Composers Datebook

It was wet and cold in New York on today's date in 1925, but a curious crowd gathered at Carnegie Hall for a concert by the New York Symphony. Walter Damrosch was to conduct the world premiere of a new Piano Concerto by George Gershwin, who would also be the soloist.

The audience reacted with cheers and bravos, but the reviews were mixed: "Conventional, trite... [and] a little dull" was the verdict of one; but another was enthusiastic, suggesting: "Of all those writing the music of today, [Gershwin] alone actually expresses US." In the America of 1925, that "us" would have included the owners of speakeasies, raccoon coats, and Stutz Bearcat roadsters. It was the "Jazz Age"— an era magically captured in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby."

Seventy-four years later, in December of 1999, John Harbison's opera based on "The Great Gatsby" premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, playing to sold-out houses. Once again, audiences were enthusiastic—the critics less so.

To capture the mood of the 1920s, Harbison had composed a number of original songs in Jazz-Age style, which he incorporated as themes in his opera. These tunes have even been published as a separate "Gatsby Songbook!"

Imagine: a modern opera with tunes audiences can actually hum as they leave the theater! What will they think of next?

On today's date in 1949, Northrop Auditorium in Minneapolis was the venue for the world premiere performance of Béla Bartók's last orchestral piece: his Concerto for Viola and Orchestra. The soloist was William Primrose, who had commissioned the work, with the Hungarian-born conductor Antal Dorati leading the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Bartók had died in 1945, leaving extensive but incomplete sketches for the concerto he was writing for Primrose. After his death, the Viola Concerto was completed and orchestrated by Bartók's friend and fellow Hungarian, Tibor Sérly, who had also put the finishing touches on Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, which also premiered posthumously.

The 1949 premiere of the Viola Concerto in Minneapolis attracted worldwide attention. To the surprise of some, it also went over very well with its first-night audience at Northrop Auditorium.

At the dress rehearsal, Dorati had predicted as much: "This is one time the audience need have no qualms about the word 'contemporary' as applied to the music it's about to hear." Dorati's view was that the public was finally catching up with Bartók's highly original idiom. "It's not a case of a composer becoming famous because he is dead," said Dorati. "It is true there has been a great surge of performances of Bartók's music since his death, but that is because the public was ready to hear his music."

Because it's often played at weddings, the "Trumpet Voluntary" is one piece of Baroque music that just about everyone has heard. Once attributed to the famous 17th century British composer Henry Purcell, this music was, in fact, composed by Purcell's slightly younger and not-so-famous contemporary Jeremiah Clarke.

Clarke was born around 1674 and sang as a boy soprano in London's Chapel Royal. After his voice changed, he became a choir director and rejoined the Chapel Royal as an organist in 1700. Tragically, on December 1st in 1707, Clarke shot himself – according to some contemporary accounts as the result of a hopeless love affair.

And speaking of such things: also on today's date—in 1886—the American premiere of "Tristan und Isolde," Richard Wagner's classic opera of ill-fated passion, took place at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Anton Seidl, a protégé of Wagner, conducted. While composing Tristan, Wagner wrote to his lover, Mathilde Wesendonck: "Child! This Tristan is turning into something fearsome... the opera will probably be banned... only mediocre performances can save me! Good performances will drive people mad!"

If not driven mad, American audiences in 1886 were at least remarkably enthusiastic. The Musical Courier reported that "the audience filled every available seat and listened to the performance, which lasted until nearly midnight, with an attention and genuine enthusiasm unequaled in the musical history of this land."

On today’s date in 1885, the Paris Opera gave the first performance of “Le Cid,” the 11th opera written by the French composer Jules Massenet.

“Le Cid” is set in medieval Spain and tells the story of Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, a legendary hero who defended his country against the Moors. The same story inspired a 1961 movie titled “El Cid,” starring—who else?—Charlton Heston.

But back in 1890, Massenet’s opera was introduced to American audiences by the New Orleans Opera and reached New York City in 1897, serving as a vocal showcase for turn-of-the-century superstars of the early Metropolitan Opera. Enrico Caruso made a famous recording of the opera’s most famous excerpt—Rodrigo’s Act III aria, “O souverain, o juge, o pere,” which translates as “Oh Lord, Oh Judge, Oh Father.”

Unlikely as it may seem, this aria inspired a pop hit in 1981, when composer and performance artist Laurie Anderson translated its opening line as “O Superman, O Judge, O Mom and Dad.” As a credit to the French composer, Laurie Anderson‘s “O Superman” is even subtitled “For Massenet.”

Trained as a classical violinist with the Chicago Youth Symphony, Laurie Anderson soon shifted to a variety of electronically-altered fiddles, and one of her albums is titled, appropriately, “Life on a String.”

It was on this date in 1825 that the United States had its first date with authentic Italian opera. This was a performance of Gioacchino Rossini's "The Barber of Seville,” staged at New York City's Park Theater.

The singers were mostly from one extraordinary Spanish family—the Garcias—led by its patriarch Manuel Garcia, a tenor who performed role of Count Almaviva – the same role Garcia had created at the opera’s premiere in Rome nine years earlier.

The 1825 New York audience included luminaries from society and the arts—including the American novelist James Fenimore Cooper and Mozart’s one-time librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, who was teaching Italian at Columbia University in those days.

November 29th is also important to 20th century American musical theater. Cole Porter's "Gay Divorce" opened on Broadway on November 29, 1932, at the Ethel Barrymore Theater.

