Composers Datebook

Elia Kazan’s film, On the Waterfront, a 1954 black and white classic starring Marlon Brando, won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It was also nominated for — but didn’t win — that year’s Oscar for best original score. It was Leonard Bernstein’s first film score, and his last. He didn’t enjoy the experience:

“I had become so involved in each detail of the score, that it seemed to me the most important part of the picture. I had to keep reminding myself that it really is the least important part,” Bernstein recalled. “Sometimes the music would be turned off completely to allow a line to stand forth stark and bare, and then be turned on again. Sometimes the music, planned as a composition with a beginning, middle and end, would be silenced seven bars before the end … And so the composer sits by, protesting as he can, but ultimately accepting with a heavy heart the inevitable loss of a good part of the score. Everyone tries to comfort you. ‘You can always use it in a suite.’ Cold comfort. It’s good for the picture, you repeat numbly to yourself … it’s good for the picture.”

But Bernstein did fashion a concert suite from On the Waterfront and, not one to waste time, conducted the first performance with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood on today’s date in 1954, exactly two weeks after the film opened.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): On the Waterfront Suite; Israel Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; DG 415 253

On today’s date, Wolfgang Mozart completed two of his most famous works: on August 10, 1787, the Serenade known as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and, on the same day 10 years later, the Jupiter Symphony — Mozart’s Symphony No. 41.

Despite the fame of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik — which translates as A Little Night Music — nothing is known for certain about the circumstances of its composition. Since a Serenade is a suite of orchestral movements normally written as background music for some rich patron’s patio party, we can assume Eine Kleine filled such a function some pleasant evening in Vienna. We can only hope the patrons appreciated what they got for their money.

Hardly any more is known about the composition of Mozart’s final symphony, the Jupiter, as no relevant letters or documents survive from this period of his life. The Jupiter nickname appears to have originated years later in London. In Germany it was just called “the symphony with the fugal finale.”

There’s a classic recording of Mozart’s symphony favorites featuring the Marlboro Festival Orchestra with Pablo Casals conducting. The Marlboro Festival is held each summer for seven weeks in a cluster of old farm buildings on a hilltop in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Talented young professional musicians from all over the country gather here, principally to study, secondly to perform, for audiences eager to hear both the emerging and established Marlboro musicians.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor; EMI Classics 65690

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Symphony No. 41 (Jupiter); Marlboro Festival Orchestra; Pablo Casals, conductor; CBS/Sony 47294

In the 19th century, the German spa town of Baden-Baden was the place to be in the summer. Wealthy international tourists could bathe in artesian wells by day, and by night, gamble at the casino or attend performances at a splendid theater modeled on the Paris Opera.

That theater opened on today’s date in 1862 with the premiere of a new comic opera by French composer Hector Berlioz, based closely on Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing, titled Beatrice and Benedict after the witty pair of lovers in the play. The composer conducted.

“A great success … applauded from beginning to end. I was recalled to the stage I don’t know how many times,” Berlioz wrote the next day. Despite the success, he confessed, “My infernal neuralgia was so bad that I mounted the podium … without feeling the slightest emotion. This bizarre indifference meant I conducted better than usual!”

Despite making light of his increasing illness, possibly Crohn’s Disease, this opera proved to be his last work, and Berlioz had only a few more years to live. His biographer David Cairns wrote: “Listening to the score’s exuberant gaiety, only momentarily touched by sadness, one would never guess that its composer was in pain when he wrote it and impatient for death.”

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): Beatrice and Benedict Overture; Boston Symphony; Charles Munch, conductor; RCA Victor Gold Seal 61400

French composer and concert pianist Cecile Chaminade was born in Paris on this date in 1857. She wrote symphonic works and even operas, but it was her piano pieces and songs that became enormously popular with amateur musicians around the turn of the century, especially in America.

In the decade before World War I, over a hundred Chaminade Clubs sprouted up in America, where her music was performed by and for her fans. So imagine the excitement when it was announced that Madame Chaminade would be giving a concert tour of Eastern and Midwest states in 1908. Her American tour opened and closed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and over a two-month period she performed in Philadelphia, Louisville, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Boston and Washington, D.C.

