Composers Datebook

On today's date in 2002, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Leonard Slatkin conducted the National Symphony in the premiere of a new symphony by the American composer Cindy McTee.

McTee subtitled her Symphony No. 1 "Ballet for Orchestra" and explained her subtitle as follows: "Music is said to have come from dance—from the rhythmic impulses of men and women… [And] the impulse to compose often begins as a rhythmical stirring and leads to a physical response—tensing muscles, gesturing with hands and arms, or quite literally, dancing… There is also much pleasure to be gained from observing the gestures of a conductor, or from seeing the coordinated bowing of the string sections within an orchestra. My 'Ballet for Orchestra' emerged out of a similar kinesthetic/emotional awareness and a renewed interest in dance music."

Cindy McTee's Symphony makes passing allusions to earlier works by Stravinsky, Ravel, Barber, and even Penderecki, tossing in some jazz and folk fiddling allusions for good measure. But Allan Kozinn, reviewing the new symphony for The New York Times, wrote: "Ms. McTee's sense of organization kept the work from becoming a pastiche: as diverse as its ideas were, they seemed to unfold naturally within an orchestral fabric that used the ensemble's full coloristic range."

McTee's new symphony was well-received by other critics, and audiences too. For his part, Leonard Slatkin returned to the work 10 years after its premiere, making its debut recording with the Detroit Symphony in 2012.

Prokofiev began sketching his First Violin Sonata in 1938, but its premiere performance didn’t take place until today’s date in 1946, some eight years later, when the great Ukrainian violinist David Oistrakh performed it in Moscow.

Between 1938 and 1946, dramatic changes occurred in Prokofiev’s world. In 1936, after years abroad, the composer returned to the Soviet Union, wooed by official promises of both creative and personal privileges. Within a year of Prokofiev’s return, however, the infamous “Great Terror” was unleased by Stalin, whose secret police arrested millions of Soviet citizens for offenses real, suspected, or imagined.

Patrons, friends, and creative partners of the composer were rounded up, including Nataliya Sats, who had commissioned Peter and the Wolf. She was one of the lucky ones, surviving years in a labor camp. Many others were summarily executed shortly after their arrests. The most recent estimates suggest that almost 1 million Soviets citizens were killed or died in labor camps during the Stalin’s Great Terror.

Against this dark background, Prokofiev began work on his Violin Sonata No 1 in F minor, Op 80, in 1938, but after completing the first movement and part of the second, put the score aside for six years, completing it only at the urging of Oistrakh, who recalled that while rehearsing the Sonata, Prokofiev told him that the rushing scale passages in the first and final movements should sound "like the wind in a graveyard.”

Royalty was often flattered by the composers of the Baroque age. Handel wrote glorious ceremonial music for a string of British monarchs, and, back on the continent, Bach was not above working up an obsequiously complimentary cantata or two for some German Prince. At the French Court of Versailles, King Louis XIV himself appeared on stage in his own person for cameo appearances during operas and ballets whose stories complemented Louis' wisdom, talent, and impeccable good taste. On today's date in 1987, at the Houston Grand Opera in Texas, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Chairman Mao didn't come on stage in their OWN person, but did appear as characters in the premiere of a new opera by the American composer, John Adams. "Nixon in China" was a somewhat surreal and not necessarily flattering dramatization of a real event: President Nixon's ground breaking trip to communist China in 1972. Fifteen years later, one can only guess at the former President's reaction to being portrayed on stage, or what former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, thought of being depicted as the most decidedly unsympathetic character in John Adams' opera! Adams did report that Richard Nixon's lawyer, Leonard Garment, attended a performance of "Nixon in China," most likely on the former President's behalf. No lawsuit followed, and, Adams notes with some amusement, that Garment even became something of a fan of his music!

Some symphonies are famous for their openings, but others are more often remembered for their ENDINGS. In Helsinki, Finland, on today's date in 1921, composer Jean Sibelius conducted the definitive version of his Fifth Symphony, a work that features unforgettable and highly unusual closing pages. Sibelius had been tinkering with this symphony for five years. He completed the first version in 1915, then one year later introduced a radically revised version. Three years after that, in 1919, he adjusted his adjustments. At that point, he seems to have waited to see if he was well and truly satisfied. Two years passed, nothing more came to mind that needing fixing, and so, on today's date in 1921, the version that we hear today in concert halls around the world had its premiere performance. We can only imagine how stunned audiences at the first performances of Sibelius' Fifth must have been by the work's finale, when, like some huge machine coming to rest, the orchestra grinds out six jagged unison chords, set off by dramatic pauses of total silence.

On today's date in 1950, Karel Ančerl was named the artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic, a position he would hold for the next 18 years.

Ančerl had first conducted the Philharmonic in 1930, when, upon graduation from the Prague Conservatory, he led that orchestra in one of his own compositions. For a time, Ančerl debated whether to be a composer or a conductor. He opted for the later, and in his 20s and 30s demonstrated a mastery of both classical and contemporary scores with other orchestras in Czechoslovakia.

With all that in mind, it might not seem all that surprising that in 1950 he was eventually tapped to lead the Czech Philharmonic—but that would be ignoring the miracle that Ančerl was even alive in 1950. In 1942, Ančerl and his family were imprisoned in the Nazi's notorious Theresienstadt concentration camp, and in 1944, they were transported to Auschwitz, where his wife and young son were killed; Karel alone survived.

During the post-War years under Communism, Ančerl persistently championed the music of the contemporary Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu, who was living abroad in the U.S. and France, and, despite being a native son, Martinu was hardly a favorite of Party authorities in Prague.

