Composers Datebook

Do you believe in Angels?

Apparently the mystical Finnish composer Einojuhanni Rautavaara did. He produced a number of orchestral pieces with evocative titles like "Angels and Visitations" or "Angel of Light." One of these, a concerto for double-bass and orchestra, is titled "Angel of Dusk," and was given its premiere performance in on today's date in 1981, in Helsinki.

"Looking out the window of a plane," wrote Rautavaara, "I saw a strikingly shaped cloud, gray but pierced with color, rising above the Atlantic horizon. Suddenly, the words 'Angel of Dusk' came to mind." Rautavaara had been asked to write a double-bass concerto for a friend, who died before the composer could comply with the request. Some years later, when the idea of such a concerto was suggested by another soloist, Rautavaara recalled the vision of the cloud, and had his title.

In an interview, Rautavaara spoke of a scientist who wrote that "the existence of music is an intellectual scandal." "With that he meant," Rautavaara explained, "…that there is a message in music, and yet there are no words for that message. It's from another world. For a scientist that is a scandal. For me, it's a wonderful thing."

"In the end, I agree with Carl Jung," said Rautavaara. "The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him."

Benjamin Britten was the most famous English opera composer of the 20th century, but ironically his first opera, "Paul Bunyan," had an American theme and premiered at Columbia University in New York City on today's date in 1941.

Britten lived in America from 1939 to 1942. When his American publisher suggested he write something that could be performed by any high school, Britten's good friend, the British poet W. H. Auden, also living in the U.S., fashioned a libretto around the tall tales of the mythical American folk hero, the giant logger Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe.

The New York Times review of the premiere of "Paul Bunyan"— which shared its page with a picture of New York major Fiorello La Guardia sampling Camp Fire Girls' donuts — was a mixture of praise and pans. "Mr. Britten is a very clever young man," wrote Olin Downes, but firmly suggested the young composer was capable of much better things.

Britten's next opera, "Peter Grimes," would receive its premiere in London, in 1945, by which time Britten was back in England for good, but like "Paul Bunyan" had an American connection — it was originally commissioned for $1000 by the Koussevitsky Foundation of Boston, and so received its American premiere at the Berkshire Music Festival in 1946 under the baton of Serge Koussevitsky's young protege, Leonard Bernstein.

On today's date in 1953, at New York's 92nd Street "Y," Walden String Quartet tackled the difficult First String Quartet of American composer Elliott Carter. In Carter's 45-minute Quartet, the four voices enter one by one, in the style of a fugue, but each voice pursues its own very individual pace and character.

Carter's Quartet was as densely-packed with ideas as a page from James Joyce—an author the composer cited as an influence. But, writing for the Herald Tribune, composer Virgil Thomson gave the work a glowing review: "The piece is complex of texture, delicious in sound, richly expressive, and in every way grand—the audience loved it," wrote Thomson.

That same year Carter's Quartet won First Prize in the International String Quartet competition in Belgium, a contest Carter entered almost as an afterthought. "My First Quartet was written largely for my own satisfaction and grew out of an effort to understand myself," he said.

To escape from the distractions of New York, Carter had retreated to the desert near Tucson to write it. No one had commissioned the Quartet, and Carter initially feared its complexity would only baffle performers and audiences. His next quartet, equally challenging, won a Pulitzer Prize.

Complexity would characterize Carter's music for the next 50 years—although the composer himself insists that fantasy and invention, rather than difficulty for its own sake, had always been his goal.

Today marks the anniversary of the first performance of the best-known work of the Swiss-born American composer, Ernest Bloch, whose "Hebrew rhapsody—Schelomo," for cello and orchestra, premiered at Carnegie Hall on May 3 in 1917. "Schelomo" is a vivid meditation on the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, which describes King Solomon reflecting sadly on the vanity of human endeavor—"Schelomo" being the original Hebrew pronunciation of Solomon.

