Composers Datebook

In the year 1834, the great violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini had acquired a new Stradivarius viola. He approached the 30-year old French composer Hector Berlioz and commissioned him to write a viola concerto. “Why don’t you write one yourself?” asked Berlioz. “Oh, I’m not up to it,” Paganini replied, “You will succeed, I insist.”

What Berlioz came up with, however, was a Romantic program symphony inspired by Byron’s narrative poem “Childe Harold,” with a prominent part for solo viola. Berlioz entitled his symphony “Harold in Italy.” Paganini was disappointed. “That is not what I want,” he said. “I am silent a great deal too long. I must be playing the whole time.”

And so, when “Harold in Italy” was first performed, at the Paris Conservatory on today’s date in 1834, it was an old classmate of Berlioz’s, Chrétien Urhan, who was the soloist, not the superstar Paganini. The audience seemed to like the “Pilgrims’ March” movement of the symphony, which was encored, but otherwise the performance was one train wreck after another. Berlioz even received an anonymous letter the next day, suggesting if he had a gun, he should promptly blow his brains out.

Four years later, however, Berlioz had the last laugh. At a concert that included his “Harold in Italy” symphony, Paganini, after actually hearing the music he commissioned, rose from the audience, mounted the stage and publicly declared Berlioz a genius, and two days letter presented the stunned Berlioz with a check for 20,000 francs.

If you’re a baby boomer, you probably remember exactly where you were and what you were doing on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

On that day, American composer Warren Benson was just beginning to work on a commission he had received for a new work for wind band. Maybe the trauma of that day unleashed some creative power in Benson, but whatever the reason, the resulting music is both intense and moving. He titled his piece “The Leaves Are Falling,” a line from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Autumn," a poem that evokes a sense of a passing season and a passing life. “The Leaves Are Falling” became Benson’s best-known work, and a landmark score in the wind band repertory.

Born in 1924, Benson grew up in Detroit, studied at the University of Michigan, and landed a job playing timpani in the Detroit Symphony. He served as a professor of percussion and composition at Ithaca College, and from 1967 until 1993, he taught composition at the Eastman School in Rochester, New York.

"I write music for people,” said Benson. “Family, friends, professionals, and amateurs alike. It is to give us pleasure that we collaborate—not without serious commitment, exposure, and risk, not without striving for genuine expression, new challenge, and fresh solutions worthy of the art.”

On today’s date in 1941, the famous Greek-born conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos led the Minneapolis Symphony in the premiere performance of a new symphony by German composer Paul Hindemith, who came to Minnesota for the performance.

Mitropoulos was an ardent promoter of new music, but few of the contemporary works he programmed were welcomed by audiences or the critics with much enthusiasm. Hindemith’s reputation as an atonal composer had preceded him, but, surprisingly, his new piece for Minneapolis was billed as a “Symphony in Eb Major” and, much to the delight of all concerned, featured recognizable tunes. “His themes were melodious, instantly recognizable and easily followed,” wrote the critic of the Minneapolis Tribune, concluding, “It was marked by musical honesty and sincerity [and] it should be heard again soon, not only in Minneapolis, but by other concert audiences the country over.”

By chance, another famous composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff, was in Minneapolis that day, and was invited by Mitropoulos to attend the Hindemith premiere backstage, where he wouldn’t be annoyed by autograph seekers. Rachmaninoff had a very pessimistic view of modern music, but Mitropoulos was sure the famously dour Russian would like Hindemith’s resolutely tonal new symphony. Rachmaninoff was positioned just off stage, and after the end of the symphony, which was received with great applause, Mitropoulos passed him as he left the stage. “Well?” asked Mitropoulos. “No goooood,” was Rachmaninoff’s lugubrious response.

On today’s date in 1805, Beethoven’s opera “Fidelio” had its premiere performance at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. The premiere was to have taken place earlier, but there were the usual bureaucratic problems of getting the opera’s text passed by the Austrian government censors and having the orchestral parts copied in time. On top of that, there was the little matter of the Austrian capital being occupied by French troops, as the Napoleonic Wars were in progress at the time.

