Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1931, the Russian-born American composer Nicolas Slonimsky was in Paris, conducting the second of two concerts of modern music from the Americas, both bankrolled by a retired insurance executive named Charles Ives.

While the first of these concerts concentrated on symphonic works, the second showcased chamber pieces by Latin American composers like Pedro Sanjuan, Carlos Chavez, and Alejandro Caturla, as well as works by the Franco-American composers Carlos Salzedo and Edgard Varese. North America was represented by the European premiere of Wallingford Riegger’s “Three Canons” for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon.

Normally, chamber music for just four players doesn’t require the services of a conductor, but in this case Slonimsky did beat time for the Parisian wind players hired for the gig.

As Slonimsky put it, “Some instrumental parts were written in 5/8 and others in 2/8. I started beating time in 5/8, whereupon the binary musicians began to gesticulate at me to show their discomfort. What was I to do? OK, I said, I will conduct 5/8 with my right hand and 2/8 with my left. I was so delighted with my newly found ambidextrous technique that I applied it in other pieces as well, notably in the second movement of Ives’ Three Place in New England, played on the first of the two Parisian concerts. Someone quipped that my conducting was evangelical, for my right hand knew not what my left hand was doing.”

The setting was German-occupied Paris, July 10th, 1941, for the premiere of Francis Poulenc’s “Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani,” with the great French organist Maurice Durufle as the soloist.

It’s easy to assume that the dark emotional tone of the piece was due to the Occupation, but the Concerto actually dates from the pre-War years: It was a 1936 commission from the American-born Princess Edmond de Polignac, heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune. In 1936, Poulenc had lost a close friend in a particularly gruesome car crash, prompting the composer, a lapsed Catholic, to turn to his childhood faith for solace. Poulenc may have been in a serious frame, but even so hadn’t lost his sense of humor. Here’s what he wrote the Princess, warning her not to expect a giddy, light-hearted piece like his previous Concerto for Two Pianos:

“Your Organ Concerto has given me a lot of trouble, but I hope that you will like it. It is not the amusing Poulenc, but more like Poulenc en route to the cloisters, very 15th century, as it were. I have grown into a stoutish monk, somewhat dissolute, but tended by an excellent cook.”

For his part, Poulenc cooked up a minor-key Concerto with echoes of ancient and contemporary music. Perhaps because of its ambiguous emotional tone, it was rather coolly received at it initial performances. Over time, however, Poulenc’s Organ Concerto has come to be regarded as one of his finest works.

Contemporary composers may bemoan the fact that their newly-composed opera or concerto might languish unperformed for years. “Haydn was lucky,” they whine, “His stuff got played right away!”

Well, it is true that Haydn did have his own orchestra at Prince Esterhazy’s estate, and they played his music while the ink on the scores was still wet. But even Papa Haydn had to wait for a premiere on occasion—in two instances, for a very, very long time.

Consider the last opera that Haydn wrote, entitled L'anima del filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice—or, in plain English, The Soul of the Philosopher, or Orpheus and Euridice. This was supposed to premiere in 1791 at the King's Theatre in London. But a spat between the Prince of Wales and his pop, King George III, meant the performance was off. The opera was eventually staged a mere 160 years later—on today’s date in 1951, at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, Italy, with a cast including Maria Callas and Boris Christoff, led by the legendary German conductor Erich Kleiber.

And the public premiere of a Cello Concerto in C, a work some think Haydn wrote at Esterhazy in the 1760s, took place in the 1960s. Haydn’s score was presumed lost until 1961, when it was discovered at the Prague National Museum and finally played by cellist Milos Sádlo and the Czech Radio Symphony, led by Sir Charles Mackerras, on May 19, 1962.

At London’s Covent Garden Opera on today’s date in 1953, the lavish costumes on stage were rivaled by the equally lavish attire of the theatre’s specially-invited audience, which consisted of medal and jewel-bedecked diplomats and her Royal Highness, the newly-crowned Queen of England. The occasion was the premiere of a new opera by Benjamin Britten, staged as part of the festivities surrounding the recent coronation of Elizabeth II.

