Composers Datebook

Every composer who enters a competition hopes to get a letter like this one, which showed up in the Boston mailbox of George Whitefield Chadwick in 1894:

“I take pleasure in announcing that your symphony offered for the second annual competition of the National Conservatory of Music has obtained the prize. In view of your desire to produce it without delay, we have decided to waive our right [to the symphony’s first performance].” Signed: Antonin Dvorak, Director.

And so it was the Boston Symphony, not the Conservatory’s orchestra or the New York Philharmonic, who gave the premiere performance of Chadwick’s prize-winning Symphony No. 3 on today’s date in 1894.

Chadwick dedicated his symphony to Theodore Thomas, the preeminent American conductor and new music advocate of his day. In a letter to Thomas, Chadwick commented: “My symphony was very well received here, and condemned by some of the newspaper men as a ‘dry and uninspired work’—by which you may guess that it had some features which were not altogether trivial!”

In the decades that followed his death in 1931, Chadwick’s unashamedly Romantic scores fell out of favor and were rarely heard. Some dismissed these as pale imitations of Brahms and Wagner, forgetting that same criticism could have been applied as well to many prominent European composers in the 1890s. In the context of an American musical scene dominated by German music and musicians, Chadwick himself would probably have taken such comparisons as a compliment.

In 1958, the state of Minnesota was celebrating its centennial, and decided to commission a symphony in honor of the occasion.

Now, thanks to Garrison Keillor, just about everyone these days knows there are a lot of Norwegians in Minnesota, but even back in 1958, that was still fairly obvious, and so it seemed a good idea to ask a Norwegian composer to write a “Minnesota Symphony.”

And who better than Harald Saeverud, one of the most distinguished composers of that day, and a composer who had just been granted Norwegian knighthood in the order of Saint Olaf, first-class.

Nor was Saeverud new to the symphony-writing game. His “Minnesota Symphony” was his Symphony No. 8. Its premiere performance occurred at Northrop Auditorium in Minneapolis on today’s date in 1958, with the Minneapolis Symphony led by Antal Dorati. The capacity audience of 4000 gave Saeverud and his symphony a warm welcome.

For his part, Saeverud was equally gracious, and suggested his “Minnesota Symphony” was meant to be not only an occasional piece, celebrating the settlement and growth of a Midwestern American state, but music intended to have more universal significance:

“My whole life has been a preparation for writing this work,” he stated. “With the map of Minnesota above my desk and with all my thoughts and feelings concentrated on Minnesota’s history, I dived into the work, which proved increasingly fascinating as I became aware that it was simultaneously growing into a history of mankind.”

By the mid-1940s, the famous American bandleader Paul Whiteman was not as popular as he once was during the 20s and 30s. Even so, his name and orchestra were still a draw, and Whiteman was ever hopeful of introducing new pieces that might prove as popular as Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and Grofé’s “Grand Canyon Suite,” both commissioned by Whiteman in those earlier decades.

In 1944, Whiteman commissioned a number of short chamber orchestra works, or “symphonettes” as he dubbed them, for his new radio show called “Music out of the Blue.” The show aired at midnight. “So if the pieces are too bad,” explained Whiteman to his radio bosses, “few people will know it.”

And so it was on today’s date in 1944 that one of these new pieces, commissioned from Aaron Copland, had its radio premiere. Its title was “A Letter from Home.”

In the context of an America still at war in Europe, this title had a special resonance for those with loved ones serving abroad. Copland himself had a brother in the army, and wrote the work while living in Mexico, where he, too, received letters from home from his sister, Laurine.

It was from her letters that Copland learned his mother had died and that his father’s senility was getting worse. As a recent Copland biographer puts it, “One cannot help but suppose that some of his feelings about her death and other family matters made their way into this score.”

There are some operas which are rarely—if ever—staged, but whose music becomes famous—even wildly popular—in the concert hall. Everyone has heard the overture to Rossini’s “William Tell,” for example, but only a few fortunate (or very determined) opera fans ever get to see the whole opera staged.

