Composers Datebook

Today’s date marks the birthday in 1938 of the American composer John Corigliano, and also, in 2005, of the premiere performance of his Symphony No. 3, a work scored for large wind ensemble. The premiere performance was given in Austin, Texas, by the University of Texas Wind Ensemble led by Jerry F. Junkin.

Coriglian titled his new symphony “Circus Maximus,” and offered this explanation: “The Circus Maximus of ancient Rome was a real place. The largest arena in the world, it entertained over 300,000 spectators daily for nearly a thousand years. Chariot races, hunts and battles satisfied the Roman public’s need for grander and wilder amusements as the Empire declined. The parallels between the high decadence of Rome and our present time are obvious. Entertainment dominates our culture, and ever-more-extreme ‘reality’ shows dominate our entertainment. Many of us have become as bemused by the violence and humiliation that flood the 500-plus channels of our television screens as those mobs of imperial Rome who considered the devouring of human beings by starving lions just another Sunday show.”

In performance, Corigliano asks that a huge array of brass, wind, and percussion surround the audience on all sides. As brass instruments roar and cheer all around them, the audience is meant to feel more like the watched than the watchers, and Corigliano ends the work with a bang—literally—as a shotgun blast provides the symphony’s final exclamation point!

Between 1908 and 1950, the Russian composer Nikolai Miaskovsky composed 27 symphonies. One of them his Symphony No. 19 for military wind band, premiered on today’s date in 1939 at the Cominterm Radio Station in Moscow, and was dedicated to the Red Army.

The Red Army’s bandmaster had asked Miaskovsky to write something, and at first the composer was rather reluctant. “The difficulties of this unusual task oppressed and discouraged me,” he wrote, “but I was anxious to keep my promise and soon mustered a fair spurt of energy, with the result that instead of a simple piece in one movement, I was able to send him a complete symphony in four movements.” The resulting work was, in fact, one of the normally melancholic Miaskovky’s most upbeat works.

These days, American audiences are most likely to encounter concert works for symphonic winds at colleges and universities. This piece from 1997, entitled “Dreadnought,” is by the American composer Jeffrey Brooks, who wrote it for the University of Minnesota Symphonic Wind Ensemble, who recorded the piece. The title “Dreadnought,” says Brooks, means a total absence of fear, and was also a name given to a class of heavily armed battleships of the early 20th century.

Brooks notes he wrote the piece while contemplating his two small childrens’ contrasting natures: “Ronan had no fears,” writes Brooks, “and would happily get in a cage with a tiger. Adelle was inventing new fears daily, trying them on, discarding some while keeping others.”

Carlos Castaneda was a South America-born author who settled in the United States and wrote 12 books chronicling his experiences with a pre-Columbian shaman who helped Castaneda access “non-ordinary reality” and develop his personal creativity, something the shaman called his “nagual.”

Casteneda’s books have sold millions of copies, and one of his readers was the Toronto-based composer Michael Colgrass, whose “Winds of Nagual” was commissioned by the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble and its conductor Frank Battisti, and premiered by them in Boston on today’s date in 1985. Since then, this musical suite inspired by colorful characters and scenes from Castaneda’s writings has become a classic of the concert band repertoire.

“Sometimes when I am composing,” says Colgrass, “I see music as if it is a film, but the listener need not have read Castaneda’s books to enjoy this work, and I do not expect anyone to follow any exact scenario. “

And, speaking of cinematic scenarios, Colgrass says that band directors in the Southwest told him that, in the last years of his life, Castaneda would show up at concerts when “Winds of Nagual” was being performed. “He would wait until just before the downbeat,” says Colgrass, “and then enter the auditorium wearing a white suit and sit in the middle of the audience. Apparently he considered this music to be his ‘Hail to the Chief.’”

On today’s date in 1990, the Czech-born composer Karel Husa returned to his home town of Prague to conduct a concert of his own music after more than forty years in exile. Husa had left Prague in 1948 after the post-War communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, and in 1954 accepted a teaching post at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He was granted U.S. citizenship in 1959.

