Composers Datebook

In Bucharest on today’s date in the year 1903, a 21 year-old Romanian composer named Georges Enescu conducted the premiere of two “Romanian Rhapsodies” he had written. These flashy orchestra showpieces quickly became his most popular works—a little to the composer’s later chagrin. He came to feel—and quite rightly—that the HUGE success of these toe-tappers had come to overshadow all his other compositions and accomplishments.

Enescu had good reason to be proud: In addition to being a fine composer and conductor, he was one of the great virtuoso violinists of his day. As both a conductor and violinist, he appeared with most of the great orchestras of Europe and America. For his 1923 American debut he appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra in the triple role of conductor, violinist, and composer. Enescu wrote impressive symphonies, chamber music, and even an opera based on the Greek legend of Oedipus. As a teacher and general musical mentor, Enescu could count the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin as one of his star pupils and most devoted admirers.

Enescu died in Paris in 1955. Even though he had severed relations with his now Communist homeland, the Romanian government revered him as their great national composer: His native village, a street in Bucharest, and the State Philharmonic were all renamed in his honor.

Despite all that, for most music lovers, sad to say, the name “Enescu” equals “Romanian Rhapsodies” and little else.

Of all music lovers in the world, the Viennese are notorious for the passion with which they can despise celebrities one moment, and lionize them the next. Here, for example, is one music critic’s reaction to the 1886 Viennese premiere of the Symphony No. 4 by Johannes Brahms:

“Conspicuous is the crab-like progress in the output of Brahms. It has, to be sure, never reached beyond the level of mediocrity, but such nothingness, emptiness, and hypocrisy as prevails throughout this E-minor symphony has not appeared in any previous work of Brahms in so alarming a manner. The art of composing without ideas has decidedly found in Brahms its worthiest representative. Just like the good Lord, Herr Brahms is a master at making something from nothing.”

And yet, 11 years later, on today’s date in 1897, when this same symphony was performed again in Vienna—by the very same orchestra and conductor—each movement was greeted by prolonged cheers from the audience. Not only had the Viennese come to admire the music, but also the man—and they knew their beloved Herr Brahms was dying. And so, on March 7, 1897, when the gaunt and sickly composer attended a matinee performance of his 4th symphony at the Vienna Philharmonic’s Golden Hall, the audience took the opportunity to acknowledge him and his music for the very last time.

On today’s date in 2000, the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen gave the premiere of a new opera, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on a novel of the same name by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood.

The book and opera tell of a nightmarish future: following a nuclear disaster in the United States, infertility rates have soared, and a religious sect has staged a military coup, enslaving the few fertile women who remain as breeders, or “handmaids,” for the military and religious commanders of their sect. Says Atwood, "There is nothing new about the society I depicted in The Handmaid's Tale except the time and place. All of the things I have written about have been done before—more than once, in fact."

Despite its grim subject matter, Danish composer Poul Ruders says he saw "huge operatic potential" when he first read the book back in 1992. The heroine of his opera, a handmaid named “Offred,” can still remember life before the disaster, and, through a series of flashbacks and monologues, recounts a tale of hope and suffering—emotions not foreign to many other classic operas of the past.

The original production in Copenhagen was sung in Danish, but Ruders says he conceived the work in English. The opera was staged in that language first in London at the English National Opera, and subsequently, at the opera’s American premiere, in St. Paul by the Minnesota Opera, to great critical acclaim.

The Russian city of Kuibyshev on the Volga river east of Moscow might seem an unlikely site for an important symphonic premiere. But from 1941 to 1943, Kuibyshev was the temporary capital of the Soviet Union. As German and Finnish troops advanced from the west, the Russian government and its cultural institutions moved east. Among the refugees relocated to Kuibyshev were the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra from Moscow and the composer Dimitri Shostakovich from Leningrad.

And so, on today’s date in 1942, that unlikely city was the venue for the world premiere of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, subtitled “Leningrad.”

