Composers Datebook

Today’s date marks the birth anniversaries of two major 20th century American composers: Carl Ruggles was born in East Marion, Massachusetts on today’s date in 1876, and Henry Cowell, in Menlo Park, California in 1897.

Ruggles was a tough old bird, who wrote a small handful of tough, uncompromising musical works. He was the conductor of a symphony orchestra in Winona, Minnesota from 1908-1912, a teacher at the University of Miami from 1937-1943, and a talented painter to boot. His first music to be performed in public was A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, an apt description of Ruggles himself, a crusty loner who once claimed the only man he ever met who could out-swear him was his friend and colleague Charles Ives. He eventually retired to an old schoolhouse in Arlington, Vermont.

Ruggles’ striking orchestral works, with titles like Sun-Treader and Men and Mountains, are occasionally revived, but he remains just a name for most 21st-century concert-goers.

Henry Cowell was a much more genial, out-going sort: a composer, performer and teacher who wrote a great deal of music, ranging from the dissonant and experimental to the beguilingly lyrical. He was an early apostle of what we now call world music, and in 1956 undertook a world tour, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and the US State Department, which included lengthy stays in Iran, India and Japan, and resulted in him writing a number of musical works incorporating ideas and musical instruments from those countries.

Carl Ruggles (1897-1971): Sun-Treader; Cleveland Orchestra; Christoph von Dohnanyi, conductor; Cleveland Orchestra 75th Anniversary CD Edition 093-75

Henry Cowell (1897-1965): Homage to Iran; Leopold Avakian, violin; Mitchell Andrews, piano; Basil Bahar, Persian drum CRI 836

On today's date in 1915, the Moscow Synodal Choir gave the premiere performance of a new choral work by Sergei Rachmaninoff. In Russian, the work was titled Vsenoshchnoe Bdeniye, which translates as All-Night Vigil Service or more commonly as Vespers.

This was Rachmaninoff’s take on traditional liturgical melodies of the Easter Orthodox church. Rachmaninoff himself was not particularly religious, but by 1915, all Russians, religious or not, perhaps found solace in such music as the staggering casualties of the Russian Imperial troops during World War I became apparent.

Vespers was warmly received in Moscow and repeated five times within a month of its premiere. But in 1917, the Bolshevik revolution transformed Imperial Russia into a non-religious Soviet state. It remained pretty much forgotten until 1965, when Alexander Sveshnikov made the first recording of the work with the USSR State Academic Russian Choir for the Soviet record label Melodiya.

Ironically, that Melodiya LP was never available for sale within the USSR, and was only issued as an export item to the West. It quickly became a best-seller, and Western audiences were astonished by both the emotional power of the work and the low bass voices required to perform it.

Even by Russian standards, the bass parts are low. When shown the manuscript score back in 1915, the work’s original conductor shook his head, and said, “Now where on earth are we to find such basses? They are as rare as asparagus at Christmas!”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Vespers (All-Nght Vigil); USSR State Academic Russian Choir; Alexander Sveshnikov, conductor; Pipeline Music custom CD (from Amazon.com)

If TikTok influencers were around in Paris in 1831, they would probably have offered a breathless special edition report on a concert that occurred on today’s date that year.

Everybody who was anybody was there: from the literary world, French novelist Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables, don’t you know, and writer Alfred de Mussett, who they say was living in sin with that scandalous baroness, who went by the name of George Sand. Oh, and German poet Heinrich Heine was there, and from the music world, three of the leading opera composers of the day: foreign-born Giacomo Meyerbeer and Luigi Cherubini, and popular native son, Jacques Halevy. And who could miss the dashing, lion-maned Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt also seated in the theater?

They were all there to witness the Parisian debut of the most charismatic performer of his time, Italian violinist Nicolo Paganini. It was whispered that the fourth string on his violin was made from the intestine of his mistress, murdered at his own hand, and that he had spent 20 years in prison for the crime, with his violin his sole companion. Others hinted he had actually made a pact with Satan, trading his immortal soul for superhuman virtuosity! He looked like death warmed over, thin and gaunt, but played like a man possessed.

Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840): Caprice No. 10; James Ehnes, violin; Telarc 80398

Today is International Women’s Day, a global celebration of the social, economic, political, and cultural achievements of women, so here’s a French composer whose name you may not have heard before, but you should!

