Composers Datebook

We probably have the irrepressible playwright, music critic, and ardent socialist George Bernard Shaw to thank for this music—the Third Symphony of Sir Edward Elgar.

Shaw had been trying to persuade Elgar to write a Third Symphony, and, early in 1932, had written to Elgar: "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 Third Symphony, commissioned, in fact, by the BBC.

Fast forward 64 years, to February 15th, 1998, when the BBC Symphony gave the premiere performance of Elgar's Third at Royal Festival Hall in London, in a performing version, or "elaboration" of Elgar's surviving sketches, prepared by the 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!"

Happy Saint Valentine's Day!

On today's date in 1953, a new choral work by the German composer Carl Orff received its premiere performance at the La Scala opera house in Milan, Germany. "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, a tryptich that included Orff's famous "Carmina Burana," based on medieval texts, and "Catulli Carmina," based on love lyrics by the 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 "mimimalist" 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. Orff's response? "Oh, I know very well the effect of my rubber-stamp music!"

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

Webster's defines a waltz as "a gliding dance in 3/4 time." But for most people, THIS music defines "waltz." It's the "Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss, Jr, first performed on today's date in 1867 at a Carnival concert of the Men's Choral Society of Vienna.

The society's "house poet," one Joseph Weyl, a police officer by profession, provided the words for the original choral version of the "Blue Danube" Waltz. It was a flop, and even the choral society urged officer Weyl not to quit his day job. Strauss sold the rights to his waltz to a Viennese publisher—and six months later regretted it. At the 1867 World's Fair in Paris, the "Blue Danube Waltz" became an international hit and soon became the unofficial National Anthem of Vienna.

In 1963, the American pianist and composer Robert Moran found himself in Vienna, where he heard the strains of an unfamiliar waltz melody coming though the open door of the Bösendorfer Piano Company. Moran's Viennese friends assured him that, yes, there were still composers writing brand-new waltzes.

Intrigued, Moran tried his hand at it himself, and soon was asking his composers friends to give it a try. The result was "The Waltz Project," a collection of 25 short waltzes by famous and not-so-famous contemporary composers published in 1978.

Philip Glass's contribution, for example, was entitled "Modern Love Waltz".

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 himself attended. Johnson 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," Johnson recalled. "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 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, Johnson 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," said Johnson.

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,” said Shapiro. “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.”

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.” And that’s spelled “T-W-O” -- not “T-O-O,” folks!

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!

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 the American composer Howard Hanson. The performers for Met Opera's premiere included the 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 VERY unwilling leading lady.

Despite its setting in Puritan New England, Hanson's 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.

On today's date in 1784, in the city of Vienna, Wolfgang Mozart finished one bit of work and started another—which he would continue until the end of his life.

After Mozart put the finishing touches to his Piano Concerto No. 14 in E flat, he entered this work as the first item in a ledger, which he titled, "A List of all my works from the month of February, 1784 to the month of..." Mozart then left a blank space on his title page for the concluding month and wrote just the number "1" in the space left for the concluding year of his catalog—with the reasonable expectation that he would live long enough to see the turn of the new century. He then signed his title page: "Wolfgang Amadé Mozart by my own hand."

On the catalog's unruled left-hand pages Mozart wrote the date and description of his subsequent works, and occasionally, in the case of his operas and vocal pieces, the names of the singers who premiered them. The right-hand side of the page was lined with music staves, and here Mozart would write the opening measure of each piece.

The very last entry in Mozart's ledger book is dated November 15, 1791, just one month before his death. This final entry notes the completion of a cantata written for Vienna's "New-Crowned Hope" Masonic Lodge.

On this day in 1934, an excited crowd of locals and visitors had gathered in Hartford, Connecticut, for the premiere performance of a new opera entitled "Four Saints in Three Acts."

The fact that the opera featured 16 saints, not 4, and was divided into 4 acts, not 3, was taken by the audience in stride, as the libretto was by the expatriate American writer, Gertrude Stein, notorious for her surreal poetry and prose. The music, performed by players from the Philadelphia Orchestra and sung by an all-black cast, was by the 37-year old American composer, Virgil Thomson, who matched Stein's surreal sentences with witty musical allusions to hymn tunes and parodies of solemn, resolutely tonal music.

Among the locals in attendance was the full-time insurance executive and part-time poet, Wallace Stevens, who called the new opera (quote): "An elaborate bit of perversity in every respect: text, settings, choreography, [but] Most agreeable musically… If one excludes aesthetic self-consciousness, the opera immediately becomes a delicate and joyous work all around."

The opera was a smashing success, and soon opened on Broadway, where everyone from Toscanini and Gershwin to Dorothy Parker and the Rockefellers paid a whopping $3.30 for the best seats—a lot of money during one of the worst winters of the Great Depression.

On today's date in 1975, "Laude," a new work for symphonic winds by American composer Howard Hanson received its premiere performance in Berkeley, California, by the California State University Long Beach Band conducted by Larry Curtis. The new work was a commission from the College Band Directors National Association.

The notes supplied for the occasion by the 78-year-old composer were unusually eloquent and reflective:

"As one comes toward the end of a long life," wrote Hanson, "one realizes how many influences go back to early childhood. In my musical and religious life the greatest was, undoubtedly, the chorales which I heard as a young boy growing up in Wahoo, Nebraska… 'Laude' [is] based on a chorale of praise… I took my cue from the 150th Psalm: 'Praise Him with the sound of the Trumpet, With Psaltery and harp, With timbrel and dance, With string instruments and organs, Praise Him upon the loud cymbals, the high-sounding cymbals, Let everything that has breath praise the Lord'… when the chorale melody appears, working up a crescendo which becomes, I hope, a veritable avalanche of sound, with, literally, 'everything that has breath' praising the Lord."

An ardent champion of American classical music, Howard Hanson taught for some 40 years at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and once estimated that over 2000 works by more than 500 American composers were premiered during his tenure.

For most of the 18th and 19th centuries, commissioning new musical works was the exclusive prerogative of the Church, royalty, and the wealthy nobility. More recently, Foundations and big corporations have gotten into the act. But even today, individuals can make a difference.

In 1991, six couples in Minneapolis and St. Paul decided to form a Commissioning Club, modeled along the lines of an Investment Club, to spark the creation of new works in a variety of genres and promote the work of composers they admired.

On today's date in 1996, one of their commissions, the "Dramatic Suite" by American composer Stephen Paulus was premiered by flutist Ransom Wilson and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. It was played first in Minnesota, and subsequently at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Later that same year, the Club arranged for another Paulus commission: a new Christmas Carol, titled "Pilgrim Jesus," that was premiered on the BBC radio broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge. That 1996 broadcast, heard by millions of radio listeners worldwide, marked the first time that an American composer had been chosen to contribute a new carol for that famous Christmas Eve service—not a bad return for the Commissioning Club's investment!