Composers Datebook

One of the preeminent figures in 20th century Japanese concert music was a composer named Toshiro Mayuzumi, born in Yokohama in 1929. The range of his music reflects a curious turn of mind. He wrote pieces in a neo-Romantic mode, experimented with electronic music and jazz, composed aggressively avant-garde works, and scored music for theater and both Japanese and American films. In 1958, he composed a "Nirvana Symphony," inspired by the haunting sound of Japanese temple bells. "For the past few years," wrote Mayuzumi, "I feel as if I have been possessed by bells. I wonder why it is that, no matter how splendid a piece of music may be, it sounds totally faded and worthless when set beside the lingering resonance of a temple bell." The "Nirvana" Symphony of 1958 was followed up with another orchestral work inspired by Buddhist themes, a "Mandala Symphony," which premiered in Tokyo on today's date in 1960. Mayuzumi collaborated on a number of projects with the nationalistic writer, Yukio Mishima, who, to protest what he considered the weakness of contemporary Japanese society, committed ritual suicide in 1970. Mayuzumi's 1976 opera, "Kinkakuji," or "The Golden Pavilion," is based on a novel by Mishima, which, thanks to a New York City Opera production in 1995, became the first Japanese grand opera to be staged in the U.S. Toshiro Mayuzumi died in 1997, at the age of 68.

She's been called a "British Gershwin" but perhaps a "British Poulenc" might more accurately describe the genial and graceful music of Madeleine Dring, a woman whose diverse and energetic creative life was cut short, when, at the age of 53, she died suddenly on today's date in 1977. Madeleine Dring was born into a talented musical family in 1923, and she showed early promise. On her tenth birthday she won a scholarship to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music in London, and eventually studied composition with Herbert Howells, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Gordon Jacob. Dring was soon providing incidental music and songs for amateur and professional theatrics. She was also a gifted singer and actress, and performed occasionally on stage and television. Dring married the British oboist, Roger Lord, and a number of her chamber works feature that instrument. This one bears the witty title, "Three-Piece Suite." Six volumes of her songs were published after her death, largely through the persistence of her husband, and many of her other works have been published, performed, and recorded with increasing frequency, especially in the United States. Sadly, Dring died just when women composers began to receive increasing attention from music historians, performers, and audiences worldwide. In the year 2000, a biography and study of Dring's career were published in England.

It's all a matter of timing. In 1942, the Soviet Union was America's wartime ally, and the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich made the cover of Time magazine. Seven years later, the war was over, but the COLD war was on—with a vengeance.

On March 25, 1949, Shostakovich arrived in New York for his first visit to America, hand-picked by Stalin to be part of the Soviet delegation to a "Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace." (That's what they called it, anyway.)

The goals of the congress organizers were idealistic, but the anti-Communist tide of American public opinion resulted in pickets, protests, and many cancellations. Those who did speak at the congress, including the American composer Aaron Copland, felt compelled to preface their comments with unambiguously anti-Communist manifestos. Shostakovich nervously read the equally unambiguous speech prepared for him by his Soviet minders, a speech attacking American imperialism in general and the expatriate Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, in particular. It was embarrassing for everyone concerned, and the Soviet guests were asked to leave early.

While he was in New York, Shostakovich got to play a piano reduction of the Scherzo from his Fifth Symphony for a huge crowd at Madison Square Garden. That, at least, resulted in a big ovation—and maybe that was how he privately approached the whole, sad affair—as a kind of grim scherzo, or joke.

Music history, like your parents, often reminds us that "Life is NOT fair." On today's date in 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach, Kapellmeister at the Court of Prince Leopold of Coethen, wrote a flowery dedication (in rather bad French) on the title page of his manuscript score for six concertos and sent them off to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, perhaps angling for a job offer in response. To this day, these pieces are known as the "BRANDENBURG Concertos," although in all probability they were composed for and played at Leopold's court. By all rights, they should be known as the "Coethen Concertos," especially since it appears the Margrave of Brandenburg's orchestra never performed them. Bach's concertos require virtuoso performers, and if the Margrave's musicians ever did look at the scores, they probably just bowed deeply and said, "With respect, your Highness, IN YOUR DREAMS." The Coethen musicians might have been less intimidated by Bach's demanding scores, but perhaps Johann was already looking to move on. Prince Leopold's new bride was no music lover (and said so, rather pointedly) and Bach, a devoted church musician, perhaps felt frustrated by Coethen's strict Calvinism, which didn't even permit organ music during church services. In any case, Bach didn't get a job offer from the Margrave, the Prince didn't get the credit, and on all the CD jewel box spines, it reads: "The BRANDENBURG Concertos."

Any composer who sets out to write a violin concerto knows that his or her new work will be measured against the famous concertos of the past. But in the fall of 1936, when the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok decided to write a violin concerto, he asked his publisher to send him some recent work of his contemporaries. After seeing what Karol Szymanowski, Kurt Weill, and Alban Berg had accomplished in the form, Bartok set to work, with much input from his violinist friend, Zoltan Szekely, for whom the new concerto was being written. Bartok was in America when Szekely premiered his Concerto with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Willem Mengelberg. It was only in America, some years later, in 1943, that Bartok first heard his Concerto at a New York Philharmonic concert. He wrote, "I was most happy that there is nothing WRONG with the scoring. Nothing needs to be changed, even though orchestral accompaniment of the violin is a very delicate business." If Bartok was happy with the scoring, he wasn't very pleased with one New York music critic, who wrote that he didn't think the new work would ever displace the great violin concertos of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, or Brahms. "How is it possible to write such an idiotic thing," commented Bartok. "What fool fit for a madhouse would want to displace these works with his own?"