After all, her music was good enough that Gabriel Fauré, Paul Dukas, and Maurice Ravel performed it at musical salons in Paris. She was a close friend of the famous composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger, studied organ with Louis Vierne, and composition with Vincent d’Indy.

But enough name-dropping. Her name was Charlotte Sohy. Born in Paris in 1887, and in the early decades of the 20th century, achieved both professional status and public success as a composer, writing masses, art songs, piano pieces, chamber music, and this symphony, which dates from 1917.

Unlike many women composers of the past, Sohy’s husband fully supported her career. After all, he was also a composer, and she even collaborated with him on a few of his pieces. Still, even in cosmopolitan Paris, she chose to publish her music under the pseudonym Charles Sohy, and while her chamber works received performances, her symphony remained unperformed during her lifetime.

Charlotte Sohy (1887-1955): Symphony in C-sharp minor; Orchestre National de France; Débora Waldman, conductor; Palazzetto Bru Zane Label BZ-2006

Some special music had its premiere at Harvard University (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) on today’s date in 1980. It was commissioned to honor the memory of Walter Piston, who had taught composition at Harvard for a number of years, and it was one of his students, American harpsichordist and organist Daniel Pinkham, who composed it.

Pinkham had exceptional teachers. He studied harpsichord with Wanda Landowska, organ with E. Power Biggs and, in addition to Piston, Pinkham studied composition with Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and Arthur Honegger.

But he credits another familiar name for his most important musical epiphany.

In 1939, while still a teenager, he heard one of the first American concerts given by the Trapp Family, whose sentimentalized story is familiar from The Sound of Music. The Trapp Family’s usual ensemble, which combined Renaissance and Baroque instruments like recorders and gambas with the bright and clear voices of young children, spoke to the young Pinkham as no music had before, becoming “a part of my way of looking at things,” as he put it later.

Pinkham composed everything from symphonies to electronic music. His choral and organ works are especially admired, and in 1990, he was named Composer of the Year by the American Guild of Organists.

Daniel Pinkham (1923-2006): Serenades; Maurice Murphy, trumpet; London Symphony; James Sedares, conductor; Koch International 7179

Today in 1825, one of Beethoven's late chamber works, his String Quartet No. 12, received its premiere in Vienna by the Schuppanzigh Quartet. The Quartet had only received the music two weeks earlier, which, in those days, would be plenty of time for experienced musicians to work up a normal string quartet of that day. But Beethoven’s new quartet was harmonically and structurally far from the norm for 1825.

Even Beethoven knew as much, and drafted a humorous “contract” for himself and the four musicians to sign. It read: “Each one is herewith given his part and is bound by oath and pledged on his honor to do his best, to distinguish himself and to vie with the other in excellence. Signed: Schuppanzigh, Weiss, Linke, the grand master’s accursed cellist Holtz and the last, but only in signing, Beethoven.”

Even so, the premiere was under-rehearsed, and the players seemed visibly unhappy with their difficult assignment. Fortunately, Beethoven was not present, but when he learned of the poor performance, he was furious. He immediately contacted another violinist, Joseph Böhm, whose quartet meticulously rehearsed the new piece under the composer’s watchful eye.

Their performance was better received, and in April of 1825, Böhm took the unusual step of programming the difficult new work twice on the same program. As a contemporary review put it, this time, “the misty veil disappeared and Beethoven’s splendid work of art radiated its dazzling glory.”

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): String Quartet No. 12; LaSalle Quartet; DG 453 768

On today’s date in 2020, a new cello concerto by American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich was given its premiere in Fort Lauderdale, by cellist Zuill Bailey the South Florida Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sebrina María Alfonso, the same performers who had commissioned the work.

About the work, Zwilich said, “A Cello Concerto is something that had been on my ‘composer’s wish list’ for a long time. One of the things I love about the cello is that it covers virtually the entire range of the human voice — I particularly like its evocation of the mezzo-soprano … I sometimes refer to string instruments as ‘singers on steroids,’ because of the power they give to a composer to explore virtuosity as well as expressivity. My Cello Concerto engages both the lyrical, singing nature of the instrument and its technical possibilities.”