The musical’s title rankled censors who feared it treated divorce too lightly, and they insisted on converting it to the less controversial "Gay Divorcee." Cole Porter’s score included one of his classic songs, "Night and Day,” and, like Rossini before him, Porter claimed to have tailor-made this song for the unusual tenor star of HIS new show, one Fred Astaire.

According to historians, the 19th Century was the great age of Romanticism—but tell that to Sergei Rachmaninoff and Howard Hanson! On today’s date, two of their quintessentially Romantic works were both premiered in the 20th century.

In 1909, Rachmaninoff came to the U.S. for his first American tour, and on today’s date appeared as the piano soloist in the premiere of his Third Piano Concerto with the New York Symphony. Now, if you believe the movie “Shine,” “Rach 3” is the most difficult of all Romantic piano concertos. Even its composer confessed he need to practice it on the boat to America!

By 1930, when American composer Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 premiered on today’s date in Boston, Romantic music was increasingly considered “old fashioned.” But Hanson defiantly subtitled his new Symphony “The Romantic.”

“My Symphony represents a definite embracing of the Romantic,” wrote Hanson “I recognize, of course, that Romanticism is, at the present time, music’s poor stepchild… Nevertheless, I embrace her all the more fervently, believing as I do that Romanticism will find in this country rich soil for new growth.”

And how about outer space? Decades after its premiere, Hanson’s popular “Romantic” Symphony even showed up as part of the film score to the sci-fi classic “Alien!”

“Also sprach Zarathustra,” a tone poem by Richard Strauss, was first performed in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, on this day in 1896, with the composer conducting.

For decades thereafter, it was considered one of his lesser works and only occasionally performed. Then, in 1968, Stanley Kubrick chose its opening fanfare as the main theme of his movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Suddenly “Also Sprach” jumped to the top of the classical charts and became a concert hall favorite as well— even though many of its new audiences are surprised when the piece goes on for another half hour after its spectacular opening.

Another composer who also benefited from Kubrick’s movie was the Hungarian György Ligeti. Initially, Ligeti’s fame was limited to avant-garde circles, but his 1961 composition “Atmosphères” also became part of the “2001” soundtrack and catapulted him to much wider fame. Ligeti’s eerily floating sound-clusters seemed to Kubrick perfect “outer space” music.

Ligeti himself was not happy how his music was used in the film, but, grudgingly, did express admiration for the film’s surreal final sequence. Richard Strauss died in 1949—some 20 years before Kubrick’s film debuted—but we suspect THAT hard-headed businessman would have been pleased that his music was used — and would have promptly demanded a hefty cut of Kubrick’s royalties.

On today’s date in 1997, violinist Joshua Bell and the San Francisco Symphony gave the premiere performance of an 18-minute “Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra” by American composer John Corigliano.

This music was a concert offshoot of Corigliano’s filmscore for Francois Gerard’s movie “The Red Violin,” but debuted months before the film itself was completed.

Said Corigliano, “I was delighted when asked to compose the score for Francois Girard's new film. How could I turn down so interesting and fatalistic a journey through almost three centuries, beginning as it did in Cremona, home of history's greatest violin builders? I also welcomed the producer's offer to separately create a violin and orchestra concert piece, to be freely based on motives from the film.

“I'd assumed that, as usual in film, I wouldn't be required to score it until it was completed, except for a number of on-camera "cues"… Then plans changed. Filming was pushed back. So the present ‘Chaconne’ was built just on the materials I had; a good thing, as it turns out, because I now had the freedom, as well as the need, to explore these materials to a greater extent than I might have had I been expected to condense an hour's worth of music into a coherent single movement.”

On today’s date in 1955, the Boston Symphony was celebrating its 75th anniversary season with the premiere performance of a brand-new symphony—the sixth—by the American composer Walter Piston. At the time, Piston was teaching at Harvard, and his association with the Boston Symphony went back decades. Even so, Piston paid the orchestra an extraordinary compliment, crediting its musicians as virtual partners in its composition:

“While writing my Sixth Symphony,” Piston wrote, “I came to realize that this was a rather special situation. I was writing for one designated orchestra, one that I had grown up with, and that I knew intimately. Each note set down sounded in the mind with extraordinary clarity, as though played immediately by those who were to perform the work. On several occasions it seemed as though the melodies were being written by the instruments themselves as I followed along. I refrained from playing even a single note of this symphony on the piano.”

This symphony may have been tailor-made for the Boston players, but Piston was practical enough to know other orchestras would be interested, and so added this important footnote: “The composer’s mental image of the sound of his written notes has to admit a certain flexibility.”

For many years Ragtime composer Scott Joplin’s birth date was listed as November 24, 1868, but recent research suggests it was more likely sometime during the second half of 1867.

Joplin was born in Texarkana, Texas. His family played the banjo, violin, and guitar, but little Scott was fascinated by the piano in a neighbor’s house. Some German musicians in Texas taught him the European classics. By age 17, Joplin was on the road performing in the honky-tonks of St. Louis. In 1894, Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, where he began to write original music while performing at a place called the Maple Leaf Club, which was to lend its name to his most famous piece, the “Maple Leaf Rag.”

Scott Kirby, a contemporary composer of ragtime, shares Joplin’s first name. Born in Urbana, Ohio, Scott Kirby lived and worked for a time in New Orleans. In addition to performing the classic rags of Scott Joplin and the New Orleans romantic composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Scott Kirby composed brand-new rags in a style he calls “Terra Verde.“

“Terre Verde,” says Kirby, “is a contemporary cousin of Ragtime with roots in a wide variety of American ethnic music, as well as strong ties to European Romantics of the 19th century, such as Chopin and Schumann.”