Zoltán Kodály’s opera “Háry János” falls into this strange class of works both popular and obscure. This comic opera debuted at the Royal Hungarian Opera House in Budapest on today’s date in 1926, and recounts the adventures of an old veteran named “Háry János.”

In the village tavern, Háry boasts of his heroic military exploits: how he singlehandedly won a battle against the Emperor Napoleon, for example. Why, the Emperor’s Wife even fell in love with him, and he could have ran off with her if he’d wanted, but he chose to remained true to his Hungarian sweetheart back home.

You get the idea…

Kodály’s opera was a tremendous hit in Budapest, but was not taken up elsewhere. Perhaps some of the humor was lost in translation, and even today, performances outside of Hungary are quite rare. But a concert suite of excerpts from Kodály’s brilliant score depicting Háry János’s imaginary adventures was taken up eagerly by orchestras worldwide.

Kodály’s “Háry János” Suite quickly became a popular showpieces for virtuoso orchestras, with performances and audiences alike enthusiastic over its unbeatable combination of great tunes, colorful orchestration, and smile-inducing wit.

The expatriate American composer Conlon Nancarrow is famous for writing pieces for player pianos.

Nancarrow apparently came to the conclusion that the rhythmically complex, intricate contrapuntal music he wanted to write would prove just too difficult for mere mortals to tackle. Despite its complexity, Nancarrow’s music drew some of its deep and lasting influences from the human, all-too-human jazz stylings of Art Tatum and Earl Hines, and the complex rhythmic patterns of music from India.Nancarrow was born in 1912 in Texarkana, Arkansas.

At the age of 18, he heard Igro Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” which sparked his life-long interest in rhythmic complexity. Soon after, Nancarrow began private music studies with American composers Roger Sessions and Walter Piston. Like many idealistic Americans in the 1930s, Nancarrow joined the Communist Party, volunteered for the Lincoln Brigade, and fought in the Spanish Civil War. He moved to Mexico City in 1940, where he lived and worked until his death.

Nancarrow composed in almost total isolation until the late 1970s, when some of his piano roll compositions started appearing on record. These created quite an impact, and the MacArthur Foundation awarded him its prestigious ‘genius’ award of $300,000.

Late fame even brought a series of commissions for live performance and performers willing to take on the challenge of performing his difficult music. One of these pieces, Nancarrow’s String Quartet No. 3, was premiered on today’s date in 1987 by the Arditti Quartet.

Nancarrow died in Mexico in 1997.

Imagine the cocktail party bragging rights you’d have if you had attended the first night of “Girl Crazy,” a new musical that opened in New York on today’s date in 1930. That show marked the Broadway debut of Ethel Merman, and co-stared Ginger Rogers.

But that’s just for starters…

“Why,” you could say, “in the pit orchestra that night was the Red Nichols ensemble, which included among its players Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, and Jack Teagarden—gentlemen who would all go on to become famous band leaders in their own right.”

“And,” you might continue, “Speaking of band leaders, for the opening night of ‘Girl Crazy,’ the show’s composer, George Gershwin himself, was there in the pit conducting that all-star ensemble.”

For his part, Gershwin recalled: “The theater was so warm that I must have lost three pounds perspiring. But the opening was so well received that FIVE pounds would not have been too much. With the exception of the some dead head friends of mine, especially the critics, I think the notices, especially of the music, were the best I have ever received.”

Gershwin was right: “Girl Crazy” included two songs that quickly became classics: “I Got Rhythm” and “Embraceable You.” The show ran for 272 performances—an impressive statistic in the first year of the Great Depression, and Hollywood produced not one but TWO cinematic versions of the show in 1932 and 1943.

On today’s date in 1944, a 29-year-old American composer named David Diamond had his Second Symphony premiered by the Boston Symphony under the famous Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky.

Diamond says he had actually written this music for the charismatic Greek maestro Dimitri Mitropoulos, who was then music director of the Minneapolis Symphony.

