Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1999, the Lyric Opera of Chicago premiered a new opera by the American composer William Bolcom, based on “A View from the Bridge,” a powerful and very famous play by Arthur Miller.

Now, not all stage plays “translate” well into opera, as Bolcom was well aware: “In theater, you have the text and then below it you have the subtext,” said Bolcom. “In opera it is pretty much the opposite, the subtext is what you are really dealing with first and foremost: big, raw emotions, which are supported by the text. Not all of Arthur Miller's plays would make strong opera; but A View From the Bridge has a strong story that you can tell on one page."

In fact, Miller’s play, although set in Brooklyn in the 1950s, has often been likened to a Greek tragedy, a theatrical form in which the chorus plays an important role.

Bolcom saw that as a real opportunity: "If you are going to do an opera from a play, it better have a dimension that the play doesn't. In a play, you can't have your chorus speak at all because—practically speaking—it is financially prohibitive: as soon as the chorus opens up its mouth the price goes up because of actors’ equity. So, naturally one of the great resources of opera houses is an opera chorus, a resource you CAN use much more easily."

The Russian Revolution of 1917 wiped out many family fortunes, and many penniless, Russian émigrés who fled the Bolsheviks had to start from scratch in exile.

Natalie Koussevitzky, however, was not one of them. Her family fortune was fairly diversified, which meant that even the loss of her large Russian holdings left her with considerable wealth elsewhere in Europe. And since Natalie was married to the Russian émigré music publisher, conductor, and new music impresario Serge Koussevitzky, that meant a number of famous 20th century composers benefited as well. It’s not an exaggeration to say that, culturally speaking, without Natalie’s fortune, the history of 20th century music would have been noticeably poorer.

When Natalie died, Serge Koussevitzky established a Music Foundation in her honor. One of the Foundation’s memorial commissions was premiered on today’s date in 1943 by the Boston Symphony, led by Serge Koussevitzky. This was a three-part symphonic “Ode” written by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, and dedicated to Natalie’s memory.

The second movement of Stravinsky’s “Ode”, sandwiched in between its two somber outer movements, was actually a bit of recycled film music. Stravinsky originally intended it for a hunting scene in the Joan Fontaine/Orson Welles cinematic version of the English novel “Jane Eyre.” As plans for that film progressed, however, the more experienced film composer Bernard Herrmann, who had worked by Orson Welles on a number or previous films and radio plays, replaced Stravinsky.

From 1976 to 1984, the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt kept revising and adjusting a chamber piece he had composed, a piece he had titled: “If Bach had kept bees…”

On today’s date in 1983 one version of this piece—for harpsichord, electric bass guitar, tape and small chamber ensemble—received its premiere performance at a new music festival in Graz, Austria.

Pärt’s chamber work opens like a minimalist piece, with repeated notes perhaps imitating the buzzing of the bees mentioned in the title. What Part meant by “If Bach had kept bees…” is open to various interpretations, but technically speaking, the piece is a slow transformation of an instrumental humming in the key of B-flat into a Bach-like cadence in the key of B-minor.

Was Pärt thinking of Bach’s famous B-minor Mass? Was the mystic and deeply religious-minded Estonian composer suggesting that bees somehow symbolized a harmonious community of God’s creatures? Or was the title, in English at least, a pun on the shifting key of “BEE-flat” to “BEE-minor?”

In any case, this piece was one of several Pärt wrote around that time, all influenced in one way or another by the music of J.S. Bach.

These Bach-collages, as Pärt called them, were “an attempt to replant a flower in alien surroundings, the problem of the suitability of tissue. If they grow together into one, then the transplantation was the right move.”

On today’s date in 1991, the American Composers Orchestra gave a concert at Carnegie Hall, intended as an 80th birthday celebration of the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness. Hovhaness himself was on hand, and conducted the world premiere performance of his Symphony No. 65.

