Composers Datebook

On this date in 1961, cellist Pablo Casals gave a chamber concert at the White House, at the invitation of President John F. Kennedy. The concert was given in honor of Governor Luis Muñoz of Puerto Rico, the home of Pablo Casals. Casals played works of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Couperin, with his own composition, “Song of the Birds,” as an encore.

While eminent guests raved over the performance, the cellist’s laconic comment was simply, “It went well.” Casals could afford to be blasé. After all, he had played at the White House before—for President Teddy Roosevelt back in 1904!

Aaron Copland was also invited to the November 13th White House concert in 1961. In a diary entry, he noted: “Pierre Salinger and Senator Mike Mansfield were at our table. President Kennedy was in full view the entire time… I was surprised at his reddish-brown hair. No evil in the face, but plenty of ambition there, no doubt. Mrs. K. statuesque… After dinner we were treated to a concert by Pablo Casals. No American music. The next step.”

That “next step” came the following spring. In May of 1962, the Kennedys presented Copland’s ballet “Billy the Kid” at the White House for the visiting president of the Ivory Coast Republic, with Copland as guest of honor.

On today’s date in 1943, the Boston Symphony and conductor Serge Koussevitzky gave the first performance of a “Symphony for Strings” by the American composer William Schuman.

Schuman was just 33 years old at the time, but Koussevitzky had already been programming and commissioning Schuman’s music for about 5 years. Koussevitzky had already given the premiere performances of his popular “American Festival Overture” and the Third Symphony.

Schuman’s “Symphony for Strings” is dedicated to the memory of Koussevitzky’s wife, Natalie, whose family fortune that enabled Serge Koussevitzky to establish himself as a conductor, found a publishing house, and commission many of the 20th century’s most significant works, including Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” and Bartok’s “Concerto for Orchestra.”

In Russia, the Koussevitzkys championed Russian music. In France, they supported French composers. And, beginning in 1924, when Koussevitzky became the music director of the Boston Symphony, many American composers benefited from this remarkable couple’s enthusiasm for new music. Schuman’s “Symphony for Strings” is just one of a long list of the Koussevitzkys’ American commissions, which includes works by Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Samuel Barber, Walter Piston, and Leonard Bernstein.

Taken as a whole, the concert music commissioned by Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky remains one of the most remarkable musical legacies of the 20th century.

At Carnegie Hall in New York City on today’s date in 1990, a new work by the American composer and jazz trumpeter Hannibal Lokumbe had its premiere performance by the American Composers Orchestra. November 11th also happens to be the birthday of its composer, who was born Marvin Peterson, in Smithville, Texas, in 1948, but now goes by the name Hannibal.

The new work was an oratorio titled “African Portraits,” which traces the story of slavery in America and black culture's contributions to American music. It’s scored for orchestra, jazz quartet, blues guitar, chorus, gospel singer, plus African storyteller and African instruments. In composing this work, which in Biblical terms he calls his personal “burning bush,” Hannibal drew inspiration from a variety of sources, ranging from the spirituals he listened to while working in the cotton fields of Texas to the drums of the Masai people in Africa, with whom he lived for a time.

A critic for the Washington Post described the work as follows:

“The dramatic power conveyed by "Portraits" is cumulative. It's derived from the drums and the chants, the procession of blues, jazz and gospel refrains, the symphonic sweep and narrative form, the great compression of time, anguish and triumph. It's a listening experience you'll not soon forget.”

On today’s date in 1862, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “La Forza del Destino” or “The Force of Destiny” had its premiere at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. Verdi and his wife, Giuseppina, were present for the opening night.

We’re not sure what the outdoor temperature was in St. Petersburg that November evening, but it was something that the Verdis carefully considered before agreeing to attend.

Responding to a friend’s letter describing a Russian winter, Giuseppina wrote: “If I were not afraid of committing forgery, I would alter that imposing figure of 22 below zero which will make Verdi open his eyes wide in fright… As for myself, I took refuge under the stove… In any case, I shall try and persuade him to expose his nose to the danger of freezing in Russia.”

Perhaps in artistic compensation, the story of “Forza” is set in sultry Spain—and after the premiere in St. Petersburg, the Verdis did indeed set off for warmer climates of Rome and Madrid, where the new opera was to have its next performances.

In the early years of the 20th century, “La Forza del Destino”—like most of Verdi’s works—was seldom staged, but in the 1920s it was successfully revived, and its overture has become a concert hall favorite.

The world’s most popular classical guitar concerto, the “Concierto de Aranjuez” by Joaquin Rodrigo, had its first performance on today’s date in 1940, in Barcelona.

Joaquin Rodrigo was born in Spain in 1901 and lost his sight at the age of three. He wrote all of his music on a Braille music typewriter. The “Concierto de Aranjuez,” inspired by a small town of that name thirty miles south of Madrid, remains his signature piece, though he wrote a number of other successful works. Rodrigo died on July 6th, 1999, at the age of 97.

In 1959, a friend had played a recording of Rodrigo’s concerto for the American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. Miles Davis said, “After listening to it for a couple of weeks, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.” So, Miles Davis played it for his friend, jazz composer and arranger Gil Evans, and in short order the two collaborated on their own 16-minute version of Rodrigo’s score. Their collaboration was included on their classic 1960 Columbia LP entitled “Sketches of Spain.”

At the recording session, Miles paid Rodrigo this compliment: “That melody is so strong that the softer you play it, the stronger it gets…”

On today’s date in 1919, a concert suite from Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” had its premiere in Lausanne, Switzerland—the same city in which the original theatrical version of Stravinsky’s score was first presented in 1918.

