Composers Datebook

London might seem an unlikely venue for the premiere of this quintessentially Spanish music — but it was a decidedly international affair when Manuel de Falla’s ballet The Three-Cornered Hat received its premiere performance at the Alhambra Theatre in London on today’s date in 1919.

The ballet was choreographed by Russian dancer Leonide Massine, who performed in the premiere with the Ballet Russe company headed by Serge Diaghilev, who had commissioned de Falla to write the work in the first place. The conductor for the premiere, Ernest Ansermet, was Swiss, but the scenery, costumes and curtain, at least, were designed by de Falla’s countryman, famous Spanish artist Pablo Piccasso.

Andalucian by birth, but living in Paris, de Falla must have found it frustrating that during this time his music was sometimes snubbed in Spain as sounding too cosmopolitan, and then pigeon-holed abroad as sounding too Spanish!

The career of Latino-American composer Roberto Sierra has also turned out to be similarly cosmopolitan. Born in Puerto Rico in 1953, Sierra studied in Europe — with the Hungarian composer György Ligeti among others — before returning to the United States where he now lives and works. His music has been performed by leading American ensembles and orchestras — including the Philadelphia Orchestra, where Sierra served as composer-in-residence. This chamber work by Sierra, Eros, was written for flutist Carol Wincenc.

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946): The Three-Cornered Hat; Ballet Suisse Romande Orchestra; Ernest Ansermet, conductor; London 414 039

Roberto Sierra (b. 1953): Eros; Jeani Foster, flute; Stefanie Jacob, piano; Fleur de son Classics 57950

In the summer of 1824, the fifteen-year-old Mendelssohn spent a holiday with his father in the fashionable spa town of Bad Doberan, on the Baltic coast near Rostock. Writing home to his family in Berlin he confessed that, although he was “comfortably lodged … with friendly people, a decent piano, [and a] pretty view … so far I have not written a note.”

That would change, however, as Mendelssohn befriended musicians employed by the local Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, whose court ensemble was a wind band. For them, the young Mendelssohn composed a Nocturno, scored for the classical octet of double winds, plus a flute, trumpet, and an odd brass instrument called a Como Inglese di Basso, roughly similar in shape to a bassoon, but with a cup mouthpiece and both open and keyed holes.

Mendelssohn described it in a letter he wrote on today’s date in 1824 as “a large brass instrument with a fine, deep tone, that looks like a watering can or a stirrup pump.”

Music for that original 1824 Nocturno has not survived, but eventually Mendelssohn reworked and enlarged the piece, adding new music, and much later, in 1838, expanded the scoring to a full wind ensemble and published the result as his Overture for Winds.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Overture for Winds; London Symphony; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 423 104

In the summer of 1972, five burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and soon the term “Watergate” came to signify a political scandal that nearly led to the impeachment of then-president Richard Nixon. But if you had said “Watergate” to someone in D.C. in July some 30 years earlier, you probably were referring to a series of outdoor concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra, whose Watergate Concerts were held on the banks of the Potomac near the Lincoln Memorial.

These concerts presented a mix of old and new music, classical favorites and recently composed works by American composers. For example, on today’s date in 1945, the weather in D.C. was clear and warm when Alexander Smallens conducted an outdoor Watergate Concert that included the recently-composed suite from Aaron Copland’s ballet Rodeo, and Newsreel, an orchestral suite by William Schuman.

Schuman’s suite was inspired by the popular newsreel features shown at movie theaters in those days — a time when radio ruled, and if people wanted to see footage of faces and places in the news, they had to turn to the movies, not CNN or the internet.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Rodeo; London Symphony; Aaron Copland, conductor; Sony Classical 60593

William Schuman (1910-1992): Newsreel; Milwaukee Symphony; Lukas Foss, conductor; Pro Arte 102

“Time is a funny thing,” as one of the more philosophically-inclined Viennese characters so wisely observed in Richard Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier.

Der Rosenkavalier had its premiere in 1911, and coincidentally, on today’s date that year, Viennese composer Anton von Webern completed one of the shortest orchestral works ever written — the fourth of his Five Pieces for Orchestra, which lasts about 20 seconds time. It’s so short, it takes longer to describe the music than to actually hear it!

