Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1733, music-loving readers of a Leipzig newspaper called the “Nachtricht auch Frag und Anzeiger” would have seen this welcome announcement: “Tonight at 8 o’clock there will be a Bach concert at Zimmermann’s Coffeehouse on Catharine Street.”

So, in addition to a Grandé Latté or Double-shot Depth-Charge, Zimmermann’s patrons could treat themselves to a Grand Sonata or Double-Concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach. As if Bach wasn’t busy enough providing all those sacred cantatas and organ chorales for two Leipzig’s churches every Sunday, he was also in charge of that city’s Collegium Musicum, an organization that presented more secular musical fare.

It’s likely that on occasional weekday nights at Catharine Street, most of Bach’s concertos and chamber works were performed by Bach himself, alongside many of the same musicians he employed each Sunday for his church music. And, much like symphony orchestras do today, visiting composers or virtuoso performers who passed through town could be showcased as soloists at Collegium Musicum performances.

Given his staggering workload, it’s not too far-fetched to assume that caffeine helped Bach stay focused and alert: One of his secular cantatas might even be considered as an early form of an advertising jingle: the humorous text of Bach’s ‘Coffee Cantata’ recounts how a young woman’s addiction to coffee triumphs over her stuffy father’s moral objections to the tasty brew.

In the opinion of General George Washington, a commanding plateau on the west bank of the Hudson River, about 40 miles north of New York City, was a key strategic position during America’s War for Independence. Washington selected Thaddeus Kosciuszko,* one of the heroes of the Battle of Saratoga, to design fortifications there in 1778, and transferred his headquarters to this “West Point” in 1779. In 1802, after America’s independence had been won, President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation establishing a United States Military Academy at West Point.

150 years later, in 1952, the West Point Military Band decided to observe the Academy’s Sesquicentennial by asking prominent composers to write celebratory works to mark the occasion. A number of composers responded, including the French composer Darius Milhaud. Milhaud’s “West Point Suite” was premiered by the West Point Band at Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 1952, with Captain Francis Resta conducting, and proved to be one of the most successful and oft-performed of these Sesquicentennial pieces.

The previous year, Milhaud had paid a visit to West Point to hear the band, as he wanted to assess both their size and ability. He was impressed by what he heard—and surprised as well when the band struck up “Happy Birthday” in his honor. It seems that both Milhaud and his wife had completely forgotten that their September 4th visit coincided with the composer’s 60th birthday!

Now, it may be a hotly contested statement that New York is the cultural capital of the United States, but few would contest that city’s important role in so much of our country’s musical history.

In 1992, to celebrate its 150th anniversary, the New York Philharmonic commissioned many new works by leading composers and spread out their celebratory premieres over several years. On today’s date in 1996, Leonard Slatkin conducted one of these: an orchestral tribute to New York written by a native son—a work by Richard Danielpour titled “Toward the Splendid City.”

While intended as sonic portrait of his hometown, Danielpour’s piece was written entirely outside of the city. As Danielpour explains it:

“‘Toward the Splendid City’ is one of the very few works I’ve written completely away from New York. Work on the piece began in Seattle and was completed in Taos, New Mexico—and, to an extent, expresses the nostalgia I felt for the city. It became my sonic postcard of the town. One passage, a sound-painting with string harmonics, celesta, harp, vibes and bells, was inspired by my memory of floating about New York at night on a plane and seeing the lights of the city in the mist…”

The comic opera “Don Pasquale” by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti had its first performance in Paris on this date in the year 1843. To this day it remains one of his best-loved and most often-performed works. In all, Donizetti wrote about 70 operas, sometimes turning out four per year.

Amazing as this seems today, it wasn’t at all uncommon in the 19th century, especially in Italy, where audience demand for new works was insatiable. Back then, when composers vied with each other for speed, Donizetti was asked if he believed that Rossini had written “The Barber of Seville” in only 13 days. “Why not?” quipped Donizetti, “He’s so lazy!”

In our time, the corollary of a busy opera composer like Donizetti might be a hard-pressed Hollywood composer like John Williams. To date, Williams has written approximately the same number of film scores as Donizetti wrote operas!

John Williams started out in the 1960s writing scores for TV shows like “Wagon Train” and “Gilligan’s Island,” then wrote for movies like “How to Steal a Million” and “Valley of the Dolls.” Eventually he wrote some of the most memorable film scores of our time, including those for “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” and “Schindler’s List.”

On today’s date in 1843, Richard Wagner’s opera “The Flying Dutchman” had its premiere performance in Dresden. The story is often told how the opera’s sea-swept overture was inspired by a stormy voyage Wagner and his wife Minna took from Riga to Paris, their journey interrupted by an emergency stop in a Norwegian fjord due to rough weather and a longer layover in London.

As usual, Wagner was fleeing creditors, and, as usual, this was due to his own outrageous extravagance. Imagine making a cramped sea voyage in the company of a huge Newfoundland dog named Robber. Wagner may have been fleeing creditors, but he wasn’t about to leave his dog behind, even though a three-week voyage in the company of a wet, sea-sick Newfoundlander must have made the trip seem as interminable as the Flying Dutchman’s eternal wanderings!

Negotiating London also proved a challenge, as Wagner recounted in his memoirs: “The dog whisked round every corner and dragged us every which way. So the three of us sought refuge in a cab which took us to the Horseshoe Tavern, a sailor’s pub recommended to us by our captain… The narrow London cabs were meant to carry two people facing each other, so we had to lay Robber across our laps, his head through one window and his tail through the other…”

We’d like to start the new year with some upbeat music to honor the American composer and bandleader Edwin Franko Goldman, who was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on today’s date in 1878.

