Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1882, the eminent German conductor Hermann Levi led the first performance of Richard Wagner’s new opera, “Parsifal”—a work that would also turn out to be his last, as Wagner would die the following year in Venice.

No other Wagner opera would arouse the same level of controversy as “Parsifal.” Some thought it a blasphemous parody of the Catholic Mass, others, like the anti-religious Friedrich Nietzsche, saw it as a sanctimonious sell-out. Wagner helped fuel the controversy by calling the work a “sacred stage festival play.” Despite the notorious anti-Semitism of Wagner and his circle, the bulk of those Bayreuth performances, like the very first, would be conducted by Hermann Levi, who was Jewish.

Levi wrote to his father about an unusual occurrence that took place during the final performance of the first run of “Parsifal” at Bayreuth:

“Just before the final scene, Wagner appeared in the pit, twisted and turned his way up to my desk, took the baton from my hand and conducted the performance to the end. I remained at his side, because I was afraid he might slip up, by my fears were quite groundless—his conducting was so assured that he might have been nothing but a Kapellmeister all his life. At the end, the audience burst into applause which defies all description.”

On today’s date in 1937, one of Copland’s less familiar works had its premiere performance—on the radio. The radio premiere was the result of a commission from the Columbia Broadcasting System, and was premiered by the CBS Symphony Orchestra.

This work has at least three different titles. Originally titled simply “Music for Radio,” as requested by the network, it was given the more colorful name “Saga of the Prairies” as the result of an on-air listener contest sponsored by CBS. Later, when Copland himself published the music, it bore the title: “Prairie Journal.” So—take your pick.

Copland received a $500 commission—quite generous in those days—and was thrilled that his music would reach millions of listeners with a single broadcast. Today, new music by contemporary composers is still occasionally commissioned by radio stations and radio networks.

In 1993, “Still Movement with Hymn” was commissioned from Aaron Jay Kernis by American Public Radio (now American Public Media) and broadcast nationally on one of their program offerings. “Still Movement with Hymn,” is one of a series of elegiac works by Kernis, written in memory of American composer Stephen Albert, who was killed in a car accident the year before.

In 1926, the German composer Paul Hindemith was the director of that year’s Donaueschingen Music Festival, which, since its inception in 1921, had quickly established itself as an important showcase for new and progressive music. For the 1926 Festival, Hindemith decided to spotlight a genre of music overlooked by many composers, namely music for wind bands, and contributed a work of his own, entitled “Concert Piece for Wind Orchestra,” which premiered on today’s date in 1926 and was published as his Opus 41.

The critics of the day opined that the music was interesting, but lamented that such talented composers would waste their time writing for bands.

In his book “Winds of Change,” a history of band music and its reception, Dr. Frank Battisti explains: “In 1926, serious works for band were of no interest to German and Austrian band directors, who preferred to continue performing the standard repertory of transcriptions, arrangements, and marches. Critics, after hearing these works, remained convinced that the wind band would never become a medium of artistic musical expression.”

With the passage of time, and a dramatic change in the attitudes of band director and critics alike towards concert music for bands, Hindemith’s 1926 concert programming seems downright prophetic.

On today’s date in 1940, the “Standing Room Only” signs went up early as a crowd of 23,000 stormed the Hollywood Bowl to hear the great Paul Robeson perform.

On the program was Earl Robinson’s “Ballad for Americans,” a work for solo voice and orchestra that was for a time one of the most popular musical works in America. Earl Robinson had studied with Copland, and in 1934 had joined the Federal Theater Project. His “Ballad for Americans” quickly became a popular concert hall vehicle for Paul Robeson, and, in election year 1940, it was even performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Republican Party’s National Convention. Robeson made a famous recording of the work, but nowadays “Ballad for Americans” is seldom, if ever, heard or performed.

Also on the Hollywood Bowl’s program for July 23, 1940, was the first complete West Coast performance of William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 1, subtitled the “Afro-American Symphony” by its composer. Still had settled in Los Angeles to work for the film industry, but by 1940 had also achieved fame as the country’s foremost African-American composer of concert music. Unlike “Ballad for Americans,” the “Afro American Symphony” still shows up on concert programs these days.

London might seem an unlikely venue for the premiere of this quintessentially Spanish music—but it was a decidedly international affair when Manuel de Falla’s ballet “The Three-Cornered Hat” received its premiere performance at the Alhambra Theatre in London on today’s date in 1919.

The ballet was choreographed by the Russian dancer Leonide Massine, who performed in the premiere with the Ballet Russe company headed by Serge Diaghilev, who had commissioned de Falla to write the work in the first place. The conductor for the premiere, Ernest Ansermet, was Swiss, but the scenery, costumes and curtain, at least, were designed by de Falla’s countryman, the famous Spanish artist Pablo Piccasso.

Andalucian by birth, but living in Paris, de Falla must have found it frustrating that during this time his music was sometimes snubbed in Spain as sounding too cosmopolitan, and then pigeon-holed abroad as sounding too Spanish!

The career of Latino-American composer Roberto Sierra has also turned out to be similarly cosmopolitan. Born in Puerto Rico in 1953, Sierra studied in Europe—with the Hungarian composer György Ligeti among others—before returning to the United States where he now lives and works. His music has been performed by leading American ensembles and orchestras—including the Philadelphia Orchestra, where Sierra served as composer-in-residence. This chamber work by Sierra, titled “Eros,” was written for flutist Carol Wincenc.