Webern was attempting to render down the extravagant style of late-Romantic composers like Strauss and Mahler into its quintessence — a haiku-like concentration of gesture and color, the musical equivalent of a Japanese painting of just a few deft brush strokes across a blank canvas, with more implied than actually shown.

In the same spirit, but at the opposite end of the time spectrum, is the work of American composer Morton Feldman, who holds the record for composing some of the longest pieces ever written. Feldman was friends with, and inspired by, painters of the so-called New York School, including Mark Rothko and Philip Guston. A 1984 work by Feldman is titled For Philip Guston, and, in complete performance, it’s a piece that runs about four hours.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Der Rosenkavalier: Suite; New York Philharmonic; Lorin Maazel, conductor; DG 7890

Anton Webern (1883-1945): No. 4, from Five Pieces for Orchestra; Ensemble InterContemporain; Pierre Boulez, conductor; DG 437786

Morton Feldman (1926-1987): For Philip Guston; The California EAR Unit; Bridge 9078

To some it seemed an act of sheer madness for a string quartet to announce in the 1970s that it would not perform the classic repertory of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but devote itself instead to music written after 1900, especially newly-composed works. But the Kronos Quartet has proved the skeptics wrong. Founded in Seattle in 1973, and reformed in San Francisco five years later, the Kronos Quartet has established itself as a major player on the international music scene, premiering hundreds of new works by living composers.

On today’s date in 1984, the Kronos Quartet was at the Kukmo Music Festival in Finland, where they gave the premiere performance of Pieces of Mosaic, the String Quartet No. 5 by Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen. This quartet is a string of 16 short fragments, and, as the composer explained, reflected a pessimistic view of world affairs, circa 1984, the ominously Orwellian year of its composition. “It seems somehow crazy that a composer should create extended symphonic forms for the world we live in. This quartet is the kind of work the world deserves: one which is smashed into fragments,” Sallinen said.

Sallinen is one of the best-known Finnish composers since Sibelius, and in addition to chamber works like his Quartet No. 5, he has written symphonic works and a number of successful operas.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): String Quartet No. 17 (Quartetto Italiano); Philips 422 512

Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935): String Quartet No. 5 (Pieces of Mosaic); Sibelius Quartet; Ondine 831

On today’s date in 1717, King George and his entourage took a barge trip on the river Thames, traveling from Whitehall to Chelsea, accompanied by about 50 musicians, also on barges. A contemporary newspaper account reported that they performed “the finest Symphonies, composed express for this occasion by Mr. Handel, which his Majesty liked so well that he caused it to be played three times in going and returning.”

Another report refers to “trumpets, horns, oboes, bassoons, flutes, recorders, violins and basses” being employed. In our time, Handel’s Water Music — as the three suites have come to be known — is one of the best-known and best-loved works of the entire Baroque Age.

In 1985, three hundred years after the birth of Handel, American composer Libby Larsen composed a Symphony she titled Water Music, written as a tribute to Handel and as an expression of her own enthusiasm for sailing.

Larsen is one of today’s busiest American composers, and in the year 2000 the American Academy of Arts and Letters presented her with its Award in Music, honoring her lifetime achievements as a composer. When asked how she finds time to balance her busy life as a composer, she answered, “I can’t not do it — having a life and a life in music is as natural and necessary to me as breathing.”

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759): Water Music; Royal Philharmonic; Yehudi Menuhin, conductor; MCA 6186

Libby Larsen (b. 1950): Symphony (Water Music); Minnesota Orchestra; Sir Neville Marriner, conductor; Nonesuch 79147

Following the death of a loved one, American poet Barbara Crooker wrote, “How can we go on/knowing the end of the story?”

American composer Dale Trumbore attempted to answer that question with her haunting choral work, How to Go On, given its premiere performance on today’s date in 2016 in Anaheim, California by the Choral Arts Initiative.

Rather than setting the traditional Latin text of the Requiem Mass like Verdi, or passages from the Bible like Brahms, Trumbore crafted a kind of “secular requiem,” choosing texts by Crooker and two other contemporary American poets addressing fundamental questions of life, love, and loss.

“I have moments of utter panic about my own mortality, and I know many other people do as well, although we may not openly discuss or address our fears about death,” she confessed. “Taken together, the seven poems of How to Go On recognize these fears while also cultivating a feeling of everything ultimately being at peace. Hopefully the music adds to that visceral feeling of reassurance.“

Trumbore, a New Jersey native, studied with the great choral composer Morten Lauridsen at the University of Southern California and her own vocal works are noted for what The New York Times described as her “soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies.”

