Composers Datebook

Today is Earth Day—an annual event started in 1970 by then-Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin as an environmental teach-in.

Senator Nelson wasn’t the only one concerned back then, either: the Czech-born composer Karel Husa had noticed dead fish floating on a lake located near a power plant. “The plant was producing hot thermal pollution which in turn killed all those fish,” Husa recalled. “In addition, I noticed more beer cans in the water and algae in greater quantities.”

A wind band commission provided Husa with an opportunity to create a work he called “Apotheosis of This Earth.” In explaining its title, Husa wrote:

“Man’s brutal possession and misuse of nature’s beauty—if continued at today’s reckless speed—can only lead to catastrophe. The composer hopes that the destruction of this beautiful earth can be stopped, so that the tragedy of destruction—musically projected here in the second movement—and the desolation of its aftermath—the “postscript” of this work—can exist only as fantasy, never to become reality.”

“Apotheosis of this Earth” was commissioned by the Michigan School Band and Orchestral Association, and its premiere performance took place on April 1, 1970, with Husa himself conducting the University of Michigan Symphony Band at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. It proved a powerful piece of music.

“As the Postscript finished,” recalled the composer, “I saw that the students in the band were somehow moved—there were even some tears.”

OK -- say you were paid to listen to and promote hundreds of new classical recordings every month and travel the world to broker new deals for one of the largest recorded music companies of our day.

The question is, “What would you do in your spare time?”

Well, if you’re a composer, the answer is easy: write your own music, of course.

That’s the case for Sean Hickey, whose “day job” is being the Senior Vice-President for Sales and Business Development at Naxos of America, but who also finds time to create his own chamber and orchestral works.

On today’s date in 2007, for example, his Clarinet Concerto received its premiere performance at Symphony Space in New York City, with David Gould as soloist with the Metro Chamber Orchestra. It’s gone on to be his most-performed orchestra work, and, in keeping with Hickey’s globe-trotting, has been recorded in the Russian Federation by another virtuoso clarinetist, Alexander Fiterstein with the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony. The work also incorporates fragments of folk tunes from Scotland as part of the creative mix.

“I wanted to compose a work in traditional three-movement concerto form,” says Hickey, “where form and virtuosity synergize and complement one another.”

And why those Scottish themes? “They have a timeless quality of most great folk music, “says Hickey. “In the concerto’s cadenza, a fiddle tune leads headlong into a rapturous close.”

Religious music, like the religious experience itself, comes in all shapes, forms, moods, and colors.

On today’s date in the year 2002, for example, this setting of the Song of Isaiah had its premiere performance at the Milwaukee Art Museum during a concert by the Present Music ensemble. The composer of the new setting was a native of Milwaukee named Michael Torke, who writes:

“I have always considered that a central religious experience is one of uplifting joy, as opposed to other spiritual expressions of pleading, suffering, atonement, or wrath. It is that state of joy and thanksgiving I am trying to express.”

Song of Isaiah was commissioned for Present Music's 20th anniversary, and to honor the Archbishop Rembert Weakland. The piece is scored for a singer, clarinet, bass clarinet, string quintet, piano, vibraphone, and a percussionist who plays the rhythmic underpinning with a tambourine, claves, and in the center of the piece, a triangle.

“This spirited rhythm,” writes Torke, “embodies slower embedded forms that are etched out melodically by the clarinets in octaves, and also by the strings and piano in octaves. In essence, there are no climaxes, as I wish the music to be a meditation, though the feeling is quite lively. Nine sections of the piece serve as episodic variations, and explore different small chunks of text from the Book of Isaiah. The form is a mirror: the first and ninth sections relate, as do the second and eighth, and so on; the fifth section (using the triangle) is in the exact center.”

According to Webster’s Dictionary, a concerto is “a piece for one or more soloists and orchestra with three contrasting movements.” And if you ask the average Classical Music Lover to describe a Violin Concerto, it’s likely he or she will think of the big 19th century Romantic concertos by Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, works in which there seems to be a kind of dramatic struggle between soloist and orchestra.