In 1942, the Soviet Union was America’s ally in the war against Hitler, and Shostakovich’s new symphony was enlisted as a major propaganda tool. A microfilm copy of the new score was flown from Kuibyshev to Tehran, then transported by car through Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine to Cairo, then flown to Brazil for transfer by the U.S. Navy to New York. The American premiere was given on July 19, 1942, by the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini.

Less than a month later, on August 9, 1942, the “Leningrad” symphony was even performed in the besieged and starving city of Leningrad. The few musicians still capable of performing were given extra rations to keep up their strength, and, to ensure a measure of quiet during their performance, a Russian artillery commander ordered an intensive artillery bombardment on the enemy troops surrounding the city.

On today’s date in 1893, a New York Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall featured the premiere of a big new symphony by a 37-year old American composer and New York native named George Templeton Strong, Jr. This was a pretty big deal at a time when the Philharmonic regularly played new works from Europe, but paid little attention to what Americans were composing.

As the Philharmonic’s program book put it, somewhat defensively: “The acceptance of a work for performance is to a certain extent a declaration that it belongs to the very best class of contemporaneous literature according to the unbiased judgment of those who are entrusted with these concerts.”

Strong’s Symphony No. 2, subtitled “Sintram,” was inspired by a literary work of that name depicting the victory of good over evil. The New York Times review gave it high marks, praising the composer’s imagination and mastery of instrumentation, but ventured to suggest that a few cuts might be welcomed by future audiences, as the new symphony WAS a tad long and unremittingly serious in tone. Still, the Times gave the opinion that Strong belonged to “the front rank of living composers.”

Strong himself was not present. He was in Switzerland, a country he was soon to adopt as his permanent home. His absence on the American scene caused his music to be largely forgotten, but recently there has been a revival of interest in this late Romantic expatriate composer.

The German composer Richard Wagner tried to limit performances of his final opera, “Parsifal,” to his own theater in Bayreuth, hoping it would provide a source of income for his family after his death. “Parsifal” premiered at Bayreuth in 1882, and after Wagner died the following year, his widow forbade rental of the music for performances elsewhere.

Naturally, Wagner enthusiasts all over the world were eager to hear the new work. One of them was a German-born American named Walter Damrosch, who, at the tender age of 23, was the head of both the New York Symphony and Oratorio Society, and a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, to boot. While visiting London in 1885, Damrosch had bought a miniature score of “Parsifal.” The purchase gave him no right to perform the work, but he discovered the fine for doing so was only 50 pounds, and so he hired copyists to prepare orchestral parts for a performance in America.

On today’s date in 1886, Damrosch gave a concert performance of “Parsifal” at the old Metropolitan Opera House. Among his vocal soloists, Damrosch even managed to book soprano Marianne Brandt, one of the original Bayreuth cast members.

Unfortunately for Damrosch, Anton Seidl, a close friend of the Wagner family had just been hired as the new music director of the Met. Seidl apparently took offense at Damrosch’s audacity, and as long as Seidl was in charge at the Met, he limited Damrosch to the NON-Wagnerian repertory!

Ask an intelligent music lover to name some of the major figures in modern music and it’s likely the names Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Bartók will crop up. But in addition to those Austrian, Russian and Hungarian composers, a lively group of Italian modernists were also active throughout the 20th century—only their names and music are not so well known.

One of them was Goffredo Petrassi, born in 1904. Petrassi became one of the leading figures in a group of Italian composers that included Dallapiccola, Casella and Malipiero. This group tried to compensate for Italy’s almost total preoccupation with opera by concentrating more on instrumental pieces.

Petrassi’s own musical influences range from the Italian Renaissance music he sang as a young choirboy in Rome to the works of abstract painters like Jackson Pollock that he viewed when visiting America.

Petrassi’s largest body of work was his eight Concertos for Orchestra composed between 1933 and 1972, but in his final years he turned to chamber works, such as this “Autumn Sestina” completed in 1982. A “Sestina” is a poetic stanza of six dissimilar verses, and Petrassi scored his work for six instruments.

