Composers Datebook

Today’s date commemorates the death, in 1957, of the most famous Finnish composer of modern times, Jean Sibelius. Born in 1865, Sibelius studied at the University of Helsinki, developed a strong sense of nationalism in the 1890s, and achieved world fame in the first years of the 20th century. He wrote little after the World War I, however, and lived his last 30 years in almost complete seclusion.

Even so, he was one of the most popular composers of his time. In 1938, a recording of his tone-poem Finlandia was selected as one of only three pieces of music to be deposited along with other artifacts of modern civilization in an indestructible time capsule buried on the site of the New York World’s Fair.

By 1957, the enormous acclaim that Sibelius enjoyed during his lifetime had faded somewhat, but these days his reputation seems on the rise once again, as does the influence of Finnish music in general.

A remarkable number of talented composers are thriving in that tiny nation today, and operas, orchestral works and chamber pieces by contemporary Finnish composers like Aulis Sallinen, Einojuhanni Rautavaara, Magnus Lindberg and Kaija Saariaho are increasingly finding worldwide audiences.

Sibelius would have been very pleased.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957): Alla Marcia from Karelia Suite; Finnish Radio Symphony; Jukka-Pekka Saraste, conductor; (RCA 7765)

On today’s date in 2002, a little over one year after two passenger jetliners had crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new work by American composer John Adams.

On the Transmigration of Souls, this high-profile commission sought to address a nation still in shock and grief at the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.

“I realized right up front that the public didn't need any more reiteration of the narrative of that day,” Adams said in an interview. “Certainly it didn't need some tasteless dramatization of the events … If I was going to do something meaningful, I was going to have to go in the opposite direction.”

Adams chose to set some of the words scribbled on posters plastered around Ground Zero by families searching for their loved ones. “They were a mixture of hope and a slowly dimming acceptance of reality,” Adams said. “When people are deeply in shock … they don't express themselves in fancy language … they speak in the most simple of terms.”

Adams said he hoped his new piece would provide “memory space,” a musical work that could be at once a platform for either communal or personal reflection.

John Adams (b. 1947): On the Transmigration of Souls; New York Philharmonic; Lorin Maazel, conductor; Nonesuch CD 79816

On this day in 1918, Russian composer Serge Prokofiev arrived in America to give a recital of his piano works in New York. He told interviewers that despite the revolution in his homeland and widespread conditions of famine, Russian musicians continued to work.

Prokofiev, however, stayed away from his homeland for years. His opera The Love for Three Oranges and his Piano Concerto No. 3 received their premieres in Chicago in 1921. From 1922 to 1932, Prokofiev lived mainly in Paris before eventually returning home for good.

Another temporary expatriate composer, Jón Leifs of Iceland, has an anniversary today, when in 1950, his Saga-Symphony was performed for the first time in Helsinki. Leifs was born in Iceland in 1899 and died there in 1968. He studied in Leipzig, where, in his words, he (quote) “began searching whether, like other countries, Iceland had some material that could be used as a starting-point for new music … some spark that could light the fire.”

Leif’s years in Germany coincided with the rise of the Nazis, who at first found him a sympathetic Nordic composer. When Leifs married a Jewish woman, however, he soon fell out of favor and eventually fled to Sweden with his family. After the war he returned home and today is honored as Iceland’s first great composer.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Piano Concerto No. 3; Martha Argerich, piano; Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, conductor; EMI Classics 56654

Jón Leifs (1899-1968): Saga Symphony; Iceland Symphony; Osmo Vänskä, conductor; BIS 730

In 1962, American jazz composer, performer and bandleader Duke Ellington was 63 — an acknowledged master, but trends in American jazz were changing, and there were much younger figures emerging, with more challenging styles.

Take, for example, bassist Charles Mingus, Jr., a master of collective improvisation, and drummer Max Roach, a pioneer in the be-bop movement. Despite their age and stylistic differences, these three jazz titans went into a recording studio on today’s date in 1962 and, while tape rolled, using bare-bones charts provided by Ellington of melodies and harmonies, the three jazz titans improvised. The results were issued the following year as a classic LP, Money Jungle.

