Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1980, a week-long festival entitled “New Music America” came to a close in Minneapolis with a concert at that city’s Guthrie Theater. The program included the premiere of a piece entitled “High Life for Strings,” composed by David Byrne, a musician best known for his work with a rock band called The Talking Heads.

Byrne later recalled, “When I participated in the New Music America festival in Minneapolis, minimalism and New-Age noodling were making big in-roads into a scene that had been, for better or worse, more insular and academic. My piece, for a dozen strings and me as a timekeeper, was on a program with Philip Glass.” Byrne says he was fascinated by the intricate rhythms of West African pop music at the time, and that also influenced his “High Life for Strings.”

Brian Eno was another rock musician represented during the Festival in Minneapolis. Some years earlier, Eno had been so irritated by the inane, chirpy muzak he heard while traveling that he composed a soothing ambient synthesizer score he called “Music for Airports.” Appropriately enough, during the 8 days of the Festival, Eno’s score was broadcast 24 hours a day throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Decades after its composition, composer Michael Gordon arranged Brian Eno’s synthesizer score for acoustic instruments, and recorded an arrangement of “Music for Airports” for the percussion ensemble Bang on a Can.

A now-obscure Englishman named Charles Caleb Colton is credited with the famous quote that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." A number of great composers have been "flattered" in that fashion, too. On today's date in 1985, a new work by the American composer John Harbison premiered in Sarasota, Florida. It imitated the form and gestures of a Baroque Concerto Grosso in the style of J.S. Bach. Harbison's work was titled "Concerto for Oboe, Clarinet, and Strings." Harbison described his piece as follows: "The oboe, clarinet, and strings are equal partners. The first movement is declamatory, the second contemplative, and the last frenetic. Each movement sustains one affect [or mood], in the Baroque manner... The steady insistent rhythms are indeed baroque, the harmonies less so." "One astute writer," commented Harbison, "referred to the piece as 'scenes from a marriage.' This metaphorical marriage between solo winds and strings contains quarrels, precarious balances, comic relief, misunderstandings, and eventual unanimity." And, speaking of marriage, Harbison composed the work at Token Creek, in Wisconsin, an unincorporated community near Madison where his wife's family had farmed since the 1920s and where for some 25 years each summer John and Rose Mary Harbison have organized their own mini-Festival of chamber music.

"You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn't?" That's how the American composer John Adams described his orchestral miniature "Short Ride in a Fast Machine," which received its premiere on today's date by the Pittsburgh Symphony at the 1986 Great Woods Festivals in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Since then, Adam's "Short Ride" has had a "long run"—it now ranks as one of the most-frequently performed of all contemporary American orchestra pieces.

From 1979 until 1985, Adams served as the San Francisco Symphony's first Composer-in-Residence. In notes for a Symphony program, the late Michael Steinberg had these comments about Adams' "ride."

"'Short Ride in a Fast Machine' begins with a marking of quarter notes (woodblock, soon joined by the four trumpets) and eighths (clarinets and synthesizers); the woodblock is fortissimo and the other instruments play forte. Adams describes the woodblock's persistence as 'almost sadistic' and thinks of the rest of the orchestra as running the gauntlet through that rhythmic tunnel."

Another commentator suggested that "this music is like a roller coaster that just goes fast as the dickens. It's also hair-raisingly difficult to play."

The composer determined the tone of the four-minute piece when he marked at the beginning of the work "Delirando," which means "delirious."

In Cockney rhyming slang, being "Brahms and Liszt" means being tipsy.

But during the latter half of the 19th century, for many passionate music lovers, the phrase "Brahms and Liszt" signified opposite—and mutually exclusive—tastes in contemporary music. Oddly enough, it was the younger German, Johannes Brahms, who represented the more conservative, traditionally structured side of the spectrum, while the older Hungarian, Franz Liszt, represented a freer, less structured style, dubbed "the music of the future."

Brahms and Liszt first met on today's date in 1853, when Liszt was 41 and Brahms just 20 years old. The young American composer and pianist William Mason, also in his 20s, was present at the meeting, which took place at Liszt's home in Weimar. Mason recalled the historic encounter in his memoirs.

Liszt read at sight the manuscript of one of Brahms' early piano pieces, and praised the young composer's work. When pressed by those present for some of his own music, Liszt began playing his recently completed Sonata in B-Minor, arguably one of his finest works. Midway through the piece it became embarrassingly apparent that the young Johannes Brahms had fallen asleep in his chair.

Maybe it was the summer heat, perhaps sleep deprivation—or maybe, as some must have thought at the time, Brahms was just bored. In any case, Liszt was understandably miffed, and after finishing his Sonata, rose from the piano and left the room without a word.

On today's date in 1926, the American opera composer Carlisle Floyd was born in Latta, South Carolina. Floyd's ancestors were among the first to settle in the Carolinas, and many of his dozen or so operas are based on colonial, southern, or rural themes. For three decades Floyd taught piano and composition at the University of Florida in Tallahassee, and it was there that his most famous opera, "Susannah," was initially staged in 1955.

"Susannah" was an American retelling of the Biblical tale of Susannah and the elders, set in rural America. It was a tremendous success, and was soon taken up by the New York City Opera and was chosen to represent American opera at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. Since its première, "Susannah" has received nearly 300 productions and more than 800 performances in the United States and Europe. Opera America magazine included it among the top ten "most performed" American operas of all time.

When pressed once to articulate what it is about his music that strikes many listeners as quintessentially "American," Carlisle Floyd answers, "I'm probably the worst person to ask. I've never really set out consciously to write 'American' music. I don't know what that would be unless you mean the obvious Appalachian folk references in a good many of my pieces. I can tell you, however, that when I've seen my operas in Europe they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here."

