Composers Datebook

In the Guiness Book of Music Facts and Feats, the record for "Most Prolific Composer" goes to Georg Philip Telemann, who died on today's date in 1767 at the age of 86. And longevity gave an edge to productivity: Telemann outlived his prolific contemporary, J.S. Bach, by 21 years, and outlived Handel by 12. But even considering the extra years he lived, Telemann's output is staggering. Of Bach's cantatas, some 200 or so survive, but Telemann's number 1400. He also wrote 125 orchestral suites, 125 concertos, 130 trios, 145 pieces for solo keyboard, and about 50 operas. Most composers (if they are lucky), publish one autobiography; Telemann published three, and commented in one of them, "How is it possible for me to remember everything I wrote for violin and winds?" Sometimes, in addition to composing original music, Telemann was also asked to perform it: "A few days before I play a violin concerto," he wrote, "I always locked myself away, fiddle in hand, shirt-sleeves rolled up, with something strong to calm the nerves, and practice." Fortunately, Telemann seemed to find musical inspiration everywhere, including from the pop and folk music of his day. As he put it, "One would scarcely believe what wonderful ideas pipers and fiddlers have when they improvise while dancers pause for breath. An observer could easily gather enough ideas from them in eight days to last a lifetime!"

In wartime London, on today's date in 1943, a Promenade Concert featured the first performance of the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The composer himself conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Queen's Hall, the traditional home of the annual summertime Proms concerts, had been destroyed by German bombers two years earlier. The Proms concerts had moved into a new and larger venue, the Royal Albert Hall, where the series continues to this day. For the 1943 season, Proms programs started earlier than usual, so that concert goers could get home before the nightly air raids on the city. To London audiences troubled by war fears and many sleepless nights of German bombing, the serene musical world of the Vaughan Williams Fifth must have seemed a real blessing. It's not a "wartime" symphony in the conventional sense, full of defiance and bluster, but rather an evocation and affirmation of England's musical past, blending hints of 16th century hymn tunes and modal folk melodies into symphonic form. For some time, Vaughan Williams had been at work on an opera based on "The Pilgrim's Progress," a 17th century allegorical tale by the Puritan writer John Bunyan. Some of the tunes and motives from his projected opera ended up in the symphony, along with a sense of faith and optimism in the face of adversity that must have deeply affected the first audience to hear the work.

In 2008, the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists was held in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and for the occasion a "Minnesota Organ Book" was commissioned. The idea was that six Minnesota composers* would each write a short piece for organ plus one solo instrument, and that the pieces would be suitable for use at a Sunday service.

One of the Minnesota composers selected was Carol Barnett, who recalled thinking to herself, "Well, probably everybody else will do something slow and lovely, so I'm going to do something fast, which means a Recessional. The whole idea of a Recessional is, 'We are done. Let's get out of here!' and one assumes that means getting out into a bright and beautiful day…"

Barnett selected a bright, beautiful, but decidedly unusual extra instrument for her piece—namely the steel pan.

The steel pan is a chromatically-pitched concert instrument related to the steel drums heard in the calypso folk music of Trinidad. Its bright, metallic sound blends surprisingly well with the pipe organ, holding its own against the organ's mighty voice. Moreover, its calypso associations evoke a sense of joyful release—perfect for a recessional, in Barnett's opinion.

She titled her piece, "Praise," and it received its premiere performance on today's date in 2008 at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, with organist Jonathan Gregoire and percussionist Jay Johnson.

*For the record, the six composers and pieces included in "The Minnesota Organ Book" are:

• Cary John Franklin: "Morning Light" (for cello and organ)

• Monte Mason: "The Dances of Our Lady" (for soprano saxophone and organ)

• Janika Vandervelde: "Hachazarah: The Arousal of the Return" (for violin and organ)

• Linda Tutas Haugen: "Invocation and Remembrance" (for trumpet and organ)

• Carol Barnett: "Praise" (for steel pan and organ)

• David Evan Thomas: "Psalm and Dance" (for flute and organ)

The sheet music comes with a CD recording of all six pieces and is available fr...