But on today’s date in 2003, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and its concertmaster Stephen Copes premiered a Violin Concerto that didn’t quite fit that mold. For starters, it had FOUR movements, and this Violin Concerto No. 2 of American composer George Tsontakis might be described as more “democratic” than Romantic—meaning the solo violinist seems to invite the other members of the orchestra to join in the fun, rather than hogging all the show. This concerto is more like a friendly, playful game than a life-and-death contest, and Tsontakis even titles his second movement “Gioco” or “Games.”

And, speaking of games, this new Concerto proved a winner, being selected for the prestigious 2005 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Even so, George Tsontakis confesses to being a little shy when sitting in the audience as his music is played, knowing full well, he says, that most people came to hear the Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, and not him.

It was on today’s date in 1944 that the Jerome Robbins-Leonard Bernstein ballet “Fancy Free” was first danced by the Ballet Theater at the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. It was a big hit. Bernstein himself conducted, and alongside Robbins and set designer Oliver Smith, took some 20 curtain calls.

“The ballet is strictly wartime America, 1944,” wrote Bernstein, “The curtain rises on a street corner with a lamp post, a side-street bar, and New York skyscrapers making a dizzying backdrop. Three sailors explode onto the stage. They are on 24-hour shore leave in the city and on the prowl for girls. The tale of how they meet first one, then a second girl, and how they fight over them, lose them, and in the end take off after still a third, is the story of the ballet.”

In a curious parallel to the stage action described by Bernstein, the ballet had been first pitched to composer Morton Gould, who said he was too busy, then to Vincent Persichetti, who in turn suggested Bernstein as a third, and perhaps better choice to produce a more hip, jazzy, and danceable score.

Putting music, choreography and set designs together proved a logistical challenge, as Bernstein was working on the East Coast, Robbins was on tour elsewhere in the country, and Smith was in Mexico. Bernstein made piano four-hand recordings as he completed each section of the music, and mailed these off to his partners. His piano-bench partner for those work-in-progress recordings, by the way, was none other than Aaron Copland.

The British composer Gustav Holst lived and worked in a West London neighborhood called Hammersmith for many years—and in 1930, Holst gave that name to a work for wind band he wrote on commission from the BBC.

“Hammersmith” opens with a "Prelude" representing the river Thames, which, said Holst, "goes on its way unnoticed and unconcerned." A “Scherzo” section represents the hustle and bustle of Hammersmith’s market, exemplified, according to Holst’s daughter, by a large woman at a fruit stand who always called her father 'dearie' when he bought oranges for their Sunday picnics

In 1931, “Hammersmith” was first performed in England in the composer’s own orchestral arrangement by the B. B. C. Symphony led by Adrian Boult—and the piece was booed. Holst’s bad luck continued the following year: He was scheduled to conduct the premiere of the original wind band version of “Hammersmith” on today’s date at the 1932 American Bandmasters Association Convention in Washington, D.C., but had to cancel his trip due to illness. The DC premiere took place as scheduled, but with the U.S. Marine Band led by Taylor Branson, rather than the composer.

For the next 22 years, the original, wind band version of “Hammersmith” remained neglected until Robert Cantrick and the Carnegie Institute of Technology Kiltie Band in Pittsburgh gave what they thought was its world premiere performance in 1954. It seems even Holst’s publisher had forgotten all about its 1932 American premiere.

In the years following the end of World War II, the “baby boom” led to a dramatic rise in the number of high school and college music programs across the country. By the mid-1950s, a number of well-known American composers started receiving commissions from these schools for new works for wind band.

In the past half-century, the Symphony for Band, by American composer Vincent Persichetti, has been one of the most frequently performed. It was commissioned by the Washington University Chamber Band, and received its first performance by the ensemble in St. Louis, Mo., on today’s date in 1956.