By the time of this death in the year 2000, Hovhaness had composed 67 symphonies, and certainly ranks as one of the most prolific composers of orchestral music in the 20th century. “I write too much, far too much,” he once wrote to a friend. “This is my insanity.” Even so, performers and audiences seemed to respond to the emotional forthrightness of his music. "I become more and more simple,” Hovhaness explained. “I hate every dishonest note I may have written."

Hovhaness rejected the mid-20th century trends towards complexity and atonality, and instead turned to archaic and Eastern musical models. Many of his works were inspired by Armenian themes, real or imagined.

In reviewing the premiere of his Symphony No. 65, the New York Times critic wrote: “Mr. Hovhaness seems to have used liturgical roots to create his own imaginary Armenia, a music that may exist only in one American’s imagination. Ernest Bloch, a Swiss who spent years in the United States, invented an Israeli style in much the same way.”

This music is from the most famous of all Hovhaness symphonies, his Symphony No. 2, subtitled “Mysterious Mountain,” music premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Houston Symphony in October of 1955.

If, on today’s date in the year 1930, you happened to be flipping through the pages of the New York Times, you would have seen several ads for radios, including one that argued that purchasing a radio was a good investment.

Just one year after the infamous 1929 stock market crash, New Yorkers might have been a little leery of investing in anything, and disposable income for most Americans was severely limited during the Great Depression that followed.

Still, that same October 5th edition of the Times announced that the New York Philharmonic would commence live nation-wide broadcasts of its Sunday afternoon concerts that very day. Music by Weber, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky would be featured, with the visiting German conducting Erich Kleiber leading the orchestra.

And that wasn’t all: the rest of the Philharmonic’s 1930-31 season, led by the orchestra’s new music director, Arturo Toscanini, would also be broadcast live on subsequent Sunday afternoons.

For music lovers, that radio purchase started to look like a pretty good investment after all.

And so, thanks to the Philharmonic broadcasts, in addition to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, radio audiences coast-to-coast were introduced as well to some of the new works of young American composers like Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

In recent years, archive recordings of many of those famous New York Philharmonic broadcasts have even been released as compact disc sets sold to benefit the Philharmonic’s current activities and programs.

On today’s date in 1910, a young Austrian composer had his first major work staged as a ballet-pantomime at the Vienna Court Opera. It was quite a prestigious affair, all in all, with the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit and none other than Franz Josef, the Austrian Emperor, in the audience.

All that was enough to go to any young composer’s head—and the composer in question, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, was very young indeed. He was just 13 when his ballet-pantomime entitled “The Snowman” premiered in Vienna.

Actually, he had written the piano version of “The Snowman” back in 1908, when he was all of 11. Korngold’s teacher, the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, orchestrated the piece for the Vienna Court Opera performance, but it wasn’t very long before little Erich was preparing his own orchestrations, thank you very much.

By his 20s, Korngold was a celebrated through Europe as composer of operas and concert hall works. Korngold settled in Hollywood in the 1930s, as his Jewish heritage made a career in Nazi Europe impossible. His film scores for classic Errol Flynn adventure movies—“SVASH-booo-klers” as Korngold called them in his thick Viennese accent—made him famous in America.

During the final decade of his life, Korngold again devoted his attention to concert works, such as this Violin Concerto from 1947, composed for Jascha Heifetz, which recycled some his movie themes into a popular showpiece for a virtuoso performer.

Korngold died in Hollywood in 1957.

One of the last chamber works of the American composer Aaron Copland received its first performance on today’s date in 1971.

This took place in Philadelphia as a benefit for that city’s Settlement Music School, with Copland himself present for the premiere of his “Duo” for flute and piano. The work was commissioned by friends and students of the late William Kincaid, for many years the principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

By 1971, thorny, complex, and atonal music was the fashion in both Europe and America. Copland, for his part, had composed some challenging orchestral works along these lines as well. His “Duo,” however was unashamedly lyrical.

As Copland put it: “What can you do with a flute in an extended form that would not emphasize its songful nature? Lyricism seems to be built into the flute. Some expressed surprise at the tonal nature of my Duo, considering that my recent works had been in a more severe idiom; however, the style was naturally influenced by the fact that I was composing for Kincaid’s students, not for future generations (although I hoped younger flutists would play my Duo eventually).”