Zwillich dedicated the new concerto to the memory of two legendary cellists, Leonard Rose and Mstislav Rostropovich. Following the premiere, Dennis D. Rooney of the Palm Beach Arts Paper wrote, “The concerto's three linked movements suggested a meditation on melodic gestures from the American vernacular. The blues hovered over the work allusively … Throughout, the mood was thoughtful but not elegiac.”

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Concerto for Cello and Orchestra; Zuill Bailey, cello; Santa Rosa Symphony; Francesco Lecce-Chong, conductor; Delos DE-3596

Perhaps the fanfare is the most optimistic and hopeful of all musical forms, since it signals the start of something new and worth noting.

American composer Adam Schoenberg was feeling optimistic and hopeful when he wrote the fanfare that opens his American Symphony, a work premiered on this date in 2011 by the Kansas City Symphony led by Michael Stern.

“American Symphony was inspired by the 2008 presidential election, when both parties asked the people to embrace change and make a difference. I was both excited and honored about ushering in this new era in our nation’s history,” Schoenberg said.

Schoenberg celebrated his 28th birthday a few weeks after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, and says that just a few days after the election got the idea for his new Symphony after hearing what he calls “the quintessential American symphony,” namely Aaron Copland’s Symphony No. 3, composed in 1946, just after the end of World War II. Not coincidentally, Copland’s Symphony includes his famous Fanfare for the Common Man as a key thematic statement

“I believe Copland wanted to bring beauty and peace into the world during a time of great turmoil, and seeing that our country and world had needs similar to those of Copland’s time, I set out to write a modern American symphony that paid homage to our past and looked forward to a brighter future,” Schoenberg said.

Adam Schoenberg (b. 1980): American Symphony for Orchestra; Kansas City Symphony; Michael Stern, conductor; Reference RR-139

Oscar Wilde often gets credit for the line, “But enough about me — what do you think about me?” Roughly a century ago, this portrait of the self-absorbed ego not only got laughs on the London stage, it also hit home with German concertgoers after a series of frankly autobiographical tone poems and operas by Richard Strauss had their premieres.

Take today’s date in 1899, for example. Strauss’ tone poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), received its premiere in Frankfurt, with the composer himself conducting. Strauss quoted themes from his own works in the section of the new score marked, “The hero’s works of peace,” leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind that the hero in question was Strauss himself. Depicted in carping and crabbed musical terms were “the hero’s critics,” meant to be taken as Strauss’ real-life music critics. Understandably, they were not amused, and attacked Strauss for his inflated ego and music.

Strauss, as usual, was totally unflappable and offered his own somewhat self-deprecating description of the origins of his heroic piece as follows:

“Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is so little beloved of our conductors these days that to fulfill this need I am composing a largish tone-poem A Hero’s Life, admittedly without a funeral march, yet in E-flat, and with lots of horns, which are the yardstick of heroism.”

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life); Minnesota Orchestra; Eiji Oue, conductor; Reference 83

Recordings can be an effective calling card for composers — but the expense of recording an orchestral work in the U.S. is rather daunting, so composers often work with record labels that use orchestras abroad.

American composer Rain Worthington made a recording of her orchestral work Tracing a Dream with the Russian Philharmonic on today’s date in 2010, and, in quintessential 21st-century fashion, planned to “attend” the Moscow recording session via Skype.

“But just as I was about to log in, the recording assistant emailed the Russian authorities had revoked the permission to Skype. At the last minute an appeal by my American recording producer, Bob Lord, who was present in the studio, somehow convinced them to allow the connection. So I spent the morning ‘virtually’ in Moscow, listening to and participating in the three-hour recording session!” she recalled.

“Tracing a Dream taps into the impressionistic logic of dreams,” she said. “Within this realm there is a fluidity of connections governed by emotional contexts, rather than rational order.“

Six years after its recording in Moscow, Tracing a Dream received its public premiere by the Missouri State University Orchestra conducted by Christopher Kelts and was awarded an Ernst Bacon Award for the Performance of American Music.

Rain Worthington (b. 1949): Tracing a Dream; Russian Philharmonic Orchestra; Ovidiu Marinescu, conductor; Navona 6025