Composers Datebook

OK, here’s a cocktail party question for music mavens: “What do James Brown, the master of funk, and the Soviet symphonic composer Dimitri Shostakovich have in common?”

One answer is this piece of music, which premiered on today’s date in 1990 at Alice Tully Hall in New York City at a concert by Marin Alsop’s Concordia orchestra. The piece is entitled “Stomp,” written by the Seattle-based composer David Schiff.

For starters, on the score of “Stomp,” Schiff includes a reference to James Brown’s music, instructing the players, “Every instrument is treated like a drum.” Also, during its opening, there’s a staccato rhythm based on Brown’s iconic tune, “I Feel Good.”

And the Shostakovich connection? Well, Schiff confesses to modeling “Stomp” on the opening movement of that composer’s Ninth Symphony, right down to a strict imitation of Shostakovich’s repeat of the exposition, in sonata-form style.

On the origin and subsequent use of “Stomp,” Schiff says: “Marin Alsop conducted one of my pieces at Tanglewood in 1988 and later asked me for a new orchestral piece for her Concordia orchestra; since then, ‘Stomp’ has since been played by many orchestras including the LA Philharmonic, who took it to high schools to demonstrate that classical music could be really loud.”

A reminder that ear plugs are not required to hear ‘Composers Datebook’ online, but ear buds might be nice if you’re at work when you do. Just visit Your Classical.Org to find us.

On today’s date in 1940, the Chicago Symphony helped to celebrate their 50th anniversary with the premiere performance of a specially commissioned symphony from the famous Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

Stravinsky himself was on hand to conduct his “Symphony in C” – a work that attracted a great deal of attention at the time. For starters, writing a symphony in the key of C Major seemed a definitely anti-modern gesture at a time when Arnold Schoenberg’s “twelve tone” method of composition was gaining ground with prominent American musicians and critics. “How traditional can you get?” some of these must have thought when they saw the title of Stravinsky’s work.

Stravinsky’s new symphony was quickly labeled “neo-classical,” meaning it consciously harked back in form of Haydn or Mozart’s symphonies, albeit clothed, musically speaking, in a much more modern fashion.

Now, traditionally the key of C Major was deemed a “happy” or “bright” key, but Stravinsky composed his Symphony during one of the unhappiest periods of his life, when his wife, his mother and one of his daughters had all died in rapid succession.

“It is no exaggeration to say that in the following weeks I was able to continue my own life only by my work on the Symphony in C,” wrote Stravinsky. “But I did not seek to overcome my grief by portraying or giving expression to it in music, and you will listen in vain, I think, for traces of this sort of personal emotion.”

For later Romantic composers like Richard Wagner, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was “the apotheosis of the dance,” and certainly sitting still during the Symphony’s dizzying finale is not always easy…

…But for those in the audience at its premiere in 1813, as part of a benefit concert for wounded Bavarian and Austrian soldiers, it was the somber slow movement that proved most attractive. Maybe audiences read more into it that Beethoven intended, given the occasion, but over time, the slow movements of many Romantic symphonies not only got longer, but also became the emotional “heart” of the composition.

By the time of Bruckner and Mahler, some of these slow movements alone lasted as long as an entire symphony by earlier composers like Haydn and Mozart. And many composers since then have written slow symphonic movements, which stand alone as complete works in themselves.

On today’s date in 1999, this “Adagio” by the Italian composer Elisabetta Brusa received its premiere performance by the Virtuosi of Toronto. Brusa was born in Milan in 1954, and studied music at the Milan Conservatory.

“My Adagio,” she writes, “is a freely structured composition in a single movement inspired by well-known masterpieces, such as those by Albinoni, Mahler, and Barber. Independent of a pre-established form, sonata, or suite, it originated as an autonomous composition in the expressive style which have distinguished the numerous Adagios of the past.”

At the dawn of the 20th century Teddy Roosevelt was president and America was in an upbeat, prosperous mood. Cultural affairs were not forgotten, either. To the already established American symphony orchestras in cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati and San Francisco, new ensembles would spring up in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Seattle.

On today’s date in 1903, it was Minneapolis’ turn. On November 5th that year, a German-born musician named Emil Oberhoffer led the first concert of the newly formed Minneapolis Symphony. In those days it was a 50-piece ensemble, but in the course of the next 100 years, would double in size and change its name to the “Minnesota” Orchestra.