The cream of Viennese society had fled the city by the time Napoleon arrived, so the skimpy audience for the premiere performance of Beethoven’s new opera included a good number of his troops. What Napoleon’s soldiers made of Beethoven’s opera, which tells the story of a woman rescuing her husband from a political prison, is anybody’s guess. The Viennese critics, for their part, were not impressed. “After the first performance,” wrote one, “the theater remained completely empty. The music was way below the expectations of amateur and professional alike.”

Another wrote, “As a rule, there are no new ideas in the vocal pieces, and they are mostly too long. The choruses are ineffectual and one, which indicates the joy of prisoners over the sensation of fresh air, miscarries completely!”

After several revisions, and the eventual departure of the French, even the critical Viennese came to accept Beethoven’s opera, and in particular the Prisoners’ Chorus, as one of his most moving creations.

The publisher of Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion, which received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1961 at New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall, states with refreshing honesty that it is “not one of Harrison's most frequently performed works” and that “the highly rhythmic violin line is pleasantly contrasted by the exceptionally varied percussion ensemble.”

Now, by an “exceptionally varied” percussion ensemble, they mean in addition to more conventional percussion instruments, Harrison asks for tin cans, suspended brake drums, flowerpots, plumber’s pipes, wind chimes, and spring coils.

Not surprisingly, it is sometimes difficult to assemble the specific “heavy metal” called for in the score. For a 1965 performance, Harrison was forced to spend several hours, as he put it, "chasing down pipe lengths and flower pots in hardware stores."

But there is a method in the madness. Harrison was trying to imitate the sounds of the tuned bronze gongs of the traditional Indonesian gamelan orchestra by using distinctly American “found” materials. In performance, the set-up seems startling or downright humorous at first sight, but at first sound, it rather works. In fact, one suspects Harrison wants the audience to chuckle at first, but end up charmed.

In 1880, when Hans von Bülow was put in charge of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, exciting things happened. He quickly shaped it into one of Europe's elite ensembles, and invited the big guns of the day, Wagner and Brahms, for collaborations and premieres. Von Bülow also had an eye for emerging talent, and included a Serenade for Winds in E-Flat written by an 18-year-old composer named Richard Strauss in his orchestra’s repertory.

Von Bülow asked Strauss to compose another serenade for winds, and invited the now 21-year old to conduct its premiere performance on today’s date in 1884. That was the good news. The bad news was that just before the premiere of this new Serenade in B-Flat, Bülow’s Orchestra was on tour, so Strauss no rehearsal time. Though he had never picked up a baton in his life, it was too good an opportunity to miss. "I conducted my piece in a state of slight coma,” recalled Strauss. “I can only remember today that I made no blunders."

Von Bülow hadn’t blundered either. His faith in Strauss as a composer AND conductor proved prophetic, and his teaching method—similar to the “throw the kid in the deep end and he’ll learn to swim” method—proved successful. Strauss became both a sought-after composer AND conductor.

November 17, 1878, marked a milestone in the career of the 37-year old Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. For the first time Dvorak engaged and conducted the orchestra of the Provisional Theater in Prague in a concert entirely of his own works, including the premiere performance of a new Serenade for Winds.

Earlier that year, Dvorak heard a performance of a Mozart wind serenade in Vienna, and was so taken by the sound of Mozart’s double-reeds and horns that he wrote a similar work of his own in just two weeks.

Dvorak added to the open-air feel of Mozart’s 18th century wind serenade some lively 19th century Czech dance rhythms. But he also chose the key of D minor, reserved by Mozart for some of his most serious works. That enables Dvorak’s Serenade to seem both somber and upbeat, infused with musical shadows AND sunlight.

The new Serenade was well received in Prague and also in Vienna, where one its biggest fans was Johannes Brahms. ``A more lovely, refreshing impression of real, rich and charming creative talent you can't imagine,” wrote Brahms, “I think it must be a pleasure for the wind players!''

