Composers Datebook

August may seem an unlikely time for Advent music, liturgically speaking, but it was on today’s date in 1992 that a remarkable work entitled “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel” received its premiere at Royal Albert Hall in London. This was during the 1992 Proms at a concert by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra showcasing the talents of the virtuoso Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

The music with the Advent title was a concerto for percussion and orchestra by the Scottish composer James MacMillan, who explained that the work was started on the first Sunday of Advent in 1991, and completed on Easter Sunday the following year, and based on the ancient Advent Latin plainsong “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel” or, in its more familiar English translation: “O come, o come Emmanuel.”

Many of the orchestral works of James Macmillan are based on religious or liturgical themes, a reflection of the Scottish composer’s own deep Catholic faith, and his percussion concerto “Veni, Veni Emmanuel” was no exception.

“There's very strong and powerful analogies between religion and music,” says MacMillan. “And between music and spirituality… it's because of those connections that I'm determined to explore what the connections might be and for that reason I'm entirely at ease with giving space in my music for these considerations.”

Apparently percussions, orchestras, and audiences are willing to spend some time with MacMillan’s musical considerations. “Veni, Veni Emmanuel” has been performed well over 300 times since its 1992 premiere.

Today’s we tackle a vexing P.C. issue—not “political correctness,” mind you, but “pronunciation correctness,” a passionate matter for classical radio announcers, of course. Now there was a French composer who lived from 1912 to 1997 whose first name was Jean and whose last name was spelled “F-R-A-N- C cedilla-A-I-X.”

Most people today pronounce his name “Jean Frahn-SAY,” which has come to be the generally accepted and recognized pronunciation. The problem is that the composer’s family and close friends pronounced it “Frahn-SEX.”

Years ago, an announcer at a station in New York wrote the composer himself requesting the definitive P.C. answer, and was told, yes, technically it was “Frahn-SEX,” but that he was used to being called "Frahn-SAY" and had given up correcting people, joking that perhaps “Frahn-SAY” sounded more French, or maybe people just didn’t want to say “SEX” out loud.

This witty French composer grew up in musical family in Les Mans and claimed that by the age of twelve, he knew all the piano music from Scarlatti to Ravel. At eighteen, he won the First Prize in Piano from the Paris Conservatory and studied composition with Nadia Boulanger, the legendary teacher of many American composers ranging from Copland to Philip Glass.

Both Jean Frahn-SEX and Jean Frahn-SAY were very prolific composers of works large and small, including this delightful Symphony in G Major, which premiered on today’s date in 1953 at the summer music festival in La Jolla, California.

On today’s date in 1976, the American composer David Del Tredici conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of a work he called “Illustrated Alice.”

The music was subtitled “Two Scenes from Wonderland.” These two scenes would eventually form bookend movements of a much longer “Alice Symphony,” a work which received its first complete performance 15 years later in August of 1991 at the Tangle wood Festival in Massachusetts.

Back in 1968, Del Tredici had become fascinated with the works of Lewis Carroll, whose “Alice in Wonderland” books have captivated both children and adults for generations. To say that Del Tredici was captivated would be something of an understatement: he devoted 30 years of his career to setting Carroll’s creation to music in a series of increasingly tonal works—something that must have come as a surprise to those familiar with his earlier atonal music.

“I couldn’t imagine setting a Carroll text to dissonant music,” explained Del Tredici. “Dissonant music can’t possibly project the mood that surrounds Carroll’s writings. In order to create that mood I had to rethink everything I had done up to that time. I had to think about tonality again, not because I was trying to bring back the music of an older period, but because my musical imagination had seized upon that language.”

Today’s date marks the birthday anniversary of a 20th century composer who was born in Spain, came of age in Cuba, and, in his later years, was a resident of the United States.

His name was Julián Orbón, who was born in Avilés, Spain, on today’s date in 1925 and died in Miami Beach on May 20, 1991.

Orbón began composing at an early age, came to Cuba with his family when he was 10, and by his twenties was already quite active as a music critic, essayist and pianist at concerts of contemporary Cuban music. He was a member of Grupo de Renovación Musical, or “The Group for Musical Renewal.” In 1946 he studied with Copland at Tanglewood, and returned home to serve as director of the Orbón Conservatory in Havana, a music school founded by his father.

After the Cuban revolution, Orbón taught first at the National Conservatory in Mexico City, and then, after settling in the United States in 1964, at a number of American schools, including Washington University, Barnard College and the Hispanic Institute at Columbia.

Revered as a teacher, Orbón was also a successful and award-winning composer. Many of his works are infused with the rhythms and colors of Cuban music and traditions.

Not many 19th century composers chose their parents as wisely as Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. Papa Mendelssohn was a wealthy banker in Berlin, and his musically gifted children grew up in a mansion where Sunday afternoon chamber music concerts were regular events. Felix and Fanny would perform their own pieces at the piano, and if young Felix had composed a little symphony for strings, why, it was a simple matter for Papa to hire the necessary musicians and have it performed.

It was an idyllic situation for any young composer, and certainly young Felix put his good fortune to good use. In July of 1826, when he was 17, Felix wrote to a friend: “I have grown accustomed to composing in our garden. Today or tomorrow I am going to dream there ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’”

Mendelssohn had been reading a German translation of Shakespeare’s comedy, and on today’s date in 1826, completed a concert overture to that play. Felix and Fanny gave the first performance in a two-piano version at one of the family soirees, and a private orchestral reading at the mansion followed a few months later.

