Composers Datebook

There was a time when German opera houses would have fought over the chance to premiere a brand-new opera by Richard Strauss. But by 1940, when Strauss finished a mythological opera entitled "The Love of Danae," there was a war on, and, on top of that, Strauss had fallen out of favor with Germany's Nazi rulers. A scheduled premiere in Dresden had to be cancelled. In Leipzig, the orchestral parts for the new opera were lost in a fire, and in Munich an Allied air raid damaged the opera's sets and scenery. By the summer of 1944, when conductor Clemens Krauss was rehearsing handpicked vocal soloists and the Vienna Philharmonic for the opera's belated premiere at the Salzburg Festival, the collapse of the Third Reich was imminent. On August 1st, an order was issued from Berlin canceling all music festivals and closing all theaters. Somehow Salzburg managed to get a dispensation, and rehearsals for Strauss's opera were allowed to continue. A private dress rehearsal of "The Love of Danae" took place in Salzburg on August 16, 1944. The 80-year old composer attended, and, with tears in his eyes, thanked the performers with these words: "Perhaps we shall meet again in a better world." Strauss died in 1949, and it wasn't until today's date three years later that the first public performance of "The Love of Danae" occurred at the 1952 Salzburg Festival.

It's said that Nature abhors a vacuum—and so, apparently, did Richard Wagner, who devised a brass instrument to bridge a gap he perceived between the horns and the trombones in the orchestra of his day. And so the "Wagner tuba" was born, a brass instrument Wagner designed for the 1876 premiere of his cycle of four "Ring" operas in Bayreuth, Germany, which began on today's date that year with "Das Rheingold"—the first opera in the "Ring" cycle.

Other composers have also scored for Wagner tubas, including Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss, both ardent Wagner fans, and also Igor Stravinsky, who, though certainly not a Wagnerite, did include Wagner tubas in some of the early versions of his famous ballet scores.

Some contemporary composers include parts for the Wagner tuba in their works as well, and a quartet of these instruments appears in the score of "Stele" by the contemporary Hungarian composer, György Kurtág. Kurtág wrote "Stele" in 1994 for the Berlin Philharmonic and its then music director, Claudio Abbado, after a year spent attending performances and rehearsals by that virtuoso orchestra.

"Stele" is the Greek word for a carved or inscribed stone slab that commemorates a person or event. Kurtág is noted for his short, epigrammatic and very introspective chamber works, and "Stele" is his first major work for a large, conventional, arranged symphony orchestra.

Some have claimed that it was on today's date in 1877 that the American inventor Thomas Edison recorded his own voice reciting, "Mary had a little lamb" on a tin-foil cylinder of his own design. Now, other historians date the precise birth of the phonograph a bit earlier, others months later. In any case, the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company wasn't established until January of 1878.

Initially, recording music wasn't Edison's top priority for his invention: He thought his phonograph might be profitable as an aid to stenographers, or for families who wanted to record the last words of beloved relatives.

It took a little over a decade for classical music and the phonograph to seriously interact. In London in 1888, a bit of a Crystal Palace performance of Handel's oratorio "Israel in Egypt" was captured on an Edison cylinder. In Vienna, Johannes Brahms, seated at the piano, recorded a snippet of his famous Hungarian Dance No. 3, prefaced by a few words that for years people assumed were uttered by the composer himself—although the latest research says somebody else provided the spoken intro.

The voice of British composer Sir Arthur Sullivan was captured, however, commenting (and we quote): "I am astonished—and terrified—at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever!"

Well, Sir Arthur, I'm afraid there's no going back now…

As the proverbial saying goes: "Necessity is the mother of invention." It was, frankly, a matter of economic necessity that led a 36-year-old Austrian conductor named Clemens Krauss to program an all-Johann Strauss concert by the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Music Festival on today's date in 1929. The Salzburg Festival was established in 1920 with high ideals but insecure funding. Its mission was to offer world-class performances of theater and music, old and new, programmed to reflect Austria's unique mix of cosmopolitan European values and parochial Catholic traditions. To succeed, the Festival needed both strong local support and wealthy visitors from abroad. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but in 1929, as the Festival approached its 10th anniversary, its finances and future seemed uncertain. Now, Krauss knew that Strauss waltzes were popular with both the natives and the Festival's international visitors, so why not offer a whole concert program consisting of nothing but the dance music of Johann Strauss? The August 11, 1929, concert proved to be a resounding success, and the idea was repeated at the Festival several times over the next decade. Back home in Vienna, Krauss again revived the idea of an all-Strauss concert on December 31, 1939, this time to boost wartime morale, not box office. That year-end tradition continues to this day, as the Philharmonic presents its annual New Year's Concert, broadcast worldwide from Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna.

On today's date in 1813, William Henry Fry was born in Philadelphia. As a journalist, he was one of the most vociferous champions of American concert music, and put his money where his mouth was by becoming a composer himself.

Fry composed a number of programmatic works, including a "Niagara" symphony and another titled "Santa Claus." Above all else, Fry was passionate about opera, and wrote several of his own that never quite caught on.

Fry was a colorful—if understandably biased—music critic. Here's an excerpt from his 1862 review of a New York performance of Verdi's "Il Trovatore"—an opera only 9 years old at that time:

"The opera last evening was the Trovatore. It has a wonderful plot, beyond human comprehension; though finally we learn that [the tenor] is made into soup in the last scene by the order of his brother [the baritone], who then expresses his emotion and surprise on learning of the transaction as the curtain falls. As to the music—there are some charming, popular, ingenious, artistic, great points; then there are some others egregiously vulgar and rowdy. The Anvil Chorus, for example, is about the equal to a scene of mending a sewer set to music; or repairing a pair of cast-off leather breeches."