The subject of Britten’s new opera was Elizabeth I, Queen of England during the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the rise of William Shakespeare. During her lifetime, 16th century Tudor propagandists have started what we now would call a “personality cult” around “Good Queen Bess,” the virgin queen, or “Gloriana,” as she was dubbed by poets and musicians of the day.

Britten’s opera, entitled “Gloriana,” was expected to follow the party line, but instead presented a gritty tragedy: the elderly Elizabeth I torn between illicit love for a man who betrayed the State and her duty to execute him. The depiction of royal hanky-panky resulted in the comedy team of Flanders and Swann renaming Britten’s opera “Orgy and Bess,” and one review questioned whether this was really “Music Fit for a Queen.”

One Conservative MP wrote that Britten’s message seemed to be: “Ugliness is truth, and truth is ugliness.” Britten, for his part, privately called the first night audience a bunch of “stuck pigs.” Even so, it was decades before Britten’s “Gloriana” would be appraised on its own merits apart from the political context of its disastrous 1953 premiere.

Boston-born American composer Alice Parker is one of the most respected figures in the world of choral music. A Juilliard graduate, she studied with the legendary choral conductor Robert Shaw and collaborated with him in a series of folk-song arrangements that are performed by choruses all over the world.

Parker was approached by the American Composers Forum to write a new work for their “Choral Quest” series specially designed for middle school children. Parker was intrigued by the challenge of writing for that age group, realizing that many scores written for elementary schools would be too easy for middle schoolers, but works written for high school choirs might be too difficult. Also, parts written for middle school boys would have to accommodate voices in the process of changing from treble to tenor, baritone, and bass.

Parker collaborated with students from the Amherst Regional Middle School Choir in her home state, and found some Native American texts that intrigued her, including one that began “What I am, I must become.” That text seemed perfect, since, as Parker put it, “Children that age have so much ‘becoming’ to do… what they don’t realize—yet—is that is true for all of us, all of our lives!”

That text became the first of a three-part suite entitled “Dancing Songs,” premiered by the Amherst Regional Middle School Choir and their director David Ranen on today’s date in 2011.

Today marks the birthday of Vincent Persichetti, one of the most hard-working and productive American composers of the 20th century.

Persichetti was born in Philadelphia on June 6th in 1915, and died in that city 72 years later. During a professional career that spanned half a century, he wrote an influential book on modern compositional techniques and taught at and served as director of some of America’s finest music schools. Philip Glass and Peter Schickele were among his many composition students.

Perischetti composed an impressive body of original works, including 25 instrumental pieces he entitled “Parables,” and 15 entitled “Serenades,” some written for unconventional combinations of instruments like trombone, viola, and cello.

He also composed 14 pieces for wind band, and in its 1987 Persichetti obituary, The New York Times noted, “Mr. Persichetti's works for band—an ensemble that many 20th-century composers have neglected—provided an engaging, sophisticated introduction to contemporary music for thousands of young musicians.”

Persichetti often described his music as being a combination of “grit” and “grazioso,” and claimed that his car proved a good place to compose music. It’s said that Persichetti often taped music paper to his steering wheel in case he had a good idea while on the road.

These days, he’d be pulled over and get a hefty ticket for distracted driving, of course.

Merriam-Webster’s defines a “gazebo” as “a freestanding roofed structure usually open on the sides,” and suggests the word’s etymology might derive from the combination of the word “gaze” plus the Latin verb ending “ebo” resulting in “gaze-ebo” or “I shall gaze.”

To most Americans, however, “gazebo” conjures up warm, summer days spent out-of-doors: If you imagine yourself inside a gazebo, you’re probably enjoying a cool beverage while gazing out at the greenery—or, if you fancy yourself outside one, you’re probably seated in a lawn chair, gazing at a group of gazebo-sheltered band musicians playing a pops concert for your entertainment.

In the early 1970’s, the American composer John Corigliano wrote a series of whimsical four-hand piano dances he dedicated to certain of his pianist friends, and then later arranged these pieces for concert band, entitling the resulting suite “Gazebo Dances. “

“The title,” explained Corigliano, “was suggested by the pavilions often seen on village greens in towns throughout the countryside, where public band concerts are given in the summer. The delights of that sort of entertainment are portrayed in this set of dances, which begins with a Rossini-like Overture, followed by a rather peg-legged Waltz, a long-lined Adagio, and a bouncy Tarantella.”

