Composers Datebook

“English Horn” is an odd name for an instrument—for starters, it’s not English, and, it’s not a brass instrument, like the French horn.

The English horn is, in fact, a double reed instrument, a lower-voiced cousin of the oboe. The “English” part of its name is probably a corruption of “angle,” since it has a bend to its shape. Until late in the 20th century, its primary role was to add a darker tone color to the reed section of the orchestra, and performers who played the English horn had precious few solo concertos written to showcase their dusky-voiced instrument.

One performer, Thomas Stacy, decided to do something about that. He’s commissioned and premiered dozens of new works for his instrument. This is one of them —a concerto by the American composer Ned Rorem that Stacy premiered on today’s date in 1994 with the New York Philharmonic.

Ned Rorem is perhaps best-known as a composer of art songs, but has also composed successful orchestral and chamber works. “Why do I write music?” asks Rorem—“because I want to hear it. It’s as simple as that. My sole aim in writing the Concerto for English Horn was to exploit that instrument’s special luster and pliability… to make the sound gleam through a wash of brass and silver, catgut and steel.”

Today’s date marks an important anniversary in the history of the American symphony. On January 26, 1876, the Symphony No. 1 in c minor of John Knowles Paine was premiered in Boston. This was the first American symphony to be generally acknowledged by the musical community here and abroad as being on a par with the symphonies of the great European composers.

American musical life in the 19th century was heavily influenced by German models—and Paine’s Symphony No. 1 takes its key and much of its musical style from Beethoven’s Fifth. The contemporary American composer and conductor Gunther Schuller once quipped that Paine’s First was “the best Beethoven symphony that Beethoven didn’t write himself.”

Even so, Paine’s 1876 Symphony is a landmark in American musical history, as was one of Paine’s earlier works—a grandiose Mass in D Major for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, which was premiered in Berlin in 1867, and successfully revived by Gunther Schuller in Boston in 1972.

Paine is remembered for other reasons as well: He founded the music department at Harvard and became the mentor for a new generation of native composers. He was also one of the founders of the American Guild of Organists, and wrote an influential textbook titled, “The History of Music to the Death of Schubert,” which was published one year after Paine’s death in 1906.

Many a political work of art has had its origin in a smoke-filled room, but not all that many piano trios can claim such a venue for their inspiration. On today’s date in 1987, composer and pianist Paul Schoenfield joined a violinist and cellist from Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for the premiere performance of a new piano trio the orchestra had commissioned, a work Schoenfield eventually titled “Café Music.”

Here’s how Schoenfield explains it: “The idea came to me in 1985 after sitting in one night for the pianist at Murray’s Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge in Minneapolis. Murray’s employed a house trio which played entertaining dinner music in a wide variety of styles. My intention was to write a kind of high-class dinner music—music which could be played at a restaurant, but might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall. The work draws on the types of music played at Murray’s: early 20th century American, Viennese, light classical, gypsy, and Broadway style are all represented.”

Much to Schoenfield’s surprise, “Cafe Music” became a concert hall hit, performed and recorded by many classical chamber groups. For his part, Schoenfield confesses two lasting memories of that night he filled in at Murray’s: first, a realization of what hard work it was to play dinner music for hours on end, and, second—in the days before smoke-free restaurants—how his clothes smelled of cigars and cigarettes for days afterwards!

“We are NOT amused,” is the dour statement often attributed to the matronly Queen Victoria in her later years, although some historians dispute she ever really said it.

But as a young woman, in her diary Queen Victoria’s did write, “I was VERY MUCH amused indeed!” after seeing the Italian opera singer Giulia Grisi on stage. The young Queen was something of a fan, and even made a drawing of the then-famous singer in a role she created: that of Elvira in Vincenzo Bellini’s opera “I Puritani,” or “The Puritans,” which debuted in Paris on today’s date in 1835.

When Bellini’s brand-new opera came to London later that same year, with Grisi in the cast, the young Queen Victoria attended several performances, and the opera she called “Dear Puritani” became a life-long favorite, perhaps because it was the first she attended with her husband-to-be, the young Prince Albert.

The opera is set in 17th century England during the Civil War between Royalist supporters of the deposed King Charles I and Puritan rebels led by Oliver Cromwell, and its plot involves a Romeo and Juliet-like love story between a delicate Puritan soprano and a dashing Royalist tenor. Unlike Shakespeare’s tragedy, however, Bellini’s opera provides a happy ending for the politics-crossed young lovers.

On today’s date in 1894, during the New York Herald’s clothing fund drive, readers of that newspaper would have seen this announcement of a concert that evening at Madison Square Garden: “Hear Stephen Foster’s ‘Old Folks at Home’—rendered tonight for charity as it has never been before—In Dvorak’s own arrangement—sung entirely by Negroes—in aid of the Clothing Fund.”

Dvorak was in New York, teaching at Mrs. Jeannette Thurber’s National Conservatory of Music. The Herald’s review of the January 23rd concert credited Mrs. Thurber with the idea of showcasing the talented black students of her Conservatory, writing, “She threw open the doors of her establishment to pupils of ability, no matter what their race, color, or creed. Her efforts were ably seconded by Dr. Dvorak. The famous Bohemian has studied the Negro race, their songs, their folk lore, and saw that in their intellectual make-up there lay, ignored or unknown, the germs of an original musical organization, the foundation of a truly national school of music.”

49 years later to the day—on January 23, 1943—many would have agreed with Dvorak’s prediction as Duke Ellington and his orchestra presented their first concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall, offering the premiere performance of Ellington’s “Black, Brown, and Beige” Suite—with all proceeds again going to benefit a charity: the Russian war relief fund.

One of the 20th century’s most important—and most lurid—operas had its American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on today’s date in 1907.