As this is the COMPOSERS Datebook, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that the Minnesota Orchestra has enjoyed a special relationship with a number of leading American composers.

Aaron Copland conducted the orchestra on a memorable and televised Bicentennial Concert in 1976, and the orchestra has given the premiere performances of works by Charles Ives, John Adams, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, among others. Two young American composers, Stephen Paulus and Libby Larsen, served as composers-in-residence with the orchestra in the 1980s, and more recently, Aaron Jay Kernis served as the orchestra’s new music advisor.

Another long-time Minnesota resident, Dominick Argento, was appointed the orchestra’s composer emeritus. Argento’s “A Ring of Time” was premiered by the orchestra in 1972 as part of their 70th anniversary celebration.

Today’s date marks the anniversary of the premiere performance of two musical works written by émigré composers: one Austrian, the other Chinese.

On Nov 4, 1948, the Albuquerque Civic Symphony gave the first performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s powerful piece for narrator, chorus and orchestra entitled “A Survivor from Warsaw.” Because of his Jewish heritage, Schoenberg resettled in America in 1933 when the Nazis took over Germany. After the end of World War II, Schoenberg met some survivors of the Nazi pogroms in the Warsaw ghetto. Profoundly moved as they recounted their harrowing experiences, Schoenberg set their recollections to music, utilizing a twelve-tone theme which is revealed only at the end of the work, where it supplies the traditional melody of a Jewish prayer of comfort and hope.

On today’s date in 1993, Boulder, Colorado, was the venue for the premiere of this music, the String Quartet No. 3 by the Chinese composer Bright Sheng. “It was inspired by the memory of a Tibetan folk dance which I came across about 25 years ago when I was living in a province on the border between China and Tibet,” recalled Sheng. At that time, Madame Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” was in full force, and that explains why a teenage pianist from Shanghai ended up on a remote Chinese frontier.

Eventually, Sheng was able to enroll in the Shangai Conservatory, and in 1982 came to New York. “All of my compositions somehow deal with Chinese culture,” explains Sheng, “yet they synthesize Chinese and Western musical forms.”

The Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov might be described as an operatic dynamo: not only did he compose fifteen of them himself, but he also had a hand in editing, orchestrating and promoting four important Russian operas written by others: Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” and “Khovantschina,” Borodin’s “Prince Igor,” and Dargomïzhsky’s “The Stone Guest.”

Of Rimsky-Korsakov’s fifteen operas, however, only his last, “The Golden Cockerel,” is staged with any regularity outside Russia, although instrumental suites and excerpts from several of them have proven immensely popular as concert pieces.

The familiar “Flight of the Bumble-Bee” is from a Rimsky-Korsakov opera that premiered in Moscow on today’s date in 1900, and, like most of his operas, is based on Russian fairytales. The opera’s full title is: “The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of his Son the Renowned and Mighty Bogatïr Prince Guidon Saltanovich, and of the Beautiful Swan-Princess.”

If you think the title is a bit long, consider the required cast of performers, which in addition to thirteen main characters calls for Boyars and their wives, courtiers, nursemaids, sentries, troops, boatmen, astrologers, footmen, singers, scribes, servants and maids, dancers of both sexes, 33 knights of the sea with their leader Chernomor, a squirrel, and – oh yes – a bumblebee.

You begin to see that staging a Rimsky-Korsakov opera is: a) not something one can do on the cheap, and b) potentially confusing to those not familiar from infancy with the intricacies of Russian fairy tales.

Today we dip into the “Composers’ Mailbag” for two letters, neither of them dealing with any significant musical matters, but both (coincidentally) with wine.

In a note dated November 2, 1894, Giuseppe Verdi writes (in his typically blunt style), “Dear Sig. Melani, I received yesterday the cases of wine. Now what is left is to pay for them. Please send me the bill for what I owe you minus the empty cases and returned bottles. Do it as soon as possible as I am going to the country and want to send you a check before I leave. As always, G. Verdi."