When asked where the “Autumn” in the title came from, Petrassi responded: “Perhaps it’s got something to do with my age.” Shortly after finishing this work, Petrassi’s eyesight failed, and he stopped composing entirely. He died in Rome on today’s date in 2003 at the age of 98.

In Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s characters brags: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” None of those happened to Claude Debussy, however, when his symphonic suite “La Mer”–“The Sea”–had its American premiere on today’s date in Boston in 1907.

It was, as they say, a tough crowd… composed of “easily discomfited dowagers, quiet, academically-minded New England music lovers, and irascible music critics.”

That’s the description of musicologist Nicholas Slonimsky, who collected notably bad reviews in his notably excellent “Lexicon of Musical Invective.” Other reviews of “The Sea” included lines like: “Frenchmen are notoriously bad sailors, and we clung like a drowning man to a few fragments of the tonal wreck.”

Another said: “Debussy’s music is the dreariest kind of rubbish. Does anybody for a moment doubt that Debussy would not write such chaotic, meaningless, cacophonous, ungrammatical stuff if he could invent a melody?”

An even more graphic critic said: “It is possible that Debussy did not intend to call it 'La Mer,' but 'Le Mal de Mer,' which would at once make the tone-picture as clear as day. It is a series of symphonic pictures of seasickness. The first movement is Headache. The second is Doubt, picturing moments of dread suspense... The third movement, with its explosions and rumblings, has now a self-evident purpose: The hero is endeavoring to throw up his boot heels!”

Maurice Ravel’s orchestral suite "Le Tombeau de Couperin" was premiered in Paris this day in 1920. It had started out as a suite of solo piano pieces, intended as a tribute to the great French Baroque composer François Couperin—or, as Ravel wrote, “not so much to Couperin himself, as to 18th-century French music in general.” Although the French word “tombeau” translates literally as “tomb,” it also signifies a musical piece paying tribute to a past master, in the English sense of “in memoriam.”

As it turned out, Ravel’s piece would become a memorial not only to Couperin, but to seven of his friends killed during World War I. His original work on the piece began in 1914, but was interrupted by his service as an ambulance driver during the war. He returned to it after being discharged in 1917. Each movement was dedicated to a friend or two killed in battle.

Although the “tombeau” as a musical form has been associated almost exclusively with French composers, a contemporary American composer has used the idea as well, albeit with a more lighthearted spirit. His “Tombeau de Liberace” makes reference to the late pianist and showman, a kitschy icon of 20th century American pop culture.

Michael Daugherty says, “Starting from the vernacular idiom, I have composed ‘Le Tombeau de Liberace’ as a meditation on the American sublime: a lexicon of forbidden music. It is a piano concertino in four movements, each creating a distinct Liberace atmosphere.”

On today’s date in 1950, the Sonata for Cello and Piano by the American composer Elliot Carter had its premiere at New York’s Town Hall, as part of a recital by cellist Bernard Greenhouse and pianist Anthony Markas. According to the Times review, the Carter Sonata was (quote): “grave in character, almost unrelieved by any touch of lightness and gaiety. While it is neatly scored for cello and piano, it is NOT an easy work.”

The new Cello Sonata marked a shift in the 41-year old composer’s style away from the more populist mode of Aaron Copland and toward a more deliberate attempt to find his own unique voice as a composer.

Decades later, recalling this period in his life, Carter recalled: “About the time of the Second World War, I began to feel that the neo-classical or populist music that I was writing wasn't strong enough. It didn't express the feelings that I felt. We had all overwhelming feelings about the war and its result, and Hitler and all that, and this made me feel that I had to write something more serious and much more meaningful ̶—to me at least, if not to the audience. It was like a blind man trying to find things. It was a probing period. Gradually, I began to find out what it is that meant a lot to me, and I began to narrow my attention to the point where I really knew the kind of thing I wanted to write."