Composers Datebook

As kids, many of us received home-made presents: a sweater or pair of socks, perhaps, or—if you were unlucky—a crocheted bow tie you were forced to wear when Auntie came to visit.

On today's date in 1720, Johann Sebastian Bach started a home-made present for his 9-year old son, Wilhelm Friedemann. It was a collection of little keyboard pieces designed to teach him to play the harpsichord, pieces now known as Bach’s “Two- and Three-Part Inventions.”

Here's how J.S. Bach himself described these pieces: "Straightforward Instruction, in which amateurs of the keyboard, and especially the eager ones, are shown a clear way not only of learning to play cleanly in two voices, but also, after further progress, of dealing correctly and satisfactorily with three… all the while acquiring a strong foretaste of composition."

In the case of little Wilhelm Friedemann, it did the trick. Not only did he master the keyboard, he became a composer himself.

Even just attentively listening to Papa Bach's inventions can have its rewards, according to the late music critic Michael Steinberg, who wrote, "Bach has done such a good job at instilling 'a strong foretaste of composition' that… they will make the hearer a better, … a more aware and thus a more enjoying, listener as well."

The first Piano Concerto by Brahms received its premiere public performance on today’s date in 1858 with the Hanover Court Orchestra under the direction of Brahms’s close friend Joseph Joachim and its 25-year composer as soloist.

That first night audience had never heard anything quite like it. In his biography of Brahms, Jan Swafford describes what was expected of a piano concerto back then, namely “virtuosic brilliance, dazzling cadenzas, not too many minor keys, [and nothing] too tragic.”

“To the degree that these were the rules,” writes Swafford, “[Brahms] violated every one of them.”

His concerto opens with heaven-storming drama, continues with deeply melancholic lyricism, and closes with something akin to hard-fought, even grim, triumph. Rather than a display of flashy virtuosity, Brahms’s concerto comes off as somber and deeply emotional. A second performance, five days later in Leipzig, was hissed.

"I am experimenting and feeling my way,” Brahms wrote to his friend Joachim, adding, "all the same, the hissing was rather too much."

Now regarded a dark Romantic masterpiece, it’s important to remember how long it took audiences to warm to Brahms’ music. The American composer Elliott Carter recalled that even in the 1920s, Boston concert goers used to quip that the exit signs meant, "This way in case of Brahms."

On today’s date in 1961, the French composer Francis Poulenc was in Boston for the premiere of his new choral work. It was a setting a Latin text “Gloria in excelsis Deo” or “Glory to God in the Highest.”

These days Poulenc’s “Gloria” is regarded as one of his finest works, but back in 1961, some critics shook their heads and tut-tutted about the perceived irreverence of sections of the new work which to them came off as too light-hearted and out of place in a presumably “serious” religious work. Poulenc’s setting of the Latin text “Laudamus te, Benedicimus te” (We praise you, we bless you), seemed downright giddy to those critics.

In his defense, Poulenc said: "I was thinking when I composed it of these frescoes by Gozzoli with angels sticking out their tongues, and of Benedictine [clergy] I once saw playing soccer."

In retrospect, it seems odd that anyone should have been surprised by the coexistence of the serious and the silly in the music of Poulenc, since both moods had been evident in his music for decades. In 1950, the critic Claude Rostand described the composer as "A lover of life, mischievous and good-hearted, tender and impertinent, melancholy and serenely mystical, half monk—and half delinquent.”

Each January, Martin Luther King Day is observed on the third Monday of the month, and in 2009, MLK day fell on January 19th.

To celebrate, the director of the Boston Children’s Chorus commissioned and premiered a new work from the American composer Trevor Weston. Rather than set words spoken by King, Weston took a different course:

“[Dr. King’s] speeches speak to … the beauty of living in a society where the truth of equality is actually realized and often demonstrate a broad historical perspective,” says Weston, “so I celebrated King by using texts from the African Saint Augustine and the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.”

From Saint Augustine’s “Confessions,” Weston includes the line, “O Truth, you give hearing to all who consult you … you answer clearly, but all men do not hear you,” and from a Dunbar work entitled “The Poet,” this line: “He sang of life, serenely sweet/With now and then a deeper note.”

Musically, Weston echoes works both medieval and modern, specifically the 12th century composer Hildegard von Bingen and the 20th century composer Morton Feldman, with a variation on the spiritual “Wade in the Water” tossed in for good measure.

The result is a haunting, inward-looking choral work that Weston entitled “Truth Tones.”

On today's date in 1958, Leonard Bernstein asked, "What does Music mean?" He posed the question to an audience of kids assembled at Carnegie Hall for the first of his "Young People's Concerts" -- but since the concert was televised, it was a question he posed as well to a nationwide audience of all ages.

That 1958 concert opened with Rossini's "William Tell" Overture – music that "meant" the Lone Ranger to TV audiences back then, or as Bernstein put it: "Cowboys, bandits, horses, the Wild West."

But, Bernstein argued: "Music is never about anything. Music just is. Music is notes and sounds put together in such a way that we get pleasure out of listening to them, and that's all it is." Bernstein then demonstrated how the same music could plausibly be the "soundtrack" to any number of different "stories."

Bernstein concluded his first Young People’s Concert with Ravel's "La Valse" and these comments: "Every once in a while we have feelings so deep and so special that we have no words for them. Music names them for us, only in notes instead of in words. It's all in the way music moves and that movement can tell us more about the way we feel than a million words can."