In that original form, “The Soldier’s Tale” was a kind of musical morality play scored for narrator and small chamber ensemble. Stravinsky incorporated elements of American jazz, although what he knew of jazz was derived entirely from looking at sheet music rather than any firsthand experience of actually hearing American jazz.

Eighty years later, for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the American jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis composed “A Fiddler’s Tale”—a companion piece to Stravinsky’s work, scored for the same configuration of instruments.

Wynton Marsalis said, ''No matter what I do, I'm not going to compare myself to Stravinsky. That would be ridiculous. You have to accept who he is and do what you can do, and hope that what you do is on some level of quality.”

Like Stravinsky’s piece, “A Fiddler’s Tale” also exists in two versions: as a theater piece with narrator, and as a purely instrumental suite. Both have been recorded, and both, not surprisingly, feature Wynton Marsalis as the trumpeter.

In 1971, after reading a book about the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, the American pop singer Don McLean wrote a song he titled “Vincent,” which became a big hit the following year. The song is better known by its opening line, “Starry, starry night,” a reference to one of Van Gogh’s best-known paintings, entitled “The Starry Night.”

But McLean wasn’t the only composer inspired by that painting. On today’s date in 1978, a new orchestral work by the French composer Henri Dutilleux was premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., by the National Symphony Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich.

Dutilleux titled his new work “Timbre, space, movement,” but added a subtitle, “The Starry Night,” in acknowledgement of the painting’s influence, and said he wanted to translate into music the (quote) "almost cosmic whirling effect which [the painting] produces".

Now, painting and music are very different art forms, but the energy, pulsation, and whirling qualities of Van Gogh’s masterpiece do find vivid expression, both visually and musical, in Dutilleux’s work.

As a kind of frame, Dutilleux placed the cellos in a half circle around the conductor, omitted violins and violas from his instrumentation, and alternated static episodes and whirling wind and percussion solos to evoke illusion of motion in the Van Gogh painting.

The saxophone—whose flashing serpentine figure is now virtually synonymous with jazz clubs and wind bands—was the brainchild of woodwind craftsman Adolphe Sax, born in Belgium on this date in 1814, to a family of prominent instrument makers. Sax moved to Paris in his late 20’s, where he proved himself a restless and prolific inventor of new instruments.

Yet only a few of these lived on, of which the saxophone is by far the most popular. John Philip Sousa’s band gave many audiences in this country their first taste of the saxophone, and its important role in jazz can hardly be overestimated—that’s a development that neither Sax nor Sousa could have foreseen.

In the symphonic repertory, saxophones are still just occasional visitors to the concert hall, but in the world of chamber music, saxophone quartets have become quite popular. In America alone there are dozens of professional saxophone quartets who commission and perform new works.

Take, for example, the “Quartet for Saxophones” by the Canadian composer Anita “A.D.” Perry, a work written for the Amherst Saxophone Quartet of Buffalo, New York. The Amherst Quartet has a 20-year history of commissioning and performing new music, and has recorded a number of compact discs, include one of Perry’s quartet.

On today’s date in 1938, two works by the American composer Samuel Barber received their very high-profile premiere performances on a live, coast-to-coast broadcast by the NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

Toscanini was impressed by Barber’s First Symphony, which was performed at the 1937 Salzburg Festival, so Toscanini asked the 25-year old composer for a short orchestral piece, which Toscanini might perform with the newly-formed NBC Symphony.

Barber offered Toscanini his pick of two short pieces, and must have been surprised when Toscanini agreed to perform BOTH of them: a newly-composed “Essay for Orchestra” and Barber’s arrangement for full string orchestra of a movement from a String Quartet he had written in 1936. Retitled “Adagio for Strings,” it was destined to become Barber’s best-known work.

Barber’s “Adagio” acquired a special resonance during World War Two, as a threnody for America’s war dead. It was also performed at the funeral of wartime President Franklin D. Roosevelt. More recently, Barber’s “Adagio” has been used to great effect in several successful films, including “The Elephant Man” and “Platoon.”

In a memorial tribute to Barber, American composer Ned Rorem wrote, “If Barber [25 years old when the ‘Adagio’ was completed] later aimed higher, he never reached deeper into the heart.”

Take one flute, one oboe, and mix well with one each of a clarinet, bassoon and French horn —and you have the recipe for the traditional wind quintet. In the 19th century, this tasty musical mix was perfected by Europeans like the Czech composer Anton Reicha, who produced 24 wind quintets in his lifetime.

In the 20th century, American composers like Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, and John Harbison have all written one wind quintet each—matching Reicha’s in quality, if not in quantity. But other American composers HAVE returned to the wind quintet for a second helping. On today’s date in 1993, the Wind Quintet No. 2 of the Californian composer David Ward-Steinman received its premiere in Sacramento by the Arioso Quintet.

Ward-Steinman titled his second quintet “Night Winds,” and asked his five players to occasionally double on some non-traditional instruments such as bamboo or clay flutes, a train-whistle, and even the traditional wind instrument of Indigenous Australians, the didgeridoo—all to create some atmospheric “night-wind” sounds.

In addition to wind quintets, David Ward-Steinman composed orchestral works, chamber music and pieces for solo piano. A native of Louisiana, Ward-Steinman studied with Darius Milhaud in Aspen, Milton Babbitt at Tanglewood, and Nadia Boulanger in Paris.