Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1949, the British composer Gerald Finzi conducted the premiere performance of his Clarinet Concerto at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford.

During his lifetime Finzi never achieved the fame of some other 20th-century British composers, but he did—and still does—have admirers. British tenor Mark Padmore wrote a recent appreciation entitled “The quiet man of British music,” which included these lines:

“I want to make a case for taking the time to get to know a composer… whose plumage is discreet and whose song is quiet and subtle. Finzi might be termed one of classical music's wrens. Despite his exotic-sounding surname and mixed Italian, Sephardic and Ashkenazi heritage, Finzi was in many ways an archetypal English gentleman... One of his passions was the saving of old English varieties of apples… [his] music was written slowly and often it would take many years for a piece to reach its final form.”

Finzi died in 1956, aged 55, from Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was concerned his music would be forgotten after his death and added this note to his catalogue of works:

"I like to think that in each generation may be found a few responsive minds… To shake hands with a good friend over the centuries is a pleasant thing, and the affection which an individual may retain after his departure is perhaps the only thing which guarantees an ultimate life to his work."

By coincidence, the year 2000 marked both the arrival of a new millennium and the 250th anniversary of the death of the great German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

The International Bach Academy in Stuttgart decided to mark the occasion with a grand gesture: they commissioned four very different composers to write four new passion settings, one each after the Gospel accounts of the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. A German composer, Wolfgang Rihm, was chosen for the St. Luke Passion; a Russian, Sophia Gubaidulina, for St. John’s; an Argentine, Osvaldo Golijov, for St. Mark’s; and a Chinese composer, Tan Dun, for the Passion according to St. Matthew.

On today’s date in the year 2000, Helmuth Rilling conducted the premiere of Tan Dun’s “Water Passion after St. Matthew.” Tan said he was struck by the references to water in St. Matthew’s gospel, so his setting includes seventeen large illuminated bowls of water, positioned on stage in the form of a cross. These divide the chorus, with three percussionists and a group of additional soloists stationed at the four points of this cross.

In Tan’s “Water Passion,” natural sounds of water mix with a wide range of vocal techniques, including Tuvan throat singing and the stylized virtuosity of Peking Opera.

Critical reaction covered an equally wide range: some called Tan Dun’s “Water Passion” an important new work, others panned it as pretentious flim-flam.

In Pittsburgh on today’s date in 1996, the Latin-American Quartet of Mexico gave the premiere of the Third String Quartet of American composer David Stock. Stock is probably best known for his orchestral music: He was composer-in-residence with both the Pittsburgh and Seattle Symphonies, writing large-scale works for those ensembles, and also for the New York Philharmonic.

But Stock wrote several string quartets as well. His first was a student work that premiered in Paris. The second is subtitled “Speaking Extravagantly” after a quote by Charles Ives that, “Perhaps music is the art of speaking extravagantly.”

Stock’s Third Quartet is a more personal work: its Scherzo movement, concludes with a set of variations on “Happy Birthday”—a tribute to the composer’s wife on the occasion of her 50th.

In addition to composing and teaching, Stock was an advocate for other composers’ works. For 23 years, Stock served as director of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and as host of a weekly radio series on WQED in that city.

And speaking of radio, in 2001 Stock conducted the Charlottesville Symphony in the first performance of an orchestral piece entitled “Drive Time,” music Stock described as “an updated version of the music usually programmed on Public Radio during the morning and evening drive time slots, hence the title."

Today we note the birthday anniversary of the American composer and teacher Wayne Barlow, who was born in Elyria, Ohio, on today’s date in 1912, and died in Rochester, New York, on December 17, 1996.

As a composer, Barlow is mostly remembered for a single work: a rhapsody for oboe and strings entitled “The Winter’s Past.” It was premiered at the Eastman School of Music in 1938 by the Rochester Civic Orchestra under the direction of another noted American composer, Howard Hanson, with Eastman faculty oboist Robert Sprenkle as the soloist.

Barlow received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from Eastman and taught there himself for over 40 years, eventually becoming chairman of the composition department, director of the school’s electronic music studio, and dean of graduate studies.

Barlow also served as organist and choirmaster at two churches in Rochester, and composed a set of hymn voluntaries for organ, covering the church year.

An exceptionally well-rounded musician himself, Wayne Barlow hoped his students would be similarly well-versed in more than just one musical specialty. Barlow once said, “To me music is rather indivisible—which is to say, while it is impossible to know all about everything involved in the art of music, it is just as impossible to be a totally successful teacher, or composer, or musicologist, or theorist, or performer, or conductor without knowing something about how ALL these pieces of the art fit together.”

Today in 1980, “Satyagraha,” a new opera by the American composer Philip Glass, had its premiere in Rotterdam by the Netherlands Opera.

Four years earlier, in 1976, Glass’s first big opera, “Einstein on the Beach,” had scored a big hit not only in Avignon, France, where it had premiered, but also at a special, non-subscription performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

But “Einstein” had been written for Glass’s own electronic keyboard ensemble, while the new opera “Satyagraha” was written for the more traditional opera pit orchestra of strings, winds and brass… with an electric organ and synthesizer thrown in for good measure. THAT was, in some ways, a new language for Glass to learn.

And speaking of new languages, for opera singers used to singing in Italian, French or German, the libretto for “Satyagraha,” crafted by Glass and Constance DeJong, was to be sung in ancient Sanskrit, based on texts from Bhagavad-Gita.

"Satyagraha" is a Sanskrit word meaning "truth force." While the text is ancient, the story of the opera is set in modern times, and deals with Mahatma Gandhi's early years in South Africa and his development of non-violent protest as a political tool.

“Satyagraha” is the second of three operas that form a kind of trilogy about men who changed the world: Einstein, Gandhi, and the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten.