In 1968, when Czechoslovakia was invaded by Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops, Karel Ančerl emigrated to Canada in protest, and served as music director of the Toronto Symphony until his death in in 1973.

Rugby is a style of football that originated in England at Rugby School and was one of several similar games played at British public boy's schools during the 19th century.

It's also the name of a tone poem written by the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger that premiered in Paris at the Théâtre des Champes-Elysées on today's date in 1928 at the very first concert of the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, conducted by the famous Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet.

In describing his tone poem, Honegger wrote: "I'm very fond of soccer, but rugby is closer to my heart. It seems to me more spontaneous, more direct, closer to Nature than soccer, which is more scientific… I'm more keenly attracted by rugby's rhythm, which is savage, abrupt, chaotic, and desperate. It would be wrong to consider my piece as program music. It simply tries to describe in musical language the game's attacks and counterattacks, and the rhythm and color of a match."

Now, you would think in such a slam-bang contact sport as rugby that Honegger would employ a big battery of percussion instruments, but—surprise—they are totally absent in his score. Not to worry. There is plenty of rough 'n' tumble action between the strings, winds, and brass, but fortunately no protective headgear is required by either the performers OR the listeners.

Two very fine American symphonies had their premiere performances today. On today's date in 1943, the British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham led the Seattle Symphony in the premiere performance of the Symphony No. 1 by a 30-year old composer named Jerome Moross. The slow movement of the Moross symphony was inspired by the American hobo tune "The Midnight Special." As Moross once said, "A composer must reflect his landscape and mine is the landscape of America. I don't do it consciously, it is simply the only way I can write." The new symphony was well received, but subsequent performances have been rare events. These days, Moross is better known for his film and TV work. His 1958 score for "The Big Country" was nominated for an Academy Award, and he also wrote the music for the popular TV Western series "Wagon Train." Three years after the Seattle premiere of the Moross First Symphony, Aaron Copland's Third Symphony had its premiere on the opposite coast. Serge Koussevitzky conducted the Boston Symphony in the 1946 premiere of Copland's score, which includes as one of its themes Copland's enormously popular "Fanfare for the Common Man," a work the Cincinnati Symphony had premiered in 1943. Critics may prefer Copland's more adventurous first two symphonies, but the Third has proven the clear choice of audiences and orchestras over the years.

On today's date in 1941, the Boston Symphony gave the first performance of a new symphony by a 31-year old American composer named William Schuman.

It is numbered as Schuman's Third Symphony but, in reality, you might as well say it's his First.

Now, Bill Schuman was not an early devotee of the New Math. The explanation is a fairly simple one: Schuman had written two earlier symphonies, but these were composed very much under the influence of his teacher, the American composer Roy Harris. It was hearing one of the Harris symphonies played by the New York Philharmonic that gave Schuman the idea of writing symphonies of his own. Schuman wrote his first symphony in 1935 and a second in 1937. The Second was very well received, and had even been played by the Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitzky. It was Koussevitzky who commissioned Schuman to write a Third Symphony, and conducted its premiere on today's date in 1941.

It was with this work that Schuman felt he really found his own distinct voice as a composer. He withdrew his two earlier symphonies, and they were never published.

By the time of his death in 1992, William Schuman had completed a Symphony No. 10. So—subtract the first two, and that makes eight "authentic" and "officially authorized" William Schuman symphonies in all.

Of all the orchestral works of Richard Strauss, the one that premiered in Dresden on today's date in 1925 ranks amount the least-known. For starters, it has an odd title, "Parergon to the Symphonia Domestica." "Parergon" means "an ornamental accessory or embellishment," and so Strauss meant his new work, written for piano left-hand and orchestra, was a follow-up to his earlier "Symphonia Domestica," a tone-poem written two decades years earlier, and a musical depiction of one day in the Strauss family household, complete with baby's bath. The baby in question was Strauss's son Franz, who by 1925 was a young man setting up his own household, and had recently recovered from a near-fatal case of typhus contracted while on his honeymoon in Egypt. For Strauss, this "Parergon" was a private celebration of his son's survival. For Paul Wittgenstein, the wealthy one-handed concert pianist who commissioned it, the new work was one of several he had requested from leading composers of his day, all designed as a public showcase for his talent. As an Austrian soldier during World War I, Wittgenstein was wounded on the Eastern Front, and his right arm had to be amputated. Despite that loss, Wittgenstein had the means and the determination to continue his performing career. His contract with Strauss stipulated that he alone would have exclusive rights to the "Parergon" as long as he wished, and so it wasn't until 1950 that any other pianist could perform it.

Liverpool may be renowned as the birthplace of The Beatles, but it has other claims to fame as well. On today's date in 1946, for example, one of Benjamin Britten's best-known orchestral works received its first concert performance in that British city. "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" was its title, with "Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Henry Purcell" appended as an explanatory subtitle. Britten himself preferred the "Young Person's Guide" as its official title, and regularly complained whenever the BBC tried to "upgrade" to the more scholarly "Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Henry Purcell" when announcing the piece over the radio. Originally conceived as the soundtrack to a British education film on the instruments of the orchestra, Britten's score can be performed with a spoken narration, or, as is more common, as a purely instrumental work. In fact, the 1946 Liverpool concert premiere actually preceded the first showing of the film by a month or so. Henry Purcell is today acknowledged as the greatest British composer of the 17th century, just as Benjamin Britten is now ranked among the greatest of the 20th century. As a spectacular display of orchestral sounds and colors, the "Young Person's Guide" is hard to beat. It's a kind of mini-concerto for orchestra, showcasing each section of the modern symphony and culminating in a grand fugue on the Purcell theme for the whole orchestra.