Richard Strauss’s “Salome” is a faithful setting of Oscar Wilde’s play about the decadent Biblical princess who, after her famous “dance of the seven veils,” demands the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter as a reward. She then confesses her love to the severed head and kisses it. This scene, accompanied by Strauss’s graphic music, proved too much for early audiences to take.

“A reviewer,” wrote the New York Tribune,” should be an embodied conscience stung into righteous fury by the moral stench with which Salome fills the nostrils of humanity.” The New York Sun went even further: “The presentation of such a story is ethically a crime.” The Met cancelled the rest of the scheduled performances, and “Salome” was not staged there again until 1934.

Closer to our time, the American composer Terry Riley put a more positive spin on the legend of Salome. In the 1980s, Riley wrote some string quartets collectively titled “Salome Dances for Peace.”

“I conceived my quartets as a kind of ballet scenario,” said Riley, “in which contemporary world leaders like Reagan and Gorbachev are seduced by a reincarnated Salome into realizing world peace.” The fifth quartet in the Salome series, which we’re hearing now, is even subtitled “Good Medicine.”

One of the most famous British composers from the Age of Shakespeare was the lutenist and songwriter John Dowland. His life is better documented than many of his contemporaries, but much about him remains puzzling. Dowland wrote that he was born in 1563, but doesn’t tell us where—some speculate Dublin, others Westminister.

Early biographies said he died in London on today’s date in 1626, but more recent research suggests mid-February as more likely. Even so, Dowland was around 63 when he died—a ripe, old age in that time of the Plague.

One early biography described Dowland as: “A cheerful person, passing his days in lawful merriment.” Others suggest he suffered from depression, and many of his most famous works are deeply introspective in tone, in keeping with the then-fashionable cult of melancholy and its preoccupation with tears, darkness, and death.

Dowland lived in a dangerous age of bitter religious conflict. He once wrote a frantic letter from Germany warning the British authorities of a Catholic plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. But in that same letter Dowland confessed his own Catholic sympathies, and, rather surprisingly, both at home and abroad worked for eminent Protestant families and royalty.

The last record we have of him as a performer dates from May of 1625, when he played at the funeral of King James the First—a fitting finale to the quintessential composer of that remarkable age.

Now, it might seem unlikely that Katherine Hepburn, Winona Ryder and Charles Ives might have anything in common, but bear with us a moment...

Hepburn appeared in a 1933 film based on Louisa May Alcott’s classic 19th century novel “Little Women,” as did Ryder in a successful 1994 cinematic remake. The second movement of Charles Ives’ “Concord” Sonata—the music we’re hearing now—is titled “The Alcotts,” and evokes Louisa May, her novel and her real-life family and friends, who included the New England “Transcendentalists” Emerson and Thoreau.

Ives wrote his “Concord” Sonata in 1913, but it wasn’t until today’s date in 1939 that pianist John Kirkpatrick gave the first public performance of the sonata in New York City.

As generations of readers and film fans know, “Little Women” chronicles the coming of age of four young women during the American Civil War. The story of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy so captivated a young contemporary American composer named Mark Adamo that he composed an opera based on Alcott’s “Little Women.”

After its premiere in 1998 at the Opera Studio of Houston Grand Opera, that company’s general director predicted that Adamo’s opera was “destined to become an American classic.” He put his money where his mouth was, and rescheduled “Little Women” for main stage performances in Houston, and other opera companies around the country have done so as well.

When boomers wax nostalgic about the Kennedy Administration, it’s Lerner & Loewe’s musical “Camelot” they start to hum. After all, “Camelot” opened in 1960 just a month after John F. Kennedy was elected, and, a week after his assassination in 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy told historian Theodore H. White that they owned the original cast album and liked to play it before retiring at night. She quoted a phrase—"one brief shining moment"—from “Camelot’s title song as how she wished his presidency to be remembered.

But early in 1961, everyone was looking forward, not backwards. The President-elect had asked Frank Sinatra to help arrange a musical gala to be held on January 19, 1961, the eve of his Inauguration, and Leonard Bernstein was tapped to represent classical music. Bernstein had known Kennedy since the mid-1950s, and, after all, they both were Harvard men.

As luck would have it, a rare blizzard hit Washington D.C. that night, snarling traffic, and a police escort had to rush Bernstein to the Gala. There was no time for him to change into formal attire, so Bernstein appeared onstage in a hastily-borrowed and much-too-large dress shirt to conduct the world premiere of his “Fanfare for JFK.”

After the premiere of his “Fanfare,” Bernstein conducted a more familiar wind band standard—Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

Composers—like anybody else—can be quite superstitious about numbers. Gustav Mahler, for example, was reluctant to assign the number “9” to his song cycle symphony, “Das Lied von der Erde,” fearing that work would turn out to be his last: after all, Beethoven and Bruckner had only completed nine symphonies. Ironically, Mahler did go on to complete a Ninth Symphony, but died before he could finish work on a Symphony No. 10.

For the most part, American composers have avoided this problem by rarely if ever producing more than one or two symphonies of their own. Naturally there have been exceptions.

On today’s date in 1963, the Ninth Symphony of the American composer Roy Harris had its premiere performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy, who had commissioned the work.

Like many of his other symphonies composed during and after the Second World War, Harris’s Ninth has a patriotic program, and each of its sections bears a subtitle from either the American Constitution or Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” This music, from the symphony’s opening movement, is titled “We the People.”

Harris went on to write 13 Symphonies in all—although, perhaps submitting to a bit of numerological superstition himself—when his symphony No. 13, a Bicentennial Commission, was first performed in Washington, D.C. in 1976, it was billed as his Symphony Number Fourteen!