In the summer of 1824, the fifteen-year-old Mendelssohn spent a holiday with his father in the fashionable spa town of Bad Doberan, on the Baltic coast near Rostock. Writing home to his family in Berlin he confessed that, although he was "comfortably lodged… with friendly people, a decent piano, [and a] pretty view... so far I have not written a note."

That would change, however, as Mendelssohn befriended musicians employed by the local Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, whose court ensemble was a wind-band. For them, the young Mendelssohn composed a Nocturno, scored for the classical octet of double winds, plus a flute, trumpet, and an odd brass instrument called a “Como Inglese di Basso," roughly similar in shape to a bassoon, but with a cup mouthpiece and both open and keyed holes.

Mendelssohn described it in a letter he wrote on today’s date in 1824 as "a large brass instrument with a fine, deep tone, that looks like a watering can or a stirrup pump."

Music for that original 1824 Nocturno has not survived, but eventually Mendelssohn reworked and enlarged the piece, adding new music, and much later, in 1838, expanded the scoring to a full wind ensemble and published the result as his Overture for Winds, Op. 24.

In the summer of 1972, five burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC, and soon the term “Watergate” came to signify a political scandal that nearly led to the impeachment of then-president Richard Nixon. But if you had said, “Watergate” to someone in D.C. in July some 30 years earlier, you probably were referring to a series of outdoor concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra, whose “Watergate Concerts” were held on the banks of the Potomac near the Lincoln Memorial.

These concerts presented a mix of old and new music, classical favorites and recently composed works by American composers. For example, on today’s date in 1945, the weather in DC was clear and warm when Alexander Smallens conducted an outdoor Watergate Concert that included the recently-composed suite from Aaron Copland’s ballet “Rodeo,” and “Newsreel,” an orchestral suite by William Schuman.

Schuman’s suite was inspired by the popular newsreel features shown at movie theaters in those days—a time when radio ruled, and if people wanted to SEE footage of faces and places in the news, they had to turn to the movies, not CNN or the internet.

Many composers have produced works inspired by their deep religious faith: in the 18th century, the sacred music of the devout Lutheran church musician Johann Sebastian Bach being a notable example.

Even in our more secular age, this is sometimes the case. The contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan’s works have explicit Christian themes, and, like Franz Liszt in the 19th century, MacMillan has even taken minor religious orders in the Roman Catholic Church.

On commission from the London Symphony, MacMillan wrote three interrelated orchestral works, two concertos and a symphony, all based on the Passion and Resurrection story. The first of these, entitled “The World’s Ransoming,” for English horn and orchestra, focused on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, and was premiered at the Barbican Center in London on today’s date in 1996.

Of this piece, MacMillan wrote, “’The World's Ransoming’ includes musical references to [traditional liturgical] plainsongs for that day, as well as a Bach chorale … which I have heard sung in the eucharistic procession … The title of the piece comes from St. Thomas Aquinas's [Latin] hymn ‘Pange Lingua’”.

An English translation of part of the Aquinas hymn reads:

Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory,

Of His Flesh, the mystery sing;

Destined, for the world's ransom,

From a virgin’s womb to spring.

To some it seemed an act of sheer madness for a String Quartet to announce in the 1970s that it would not perform the classic repertory of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, but devote itself instead to music written after 1900, especially newly-composed works. But the Kronos Quartet has proved the skeptics wrong. Founded in Seattle in 1973, and reformed in San Francisco five years later, the Kronos Quartet has established itself as a major player on the international music scene, premiering hundreds of new works by living composers.

On today’s date in 1984, the Kronos Quartet was at the Kukmo Music Festival in Finland, where they gave the premiere performance of the 5th String Quartet of the Finnish composer, Aulis Sallinen, subtitled “Pieces of Mosaic.” This quartet is a string of 16 short fragments, and, as the composer explained, reflected a pessimistic view of world affairs, circa 1984, the ominously Orwellian year of its composition. “It seems somehow crazy,” said Sallinen, “that a composer should create extended symphonic forms for the world we live in. This quartet is the kind of work the world deserves: one which is smashed into fragments.”

Sallinen is one of the best-known Finnish composers since Sibelius, and in addition to chamber works like his Fifth Quartet, he has written symphonic works and a number of successful operas.

On today’s date in 1717, King George and his entourage took a barge trip on the river Thames, traveling from Whitehall to Chelsea, accompanied by about 50 musicians, also on barges. A contemporary newspaper account reported that they performed “the finest Symphonies, composed express for this occasion by Mr. Handel, which his Majesty liked so well that he caused it to be played three times in going and returning.”

Another report refers to “trumpets, horns, oboes, bassoons, flutes, recorders, violins and basses” being employed. In our time, Handel’s “Water Music”—as the three suites have come to be known—is one of the best-known and best-loved works of the entire Baroque Age.

In 1985, three hundred years after the birth of Handel, American composer Libby Larsen composed a Symphony she titled “Water Music,” written as a tribute to Handel and as an expression of her own enthusiasm for sailing.

Libby Larsen is one of today’s busiest American composers, and in the year 2000 the American Academy of Arts and Letters presented Larsen with its Award in Music, honoring her lifetime achievements as a composer. When asked how she finds time to balance her busy life as a composer, Larsen answers: “I can’t not do it —having a life and a life in music is as natural and necessary to me as breathing.”