OK, if your dad wrote music for silent movies and you want to be a composer yourself, does that increase the odds that you may end up a film composer, too? At least that’s the case of David Raksin, who was born in Philadelphia in 1912, and who died in Los Angeles on today’s date in 2004.

After music studies at home and in New York, in 1935, when he was 23, Raksin moved to Hollywood to help Charlie Chaplin arrange Chaplin’s own music for his film, ''Modern Times.'' Raksin stayed on in Hollywood, working without credit on dozens of B-rated films, and took lessons from Arnold Schoenberg, then living in Los Angeles.

A big break came in 1944 with the tremendous success of Raksin’s haunting score for the 1944 film, “Laura,” an opportunity that came his way only after more famous composers like Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann had turned the job down. By the time of his death, Raksin would score 100 films and 300 TV shows, teach at USC and UCLA, and on occasion, compose concert works as well.

In 1960, for the Horn Club of Los Angeles, Raksin wrote “Morning Revisited.” Explaining its genesis and title, Raksin said, “They needed a piece that would use their entire ensemble … two antiphonal groups of six French horns each, four Wagner tubas, a baritone horn, two contrabass tubas, and seven timpani. I was busy working on a picture, so I'd start work at four or five a.m., and that's how I wrote ’Morning Revisited.’”

Just about ANY time is a good time to be in Paris, but chances are, given your druthers, you wouldn't have chosen to be in Paris on this date in 1942. The city was occupied by German troops, and the World War had several more dismal years to grind on. Courageous acts of overt resistance to the occupation did occur occasionally, but might cost you your life. But if you were in Paris on today's date in 1942, you could have visited the Paris Opera for the premiere performance of a new one-act ballet by the French composer Francis Poulenc. The ballet was called "Les Animaux modeles" or "The Model Animals," with a scenario based on animal fables by the French writer La Fontaine. Some 20 years earlier, in happier times, Poulenc had made his name with another one-act ballet. That 1924 work was titled "Les biches" or "The Does" and was written for the Ballets Russes of Monte Carlo. That work's scenario described the flirtations and seductions of some bright young things at a house party in the country. "Everything was simple and carefree, sunshine and good humor," as Poulenc himself put it. Not surprisingly, Poulenc's 1942 ballet was a darker, often grimmer affair, expressing in music some of the quiet desperation the French must have felt under the German occupation, mingled with a fervent hope for better days to come.

Summer music camps have become a fixture of American cultural life, offering young talent a chance to rub shoulders with seasoned professional musicians, and to perform both old and new musical works. On today's date in 1977, American composer, conductor, and music educator, Howard Hanson, conducted the premiere performance of his Seventh Symphony at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. Hanson subtitled his Seventh, "A Sea Symphony," and it includes a choral setting of passages from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." For 40 years, Hanson headed the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Closer to our own time, Eastman professor Augusta Read Thomas follows in Hanson's footsteps as composer-in-residence at various summer music camps. On today's date in 2001, at the annual Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, one of her pieces entitled "Murmurs in the Mist of Memory" received its world premiere performance. Thomas has also served as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Thomas writes, "Music of all kinds constantly amazes, surprises, propels and seduces me into a wonderful and powerful journey. I am happiest when listening to music and in the process of composing music. I care deeply that music is not anonymous and generic or easily assimilated and just as easily dismissed."

In August of 1942, the 19th Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music was underway in Berkeley, California. Over 30 composers from 13 nations were represented. All the composers were male–with one exception. On today's date in 1942, at the fifth Festival concert, the "Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale" for clarinet and viola written by Rebecca Clarke was premiered.

Clarke was born in Harrow, England, in 1886, to an American father and a German mother. She grew up a British citizen, studied music in London, and became one of the U.K.'s first female professional orchestral violists. She was stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II and settled permanently in New York City.

In program notes for the 1942 Festival, Clarke described her "Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale" as follows: "The whole thing is very unpretentious: a short, unassuming little prelude… The second movement should sound very spirited… The third movement, Pastorale, is rather melancholy and nostalgic…"

This work, and much of Clarke's other music, remained unpublished during her lifetime, but, over time, its quality and range increasingly came to light. When Clarke turned 90 in 1976, she was interviewed by the BBC, and seemed both gratified and bemused by all the renewed attention. Clarke died at her home in New York at the age of 93. In the year 2000, a Rebecca Clarke Society was founded in Massachusetts to help promote her music.

In the summer of 1764, the eight-year-old child prodigy, Wolfgang Mozart, was in England, accompanied by his 13-year old sister, Nanerl, and their father, Leopold. The Mozarts had arrived in London wearing what back home in Salzburg would pass as fashionable French-style clothing. Since England had just ended the Seven Years' War with France, this faux pas resulted in the Mozarts receiving some rude words and even ruder gestures from London street urchins. Papa Leopold quickly acquired more "politically correct" attire for himself and the children. On August 5th, 1764, the family settled at a country home in Chelsea for a time, as Leopold had taken ill. Temporarily forbidden to make any noise or even play the piano while their father recovered, Wolfgang and Nanerl had to amuse themselves quietly. Mozart had already written some keyboard pieces and chamber works, but it was in Chelsea that he decided to try his hand at writing his first symphony. Perhaps as compensation for having to keep so quiet, Mozart suddenly was keen on writing for as many instruments as possible. As Nanerl later recalled, "While he composed and I copied, he said to me, 'Remind me to give the horn something worthwhile to do!'" And so, Mozart's Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, written in London in the summer of 1764, is scored for two oboes, TWO horns and strings.