There is an ancient curse, popularly attributed to the Chinese, "May you live in INTERESTING times!" The French composer Etienne-Nicolas Mehul, who was born on this date in 1763, certainly lived and worked in an "interesting" time, politically and musically speaking.

His creative life spanned both the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, and since Mehul live and worked in Paris, he found himself at the epicenter of some extremely "interesting" events. As one of the leading French composers of his day, he was commissioned to write patriotic works for state occasions, and had friends and supporters in high places, including Napoleon himself.

His operas, both dramatic and comic, were greatly admired by his contemporaries, although sometimes these proved too "politically incorrect" for the Parisian censors.

Beethoven (not always "P-C" himself) was a Mehul fan, and borrowed some striking theatrical effects from one of Mehul's operas to use in his own opera, "Fidelio."

Apparently this admiration—and the borrowing—was reciprocated. The last movement of Mehul's First Symphony (in g minor) shows the impact of Beethoven's dramatic Fifth Symphony (in c minor) of a few years earlier.

Even after Mehul's death in 1817, his works continued to be admired, studied, and imitated by later composers like Weber, Berlioz, and Wagner. These days, sad to say, Mehul's works are only occasionally heard in performance or on recordings.

Today's the birthday of the versatile Argentinean-born American composer, arranger and jazz pianist, Boris Claudio "Lalo" Schifrin, who was born in Buenos Aires on today's date in 1932. From his background, you'd guess Schifrin was destined for a concert career. His father was a violinist in the orchestra of Argentina's premiere opera house, the Teatro Colon. As a boy he studied with Enrique Barenboim, father of pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim, and in Paris he studied composition with Olivier Messiaen and Charles Koechlin.

But Lalo Schifrin also loved jazz, and after studies by day with Messiaen, his nights were spent performing in Parisian jazz clubs. Eventually Dizzy Gillespie commissioned him to write for his band.

Around the same time, Schrifin began writing film and TV scores. When he started working on the TV series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," he came into contact with legendary film composer Bernard Herrmann, who became a friend and mentor. Schifrin has written more than 100 scores for film and television, garnering Grammy awards and Oscar nominations along the way. Undoubtedly his most famous composition is this catchy theme of the 1960s TV series, "Mission Impossible"—and still used in the subsequent movie remakes.

For the concert hall, Schifrin has composed concertos and arrangements for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and guitarist Angel Romero, and was the arranger of choice for those "Three Tenor" song medleys sung by Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo.

Today in 1948, about 50 members of the press were invited to New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for a demonstration of a new kind of phonograph record. A Columbia Records employee named Edward Wallerstein stood between a big stack of heavy, shellac, 78-rpm albums, the standard for recorded music in those days, and a noticeably slimmer stack of vinyl discs, a new format which Wallerstein had dubbed "LPs"—"long playing" records that spun at 33 and 1/3 revolutions per minute.

Before 1948, if you wanted to buy a recording of a complete symphony or concerto, it meant the purchase of up to a dozen separate 78s, each playing only four minutes a side. In developing its new LP-record, Columbia's goal was to fit complete classical works onto a SINGLE disc. "I timed I don't know how many works in the classical repertory," recalled Wallerstein, "and came up with a figure of seventeen minutes to a side. This would enable about 90% of all classical music to be put on two sides of one record."

Columbia's first LP release was a recording of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with Nathan Milstein the soloist and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Bruno Walter.

The following year, Columbia struck pay dirt when it released the original cast album of a brand-new Broadway musical by Richard Rodgers. The 1949 Columbia LP of Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza singing the hit tunes from "South Pacific" became a best-seller, and by 1951 the LP-record had won: No one was making 78s anymore.

Today's date marks the 1953 New York premiere of a musical movie that flopped at the time but has since become a cult classic—and for two very good reasons.

First, the movie's script—written by Dr. Seuss—was about a little boy named Bart who didn't enjoy practicing the piano and who was worried that his widowed mom might marry the dreaded piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker. The film, entitled "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T," is cast as Bart's dream—or nightmare—with surreal scenarios as only Dr. Seuss could imagine them.