The second (and more personable) letter is dated November 2, 1748, and was penned by Johann Sebastian Bach to his cousin, Johann Elias Bach. It reads: “Most Esteemed Cousin, That you and your dear wife are still well I am assured by the agreeable note I received from you yesterday accompanying the excellent little cask of wine you sent, for which much thanks. It is, however, greatly to be regretted that the cask was damaged, either by being shaken in the wagon or in some other way, for when it was opened for the usual customs inspection here, it was almost 2/3 empty, and it is a pity that even the least drop of this noble gift of God should have been spilled. I remain your wholly devoted cousin and most willing servant, J.S. Bach.”

On today’s date in 1738, George Frederick Handel completed one of his first great Biblical oratorios. It was entitled “Israel in Egypt,” and was based on the Book of Exodus.

At this point in time, British taste for Handel’s Italian-style operas had waned, and, like the filmmaker Cecile B. DeMille some 200 years later, Handel set out to entice his jaded audience back into the theaters with Biblical epics like “Saul” and “Israel in Egypt,” featuring big casts and lots of special effects.

“I hear,” gossiped one young British Lord to his father, “that Mr. Handel has borrowed a pair of the largest kettle-drums from the Tower of London, so to be sure it will be most excessively noisy!”

Even so, many in the audience at premiere of “Israel in Egypt” didn’t know quite what make of it. Some thought religious subjects unsuitable outside of a church setting; others found the music, in the words of one contemporary, “too solemn for common ears.” A few, however, were quite enthusiastic. One gentleman wrote a long letter to the London Daily Post, informing readers that the Prince of Wales and his consort attended, and appeared “enchanted” by the new work.

Even so, for later performances of “Israel in Egypt,” Handel felt the need to reduce the solemnity by interpolating some totally incongruous snappy English songs and up-tempo Italian arias to keep the audience from drifting off – literally and figuratively speaking.

Happy Halloween!

Friends—and enemies—of “new music” will perhaps find it amusing that it was on today’s date that Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg arrived in America, when the liner “Ile de France” docked in New York in 1933.

Schoenberg arrived in the company of his wife, their 17-month-old daughter Nuria, and a little terrier named “Witz”—which in German, means “Joke.” For the benefit of the American press, Schoenberg explained this was because the dog was “so very comic.”

For the benefit of its readers, a 1933 issue of Musical America magazine described Schoenberg as: “the despair of conservatives, the hope of radicals” and “the arch-priest of atonality.” The Nazis had fired Schoenberg from his teaching post at the Prussian Academy of Arts, and he’d come to American to teach at a school in Boston.

In 1934, Schoenberg moved to Los Angeles, where he taught Californian junior college students, played tennis with George Gershwin, and continued to compose music which Time magazine described as “so complicated that only he and a couple of other fellows understand what it’s about.”

Despite his reputation as a radical, Schoenberg saw himself as a conservative, whose harmonic innovations would help maintain the traditional dominance of German music; and, despite his fame as the inventor of a strict 12-tone “method,” Schoenberg wrote: “As a composer, I must believe in inspiration rather than mechanics.”

Even so, 50-plus years after his death in 1951, just seeing the name “Schoenberg” on a concert program is still enough to give some concertgoers a good scare!

“From whence cometh song?” asks the opening lines of a poem by the American writer Theodore Roethke…

That’s a question American composer Ned Rorem must have asked himself hundreds of times, while providing just as many answers in the form of hundreds of his own original song settings.

In addition to all those, Rorem has sizeable body of orchestral, chamber, and choral music to his credit, and a number of very successful literary collections of perceptive reviews and lively personal diaries. About his own music, Rorem tends to be a little reluctant to speak. “Nothing a composer can say about his music is more pointed than the music itself,” he writes.

On today’s date in 1979, Rorem himself was at the piano, accompanying soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson in the premiere performance of a song-cycle he called “Nantucket Songs,” a cycle that began with Rorem’s setting of Roethke’s poem.

“These songs,” wrote Rorem, “merry or complex or strange though their texts may seem, aim away from the head and toward the diaphragm. They are emotional rather than intellectual, and need not be understood to be enjoyed.”

Speaking of personal enjoyment, Rorem adds this footnote about the premiere performance of his “Nantucket Songs,” which was recorded live at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.: “Phyllis Bryn-Julson and I, unbeknownst to each other, BOTH had fevers of 102 degrees.”