Despite his fame, Ellington did not have a recording contract in 1962, and, perhaps after decades experiencing the highs and lows of life as a Black jazz musician in a segregated society, Money Jungle reflects a certain bitterness. Along with the charts he gave Mingus and Roach, Ellington also provided poetic story lines for each track, like: “Crawling around on the streets are serpents who have their heads up; these are agents and people who have exploited artists. Play that along with the music.”

Duke Ellington (1899-1974), Charles Mingus (1922-1979) and Max Roach (1924-2007): Money Jungle; Blue Note 31461

British composer Sally Beamish was born in London and studied music there and in Germany, but more recently has come to be associated with both Scotland and Sweden due to successful composer residencies in those two countries.

Her saxophone concerto, The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone, is a perfect example of this association. “The piece begins with a reference to a Swedish herding call, a special high-pitched song which carries over long distances… after this the music becomes more fragmentary, half-heard glimpses, as if the shaft of light has somehow released sounds stored in stone for millennia, layers of music long forgotten… drawing on psalms and chants from different tradition celebrating the enlightenment of [Pentecost],” she explained.

The work was a joint commission of the St. Magnus Festival which takes place at midsummer on the islands of Orkney off the north coast of mainland Scotland, a landscape of wind-swept cliffs, and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. The premiere performance took place at the St. Magnus Festival in June of 1999, and on today’s date that same year, the concerto’s Swedish herding call was heard in that country at its Örebro premiere.

Sally Beamish (b. 1956): The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone; John Harle, saxophone; Swedish Chamber Orchestra; Ola Rudner, conductor; BIS 1161

If you’ve ever witnessed a spectacular display of the Northern Lights, you’ll know the feeling: jaw-dropping wonder at the powerful forces unleashed in the vast spaces of the night sky.

American composer Henry Brant experienced something like that in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1982 during a visit, and later translated the experience into his Northern Lights over the Twin Cities, a work commissioned by Macalester College in St. Paul to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 1985.

Like most of Brant’s works, this piece employs several distinct groups of performers separated by space, a technique called spatial composition. For his Macalester Centenary commission, he utilized all the musical ensembles the College had to offer, including its chorus and orchestra, its wind, marching and jazz bands, and even its bagpipe ensemble, all positioned at various points around the college’s cavernous field house.

Brant said his own spatial works were inspired by the antiphonal works of the Renaissance composer Giovanni Gabrieli, the multiple brass ensembles in the Requiem Mass by French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz, but above all by The Unanswered Question, by modern American composer Charles Ives.

Brant was born on today’s date in 1913. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2002, and died at 94 in 2008.

Henry Brant (1913-2008): Northern Lights Over the Twin Cities; Combined musical forces of Macalester College; with six conductors, including Henry Brant; Innova CD 408

The year 2002 marked the 10th anniversary of BBC Music Magazine and to celebrate the magazine’s editor asked British composer Colin Matthews to coordinate a bold commissioning idea: a set of seven orchestral variations on a theme by Henry Purcell: Hail, Bright Cecilia.

The resulting suite, Bright Cecilia Variations, had its premiere on today’s date in 2002 at a Last Night of the Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with the BBC Symphony led by American conductor Leonard Slatkin.

Colin Matthews’ orchestration of the Purcell theme was followed by Matthews’ original variation, and in turn by six other variations composed by three additional British composers, namely Judith Weir, David Sawer and Anthony Payne, plus one each by the Danish composer Poul Ruders, Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg, and American composer Michael Torke.

Torke had this to say about his variation: “I wanted to create almost a jungle frenzy, by having four drummers from the percussion section playing tom-toms and shadowing those rhythmic beatings with melodic woodwind and brass fragments all drawn from the original theme … The result is vigorous.” 

