Composers Datebook

The British composer Ethel Smyth needed both talent and fierce determination to succeed in a professional musical career in her day. Born in 1858, she defied her father to study music in Leipzig. She became friends with Clara Schumann, Brahms and Dvořák. In 1903, her opera Der Wald was performed at the Metropolitan Opera. She also became a high-profile figure in the women’s suffrage movement, for which she was jailed briefly in 1912.

The premiere of her 64-minute vocal symphony, The Prison, took place at Usher Hall in Scotland on today’s date in 1931, when she was 73, and increasingly deaf. The text was by H.B. Brewster, who had been Smyth’s close friend and, perhaps, her lover, and is a dialogue between an innocent prisoner awaiting execution and his soul in search of spiritual peace.

In a New York Times interview, James Blachly, the conductor of the first recording of The Prison, suggests, “It’s a summary of her entire career. It’s a farewell. There’s a real sense of making peace with that, and also reconciling herself to the death of [Brewster,] her closest creative companion. It’s about love and life and loss and self-worth.”

Ethel Smyth (1858-1944): The Prison; Dashon Burton, bass-baritone; Experimental Orchestra and Chorus; James Blachly, conductor; Chandos 5279

On today’s date in 1947, Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera, The Telephone premiered at the Heckscher Theater in New York. The story involves a young man who keeps trying to propose to his girlfriend, but, well, she’s always on the phone. So the young man, deciding “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” goes to the corner and from a pay phone calls in his marriage proposal!

Now, these days, he would probably have just used his cell phone. A welcome convenience in most circumstances, cell-phones have become the bane of concert halls, interrupting musical performances with unwelcome beeps and those annoying little melodies.

One young American composer, Golan Levin, has even composed a 30-minute work titled Dialtones: A Telesymphony, scored for 200 cell-phones. Levin spend nearly a year working out the technology that would download customized sounds to cell-phones placed in the audience and allow them be played on cue. 200 members of the audience for the premiere were asked to bring their phones and register their numbers before the performance of the three-movement work.

Some audience members reportedly felt guilty when their phones rang, even though they were supposed to, and one of the performers confessed that he was jealous that the woman seated next to him was called more frequently than he was!

That might make a good storyline for a sequel to Menotti’s opera!

Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007): Excerpt from The Telephone; New York Chamber Ensemble; Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, conductor; Albany 173

On today’s date in 1994, at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the Chicago Symphony and conductor Daniel Barenboim gave the world premiere performance of Partita by American composer Elliott Carter, specially commissioned in honor of the composer’s 85th birthday.

It was a major work, and a major occasion — but, as the Chicago Tribune’s music critic John von Rheim put it, that date “will forever be known as the Night the Lights Went Out on Elliott Carter.”

Just as the orchestra was playing the final pages of Carter’s complex score, the house lights went out. The audience gasped. The orchestra stopped playing. Not sure what to do, the audience started applauding. Then, after a moment or two the lights came back on. After breathing a sigh of relief, Barenboim and the orchestra prepared to pick up where they had left off — and then the lights went out again!

Turning to the audience, Barenboim quipped, “It’s a good thing we and Mr. Carter are not superstitious.”

Well, eventually the lights came back on — and stayed on, enabling the Orchestra to finish the premiere of Carter’s Partita.

But, perhaps as a kind of insurance policy — later on Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony also made a live recording of the new work.

Elliott Carter (1908-2012): Partita; Chicago Symphony; Daniel Barenboim, conductor (live recording); Teldec CD 81792

Famous composers have been, on occasion, famous performers as well. Think of Bach on the organ, or Rachmaninoff on the piano. And if Mozart’s father is to be believed, young Wolfgang could have Europe’s finest violinist — if he had only practiced more.

But how many famous composers can you name who played the bassoon? Well, British composer Edward Elgar, for one. As a young musician in Worcester, he played the bassoon in a wind quintet. While never becoming famous as a bassoonist, his love for and understanding of the instrument is evident in all his major orchestral works, and he counted one skilled player among his friends: this was Edwin F. James, the principal bassoonist of the London Symphony in his day.