"Schelomo" premiered just a year after Bloch came to the United States. In America, Bloch had found encouragement and remarkable acceptance of his music. His "Schelomo" was just one of several works premiered at an all-Bloch concert at Carnegie Hall arranged by The Society of the Friends of Music, and performed by an orchestra made up chiefly of New York Philharmonic members with the Philadelphia orchestra's principal cellist Hans Kindler as soloist.

"Schelomo" was originally written with the Russian cellist Serge Alexander Barjansky in mind, and was dedicated to him and his wife; but it was not until a concert in Rome in 1933, a fateful year for the Jews of Europe, that Bloch got to conduct the work with Barjansky as soloist.

Despite his success in America, Bloch tried to resume his career in Europe in the 1930s, but, discouraged by the rise of anti-Semitism and threats of war, he returned to American for good in 1938, where he continued to compose, conduct, and teach until his death in 1959.

The marimba is a percussion instrument of tuned bars, usually made of wood, arranged like the keys of a piano. These bars are struck with mallets to produce resonate, rounded—and, well, "woody"—musical tones.

The marimba was developed in Mexico and Guatemala, inspired by instruments native to Africa reconstructed in the New World by unfortunate Africans brought over to Central America to work as slaves. By the mid-20th century, the marimba was showing up in jazz ensembles, and classical composers would, on occasion, even write a marimba concerto or two. More recently, massed marimbas make up a sonorous, albeit stationary, component of hyper-kinetic drum and bugle corps spectaculars.

The contemporary American composer Jennifer Higdon loves the sound of the marimba, and so in 2006 wrote a piece for three marimbas, entitled "Splendid Wood."

"'Splendid Wood' is a joyous celebration of the sound of wood, one of nature's most basic materials," says Higdon. "Wood is a part of all sorts of things in our world, but is used most thrillingly and gloriously in instruments. This work reflects the evolving patterns inside a piece of wood, always shifting, and yet every part is related and contributes to the magnificent of the whole."

"Splendid Wood" was commissioned by Bradford and Dorothea Endicott, for Frank Epstein and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, and had its New York premiere on today's date in 2007, by the Mannes Percussion Ensemble under the direction of James Preiss.

For the American conductor and composer Bernard Herrmann, 1940 was quite a year. On the East Coast, he had been appointed chief conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra, and on the West Coast, he was busy in Hollywood, composing music for an Orson Welles film titled "Citizen Kane."

Herrmann was 30 years old at the time, and recalled the experience as follows: "I was given twelve weeks to do my job. I worked on the film reel by reel, as it was being shot and cut. In this way I had a sense of the picture being built and of my own music being a part of that building. Many of the sequences were actually tailored to match the music."

The finished product was released to the public on today's date in 1941, and was an instant success, with The New York Times review the following day noting (quote), "the stunning manner in which the music of Bernard Herrmann has been used."

"Citizen Kane" was up for nine Academy Awards in 1941, but, although nominated for both "Best Picture" and "Best Musical Score," didn't win the Oscar in either category. No matter—for many filmmakers, film critics, and film fans, "Citizen Kane" rates No. 1 among the greatest films ever made.

And what does THE COMPOSERS DATEBOOK have to say on the subject? Just one word, of course: "Rosebud!"

Today is the birthday anniversary of the American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, born on this date in Miami in 1939. As a young musician in Florida, Zwilich studied violin and composition, and eventually moved to New York, where she continued her composition studies at the Juilliard School and played violin in the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski.

In 1975, she was the first woman to earn a Doctorate in Music degree at Juilliard, and, in 1983, was the first woman to win the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Music. The Pulitzer was for this music, her Symphony No. 1.

Zwilich has also composed a number of successful solo concertos, for flute, oboe, bassoon, trumpet, piano, and violin. On today's date in 1991, her 52nd birthday, THIS concerto was premiered by the Chicago Symphony under Daniel Barenboim, a piece which showcased an instrument often overlooked by composers: the bass trombone. The concerto was written for Charles Vernon, bass trombonist in the Chicago Symphony's famous brass section.