On today’s date in 1996, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of this music, a five-minute toccata for orchestra entitled “Lost and Found.” Its composer was Steve Mackey, an American whose music Tilson Thomas has championed and recorded. Mackey writes:

“On more than one occasion Michael has used the word ‘wacky’ to describe my music. Composers usually blanch at such attributions—nobody wants to be captured in a single word—but I can live with ‘wacky.’ It is not a common adjective, does not end with ‘ism,’ and clearly the rhyme with my last name personalizes it. My music tends to explore fringe modes of consciousness rather than brand-name emotion or logical thought.”

Mackey also avoids conventional titles for his works. His Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra is entitled “Tuck and Roll,” and among his other orchestral works can be found “Banana/Dump Truck” and “Eating Greens.” Mackey says:

“Greater thinkers than I have stumbled at the task of explaining humor, but my best guess, as it pertains to my music, is that it lies in the relationship of the music to the physical world. I think a lot about momentum, inertia, and even gravity. Allowing the music to get stuck and tip over, lurch headlong, tumble with limbs akimbo as well as to move fluidly gives it a ‘road runner’ cartoon kind of physicality, a fantasy, but not completely unhinged from the physical world.”

Today in 1806, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote to his publishers Breitkopf and Härtel: “You may have at once 3 new string quartets.” Beethoven had written this music on commission from the wealthy Russian ambassador to Vienna, Count Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky.

Beethoven was stretching the truth a bit when he told his publisher they could have the quartets “at once,” since as per the Count’s commission, Razumovsky had exclusive rights to the music for a full year, and the ink was still wet. But then, Beethoven had also promised the Count that he’d weave authentic Russian melodies in all three quartets, but ended up doing so in just two of them.

Today, these “Razumovsky” Quartets rank among Beethoven’s most popular chamber works, but initially they were not well received. When shown the music prior to publication, a professional Viennese quartet assumed Beethoven was playing a practical joke on them. “Crazy music” and a “patchwork by a madman” were some of the comments of others who purchased the music. “Pity to waste the money,” was a common reaction.

The second movement of the first Quartet, with its cello solo on just one note, provoked particular disdain from performers and audiences alike.

Muzio Clementi, who had seen these quartets in manuscript, remarked to Beethoven, “Surely you don’t consider these works to be music!” to which Beethoven replied, “Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age.”

Imagine a crisp, blue Northern sky, a Canadian Mountie in a bright red tunic, and, what else—an elaborately coiffed operatic soprano singing in the middle of the woods. Yes, it was on today’s date in 1924, at the Imperial Theater in New York, that “The Indian Love Call” made its debut as part of a musical entitled “Rose-Marie,” with tunes provided by an American composer of Bohemian birth named Rudolf Friml.

This one-time Dvorak pupil was born in Prague in 1879. He scored such a hit when he debuted his own Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall in 1904 that he decided to make America his home. His early years as an American composer were pretty rough, but by 1912, “The Firefly,” his first musical on Broadway, was a great success.

Friml followed this with a string of increasingly popular New York shows. “Rose-Marie” from 1924 and “The Vagabond King” from 1925 proved to be the most lucrative, but by the mid-1930s Friml’s old-world musical style was judged too old-fashioned for the Broadway of George Gershwin and Cole Porter.

Ironically, it was during the 30s that Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald films based on Friml musicals broke box office records. These campy films are now treasured precisely for their sweet, if rather affected, “period” flavor. Before retirement, Friml worked for the film industry and died in Hollywood in 1972, at the age of 92.

At a time when immigrants of many lands were moving into the American melting pot, composers in Europe were celebrating their own diversity, tapping into their native folk music for inspiration and musical themes as their own nation-states struggled for independence. This trend has continued in our own time with composers in the Pacific Rim and Middle East.

Take this music, written for the modern flute and cello, two traditional European instruments, and influenced by the folk-music of Persia. The performers are asked at times to play AND sing simultaneously into their instruments. For the flute, this results in overtones and a timbre similar to the Persian bamboo flute… and the cellist, by sharply plucking some strings, or striking them with the wooden part of his bow, also imitates Persian percussion instruments.

The composer of this Folk Song Suite, based on real and imagines Persian themes, is Reza Vali. He was born in Ghazvin, Iran, on today’s date in 1952, and began his musical studies at the Conservatory of Music in Teheran. In 1972, Reza Vali travelled to Austria to study at the Vienna Academy of Music. From Austria, he came to the United States, earning his doctorate in music theory and composition from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985, and subsequently joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University in that city.

On today’s date in 1853, the Viennese Theatrical News printed this notice: “At the big ball at Unger’s Casino Josef Strauss performed his new waltz, entitled ‘The First and the Last.’ The waltz had to be repeated no less than six times.”

That occasion marked the debut of Josef Strauss the composer, and occurred just a few weeks after the debut of Josef Strauss the conductor.

Josef was the younger brother of the popular waltz king, Johann Strauss, Jr., and initially embarked on a career as a talented architect, mathematician and civil engineer. In fact, Josef was determined to stay well away from the family’s musical empire. Josef had designed the waterworks for an Austrian town, devised a new table of logarithms for secondary school use, and even invented a new street cleaning machine, which was tested and approved by the Vienna City Council.

And then, one night, his brother Johann collapsed from overwork and dutifully Josef took over directing the family orchestra. Since it was assumed that all the Strauss family would come up with original music, Josef even tried his hand at composing.

As the title suggests, he honestly intended it to be a “one off”, hence its title “The first AND the last.” Well, it proved so popular that Josef Strauss followed it with another waltz, entitled “The First AFTER the Last.”

Josef Strauss must have heaved a sigh and bowed to destiny. He bid his engineering and scientific career adieu, and joined the family music concern.