In 1910, while working on his big, extroverted, almost 50-minute violin concerto, Elgar tossed off a smaller, much shorter, and far more introverted work for bassoon and orchestra as a gift for James. Since he was working on both pieces at the same time, if you’re familiar with he Violin Concerto, you can’t help but notice a familial resemblance to his six-minute Romance for Bassoon and Orchestra.

The Romance was first performed by Edwin F. James at a Herefordshire Orchestral Society concert conducted by the Elgar on today’s date in 1911.

Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Romance for Bassoon and Orchestra; Graham Salvage, bassoon; Halle Orchestra; Mark Elder, conductor; Halle Elgar Edition HLL-7505

We probably have the irrepressible playwright, music critic, and ardent socialist George Bernard Shaw to thank for this music — the Symphony No. 3 of Edward Elgar.

Shaw had been trying to persuade him to write a Symphony No. 3, and, early in 1932, had written: “Why don’t you make the BBC order a new symphony. It can afford it!” A few months later, Shaw dashed off a postcard with a detailed, albeit tongue-in-cheek program for the new work: “Why not a Financial Symphony? Allegro: Impending Disaster; Lento mesto: Stone Broke; Scherzo: Light Heart and Empty Pocket; Allegro con brio: Clouds Clearing.”

Well, there was a worldwide depression in 1932, but the depression that had prevented Elgar from tacking a new symphony was more personal: the death of his beloved wife in 1920. Despite describing himself as “a broken man,” unable to tackle any major projects, when Elgar died in 1934, he left behind substantial sketches for a Symphony No. 3, commissioned, in fact, by the BBC.

Fast forward 64 years, to February 15, 1998, when the BBC Symphony gave the premiere performance of Elgar’s Symphony No. 3 at Royal Festival Hall in London, in a performing version, or “elaboration” of his surviving sketches, prepared by contemporary British composer Anthony Payne. It was a tremendous success, and, we would like to think, somewhere in the hall the crusty spirit of George Bernard Shaw was heard to mutter: “Well — about time!”

Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Symphony No. 3 (elaborated by Anthony Payne); BBC Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor; NMC 053

Happy Saint Valentine’s Day!

On today's date in 1953, a new choral work by German composer Carl Orff received its premiere performance at the La Scala opera house in Milan, Italy. Trionfo di Afrodite was the title of the new work, intended to be the final panel in a triptych of choral works celebrating life and love. This triptych included Orff’s famous Carmina Burana, based on medieval texts, and Catulli Carmina, based on love lyrics by Roman poet Catullus.

All three pieces were given lavish, semi-staged performances at La Scala, led by the Austrian maestro Herbert von Karajan, and with German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda as the star soloists. For the world premiere performance of Trionfo di Afrodite, Schwarzkopf and Gedda portrayed a bride and groom on their wedding night: the texts they sang were pretty hot stuff — if you understand Latin, that is!

Triofi di Afrodite shows Orff’s indebtedness to Stravinsky, and his repetitive rhythmic patterns seem to anticipate the minimalist movement by several decades. At the 1953 premiere, Schwarzkopf’s husband, record producer Walter Legge, gently suggested to Orff that he might consider a few cuts to the new work. His response? “Oh, I know very well the effect of my rubber-stamp music!”

In any case, Legge decided not to make a recording of the new work — which seems a shame, considering the all-star cast assembled at La Scala for its premiere!

Carl Orff (1985-1982): Trionfo di Aphrodite

Today’s date in 1910 marks the birthday in Paris of a French composer you perhaps have never heard of, but Elsa Barraine is well-deserving of your attention.

Barraine’s father was a cellist at the Paris Opera, and as a teen she attended the Paris Conservatory, studying composition with Paul Dukas. Olivier Messiaen was her classmate and remained a lifelong friend. She won several prizes for her compositions, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1929 when she was just 19.

Barraine worked at the French National Radio from 1936 to 1940. During World War II, she was heavily involved in the French Resistance, and from 1944 to 1947 was the Recording Director of the French record label Le Chant du Monde. In 1953 she joined the faculty at the Paris Conservatoire, where she taught until 1972, the year the French Ministry of Culture named her Director of Music. She died in 1999.