“Mitropoulos had given a fine performance of my First Symphony,” said Diamond. “When I showed him the score of the Second he said, ‘you must have the parts extracted at once!’ As these were readied, I asked him whether he was planning to perform the work. He then told me he thought he would not stay on in Minneapolis, but he said, ‘Why don’t you send it to Koussevitzky?’ I did so, and Koussevitzky sent me a telegram that there would be a trial reading of my work at Symphony Hall. When it was over, the orchestra applauded like crazy. Koussevitzky turned to me and said, ‘I vill play!’”

Successful as the Diamond premiere was back in 1944, for many decades thereafter his neo-Romantic symphonies were rather neglected. In 1989, conductor Gerard Schwartz sparked a revival of interest with this Seattle Symphony recording of the Diamond Second.

By then, Diamond was in his 70s, and commented: “It is my strong feeling that a romantically inspired contemporary music, tempered by reinvigorated classical technical formulas, is the way out of the present period of creative chaos in music... the romantic spirit in music is important because it is timeless.”

On today’s date in 1945, the Third Symphony of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu had its premiere performance at Symphony Hall in Boston.

The new symphony’s dedication read: “To Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony,” and the new score was presented on the occasion of Koussevitzky’s 20th anniversary as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Martinu had finished the first two movements of his symphony that summer, as the Second World War was rushing to a close. Martinu later claimed he had Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the “Eroica,” very much on his mind in those days.

He said he was convinced that there was somehow an ethical force at work in the creation of a symphonic work, and, as in Beethoven’s “Eroica,” it was possible to express in music a sense of moral forces at work. As an exile from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and France, Martinu had come to the United States in 1941, and his mood is understandable in the anxious yet hopeful spring and summer of 1945.

After liberation of Czechoslovakia, Martinu returned to his homeland and was offered a teaching post in Prague. Martinu, unhappy with Czechoslovakia’s new Communist rulers, declined the offer, and returned to the America, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1952.

Even so, Martinu returned to Europe in 1953 and settled in Switzerland. He died there in 1957, but eventually his remains were returned to his family mausoleum in Czechoslovakia, and in 1990, the Centenary of his Birth was celebrated in that country as a major cultural event.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then composers must really have a thing about birds.

For centuries, composers have imitated bird song in their music: Vivaldi’s “Goldfinch” concerto for flute is one of the best-known examples from the18th century, and there are hundreds of other examples throughout music history.

On today’s date in 1953, at the Donaueschingen Music Festival in Germany, one of the most famous 20th century examples of “music for the birds” had its premiere performance. This was a piece by the French composer Olivier Messiaen for piano and orchestra, entitled “Le Réveil des Oiseaux,” or “The Awakening of the Birds.”

The musical themes for this work were all based on Messiaen’s precise notation of the songs of 38 different French birds. The piece’s structure progresses from midnight to midday, with the birds’ actual “awakening” occurring precisely at 4 a.m. at the first light of a spring day.

Messiaen’s interest in bird songs and nature was rooted in his deep religious faith. As he put it: "My faith is the grand drama of my life. I'm a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith. I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none."

On today’s date in 1903, a baby boy was born in the Russian railroad station of Parfianovka. The proud parents of little Vladimir Dukelsky were both musical, and so lulled the little boy to sleep with Italian opera arias—presumably the slow ones!

Not surprisingly, little Vladimir eventually studied music at the Conservatory in Kiev. After Russian Revolution, the budding composer ended up playing the piano at movie theaters and cabarets in Constantinople. It was there that he first heard the music of George Gershwin.

In 1921, Dukelsky came to the United States and thereafter pursued a remarkable dual career: as Vladimir Dukelsky, he composed concert music for the likes of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Boston Symphony; as “Vernon Duke,” following Gershwin’s example, he composed popular songs for Broadway and Hollywood.

Some of his songs, like “April in Paris” and “Autumn in New York,” have become classics in their own right.

“There isn’t a note of jazz in my serious music, and there are no symphonic overtones in my musical-comedy output,” said Duke. “My versatility, far from being a boon, has in reality been infuriating to most musical people. The critical boys seem to think there is something monstrous about a composer writing two different kinds of music under two different names.”

When Duke died in Santa Monica in 1969, he was far better known for his popular compositions, but decades after his death, there seems to be a revived interest in the concerts works of Dukelsky as well.