In 1908, the majority of amateur musicians in America were women, but the majority of music critics were men — the latter gave Chaminade’s concerts mixed reviews at best, and downright sexist put-downs at worst. For her part, she was used to that sort of reception in Europe — and the limited role society allowed women artists in her day.

But in a Washington Post interview published during her American tour, she remained optimistic: “There is no sex in art,” she said. “Genius is an independent quality. The woman of the future, with her broader outlook, her greater opportunities, will go far, I believe, in creative work of every description.”

Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944): L’Ondine and Scherzo in C; (Peter Jacobs, piano; Hyperion 66584

On today’s date in 1829, the German composer Felix Mendelssohn and his friend, Karl Klingemann, were on the North Sea bound for Glasgow.

Klingemann was not impressed with Scotland and wrote home that the rough North Sea passage had made most of the passengers sick — with one remarkable exception. “An 82-year old woman sat calmly by the smoke stack, warming herself in the cold wind. She was determined to see Staffa before she died. Staffa, with its silly basalt columns and caves, is in all the picture books. So, we were put into boats and clambered past the hissing sea on stumps of columns up to the odiously celebrated Fingal’s Cave. I must say, never did such green and roaring waves pound in a stranger cave. The many pillars make the inside resemble a monstrous organ. Black, resounding and utterly without any purpose at all…” he said.

Well, perhaps not utterly without purpose, since Felix Mendelssohn sent a letter home to his family on August 7 which included a scrap of musical notation. “To give you an idea of how strange I felt, this music occurred to me,” wrote Mendelssohn. It was the opening theme of what would become his concert overture, The Hebrides, or Fingal’s Cave.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave); Overture BBC Symphony; Sir Colin Davis, conductor; Philips 426 978

On today's date in 1946, Leonard Bernstein conducted the American premiere of Benjamin Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes, at the Tanglewood Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts. Peter Grimes had received its very first performance in London the previous year, and had already been staged elsewhere in Europe before reaching America. In fact, this quintessentially British opera was originally an American commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation run by famous conductor and music patron Serge Koussevitzky, who was the founder and guiding spirit of the Tanglewood Festival.

Opera News covered the American premiere with a feature, Peter Grimes On Trial – A Symposium of Verdicts, beginning by quoting with the grudging praise of the New York Times’ conservative critic that the opera was “a very interesting modern work in a provocative form.”

Also included were quotes from the lead singers, who noted its “strange intervals, harmonies, and difficult counter-play of the various voices.” But Boris Goldowsky, the music director of the Tanglewood Center, provided the most accurate assessment, given the hindsight of history. “The opera has lasting merit, and it will join the standard repertory. Like all new works, it was difficult at first, but future productions will be easier,” he said.

Here’s an additional historical footnote: the Tanglewood premiere of Peter Grimes was the first opera Leonard Bernstein conducted professionally, and the opera’s instrumental Sea Interludes were on the program of the last orchestral concert he ever conducted, 44 years later, in August of 1990, and again at Tanglewood.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Sunday Morning and Storm, from Peter Grimes; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony Classical 47541

Gourmet composer Gioachino Rossini had a beef dish, Tournedos Rossini, named after him, and over the centuries countless towns have honored their native composers by naming streets after them — but few can top the honor bestowed on the late Olivier Messiaen by the citizens of Parowan, Utah. They named a mountain after him.

On today’s date in 1978, the citizens of Parowan resolved to name a local mountain Mt. Messiaen in honor of the French composer, who had spent a month in Utah five years earlier while working on his symphonic suite, From the Canyons to the Stars.

Messiaen had been commissioned to write a work for the American Bicentennial in 1976. Apparently back in France he owned of a series of books, Wonders of the World, which included striking color pictures of the canyons of Utah, which so fired Messiaen’s imagination that he made a special pilgrimage to Bryce Canyon in Utah see them with his own eyes. The result was an orchestra score, From the Canyons to the Stars, which includes a movement titled Bryce Canyon and the Red-orange Rocks.