At the tender age of 14, Goldman attended the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, where he studied composition with Antonin Dvorak. At 15, Goldman became a professional trumpet player, performing with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra.

In 1911, he founded the New York Military Band, later known simply as the Goldman Band. They performed hundreds of public concerts around the city, including on the Mall in Central Park. In the 1930s, radio broadcasts made the Goldman Band famous nationwide. Their catchy signature tune, entitled “On the Mall,” was composed by Goldman himself, and invited the audiences to sing—or whistle—along.

Goldman composed about 150 band works of his own, and prompted the commission of many more, including wind band classics by American composers such as Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston, and Howard Hanson. The Goldman Band, led by Goldman, or his son Richard, also premiered new works by leading European composers as well.

Goldman founded the American Bandmasters Association in 1929 and served as its Second Honorary Life President after John Philip Sousa.

Edwin Franko Goldman died in New York in 1956. For his contribution to the radio industry, he has a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame, and The Goldman Bandshell in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is named in his honor.

On New Year's Eve, 1948, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the first performance of the Symphony No. 5 by the American composer George Antheil. Now, in his youth, Antheil was something of a wild man, composing a "Ballet mechanicque" for a percussion ensemble that included electric bells, sirens, and airplane propellers. It earned him a reputation, and Antheil titled his colorful 1945 autobiography what many called him: "The Bad Boy of Music."

But the great Depression and World War II changed Antheil's attitude. Rather than write for small, avant-garde audiences, Antheil found work in Hollywood, with enough time left over for an occasional concert work, such as his Symphony No. 5. In program notes for the premiere, Antheil wrote: "The object of my creative work is to disassociate myself from the passé modern schools and create a music for myself and those around me which has no fear of developed melody, tonality, or understandable forms."

Contemporary critics were not impressed. One called Antheil's new Symphony "nothing more than motion-picture music of a very common brand" and another lamented its "triviality and lack of originality," suggesting it sounded like warmed-over Prokofiev. The year 2000 marked the centennial of Antheil's birth, and only now, after years of neglect, both Antheil's radical scores from the 1920s AND his more conservative work from the 1940s is being performed, recorded and re-appraised.

On this date in 1905, the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár conducted the first performance of his new operetta, "The Merry Widow." Lehar was sure it would be a success, but others did not share his confidence. The show's librettist, lawyer in tow, urged Lehár to cancel the premiere, and the nervous theater manager banned Viennese reporters from dress rehearsals, fearing bad advance press.

After a lukewarm debut at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, "The Merry Widow" moved to a smaller, suburban theater, where it suddenly caught on. Within a year it had become a sensational hit throughout Europe.

Lehár's contemporary, Gustav Mahler, was a "Merry Widow" fan, although he sent his wife, Alma, to buy the music rather than risk the embarrassment of having the director of Vienna's Imperial Opera House seen buying such a shamelessly "pop" score.

Ironically, another great fan of Lehár's music was Adolf Hitler. Despite the fact that Lehár's wife and many of his professional associates were Jewish, Lehár's music continued to be performed in Nazi Germany. Lehár was 68 when Austria became part of the German Reich, and continued to conduct in Vienna and Berlin.

Lehár's family was spared, but many of his former associates were forced into exile. Others were not so lucky: In 1942, Louis Treumann, who first sang "The Merry Widow Waltz" at the 1905 premiere in Vienna, died in the "model" concentration camp at Theresienstadt.

While hardly twins, the String Quartets of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are often linked in the minds of music lovers and record companies. Admired today for their grace and sheer beauty, back when these quartets were first performed in Paris, reactions were quite different.

Debussy's work premiered on today's date in 1893, played by the Ysaÿe Quartet. One critic wrote the music was "strange and bizarre, with too many echoes of the streets of Cairo and the gamelan." The gamelan reference was a dig at Debussy's enthusiasm for the Indonesian bronze gong ensemble that he—and many Europeans—heard for the first time at the Paris Exposition of 1889, which bought musical performers from around the globe to that city.

Ravel completed his Quartet ten years after Debussy's. It's dedicated to his teacher Gabriel Fauré, and was first played by the Heymann Quartet on March 5, 1904. Ravel submitted it to both the Prix de Rome and the Conservatoire de Paris. It was rejected by both institutions, and Fauré described the Quartet's last movement as "stunted, badly balanced, in fact a failure."

Now if Debussy were a modern-day American, he might have sent Ravel a note saying: "I feel your pain" or "Been there, done that" —but what he actually wrote to Ravel was: "In the name of the gods of music and in my own, do not touch a single note you have written in your Quartet!"

And you know what? Debussy was right.

On today's date in 1910, the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new opera by the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck, already famous for his opera "Hansel and Gretel." This new opera was also a fairy-tale and titled "Königskinder" or "The Royal Children."

The female lead role of the Goose Girl was sung by Geraldine Farrar, admired back then for both her vocal and physical beauty. Farrar wasn't scared of geese, either. She convinced both Humperdinck and Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Met's manager, to add a touch of verismo to the staging.

In her autobiography, Farrar writes: "Humperdinck was not a little taken aback when I mentioned that I intended having live geese which were to move naturally and unconfined about the stage… The conductor was much perturbed and objected to the noise and confusion they might create; but Mr. Gatti was resigned to my whim … So with the help o f… the 'boys' behind the stage I had as pretty a flock of birds as one could find on any farm. When the curtain rose upon that idyllic forest scene, with the goose girl in the grass, the geese unconcernedly picking their way about, now and again spreading snowy wings, unafraid, the [audience] was simply delighted and applauded long and vigorously."

Unlike "Hansel and Gretel," "Königskinder" had an unhappy fairy-tale ending, and despite some really lovely music, it's seldom staged these days—with or without live geese.