On the night of August 20, 1968, Husa learned to his dismay that troops from the Soviet Union had invaded his homeland to suppress a growing Czech democratic movement. In a matter of months, Husa completed a work for wind ensemble entitled “Music for Prague, 1968.” It was a powerful work, inspired by powerful emotions, and it soon became a classic of wind band repertory.

At the festive concert in Prague's Smetana Hall on February 13, 1990, broadcast nationwide by Czech radio and television networks, Husa conducted the Czechoslovak premiere of “Music for Prague 1968,” a composition that had received thousands of performances all over the world, but none, until that night, in the city that inspired it.

One of Husa’s American students, the composer Thomas Duffy, travelled to Prague to attend the concert. “Husa conducted the piece vigorously,” Duffy recalled, and after the performance noted that, “Twice, when I felt that the volume of applause was already overwhelming, Husa presented the V for victory sign to the house—and the volume doubled.”

Today’s date marks the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. It is also celebrated as the birthday of the famous American symphonist Roy Harris, who stated he was born in Lincoln County near Chandler, Oklahoma, on February 12th in 1898. Some have challenged the accuracy of the date, as a land deed associated with his family suggests his birth year might have been 1901, and Harris himself was the main source of information regarding the actual day of his birth.

There’s also some confusion about exactly how many symphonies Harris wrote, since he didn’t assign numbers to some of the works he labeled “symphonies” or “symphonic”—and in 1976 deliberately misnumbered his Symphony No. 13 as being his Symphony No. 14, being reluctant to assign the ominously unlucky number 13 to his new work. As it turned out, it was, in fact, the last symphony he completed before his death in 1979.

Despite all this, Harris’s Third Symphony from 1938 is regularly cited as one of the best American symphonies of the 20th century, if not “The Great American Symphony,” and gradually many of his less familiar 15 or so symphonies are also showing up on compact disc and on concert programs.

As the most recent Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians puts it, “the musicality, breadth of vision, and generosity of impulse that form his best music assure him long-term recognition.”

So, whether or not it was in 1898 or 1901, or even on February 12—Happy Birthday, Mr. Harris!

During the 1906-1907 season of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, America’s premiere opera company staged a mini-festival of operas by a living composer—the Italian Giacomo Puccini.

The Met’s star tenor, Enrico Caruso, could be heard in revival productions of Puccini’s “La Boheme” and “Tosca”—operas that still qualified as “contemporary music,” being just 10 and 7 years old respectively. And, with Caruso again in the leading male roles, the Met scheduled the company premiere of Puccini’s first big operatic success, “Manon Lescaut” and, on today’s date in 1907, the American premiere of Puccini’s newest opera, “Madame Butterfly.”

The Met arranged for Puccini himself to come to New York to supervise the rehearsals for “Manon Lescaut” and “Madame Butterfly,” but his ship was delayed by bad weather. Puccini arrived in New York on the day of the scheduled premiere of “Manon Lescaut,” and rushed to his box at the opera house just in time for the start of Act II—but not before acknowledging a big ovation from the audience.

If America was enthusiastic about Puccini, the feeling apparently was reciprocated. In 1912, Puccini visited the New York studios of Columbia Records to record a greeting to his American fans. His greeting was in Italian, but concluded with two words of English—a quote from the libretto for his “Madama Butterfly”—“America forever!”

On today’s date in 1927, at the Neues Theater in Leipzig, a new opera had its premiere performance. It was entitled “Jonny spielt auf” or “Johnny Strikes Up the Band,” and was the work of a Viennese composer named Ernst Krenek. Ostensibly, it tells the story of a Negro jazz band leader named Jonny, who steals a valuable European violin, but in symbolic terms it deals with both the role of music in society and the conflict between the artistic traditions of the old and new worlds.

Krenek’s jazzy score was a tremendous success. In its first season it was produced at 42 opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York. By 1929 the libretto had been translated into 14 languages. Its overwhelming success made the opera’s “Jonny” a pop icon and household name and provided Krenek a comfortable cushion of financial security.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany and Austria, however, Krenek’s security evaporated. For the Nazis, his opera was a prime example of what they termed “degenerate art,” and its composer wisely chose to emigrate to America, where he became a citizen in 1945. Krenek taught at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie and Hamline University in St. Paul before eventually settling in California, where he died in 1991 at the age of 91.

