Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1945, Artur Rodzinski conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premiere performance of an orchestral suite arranged from Aaron Copland’s ballet score Appalachian Spring.

For the ballet’s 1944 premiere at the Library of Congress, Copland called for a chamber orchestra of 13 players, but for most music lovers, it’s as a work for a larger symphony orchestra that Appalachian Spring is most often remembered.

He said he had conducted all of his own works but knew his Appalachian Spring best of all. He also had some specific advice for other conductors of his score.

“I have often admonished orchestras, professional and otherwise, not to get too sweet or too sentimental with it, and I have reminded performers that Appalachian Spring should be played cooler than Tchaikovsky and lighter than Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. My own favorite place in the whole piece is toward the end where I have marked a misterioso. I would tell string players that we don't want to know where the up and down bows are. They must have a special sustained quality there, a kind of organ like sound, with each entry like an amen,” he said.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Appalachian Spring Suite; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony Classical 63082

Despite a disastrous premiere in Birmingham on today’s date in 1900, Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius has become one of his best-loved and most-frequently performed works in the U.K., where, in 2015, Classic FM offered a guide to what it called the work’s “most epic choral stupendousness.”

Here’s Classic FM’s summary of its story: “The piece follows an ‘everyman’ character (the word ‘Gerontius’ comes from the Greek for ‘old man’) as he faces death, meets his guardian angel and goes before his God before being taken to Purgatory with the promise of everlasting glory.”

Well, all that Roman Catholic talk of Purgatory in the poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman that Elgar set to music did not sit well with the Church of England in the early decades of the 20th century. Many Anglican clerics flatly refused to let it be performed in their cathedrals.

But that controversy is long a thing of the past, and nowadays Gerontius is performed at cathedrals such as St. Paul’s in London and in concert venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, where in 1991 it was performed at the BBC Proms in the presence of the Prince of Wales, now known as King Charles III.

Edward Elgar (1857-1934): The Dream of Gerontius; John Shirley-Quirk, baritone; London Symphony Chorus; King’s College Choir, Cambridge; London Symphony Orchestra; Benjamin Britten, conductor; London/Decca 448170

In 2001, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, commissioned American composer Steve Heitzeg to write a Nobel Symphony.

In 1866, the Swedish engineer and scientist Alfred Nobel had invented dynamite. His patent helped him amass a great fortune, but, troubled by the destructive power and potential misuse of his invention, Nobel arranged that his estate would award annual prizes to those who made significant contributions to world peace.

For his Nobel Symphony, Heitzeg chose to set quotes from a variety of Nobel laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Dalai Lama. Purely instrumental effects were also employed to convey something of their ideas and ideals. For example, in a section honoring a 1997 winner of the Nobel Prize, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, he scored an eerie march for a percussion ensemble consisting of hollow artificial limbs.

The October 2, 2001 premiere of the Nobel Symphony came shortly after the tragic events of September 11th. Understandably, its message had a special resonance for the performers and audiences present at its first performance.

Steve Heitzeg (b. 1959): Nobel Symphony; Gustavus Orchestra; Warren Friesen, conductor; Gustavus Adolphus 60171-10022

On today’s date in 2010, at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in Nashville, the ALIAS ensemble gave the premiere performance of a new chamber work by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. It was titled Hilos — the Spanish word for “threads” — and scored for piano, violin, cello and clarinet.

Now, it’s not unusual for composers to tap their particular cultural background for inspiration, but she has a pretty wide variety of options in that regard: Her father is an American of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent. They met when her father was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s, and Frank grew up in Berkeley, California.

“There’s usually a story line behind my music,” she said. Regarding Hilos, she noted, “There are similarities to [Mussorgsky’s] Pictures at an Exhibition in that each movement tells a different story … Hilos refers to the ‘threads’ that make up Andean textiles and how these threads weave together.”

Each movement of Hilos has an evocative title, such Canto del Altiplano (Song of the Highlands), Zumballyu (Spinning Top), or Juegos de los Niños (Games of the Children).

Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972): ‘Hilos’; Lee Carroll Levine, clarinet; Zeneba Brown, violin; Matt Walker, cello; Gabriela Lena Frank, piano; Naxos 8.559645

Even during the bombing of London by the German Air Force, the London Blitz of World War Two, the BBC Proms Concerts continued.

True, in 1941 a German incendiary bomb did destroy the long-time home of the Proms, Queen’s Hall on Langham Place, but, not to be deterred, the Proms simply moved to the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington.

Wartime Proms programs included this printed notice: “In the event of an Air Raid Warning the audience will be informed immediately, so that those who wish to take shelter either in the building or in public shelters outside, may do so, The concert will then continue.”

Talk about pluck!

In 1944, British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams completed a new oboe concerto to be premiered at a Proms concert, but a German V-1 rocket that landed dangerously near the Albert Hall led to an early end to that Proms season, since the V-1 rockets, unlike the German bombers, didn’t allow enough warning time to clear the hall.

So, on today’s date in 1944, the new Vaughan Williams concerto was premiered not in London, but in Liverpool, with soloist Leon Goossens and Malcolm Sargent conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Oboe Concerto; David Theodore, oboe; London Symphony; Bryden Thomson, conductor; Chandos 8594

On today’s date in 2000, a new cello concerto received its premiere performance at the Barbican Center in London. Billed as the Crouching Tiger Concerto, this score was by Chinese composer Tan Dun, and was derived from his film score for Ang Lee’s martial arts film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

That score featured a prominent cello part, tailor-made for cellist Yo-Yo Ma, as well as a variety of traditional Chinese instruments and a percussion battery that included a North African frame drum. The haunting score matched the film so effectively that it was nominated for — and won — an Academy Award.