Dale Trumbore (b. 1987): How to Go On; Choral Arts Initiative; Brandon Elliott, conductor; CAI 2017

In 1965, Leonard Bernstein took a sabbatical year from his duties as music director of the New York Philharmonic. In 1964, the busy Mr. Bernstein had just finished conducting Verdi’s opera Falstaff at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and in 1966, would make his debut at the Vienna State Opera, conducting the same work. But he reserved 1965 to concentrate on composing.

“In the course of that year, I had the luxury to do nothing but experiment,” Bernstein recalled. “And part of my experimentation was to try to write some pieces that, shall we say, were less old-fashioned. I wrote a lot of music, 12-tone music and avant-garde music of various kinds, and a lot of it was very good, but I threw it all away. What I came out with at the end of the year was a piece called Chichester Psalms, which is simple and tonal and as pure B-flat as any piece you can think of … because that was what I honestly wished to write.”

Bernstein conducted the premiere performance at Lincoln Center with the Camerata Singers and the New York Philharmonic on July 15th, 1965, and later in the month, traveled to Chichester Cathedral in England, which had commissioned the work in the first place, for the British premiere of his Chichester Psalms.

Giuseppe Verdi (1913-1901): Act III excerpt, from Falstaff; soloists; Vienna Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; CBS/Sony 42535

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Chichester Psalms; Camerata Singers; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; CBS/Sony 47162

Today is Bastille Day, and on today’s date in 1900, the Opera-Comique in Paris premiered a patriotic opera, La Marseillaise, which melodramatically depicted how, on a spring night during the French Revolution, Rouget de l’Isle supposedly wrote the words and music for the song which later became the French National Anthem.

The opera has been long forgotten, but its composer, the French-born Lucien-Leon-Guillaume Lambert, Jr. — alongside his father, the American-born composer Charles-Lucien Lambert, Sr. — is getting some renewed attention. Both are included in a landmark new reference work: The International Dictionary of Black Composers, published by the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago.

The elder Lambert was born in New Orleans around 1828, and was a contemporary and friendly rival of famous piano virtuoso and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk. He settled in Brazil, and enjoyed an international career in both Brazil and France, performing and publishing his piano dances and salon pieces, and often appearing in concert with his son.

Lucien Lambert, Jr. was born in France in 1858, and studied with Jules Massenet, among others. He won the prestigious Concours Rossini competition, and enjoyed a productive career in France and Portugal, composing ballets, concertos, and several operas — including the one that premiered in Paris on today’s date in 1900. He died in Portugal in 1945.

Roger de Lisle (1760-1836): La Marseillaise; Detroit Symphony; Paul Paray, conductor; Mercury 434 332

Lucien Lambert, Jr. (1858-1945): Brocéliande Overture; Hot Springs Music Festival; Richard Rosenberg, conductor; Naxos 8.559 037

Decades after their deaths, Richard Strauss and Dmitri Shostakovich still remain politically controversial. Strauss worked in Nazi Germany under Hitler, and Shostakovich in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Was their art compromised by politics — and should that influence how we hear their music today?

In July of 1935, Strauss pleaded with Hitler for a personal meeting to explain his resignation as President of Germany’s office of musical affairs. He needn’t have bothered: the Gestapo had intercepted a letter Strauss had sent to Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, the Austrian librettist of Strauss’ latest opera. In that letter, Strauss mocked the Nazi’s obsession with race and urged Zweig to continue to work with him, even if they would have to meet in secret. Strauss was asked to resign, and, anxious to avoid further trouble for himself and his family, appealed directly to Hitler, who never responded.

Dmitri Shostakovich also ran afoul of his dictator when, in 1936, Stalin attended Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and hated it. The next day, Shostakovich was harshly condemned in the official press, and lived in terror for the rest of Stalin’s reign, redirecting his music according to party line and making obsequious political utterances whenever asked. Even so, many today claim to hear both terror and heroic — if coded — resistance in Shostakovich’s best scores.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Ein Heldenleben; Daniel Majeske, violin; Cleveland Orchestra; Daniel Barenboim, conductor; London 414 292

Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk excerpts; Scottish National Orchestra; Neeme Jarvi, conductor; Chandos 8587