Today’s date in 1803 marks the passing of a late Baroque composer who was born in Italy but spent most of his adult life in the Netherlands, where his works were published and distributed throughout Europe.

By the time of his death in The Hague at the age of 86, he had achieved fame as a composer, teacher, and concert organizer. But fame is a fickle thing, and his music remained all but forgotten until 1984, when his name caught the attention of the iconoclastic American rock musician Frank Zappa for the simple reason that this long-forgotten composer’s name happened to be FRANCESCO Zappa.

Now FRANK Zappa had achieved fame the 1960s and 70s as the iconoclastic founder of The Mothers of Invention and for releasing rock LPs with titles like “Freak Out,” and “Burnt Weenie Sandwich,” but in 1984 Frank Zappa released an album of Trio Sonatas by the long-forgotten Francesco Zappa, which the rock star himself performed on an electronic keyboard instrument called the Synclavier.

So was Francesco Zappa a long-lost ancestor of Frank Zappa? No, not really, but Frank Zappa liked surprising people, and his recording was a respectful, if electronically-realized, tribute to a long-forgotten composer who just happened to share his name.

Today marks the anniversary of the creation of a famous classical music nickname, “Les Six”—French for “The Six.” That’s what Parisian music critic Henri Collet dubbed six composers on this day in 1920, in a magazine article.

The composers Collet named include three still often heard today—Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc. Performances of the other three composers, George Auric, Louis Durey, and the only woman in the group, Germaine Tailleferre, are still relatively rare.

Though is counted among the neglected half of Les Six, Tailleferre’s music has been having something of a revival lately. Perhaps this is part of a general renewal of interest in concert works written by women composers, or perhaps it’s a belated recognition that much of her best work remains fresh and appealing, like her Violin Sonata No. 1, composed in 1921 and dedicated to the great French violinist Jacques Thibaud.

Born near Paris in 1892, Tailleferre was a prodigy with an astounding memory. Erik Satie proclaimed her his “musical daughter,” and she was also close friends with Maurice Ravel. The Second World War, financial insecurity, and increasing arthritis inhibited Tailleferre’s career in her later years, but she continued to compose and teach until her death at age 91, in 1983.

In the fall of 1784, Mozart and his wife moved into an elegant apartment near St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. The house belonged to the Camesina brothers, whose father made ornamental rococo plasterwork, and the ceiling of one of the larger apartments in the house was decorated in a lavish style as a kind of show room for prospective clients.

In that apartment on today's date in 1785, Haydn heard a few of the new string quartets Mozart had recently completed and would eventually dedicate to the older composer. It's likely that Mozart himself performed the viola part on that occasion.

A month later, when Mozart's father paid a visit to Vienna, the rest of the new quartets were performed, again with Haydn present. That was the occasion that Haydn turned to Mozart’s father and said: "Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name."

It was probably the most deeply appreciated compliment Mozart ever received, but one the following evening wasn't too shabby either. After a performance of one of his Piano Concertos, his majesty the Austrian emperor waved to Wolfgang as he left the stage and called out: "Bravo, Mozart!"

On today’s date in 1900, “Tosca,” a new opera by Giacomo Puccini had its premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Rome was, in fact, the opera’s setting and those in the audience would have instantly recognized the real-life landmarks depicted on stage.

Puccini composed “Tosca” at the height of the “verismo” or “realism” craze in opera. It might seem downright silly that a theatrical form as UNREAL and stylized as opera could ever be described as “realistic” – but the idea was to depict “a slice of real life” – even if that slice includes melodramatic characters like a sadistic, lecherous police chief and a beautiful opera diva he lusts for.

To be as realistic as possible, Puccini visited Rome to listen to the early morning church bells from the ramparts of the Castel Sant'Angelo, the setting of his opera’s third act and to consult with a Roman priest on the details of the liturgy for the Te Deum that concludes Act I.

Some early audiences for “Tosca” thought Puccini had taken this realism thing way too far. One proper British reviewer wrote: “Those who were present were little prepared for the revolting effects produced by musically illustrating torture ... or the dying kicks of a murdered scoundrel.”

Today’s date in 1904 marks the birthday of Richard Addinsell, a versatile British musician who became one of the most famous film score composers of his generation.

Addinsell was born in London, studied music at the Royal College of Music, and pursued additional studies in Berlin and Vienna before heading off to America in 1933 for some practical education at Hollywood film studios. He put both his theoretical and practical learning to good use when he returned to England, where he began composing for a series of successful British movies, like the Oscar-winning 1939 film “Goodbye, Mr. Chips.”

Addinsell also became a popular songwriter and accompanist for British comediennes and cabaret singers of the day.

But Addinsell is best known as the composer of the “Warsaw Concerto,” a piano concerto consciously modeled on the big Romantic scores of Rachmaninoff. This music originally appeared in the 1941 British adventure film “Dangerous Moonlight,” retitled “Suicide Squadron” when it was released in the States in 1942.

After that mega-hit, Addinsell’s fluent and versatile writing continued to grace a goodly number of Post-War British films and TV dramatizations, ranging from historical epics to psychological thrillers, gritty “slice-of-life” dramas, and whimsical, light-hearted comedies.

Addinsell died in London at the age of 73 in 1977.