Second, the film boasted a score by Frederick Hollander, a composer of droll Berlin cabaret songs who found a welcome home for his talent in Hollywood. For "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T," Hollander crafted witty songs and an extravagant instrumental sequence for a whacky Seussian ballet.

Despite all this, The New York Times reviewer was bored: "a ponderously literate affair," he wrote. Little kids who saw the film in 1953 weren't bored; on the contrary, they were scared silly by the movie. Too dull for The Times, too scary for kids, "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" did not do well at the box office in 1953.

The film did have its fans, however, and one was a little boy who DID like to practice the piano—singer and pianist Michael J. Feinstein, who lovingly gathered together all of Hollander's used and unused music for the movie for a limited edition CD-set released in 2010.

OK, violin soloists have it easy: there are thousands of violin concertos they can choose from, starting in the Baroque era of Bach and Vivaldi, and continuing right up to the present day, with new violin concertos available from composers from John Adams to Ellen Taaffe Zwlich.

Oboe concertos? Not so much. Oh, there are some very fine oboe concertos out there, but they just aren’t being written as often as new works for the violin or piano, it seems.

But on today’s date in 2010, a welcome new oboe concerto by the contemporary Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin received its premiere performance at the Concertgebouw in Amstrerdam. In describing his new work, Shechedrin wrote:

“It was my intention … to give expression to the entire palette of the tonal and technical qualities of this wonderful instrument. In my score there are however two further essential actors: the [English horn] which permanently imitates or answers the solo instrument … and the orchestra itself whose role is … not merely confined to the accompaniment of the soloist [but provides] the chance for individual musicians to demonstrate their great virtuosity in performance both within the ensemble and as soloists.”

Now, Rodion Shchedrin knows a thing or two about writing concertos and has written quite a few: for trumpet, cello, and viola; SIX concertos for piano -- as well as five showpiece “Concertos for Orchestra!”

For decades the Goldman Band was famous for its summertime concerts in New York parks. Founded in 1918 by Edwin Franko Goldman, the band was a well-rehearsed, first-rate ensemble capable of presenting both classic Sousa marches as well as brand-new works for symphonic band. And so, on today's date in 2001, at Damrosch Park next to Lincoln Center, it was the Goldman Memorial Band that premiered a new work for winds by the American composer Michael Torke, entitled "Grand Central Station." Now, everybody calls the big building at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan "Grand Central Station," but its official name is "Grand Central Terminal." Built by and named for the New York Central Railroad in the heyday of American long-distance passenger trains, it underwent major renovation in the 1990s, and Torke's score was inspired by the dazzle of the old station's new look. "As I wrote this piece," said Torke, "I thought of the tremendous energy of arrivals and departures, the swirling shapes and patterns of people with optimistic expectations. Newly renovated, Grand Central Station has that wonderful mix of the classically old, along with its shiny, new, welcoming appearance. Like the Goldman Band itself, it has decades of rich, New York history, but it is very much alive today." Although Grand Central is enjoying a new lease on life, the fabled Goldman Band was not so fortunate and disbanded in 2005.

If you're a baby boomer who played in a high school or college band, you'll probably remember the "Divertimento for Band" by the American composer, Vincent Persichetti, music that premiered on today's date in 1950, with the composer conducting the Goldman Band.

Persichetti didn't envision his "Divertimento" as a band work, per se. At the start, it was just some woodwind figures accentuated by brass and percussion. When Persichetti realized that violins and cellos just didn't seem to fit in the picture, "Divertimento" began to take shape in his mind as a work for winds, brass and percussion alone.

Persichetti went on to write a dozen more compositions for concert band. These pieces quickly entered the repertory of the thousands of high school and college bands that sprang up across the country in the years following World War II, institutions peopled by baby boomers, who, like Pesichetti's band compositions, were born in the 1950s and 60s.

Beyond his works for band, Persichetti was a prolific composer of keyboard, chamber and orchestra pieces. He once claimed that since musical ideas often came to him in his car, he liked to tape a piece of music paper to his steering wheel, so he could jot down ideas and keep his eyes on the road at the same time.

Luckily for other residents of his hometown of Philadelphia, this apparently didn't result in any head-on collisions—but kids, don't try this at home!