The music Krenek wrote during his long life covers a wide range of styles, but even though he composed twenty operas, five symphonies and four piano concertos, he remains best known as the creator of “Jonny” and his “jazz” opera from 1927.

Rhode Island natives of a certain age wax nostalgia about Rocky Point, a popular family vacation spot on the Narragansett Bay side of Warwick, which operated from the late 1840s until its close in 1995. There was an amusement park with rides like “The Russian Toboggan,” “The Wildcat” and “Cyclone,” for the kids, while mom and pop might opt for a table at the Rocky Point Chowder House.

In 1966, the American composer Ron Nelson spent a summer holiday there. “It's such a small state, there aren’t that many places to go,” he later recalled. Still, his “Rocky Point Holiday” provided the inspiration—and the title—for a work commissioned by Dr. Frank Bencriscutto for his University of Minnesota Concert Band.

“Rocky Point Holiday” was first performed under Bencriscutto’s direction on today’s date in 1967, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, during the annual convention of the College Band Director’s National Association. But the piece really took off—a little like “The Russian Toboggan” perhaps?—when Bencriscutto’s band toured the Soviet Union in 1969.

Frank wanted an ‘American’ piece to open the program,” Nelson recalled, and “Rocky Point Holiday” fit the bill perfectly. Closer to home, Nelson’s jaunty score became a classic in the wind band repertory, and was chosen by the Garfield Cadets for their Drum Corps International championship program in 1983.

These days, it’s still considered “news” when the Metropolitan Opera stages an opera by a female composer, so one might assume that in the 19th century, the performance of any opera written by a woman would have been even more sensational.

Well, that wasn’t the case on today’s date in 1895, when the Paris Opera staged “La Montagne noire,” or “The Black Mountain,” by Augusta Holmes, or “Augusta Holmès” as she was known in France. Her opera was performed 13 times, but never revived. The jaded French audiences were already quite familiar with the sensational Mademoiselle Holmès, it seems.

Born in Paris in 1847 of Irish parents, Augusta was a musical prodigy as a child, a stunning beauty as a young woman, and a composition student of César Franck. And, rare for her time, she was a financially independent artist due to a fortune inherited from her father. Rarer still: despite 19th century prejudice against female composers, Augusta’s orchestra scores were championed and premiered by Parisian orchestras, and she received major commissions for elaborate national celebrations.

By the time of her death in 1903, however, Augusta Holmès was regarded as a curious but minor figure in the history of French music. In our time, some of her orchestral works, like her symphonic tone-poem “Ireland,” have been revived, and, along with other creations of past women composers, are being reappraised by performers of the present.

On today’s date in 1996, a trio of soloists joined forces with the Minnesota Orchestra for the premiere performance of a new concerto by the American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. This was her “Triple Concerto,” a work commissioned by the soloists, namely pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson, and no less than five orchestras in addition to Minnesota’s.

Now, the most famous Concerto for Piano, Violin, Cello and Orchestra is by Beethoven, as Zwilich well knows. “My Triple Concerto is scored for exactly the same instrumentation as Beethoven’s,” she writes, “although Beethoven would certainly be startled by some of the American jazz techniques and the extraordinary facility the modern timpanist can be expected to have at his fingertips... My piece has other vague and hidden references to Beethoven, as a kind of homage to a composer who has deeply affected my life."

“As contemporary artists always have,” continues Zwilich, “today’s composers exist at a juncture between past and present. And all of us, whether we write, perform, or listen to music, face a similar challenge: how to relate meaningfully to the past without becoming imbedded in it; how to press toward the future without abandoning the richness of our heritage. It is often remarked that some audiences seem to fear the new. To this, I might add that some composers seem to fear the past. The rhetoric of ‘progress’ as well as the worship of a canon of ‘masterpieces’ can undermine the adventure of it all.”