Copland needn’t have worried. As music critic Michael Steinberg put it, reviewing its first performance in Boston: “Copland’s Duo is a lightweight work of a masterful craftsman. It is going to give pleasure to flutists and their audiences for a long time.”

Today we celebrate the birthday of an American composer whose name might not ring a bell, but whose music you might instantly recognize—and with a smile.

Leroy Shield’s name rarely appeared on the credits for the classic “Our Gang” and “Laurel & Hardy” comedies from the 1930s, but his music was used in most of them.

Leroy Shield was born in Waseca, Minnesota, on today’s date in 1893. At five he was already an accomplished pianist and organist, and by 15 a professional arranger, composer, and concert pianist. After completing musical studies in Chicago, he accompanied opera singer Eva Gauthier on American concert tours and pioneered works by then-modernist composers like Ravel, Stravinsky and Schoenberg.

In 1923, he joined the staff of the Victor Talking Machine Company, supervising their East Coast recording sessions. Then in 1930, he was appointed as Victor’s "Musical Director in charge of Hollywood, California, Activities," and it was in this capacity that he wrote and oversaw the recording of music for the famous comedies produced by the Hal Roach Studios.

In 1945, he moved back to New York and became the orchestral contractor for the NBC radio network. He worked closely with conductor Arturo Toscanini, and even traveled with the famous Italian conductor when Toscanini’s NBC Symphony made its cross-country tour in 1950. Leroy Shield retired in 1955, moved to Florida, and died in Fort Lauderdale in 1962.

One of the finest music schools in the world opened its doors in Philadelphia on today’s date in 1924.

The Curtis Institute of Music was founded with a $12 million dollar grant from Mary Louise Curtis Bok. For many decades that initial grant provided full scholarships for all Curtis students. According to Mrs. Bok, “The aim is for quality of work rather than quick, showy results."

From the start, Mrs. Bok assembled a stellar faculty for the new school, including the conductor Leopold Stokowski, who predicted that Curtis "will become the most important musical institution of our country, perhaps of the world."

Distinguished Curtis alumni have included performers like Peter Serkin, Richard Goode, and Hilary Hahn. And here’s an impressive statistic: today Curtis alumni occupy nearly 25% of the principal desk positions in the top five American symphony orchestras.

Curtis also graduated many famous composers as well, including Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, and Ned Rorem.

To help celebrate its 75th anniversary in 1999, the Curtis Institute commissioned a new orchestral work from the American composer Jennifer Higdon, who had joined the school’s faculty. Her “Blue Cathedral” was premiered by the Curtis Symphony in the spring of 2000. Higdon says her music is like “a story that commemorates living and passing through places of knowledge and of sharing—and of that song called life.”

That description seems to fit the Curtis Institute as well.

In operatic history, one of the great examples of the old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” is the career of the French composer Georges Bizet. Bizet died at the age of 36 in 1875, the same year his opera “Carmen” premiered. Now, “Carmen” eventually proved a lasting success and now ranks as one of the great masterworks of French opera—but poor Monsieur Bizet wasn’t around to experience any of that.

Moreover, “Carmen” was preceded by Bizet’s no less than 30 attempts writing a hit opera. Most of these never made it to the stage, and the few that did achieved only a modest success.

The most famous of the “pre-Carmen” operas Bizet penned premiered on today’s date in 1863. It was a Romantic tale set in exotic Ceylon, entitled “Les pêcheurs de perles,” or “The Pearl Fishers.” This was a commission from the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, and a prestigious opportunity for the 20-something composer to showcase his talents.

“The Pearl Fishers” ran for 18 performances in 1863, and, although applauded by its initial audiences, was roundly panned by the press. Only one music critic saw any merit in Bizet’s music, and that critic just happened to be the great French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz.

Even so, Bizet’s “Pearl Fishers” wasn’t revived until long after Bizet’s death, and some 30 years after its premiere. Today, after “Carmen” of course, it’s Bizet’s SECOND most popular opera.