In keeping with this tradition, in the late 1990s the American Composers Forum started commissioning major composers to write new works for middle-school bands. The series was dubbed BandQuest, and in addition to new scores by composers like Chen Yi, Michael Colgrass, Libby Larsen, Robert X. Rodriguez, and Alvin Singleton, the series offers music teachers interactive CD-ROMs, which place each piece of music in a wider cultural and historical context.

This music is from Alegre, by Cuban-born composer Tania Leon. “Alegre” is a Spanish word meaning “joyful,” and Leon’s piece is meant to demonstrate the link in Latin culture between music and dance. That’s something the New York-based Leon knows more than a little about — she was a founding member and the first music director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. A music educator as well as a composer, she also set up the theater’s music school and orchestra.

A few years back, when RCA records issued a boxed set of 100 favorite Boston Pops recordings made by Arthur Fiedler, they included Handel’s celebrated “Largo.”

Over a hundred years earlier, the Theodore Thomas Orchestra had established this melody as a favorite with 19th century American audiences. Back then, Handel was best-known for his sacred oratorios, and his “Largo” acquired a kind of honorary “halo” by association. Also, the Italian text for the melody began “Ombra mai fui,” and since “ombra” meant shade, many music lovers probably assumed it had something to do with the dear departed shade or spirit of a loved one—hence its melancholic solemnity.

In fact, this melody originated in a decidedly secular, downright whimsical context: as the opening aria of an opera by Handel that premiered in London on today’s date in 1738. The opera was entitled “Xerxes,” and dealt with the real-life Persian King who invaded ancient Greece. In the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus, Xerxes is depicted as an all-powerful despot, whose every whim became law. As evidence of the irrational effect of absolute power, Herodotus tells of Xerxes’ fondness for a certain plane tree that he ordered decorated with gold ornaments and put under perpetual military guard as a sign of royal favor. In Handel’s opera, the famous “Largo” is actually Xerxes’s dreamy song to this famous tree—and the “shade” referred to is the sort to be found under its gold-bedecked branches.

A number of the quintessentially “French” operas are set in other lands. Bizet’s “Carmen” is set in Spain and Gounod’s ”Faust” is in Germany, to cite just two examples. But Spain and Germany were familiar next-door neighbors for 19th century Frenchmen, and in that colonizing age, Parisian audiences also enjoyed traveling to much more exotic corners, all the while safely ensconced in their plush balcony seats, of course. One of the grandest of French grand operas, Meyerbeer’s “L’Africaine,” has as its eponymous heroine the African Queen of an imaginary East Indian isle, with none other than European Vasco da Gama as her love interest.

Another famous French opera set in the mysterious East had its premiere performance on today’s date in 1883, at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. This was “Lakmé” by Leo Delibes. In this one, the title heroine is an East Indian priestess of Brahma whose taboo love for an English Colonial officer leads to tragedy and death—but not before lots of gorgeous singing.

The popular “Flower Duet” from “Lakmé” achieved a particularly late 20th-century brand of fame when it was used as the soundtrack to a British Airways TV commercial.

In 1952, the West Point Military Band celebrated that famous military academy’s Sesquicentennial by asking prominent composers to write celebratory works to mark the occasion. Among those who responded with a new piece was the American composer Morton Gould, whose “West Point Symphony” received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1952, at a gala concert featuring the West Point Academy Band conducted by Francis E. Resta.

There are two movements in Gould’s “West Point Symphony.” They are titled “Epitaphs” and “Marches,” and the composer himself provided these descriptive comments:

“The first movement is lyrical and dramatic… The general character is elegiac. The second and final movement is lusty… the texture a stylization of marching tunes and parades cast in an array of embellishments and rhythmic variations… At one point,” concludes Gould, “there is a simulation of a Fife and Drum Corp, which, incidentally, was the instrumentation of the original West Point Band.”

Of all the pieces written in honor of West Point’s Sesquicentennial in 1952, Gould’s Symphony is probably the best-known.

The score of the West Point Symphony calls for a “marching machine,” but on this classic 1959 recording under the late Frederick Fennell, the required sound was provided by the very real marching feet of 120 Eastman School of Music students.