's star, the David Letterman of the day, the ever-popular comedian Mr. Lingard . Second: for the more serious sort, the American staged premiere of Richard Wagner's opera, "Lohengrin," at the Stadt Theater. The Times noted that Wagner's opera was "brought out in Germany some 20 years earlier, but was unknown here in its entirety until now." A large audience showed up for the "entirety" of "Lohengrin," which lasted over four hours and ended around midnight. Finally: at Broadway's Minstrel Hall, directly from Japan, twenty star performers from Satsuma's Japanese Circus Troupe offered "varied and interesting" entertainment in New York that night, including the amazing Mr. Yadunochi, who first smoked a pipe, then ate it, then smoked WITHOUT his pipe while playing on a flute and expelling smoke from that instrument, and, for his grand finale, concluded by reproducing, as the Times put it "the original pipe whole and unsullied." Now, THAT'S entertainment!

Today in 1961, the American composer Wallingford Riegger died in New York City, about a month shy of what would have been his 76th birthday.

Riegger was born in Albany, Georgia, in 1885. Like many American musicians of that era, Riegger studied in Germany. In the years before America entered World War I, Riegger worked in both the US and Europe: for three years he was the principal cellist with the St. Paul Symphony in Minnesota; he then served as an assistant voice coach and conductor at German opera houses in Würzburg and Königsberg.

Returning home in 1918, Riegger spent the next ten years teaching, eventually settling in New York in 1928. There he got to know Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, and other "ultra-modern" composers. Riegger's early music had been in the traditional mode, but he quickly established himself as one of the leading figures in the more experimental American music scene.

In the '30s, Riegger, like Copland, worked with the pioneers of modern American dance, including Martha Graham, and he composed a number of ballet scores. From 1938 on, however, he concentrated on non-theatrical scores, including symphonies and chamber works.

Riegger's mature works blend atonality with traditional musical forms and dance rhythms. This music from 1953, the opening of his Concerto for Piano and Woodwind Quintet, even includes some jazzy American syncopation.