“Colors are very important to me,” Messiaen once said. “I have a gift — it's not my fault, it’s just how I am — whenever I hear music or even if I read music, I see colors. The colors do just what the sounds do: they are always changing, but they are marvelous.”

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): Bryce Canyon and the Red-Orange Rocks, from From the Canyons to the Stars; London Sinfonietta; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; CBS/Sony 44762

As a public service, here’s a reminder for those of you who tend to forget your wedding anniversary: if you’re not sure when it is, maybe now would be a good time to check … before it’s too late!

Chances are that Wolfgang Mozart didn’t forget his wedding anniversary, since it was over his father’s strenuous and repeated objections that he finally married Constanza Weber at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna on today’s date in 1782.

Back in Salzburg, Leopold Mozart remained unimpressed with his son’s choice, but eventually gave his grudging consent. “I knew I could count on you,” wrote Mozart his father. “Now my dear Constanza is looking forward to traveling to Salzburg, and I wager you’ll rejoice in my happiness once you get to know her!”

Well, that might have been a bit of exaggeration. In any case, Mozart’s unfinished Mass in C minor was written as a thanks offering to both Almighty God in heaven and as a peace offering to Papa Leopold in Salzburg. Portions of it were performed in Salzburg during the young couple’s first visit the following year, with soprano Constanza singing the florid soprano part and Mozart conducting.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Great Mass: Et Incarnatus Est; Gillian Keith, soprano; Handel and Haydn Society; Harry Christophers, conductor; Coro 16084

A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty “Hi-yo, Silver!”

Generations of American baby boomers first heard Rossini’s William Tell Overture as the opening credits of the old Lone Ranger TV western, but we suspect only a few of them ever realized the overture by an Italian composer was written for a French opera about a Swiss archer, which was adapted from a German play by Friedrich Schiller. Like a Facebook relationship, “It’s complicated.”

Anyway, Rossini’s William Tell was first heard in Paris on today’s date in 1829. Rossini hoped William Tell would be considered his masterpiece. Ironically, the complete opera is only rarely staged these days, but the William Tell overture became a familiar concert hall showpiece — so familiar, in fact, as to become something of a musical cliché.

Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich gave a dark 20th-century spin to Rossini’s overly familiar theme, when he quoted the William Tell Overture in the opening movement of his Symphony No. 15. In the context of Shostakovich’s enigmatic final symphony, Rossini’s jaunty little theme comes off like a forced smile, and audiences are free to read whatever political subtext they wish into its rather sinister context.

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868): William Tell Overture; Philharmonia Orchestra; Carlo Maria Giulini, conductor; EMI 69042

Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Symphony No. 15; London Philharmonic; Mariss Jansons, conductor; EMI 56591

In Greek mythology, Orpheus was a priest of Apollo and a fabulous musician, who attempted to bring his dead wife Eurydice back from the underworld.

On this day in 1774, in Paris, the first performance of the French version of the opera Orpheus and Eurydice by Christoph Willibald Gluck took place. Gluck originally wrote the opera in Italian, but for the French version in 1774, he added some new instrumental music, including a serene interlude depicting the Dance of the Blessed Spirits — an excerpt that has become one of Gluck’s most famous and best-loved works.

Over the centuries, more than 60 operas have been written on the theme of Orpheus and Eurydice. In fact, two of the very first operas ever written are based on this legend, both by Italian composers of the late Renaissance: one by Jacopo Peri performed in 1600 and another by Claudio Monteverdi from 1607.

One of the more recent operas based on the Orpheus legend is by the American composer Philip Glass, based on a libretto he adapted from the 1950 movie, Orpheus, by surrealistic French poet and film director Jean Cocteau. The American Repertory Theatre and the Brooklyn Academy of Music commissioned Glass’s version in 1993.

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787): Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orphée; Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood, conductor; L’oiseau Lyre 410 553

Philip Glass (b. 1937): Act 2 Interlude from Orphée; Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, conductor; Nonesuch 79496-2