The Boston Symphony premiered a new symphony on today's date in 1984—a commission for its Centenary Celebrations. It was the Symphony No. 1 by the then 45 year-old American composer, John Harbison.

Like many composers who teach, Harbison does most of his composing in the summer months, usually spent on a farm in Token Creek, Wisconsin. The academic year is usually spent in Boston, teaching at MIT. In the case of his first symphony, Harbison worked on the piece both in Wisconsin (where he was also finishing up an Italian language song-cycle), and during a residency year at the American Academy in Rome.

"Just as it felt very right to be working on Italian songs in the Midwest," commented Harbison, "it was natural to work on this American-accented symphony in Italy. I have always found the view from the distance to be clearest."

Harbison's father, a Princeton history professor and amateur composer, also was a big influence on him. The younger Harbison, like his father, has an abiding passion for and fluency in American jazz as well as the modern classical idiom. Harbison dramatically fused both styles in one of his most ambitious ventures to date, the opera, "The Great Gatsby," which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1999.

In 1838, Robert Schumann visited the grave of Franz Schubert in Vienna and paid a courtesy call on Schubert's brother, Ferdinand, who was still alive. Schumann had heard about Ferdinand's closet full of his brother's manuscripts, and among the dusty music scores that Schumann was shown was one for a big symphony in C Major, unperformed, he was told, because people thought it was too difficult, too bombastic, and far too long.

Looking at the music, Schumann was stunned, and asked if he could arrange to have the symphony played. "Sure," said Ferdinand, and Schumann sent the score off to his friend and fellow composer, Felix Mendelssohn, who was the director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Mendelssohn liked what he saw, and gave the first public performance of Schubert's big symphony on today's date in 1839.

After attending the rehearsal, Schumann wrote to his girlfriend, Clara Wieck, "Today I have been in seventh heaven. If only you had been there! For I cannot describe it to you; all the instruments were like human voices, and immensely full of life and wit… and the length, the divine length, like a four-volume novel… I was utterly happy, with nothing left to wish for except that you were my wife and I could write such symphonies myself!"

Well, sometimes wishes do come true, and good deeds are rewarded. Schumann did marry Clara, did write symphonies of his own, and did help launch Schubert's work on its path towards worldwide recognition as a great symphonic masterpiece.

Not ALL composers were nice people, and even some of the more famous ones turn out to have been rather nasty, greedy, vindictive and altogether unpleasant specimens of humanity, despite the enduring beauty of their music. But we like to showcase the BETTER side of the species. On today's date in 1739, for example, George Frederick Handel premiered this music, his Organ Concerto in A Major, as a special, added attraction at a benefit concert in London. It was organized "for the benefit and increase of a fund established for the support of decay'd musicians and their families." The previous year Handel had been shocked to learn that the widow and children of one of his favorite performers, the oboist John Christian Kitch, were found wandering impoverished on the streets of London. Handel called a meeting of some of his colleagues at the Crown and Anchor Tavern and started a charitable fund, even enlisting the support of rival composers and musicians who heretofore had not been on very good terms with Herr Handel. Within a year, a series of benefit concerts were organized to raise money for a continuing fund to assist musicians fallen on hard times, and even Handel's enemies had to admit the gruff and frequently abrasive German must have had a good heart after all.

It's time once again for our "Composer Quiz": Name a famous American composer who was also a successful businessman. If you answered insurance executive "Charles Ives," Jay will show you what's under the box. But if your answer was "John Alden Carpenter," vice president of George B. Carpenter and Co., supplies and equipment dealer, we'll just pull back the curtain and show you all your prizes!

John Alden Carpenter was born in 1876 near Chicago, and, after studies out East, entered his father's business back home, eventually becoming its Vice President. Fortunately for the budding composer, the firm was largely run by his brothers, and Carpenter had enough free time to devote to his music. On today's date in 1915, the Chicago Symphony premiered Carpenter's first big orchestral work, a suite entitled "Adventures in a Perambulator." (You get extra points if you knew a perambulator is a baby buggy.)

Anyway…

Carpenter's "pram" piece was a big success, and he wrote a string of other popular works, including a ballet based on the "Krazy Kat" comic strip of his day, and one entitled "Skyscrapers," a jazzy and topical tribute to the transformation of urban America in the 1920s.

Unlike the unconventional Charles Ives, who toiled away in obscurity, the more conventional Carpenter was very famous in his day. Ironically, while Ives' fame only increased after his death in 1954, when Carpenter died in 1951, his music rapidly fell from fashion.

The Russian émigré composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff was himself the soloist on today's date in 1927 in the first performance of his Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

Rachmaninoff had premiered his Third Concerto in New York in 1909, and he'd been thinking about writing another one for over a decade. In the meantime, his life had been disrupted by both the Russian Revolution and the exhausting business of earning a living as a touring virtuoso pianist. In 1926, Rachmaninoff finally felt he could afford to take some time off and put a Fourth Piano Concerto down on paper.

In its original form, it turned out to be a much longer work than even Rachmaninoff thought practical. He joked to a friend that its movements would have to be "performed on successive nights, like Wagner's Ring operas."

Rachmaninoff made a number of cuts before the Philadelphia premiere, but even so, the new work was not well received, and so Rachmaninoff kept cutting. Audiences and critics still remained cool, and Rachmaninoff eventually shelved the work for a time—quite a time. In 1941 he prepared a "final cut" version, which ended up considerably shorter than his other three Piano Concertos, and recorded it with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.