Mendelssohn intended his piece to represent the whole of the drama in miniature: “At the end,” he wrote, “after everything has been satisfactorily settled and the principal players have joyously left the stage, the elves and fairies bless the house, and disappear with the dawn. So the play ends, and my overture, too.”

Today’s date marks a “good news, bad news” anniversary in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach.

On today’s date in 1717, Bach was appointed as the new Capellmeister at the Princely Court of Leopold of Coethen. Since the young prince was an avid music-lover, and offering Bach a much higher salary than his present one, that counts as “good news.”

The “bad news” related to Bach’s previous employer in 1717, namely the Duke of Weimar, who was not exactly pleased that Bach had accepted a new job offer. The Duke, in fact, flatly refused to let him go. Real or imagined court intrigue in Weimar complicated the matter, and the Prince’s “poaching” of Bach might have been perceived as just another indirect slap at the Duke maneuvered by a long-standing family feud.

The upshot was that Bach was put on the Prince’s payroll effective in August of 1717, but the Duke didn’t accept Bach’s resignation until five months later, and then only after throwing Bach in jail for almost a month to teach him a lesson, or, as the court secretary put it, “for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal.”

In an age when Dukes and Princes could do as they pleased, it appears giving two weeks’ notice was a tad more complicated than it is today!

As a public service, here’s a reminder for those of you who tend to forget your wedding anniversary. If you’re not sure when it is, maybe now would be a good time to check… before it’s too late!

Chances are that Wolfgang Mozart didn’t forget his wedding anniversary, since it was over his father’s strenuous and repeated objections that he finally married Constanza Weber at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna on today’s date in 1782.

Having decided on a date, Mozart had written to his obstinate father back in Salzburg asking for his blessing. As luck would have it, the letter from Papa didn’t arrive until two days after the wedding. The elder Mozart remained unimpressed with his son’s choice, but, bowing to the inevitable, gave his grudging consent.

“I knew I could count on you,” wrote Mozart in reply. “Now my dear Constanza is looking forward to traveling to Salzburg, and I wager you’ll rejoice in my happiness once you get to know her!”

Well, that might have been a bit of exaggeration… In any case, Mozart’s unfinished Mass in c minor was written as a thanks offering to both Almighty God in heaven and as a peace offering to Papa Leopold back in Salzburg. Portions of it were performed in Salzburg during the young couple’s first visit the following year, with soprano Constanza singing the florid soprano part and Mozart himself conducting.

In the summer of 1941, the winds of war hadn’t yet blown to Pearl Harbor, the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn, and all was pretty much right with the world as we knew it. The Dodgers were doing very well—so well that they would eventually win the pennant, only to lose the World Series to the hated Yankees that October. But in August of ‘41, the ignominious defeat was still a few months off, and Brooklyn fans were understandably optimistic.

One of them was the American composer Robert Russell Bennett, whose “Symphony in D” premiered on August 4th of that year. The composer let it be known that the “D” stood for “Dodgers.”

Bennett’s “Dodgers’ Symphony” was performed but never published. We’re not sure if the Dodger’s eventual defeat had anything to do with that, but let the record state the Dodgers eventually did beat the Yankees in the 1955 World Series.

Unfortunately, two years after that victory, the Dodgers' owner, Walter O’Malley, moved the team to Los Angeles. At the time, many in Brooklyn agreed with two sports columnists when they named the three most evil men of the 20th century as "Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O'Malley."

Another composer and avid baseball fan was John Philip Sousa. Sousa’s march “The National Game” was composed in 1925 at the request of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, major league baseball’s first high commissioner.

In his march, Sousa includes some interesting percussive effects involving, what else, a baseball bat!

When grandma turns 90, you can bet by her age she’s gotten just about everything imaginable as a birthday gift. That was the quandary facing the Prince of Wales in 1990, when his granny, Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England—or “The Queen Mum” as just about everybody called her—was about to celebrate her 90th.

Prince Charles writes: “The idea for a concert came to me when I was trying to think of an original birthday present for my grandmother. It suddenly struck me that here was a wonderful reason for commissioning some new music to celebrate a very special occasion.”

Prince Charles liked the music that the Scottish composer Patrick Doyle had written for Kenneth Branagh’s film of Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” so Doyle was asked to write a song cycle. The Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich heard about the planned birthday concert, and for his part commissioned and offered to play a “Romanza” for cello and small orchestra by the British composer David Matthews. The Swiss conductor and new music impresario Paul Sacher commissioned a third new work, a suite for solo violin and orchestra from the British composer Patrick Gowers.

All three pieces were played at a gala concert by the English Chamber Orchestra in the Ballroom of Buckingham Palace on today’s date in 1990, two days before the Queen Mum’s 90th birthday.

For many professional musicians, summertime is spent away from home at one or more summer music camps and festivals. And if the camp or festival just happens to in a gorgeous mountain or lakeside setting, well, so much the better.

Since 1987, world-class musicians and ensembles have made the climb to scenic Vail, Colorado, at this time of year for the Bravo! Music Festival. And on today’s date in 1993, it was at the Bravo! Festival that this new Concerto for Horn and Strings by the American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich received its premiere.

The concerto was a triple commission from the Rochester Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the New York-based French horn virtuoso David Jolley, who was the soloist for the Vail premiere. Zwilich writes:

“While I think of the solo horn as a heroic figure, I enjoyed the interplay and dialogue between horn and strings and allowed the character and nature of the horn to influence the strings and visa-versa… For me, the combination of solo horn and string orchestra is rich and evocative, as is the unique nature of the horn: its warmth and color, its dramatic legato as well as it pungent staccato, the sheer breadth of its sound.”