Dvorak must have been fond of this Serenade, too. Fourteen years later he chose it to conduct at his own 1892 “farewell” concert in Prague, just before departing for the New World to take up his teaching job at the National Conservatory of Music in New York City.

On today’s date in 1904, the Washington Post’s headline read, “Hiawatha Tonight: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Masterpiece to be sung at Convention Center.”

The 29-year old British composer himself, on his first visit to America, was to conduct the 200 members of the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society of Washington DC, accompanied by the Marine Band orchestra.

So who was this British composer and what had he done to inspire an American chorus to name itself after him?

Coleridge-Taylor was born in 1875 to an African father from Sierra Leone and an English mother. Showing remarkable musical talent, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and rapidly established himself as a major choral composer with a trilogy of oratorios, all based on Longfellow’s epic poem “Hiawatha.” The first, “Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast,” had premiered in 1898. “The Death of Minnehaha” followed in 1899 and “Hiawatha’s Departure” premiered in 1900. These oratorios became wildly popular in England, but the 1904 concert in Washington DC was the first time all three had been performed on the same concert.

The Coleridge-Taylor Society of Washington DC was America’s first African-American concert choir. Attending the Washington performance were many members of the Federal government and distinguished members of both black and white society.

Coleridge-Taylor died young, at the age of 37, in 1912. His “Hiawatha” Trilogy continued to be very popular through the early decades of the 20th century, but nowadays is rarely, if ever, heard or performed.

In 1974, St. Petersburg was still called “Leningrad” and still very much a part of what we now call the “former Soviet Union.” Back then, the most famous living Soviet composer was Dimtri Shostakovich, whose health was rapidly failing from the cancer that would claim his life the following year.

On today’s date in 1974, Shostakovich’s final string quartet, his Fifteenth, was given its premiere performance by the Taneyev Quartet. The work was supposed to have been premiered by the Beethoven Quartet, but their cellist died unexpectedly, and, mindful of his own mortality, Shostakovich was reluctant to postpone the scheduled premiere. After all, he himself might not be around by the time the Beethoven Quartet found a replacement cellist.

When his String Quartet No. 1 had premiered in 1938, Shostakovich had described that work as “joyful, merry, lyrical” and “spring-like.” His Fifteenth Quartet, on the other hand, is obviously a “winter-work,” written by someone who knows he may never see another spring.

If Shostakovich’s Fifteen Symphonies represent the “public” side of a Soviet composer, his fifteen string quartets might be described as chronicling his “private” inner world of hopes, fears and dreams. So much so that the Emerson String Quartet, an ensemble formed two years after Shostakovich’s death, celebrated its 25th anniversary season by collaborating with a British theater troupe and, with the help of historical audio and video clips, put Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Quartet chillingly in the context of the composer’s—and the Soviet Union’s—troubled life and times.

On today’s date in the year 2001, the Pacific Symphony premiered a new choral work by the American composer Richard Danielpour. Titled “An American Requiem,” its text in part was based on the traditional Latin mass for the dead, but included as well excerpts from American writers such as Emerson and Whitman on themes of life and death.

In 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II had prompted many Americans to reconsider the sacrifice of American veterans, the so-called “Greatest Generation.” Danielpour conducted informal interviews with World War II vets, as well as veterans of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. “I found myself in the presence of individuals with an integrity and nobility of heart that I had rarely seen in my own generation,” wrote Danielpour, after finishing his “An American Requiem.”

On the morning of September 11, 2001, two months before its scheduled premiere, Danielpour received a delivery of the orchestral parts of his new work to correct. Looking at his score, Danielpour realized he had forgotten to inscribe a dedication on its title page, and called his publisher in New York to discuss the matter. He ended up talking to someone who, from her office window, had just seen the second jetliner slam into the World Trade Center. “In the ensuing days as I edited and finalized the score of my work, I had, in the most disquieting way, found my dedication.”