On today's date in 1939, the King and Queen of England were in New York City. Despite the perilous situation back home in Europe, their royal majesties George and Elizabeth Windsor crossed the Atlantic to take in some of the British exhibits at the 1939 World's Fair, and sample exotic native delights such as a hot dog picnic with President Franklin Roosevelt. The previous evening at Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic had given the world premiere of the Seventh Symphony of Arnold Bax, a work commissioned by the British Council and dedicated to the American people. On the evening of June 10, the same performers presented two additional premieres: a virtuoso Piano Concerto by Arthur Bliss (with the British pianist Cuthbert Solomon as the soloist) and Ralph Vaughan Williams' set of variations for strings and harp on the old English carol, "Dives and Lazarus." The music critic for The New Yorker, covering the premieres, wrote: "The symphony wandered, as Bax symphonies seem to do, yet wandered into many characteristic eloquences. The variations were soundly charming, and the piano concerto was a roaring triumph for Mr. Solomon." There seems to be no documentation on the quality of the hot dogs served to their royal majesties, but we're willing to bet they, too, were top-notch.

On today’s date in 1904, the London Symphony gave its first concert at the old Queen’s Hall in London. Founded as a musician-run ensemble, along co-operative lines, back then all its players shared the profits at the end of each season.

So, from the start, the LSO had to be entrepreneurial: it made some of the first acoustic recordings of major orchestral works, and in the era of silent movies, played in a London theater pit for major films of the day. By the 1930s, they were recording musical scores for early British sound films as well.

One famous film score venture occurred in 1946, for a British movie entitled “The Instruments of the Orchestra,” in which the LSO itself played a starring role, performing Benjamin Britten's “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra” -- a work specially-composed for the film.

But the LSO’s best-known film score recording dates from 1977. It was then that the LSO that recorded the John Williams score for the first of the “Star Wars” movies. The score became an instant classic, and the LSO became the “go-to” orchestra for John Williams film scores, including “Superman,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and Harry Potter.

Speaking of “titanically” successful films, in 1912, the LSO arranged a North American tour and was booked to sail on a brand-new ocean liner named the Titanic. At the last minute, their tour schedule had to be changed, and – fortunately -- they sailed on a liner named the Baltic instead!

On today's date in 1912 Maurice Ravel's ballet "Daphnis et Chloé" received its first performance at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, staged by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and choreographed by Michel Fokine.

Some three years earlier, Diaghilev had approached Ravel about composing a ballet, and Ravel started working with Fokine on a scenario based on an old Greek pastoral romance about two lovers separated by pirates and reunited by the intervention of the god Pan.

Ravel was a meticulous and slow worker, and his score for "Daphnis et Chloé" ended up taking three years to complete. By the time of its 1912 premiere, internal squabbles in the Diaghilev company and conceptual differences between composer and choreographer had dampened everyone's enthusiasm for the project. Even Diaghilev seemed to lose interest.

In his memoirs, Pierre Monteux, the conductor of the first performance, recalled, "At first Diaghilev had been very enthusiastic with Ravel's magnificent score, but for some reason, which I have always thought was due to the weakness of the choreography, his fervor for Ravel and his music diminished to such a low pitch that it became difficult to work as we should have on the premiere."

Monteux continued, "But all the musicians in the orchestra, and I might say all the musicians in Paris, knew that this was Maurice Ravel's greatest work."

On today's date in 1945, a month after the end of war in Europe, a new opera by the English composer Benjamin Britten debuted at Sadler's Wells Theater in London. Its title was "Peter Grimes," with its story based on George Crabbe's long poem, The Borough, published in 1810, which described life along England's North Sea coast.

In the early 1940's, Britten was living in America, and had read Crabbe's poem in California. The commission for the opera was also American, coming from Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony and one of the leading music patrons of the day.

But Britten's opera is intensely English—evoking, as it does, the images and sounds of the North Sea off the east coast of Suffolk. Britten was born within sight of this seascape, and lived, for the better part of his later life, a little farther down the coast at Aldeburgh—the "Borough," on which George Crabbe had based his poem.

From the start, "Peter Grimes" was an immediate success. Leonard Bernstein conducted its American premiere at the Tanglewood Festival, and within three years the opera was playing around the world. Within a week of its June 7th premiere, Britten conducted the London Philharmonic in an orchestral suite of "Sea Interludes" from his new opera, and these, too, have since firmly established themselves in the concert repertory.

On today's date* in 1727, the opera season of the Royal Academy in London ended early when rival Italian prima donnas, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, came to blows on stage during a performance of Bononcini's opera, "Astianatte." Londoners were shocked, but not surprised. Trouble had been brewing between the two temperamental divas even before they arrived in England. Once there, tension between them only accelerated, egged on by partisan behavior from their rabid English fans, who (depending on their preference) greeted them with either extravagant applause and bravos, or catcalls, hissing, and, as one contemporary put it, "other great indecencies." It was all terrific box-office, as Handel must have realized. He even worked their rivalry into one of his operas entitled "Alessandro," in which the hero finds it hard to decide between the attractions of the dueling divas. Handel prudently gave exactly the same number of solo arias to each soprano. After all, according to Handel's first biographer, a year earlier he had threatened to toss Cuzzoni out the window when, during a rehearsal, she refused point blank to sing one of his arias. "Madam," Handel is quoted as roaring as he dragged her towards the window, "I know you are a veritable devil, but I would have you know that I am Beelzebub, the KING of all the devils!" Not a very gentlemanly thing to do, perhaps, but apparently Cuzzoni DID sing the aria after all. * The Julian calendar was in use in England that year; the Gregorian calendar date for this same day would be June 17.