Zwilich explains, "The work is almost like an orchestral tone poem with the solo trombone being first among many characters. Throughout the ages there have been great instrumental virtuosos who have opened up new vistas for composers… Charlie Vernon's remarkable virtuosity on the bass trombone opens up a whole new approach to the instrument."

On today's date in 1784, an Italian violinist named Regina Strinasacchi gave the second of two concerts in Vienna, and had the good sense to commission a new work for the occasion from an up-and-coming young Austrian composer named Wolfgang Mozart.

"We have the famous Strinasacchi from Mantua here right now," wrote Wolfgang to his father a few days earlier. "She is a very good violinist, has excellent taste, and a lot of feeling in her playing—I'm composing a Sonata for her at this moment that we'll be performing together on Thursday."

Wolfgang's papa must have been pleased to hear about the cash commission, but probably would have frowned to learn that Strinasacchi received her part barely in time for the performance, and that his son hadn't even bothered to write out his own part down in full—just a sketchy outline. It also comes as a shock for us to learn that Regina and Wolfgang never got together to rehearse prior to the concert, which meant that she was probably sight-reading her part, and he improvising his.

No matter—the new Violin Sonata was received warmly by Viennese audiences, and afterward Wolfgang had a whole month or so to dot all the musical "i's" and cross all the musicals "t's" in his score before it was printed. And, for the record, this Violin Sonata in B-flat Major is arguably one of Mozart's finest.

On today's date in 1865, the hottest ticket in Paris was for the premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer's long-awaited grand opera "L'Africaine," or "The African Maid," at the Paris Opera. And when I say "long-awaited," I mean long-awaited. Meyerbeer had begun work on "L'Africaine" some 25 years earlier. It had become something of a standing joke in the French press to rib Meyerbeer about the "imminent" completion of this long-standing project. There was no shortage of reasons for the delay. Meyerbeer was a slow-worker, a perfectionist; he was sidelined by ill-health, he was waiting for better singers, more sympathetic management at the Opera, etc. etc. etc. Many opera fans back then must have all but given up hope that Meyerbeer would ever finish "L'Africaine" when he finally did just that, and the work was slotted for production at the Paris Opera. At that point, as luck would have it, Meyerbeer died, and his widow entrusted another composer to supervise the rehearsals for the premiere on today's date in 1865. Meyerbeer's grand operas were the 19th century equivalent of the movies of Cecil B. DeMille. Both Meyerbeer and DeMille favored sweeping historical costume epics, lots of extras, and a tragic love story. "L'Africaine" was no exception: the hero is the explorer Vasco da Gama, and one of the opera's more spectacular scenic effects involved a Portuguese ship running aground on an exotic reef and being taken over by a swarm of natives.

Back in the 18th century, if you were Haydn, there was a friendly Austrian prince or London impresario to pay you to write symphonies and provide an orchestra to play them. If you were Mozart or Beethoven, and no prince or impresario was handy, you could always hire your own orchestra, put on a concert featuring your latest symphony, and make a profit—depending how ticket sales went, of course.

But by the 21st century, this whole writing-a-new-symphony-and-getting-it-performed business has become MUCH more complicated and expensive.

American composer Peter Boyer had years of experience writing orchestral music for film, TV, and specially-commissioned occasional scores on various historical themes, but had never been asked to write a NON-programmatic symphony. "Commissions of this nature are rare," says Boyer, "so I was pleased when the Pasadena Symphony Association offered me the opportunity."

Programmatic or not, even in an "abstract" symphony, as BBC Music magazine noted, Boyer can (quote) "set a scene or create a mood rapidly and unambiguously; he writes with great flair for big orchestras."

On today's date in 2013, Boyer himself conducted the Pasadena Symphony in the premiere performance of his Symphony No. 1, a work with no overt program but dedicated to the memory of Leonard Bernstein, and Bernstein's daughter Jaime commented, "I know how deeply Peter relates to the music of [my father], as well as to the humanitarian spirit that infuses so many Bernstein compositions."