The concert band version of Corigliano’s “Gazebo Dances” was first performed in Indiana on today’s date in 1973, by the University of Evansville Wind Ensemble, with Robert Bailey conducting.

Today’s date marks the birthday of the American composer and jazz saxophonist Oliver Nelson, who was born in St. Louis on June 4, 1932, and died of a heart attack at age 43 in Los Angeles.

Oliver Nelson packed a lot of music-making into a tragically short lifetime. He started his professional career playing with jazz bands in St. Louis when he was just 16. Even then, he was arranging and composing original jazz charts. After a stint in the Navy, Nelson studied composition at universities in Missouri and Washington DC, and privately in New York with Elliot Carter. As a sax player, Nelson performed with jazz greats of the 50s and 60s like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones, but increasingly was more in demand as a composer and arranger.

In 1961, he released a jazz album entitled “The Blues and the Abstract Truth,” six original compositions played by an all-star septet that included Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans, and Freddie Hubbard. But Nelson also worked with symphony orchestras, writing concert hall and chamber works, including this Saxophone Sonata, played here in an arrangement for clarinet and piano.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1967, he wrote scores for television series like "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "Ironside." It was a lucrative but hectic lifestyle, and its relentless pace may have contributed to his fatal heart attack in 1975.

Jazz fans have seen to it that Oliver Nelson’s classic jazz LPs from the 1960s have stayed in print, but his concert and chamber works still await a significant revival.

Prize-fighters and at least one famous conductor of the Metropolitan Opera are fond of their towels. After all, how can you see where to deliver a right jab or cue the trombones when there’s all this sweat running down your face?

The Chinese composer Tan Dun thoughtfully threw in the towel as part of the equipment required for performances of his Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra. The towel is there so the percussionist can dry his or her hands—because the instruments required to perform Tan’s concerto include two large basins of water, a soda bottle, a sieve, a water shaker, and various types of water drums and gongs.

This Concerto was a Millennium Commission from the New York Philharmonic, whose percussionist Christopher Lamb gave the premiere performance with the Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall in New York on today’s date in 1999. Tan dedicated his score to the memory of Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, who died in 1996. Like Takemitsu, Tan’s music uses Eastern and Western techniques and sensibilities to create a new synthesis of sounds.

As a young man in China, Tan Dun conducted a village musical ensemble, and for a time acted as a string player and arranger for a provincial Peking opera troupe. In 1978, he studied at the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and in the 1980s came to New York for further study at Columbia University. His music began to attract worldwide attention during the 1990s, and his score for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” won an Academy Award in 2000.

On today’s date in 1953, the Coronation of Elizabeth II was one of the most spectacular public events of the decade. Thousands crowded her route to and from London’s Westminster Abbey, and at the Queen's own request the ceremony was televised live on the BBC.

For the event, the British composer William Walton was asked to write two new pieces. The first was a “Coronation Te Deum.” This was, in fact, a work that Walton had begun almost a decade earlier for a quite different occasion, namely the opening night of the 1944 London Proms. That choral piece got shifted to a back-burner after Walton was asked to work on Lawrence Olivier’s wartime film of Shakespeare’s “Henry V.”

For the new Queen’s Coronation, Walton returned to his abandoned score, writing to friends, “I’ve got cracking on the Te Deum. Lots of counter-tenors and little boys Holy-holying, not to mention all the Queen’s Trumpeters and side drum. You will like it, I think, and I hope He will too”—“He” was capitalized, so presumably Walton was referring to either the Deity… or Winston Churchill, perhaps.

Walton was also asked to compose a “Coronation March,” which he entitled “Orb and Sceptre” after a line, coincidentally, from “Henry V.” Walton’s March may have seemed a bit jazzy to the more conservative audiences of the day, but London was in a celebratory mood in 1953, and one critic’s assessment, slipping into Cockney slang, suggests, “It sounds like a right royal knees-up!”