It was director Ang Lee who suggested that Dun rework his film score into a cello concerto, and even offered to put together a special film to accompany it. In effect, saying, “Turnabout is fair play — you composed music to fit my film, now I’ll compose a film to fit your concerto!”

Lee pulled together shots from the original film and mixed in real and imaginary scenes from New York’s Chinatown and 19th century Beijing for the new film designed to accompany performances of the new concerto.

Tan Dun (b. 1957): Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon film score; Yo Yo Ma, cello; Shanghai Symphony; Tan Dun, conductor; Sony 89347

On today’s date in 1951, the classic sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still was playing in theaters across America. The film’s opening sequence depicted a UFO hovering over Washington, D.C. Back then, flying saucer sightings were increasingly common, perhaps a result of mass hysteria spawned by cold war tensions and the existential threat posed by the atomic bomb. Or maybe we were being visited by other planets?

In any case, the movie made a big impression at the time, and countless kids — and probably a few adults as well — memorized the magic words “Gort: Klaatu barada nikto” which, in the film, prevented Washington DC’s destruction by a death-ray robot.

Fast forward nearly 50 years to 1999, when Washington, D.C.’s National Symphony premiered a new concerto for percussion and orchestra, specially composed for virtuoso percussionist Evelyn Glennie by American composer Michael Daugherty.

Inspired by the outer-space look of her percussion gear, Daugherty titled his piece UFO and asked that the soloist arrive unexpectedly and dressed as a space alien! In performance, she moved through the audience and around the stage while performing sleight-of-hand improvisations on a variety of flying saucer-like percussive instruments.

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975): The Day the Earth Stood Still film score; National Philharmonic; Bernard Herrmann, conductor; London 443 899

Michael Daugherty (b. 1954): UFO; Evelyn Glennie, percussion; North Texas Wind Symphony; Eugene Migliaro Corporon, conductor; Klavier 11121

In September 2001, American composer Elliott Carter was just a few months shy of his 93rd birthday, but still busy composing new works both large and small.

On today’s date that year, his Cello Concerto received its premiere in Chicago with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Daniel Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony.

Carter’s music is technically challenging for performers, and its complexity can make it equally challenging for audiences, especially at first hearing. Despite all that, his comments on his music were usually quite straightforward:

“In this score I have tried to find meaningful, personal ways of revealing the cello’s vast array of wonderful possibilities,” he wrote. “My Concerto is introduced by the soloist alone, playing a frequently interrupted cantilena that presents ideas later to be expanded into movements.”

A month after its premiere, Ma, Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony brought the new work to Carnegie Hall, and the New York Times reviewer Anthony Tommasini wrote:

“For all its complexities … the cello part has a rhapsodic, improvisatory quality … At its conclusion, when Mr. Carter, who is 92, climbed the steps to the stage with a cane to steady him, he received a prolonged standing ovation.”

Elliott Carter (1908-2012): Cello Concerto; Alisa Weilerstein; Staatskapelle Berlin; Daniel Barenboim conductor; Decca 478 2735

Today’s date in 1899 marks the birthday of famous African-American composer, choir director and teacher, William L. Dawson, in Anniston, Alabama. After musical studies in Kansas City and Chicago, from 1931 to 1956 Dawson taught at the Tuskegee Institute, where he developed the Institute’s Choir into an internationally-renowned ensemble.

His arrangements of African-American spirituals, which he preferred to call folksongs, are justly famous, but in 1934 he produced his masterwork, a Negro Folk Symphony, modeled on Dvorak’s New World Symphony, but exhibiting his own distinctive mastery and development of his themes. His goal, he said, was for audiences to know that it was “unmistakably not the work of a white man.”

“The themes are taken from what are popularly known as Negro Spirituals. In this composition, the composer has employed themes … over which he has brooded since childhood, having learned them at his mother’s knee,” he wrote.

Dawson’s symphony was successfully premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who took the new work to Carnegie Hall, where its 35-year-old composer was repeatedly called to the stage. The symphony was revised in 1952 with added African rhythms inspired by the composer’s trip to West Africa.

William L. Dawson (1899-1990): Negro Folk Symphony; Symphony of the Air; Leopold Stokowski, conductor; DG 477 6502

“Spaghetti western” is a nickname given to a genre of Italian films from the 1960s, most famously directed by Sergio Leone, and often starring Clint Eastwood as the taciturn, gun-toting anti-hero.

Spaghetti Western also is the title of a concerto for English horn written by American composer Michael Daugherty that received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1998 at a Pittsburgh Symphony concert conducted by Mariss Jansons.

“Just as Leone’s films redefined the Western genre from an Italian perspective, I redefine the European concerto … within an American context. In my Spaghetti Western, the English horn soloist is the ‘Man with no Name,’ moving through a series of sun-drenched panoramas, barren deserts, and desolate towns of the Wild West, … [one of ] the gun-slinging characters who haunt the landscape,” he wrote.

Daugherty gave Italian titles to his three-movement concerto: “Strade Vuote” (“Empty Streets”), “Assalto all’Oro” (“Gold Rush”) and “Mezzogiorno di Fuoco” (“Noon of Fire”). And since Eastwood was unable to play the English horn for the Pittsburgh Symphony premiere, Harold Smoliar removed the cigar from his parched, suntanned lips, adjusted his poncho and took up his English horn for the performance.

Michael Daugherty (b. 1954): Spaghetti Western; Harold Smoliar; University of Michigan Symphony; Kenneth Kiesler, conductor; Equilibrium 63