Colin Matthews (b. 1946): Bright Cecilia: Variations on a Theme by Purcell; (BBC Philharmonic; Gianandrea Noseda, conductor; BBC Music Vol. 11, no. 3

On today's date in 1993, the first gala preview screening of a new film, The Age of Innocence, based on the novel by Edith Wharton, took place at the Ziegfield Theater in Manhattan, as a benefit for the New York Historical Society. That was only appropriate, since Wharton’s historical novel describes upper-class New York society of the 1870s — an age, if the film is to be believed, so emotionally repressed that the unbuttoning of a woman’s glove can be a breathtakingly sensual moment.

The new film was directed by Martin Scorsese, famous for decidedly un-repressed thrillers likes Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Cape Fear — and initially some thought Scorsese a poor choice to film Wharton’s novel. The skeptics were proven wrong.

Much of the success of the film can be attributed to its ravishing orchestral score by American composer Elmer Bernstein. “It was my personal tribute to the music of Johannes Brahms,” he said, who also credited Scorsese for appreciating the importance of music in bringing a movie to life: Unlike most directors today, Scorsese brought in Bernstein before Age of Innocence was filmed — not after.

“We started talking about the character of the music long before Scorsese ever shot a frame of film,” Bernstein recalled, with admiration. Bernstein’s Age of Innocence score was nominated for an Academy Award — the 12th time he had been so honored in his long and productive cinematic career.

Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004): Farewell Dinner from The Age of Innocence; Studio Orchestra; Elmer Bernstein, conductor; EMI Classics 57451

During her lifetime, pianist Nadia Reisenberg was regarded as one of this country’s finest concert artists. She performed at Carnegie Hall 22 times, often with the New York Philharmonic.

But she made history on today’s date in 1939 as she embarked on a series of concert performances encompassing of all 27 of the Mozart Piano Concertos. These were live radio broadcasts conducted by Alfred Wallenstein, originating at WOR in New York, relayed coast-to-coast via the Mutual Network and the CBC in Canada, and overseas via short wave. There were 29 broadcasts in all, one a week, starting on September 12, 1939 and ending on March 26, 1940.

Mozart’s 27 piano concerts were first published in 1850, almost 60 years after the composer’s death, but before Reisenberg’s broadcasts, no one had performed all of them in such a series. French composer and pianist Camille Saint-Saens played nine Mozart concertos in Paris in 1864/1865, and 11 during a series in London in 1910, but Reisenberg was the first to perform all 27 in one concert sequence, since even Mozart never played them all in just one season.

Amazingly, live aircheck recordings of most of these historic radio broadcasts have survived and are now part of the Nadia Reisenberg Collection in the International Piano Archives at Maryland.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Piano Concerto No. 26 (Coronation); Nadia Reisenberg; WOR studio orchestra; Alfred Wallenstein, conductor; (recorded March 19, 1940); IPA of Maryland Reisenberg Mozart Piano Concertos CD 13

On today’s date in 1950, Decca recording engineers committed to disc seven short works by American composer Leroy Anderson, with him conducting top-notch New York freelance musicians.

Since 1938, Anderson had been associated with the Boston Pops, for whom he had composed a string of very successful pieces, beginning with Jazz Pizzicato and Jazz Legato, complimentary works designed for the two sides of a 78-rpm disc. Anderson recorded both those pieces at his 1950 Decca session and also the first performance of a new work, The Waltzing Cat. In fact, after 1950 most of his premieres took place at Decca recording sessions. One of them, Blue Tango, sold over a million copies.

By 1953, one national survey found Anderson was the most-performed American composer of his day. That was the year he wrote his only extended orchestral work, a piano concerto. With the exception of a short-lived Broadway musical from 1958 Goldilocks, the bulk of his works are short, witty orchestral pieces, superbly crafted works intended to make audiences smile.

“I just did what I wanted to do, and it turned out that people liked it,” Anderson once said.

Leroy Anderson (1908–1975): Jazz Pizzicato and The Waltzing Cat; Decca studio orchestra; Leroy Anderson, conductor; MCA 9815