Barraine’s catalog of works includes a variety of vocal and instrumental works, an opera, ballets, and two symphonies, but her music is seldom performed today. We’re sampling one of her chamber works, a piece for French horn and piano, Crépuscules, or Twilights.

Elsa Barraine (1910-1999): Crépuscules; Lin Foulk Baird, French Horn; Martha Fischer, piano; Centaur CRC-3857

On today’s date in the year 1900, the principal of Stanton Elementary in Jacksonville, Florida was asked to give a Lincoln’s Day speech to his students. Stanton was a segregated school for African-American children, and was the school that its principal, James Weldon Johnson, had attended. He decided he would rather have the students do something themselves, perhaps sing an inspirational song. He decided to write the words himself, and enlisted the aid of his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, who was a composer.

“We planned to have it sung by schoolchildren, a chorus of 500 voices. I got my first line, ‘Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing’ — not a startling first line, but I worked along, grinding out the rest,” Johnson recalled. He gave the words to his brother as they came to him, not even writing them down as his brother worked at the piano. By the time they finished, he confessed he was moved by what they had created: “I could not keep back the tears and made no effort to do so.”

The song was a great success on February 12th, 1900, and then was pretty much forgotten by Johnson — but not by the children who sang it. They memorized it. Some of them became teachers, and taught it to their students. The song spread across the country, and soon became the unofficial National Anthem of Black America.

“We wrote better than we knew,” he said.

J.W. (1871-1938) and J.R. (1873-1954) Johnson: “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”; Choirs and Boston Pops Orchestra; Keith Lockhart, conductor; BMG/RCA 63888

If the bassoon is rather unkindly known as the “clown” of the orchestra, what does that make the poor tuba?

Just say “tuba” to someone, and they turn into a mime — at least that was the experience of American composer Alex Shapiro when she mentioned that she was writing a new work for tuba and piano.

“The response was usually one of surprised and barely muffled laughter. The exclamation ‘Tuba, eh? What a funny instrument!’ was often accompanied by exaggerated hand and mouth gestures that somewhat resembled a trout attempting to inflate a balloon,” she said.

Shapiro wanted to show how nimble and lyrical a tuba could be. She gave her finished piece — for tuba and piano — a punning title: Music for Two Big Instruments.

The new work was commissioned by Norman Pearson, principal tubist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who premiered the work with wife, pianist Cynthia Bauhof-Williams, on today’s date in 2001 at Alfred Newman Hall on the campus of University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Grateful tubists have taken up Shapiro’s piece since then, and this West Coast commission’s first recording was made by New York Philharmonic principal tubist Alan Baer, so one could say — with a bit of a stretch — Music for Two Big Instruments has been a coast to coast success!

Alex Shapiro (b. 1962): Music for Two Big Instruments; Alan Baer, tuba; Bradley Haag, piano; innova 683

On today’s date in 1934, the audience at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City demanded — and got — 50 curtain calls for the cast and conductor of the new opera that had just received its premiere staged performance.

The opera was Merry Mount, based on a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story set in a Puritan colony in 17th-century New England. The music was by American composer Howard Hanson. The performers for Met Opera’s premiere included great American baritone Lawrence Tibbett as the Puritan preacher Wrestling Bradford, sorely tempted by the Swedish soprano Gösta Ljungberg in the role of Lady Marigold Sandys, his unwilling leading lady.

Despite its setting in Puritan New England, the opera included plenty of the lurid sex and violence that fuels the all the best Romantic opera plots, and the score was in Hanson’s most winning Neo-Romantic style, with rich choral and orchestral writing, capped by a fiery conflagration as a grand finale. What more could an opera audience want?

Strangely enough, despite its tremendous first-night success, Merry Mount has seldom — if ever — been staged since 1934. To celebrate the centenary of Hanson’s birth in 1996, the Seattle Symphony presented Merry Mount in a concert performance conducted by Gerard Schwarz.

Howard Hanson (1896-1981): Merry Mount Suite; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3105