Composers Datebook

On this day in 1900, the world first heard the Requiem of Gabriel Fauré in its full orchestral version at a concert at the Paris World Exhibition. Faure’s Requiem ranks today among his best-known and best-loved compositions, and omits all reference to the terrors of the Last Judgment which appear in the traditional liturgical text, concentrating instead on comforting the bereaved. The Requiem was originally written for chorus and a more intimate chamber ensemble, and was occasioned by Fauré’s sorrow at the death of his own father.

The American composer Christopher Rouse has written a number of works dealing with the passing of friends and colleagues — works half-seriously, half-jokingly referred to as Rouse’s Death Cycle. Rouse’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Trombone Concerto from 1991 is dedicated to the memory of Leonard Bernstein; his Symphony No. 2, from 1994, contains a tribute to the young composer Stephen Albert, who died in a car crash; and a section of his Flute Concerto from 1993 reflects the composer’s shock upon reading an account of the senseless tragedy of a two-year-old child, abducted from an English shopping mall and killed by two ten-year-olds.

Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed has noted that much of Rouse’s work is “music of leave-taking … but it is also a music of catharsis, survival and a celebration of being alive.”

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Requiem; The Cambridge Singers; John Rutter, conductor; Collegium 101

Christopher Rouse (1949-2019): Symphony No. 2 and Flute Concerto; Carol Wincenc, flute; Houston Symphony; Christoph Eschenbach, conductor; Telarc 80452

Today’s date marks two events in American musical history — one sad, one happy.

It was on today’s date in 1937 that George Gershwin died at 10:35 in the morning in a Hollywood hospital after an operation for a brain tumor. He was only 38. Gershwin was the idol of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, and also admired by the “serious” composers of his day, such as Maurice Ravel and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Even Arnold Schoenberg, the fearsome leader of the 12-tone school — and Gershwin’s regular tennis partner in Los Angeles — said, in tribute, “there is no doubt that he was a great composer.”

A Gershwin memorial concert was held in the Hollywood Bowl later that year, featuring notables from both classical and popular music, including Otto Klemperer, Fred Astaire and Lily Pons.

The happier anniversary we note is the founding of the Hollywood Bowl on today’s date in 1922. This open-air auditorium was constructed in a natural canyon in the Los Angeles area, and hosted its first public concert with the fearsomely-bearded German conductor Alfred Hertz on the podium. An audience of 5,000 cheered music by Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and Rossini. Works by those composers still show up on Hollywood Bowl programs today, often alongside selections from now-classic Hollywood film scores, often conducted by their composers — bearded or otherwise.

George Gershwin (1898-1937): An American in Paris; Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; John Mauceri, conductor; Philips 438 663

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): 1812 Overture; Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor; EMI Classics 65690

On today’s date in 1733, Georg Friderich Handel paid a visit to Oxford to conduct the premiere performance of his new oratorio, Athalia, at the Sheldonian Theater.

Handel had been invited by the University to add some musical pizzazz to an elaborate ceremony know as “The Publick Act,” during which honorary degrees were bestowed on worthy individuals. It was apparently a terrific performance, with one visitor from London reporting: “Never has there been such applause and marks of admiration.” But not everyone in Oxford was happy. One crusty don, apparently not a fan of new music, complained of the presence of “Handel and his lousy crew — a great number of foreign fiddlers.“

Handel was offered an honorary degree by Oxford, but he did not accept, claiming he was “too busy,” but maybe he just balked at paying the University’s required fee of 100 pounds to receive the honor.

In the 19th century, Oxford and its rival Cambridge would bestow honorary degrees on other major composers like Tchaikovsky and Dvořák, and, in our own time, between 1949 and 1990, one American composer, William Schuman received no fewer than 28 honorary degrees. In fact, Schuman had so many that he had a quilt sewn together from pieces of his ceremonial gowns, so that, as he liked to quip, “He could take his naps by degrees.”

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) – Sinfonia, from Athalia (Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood, cond.) L'Oiseau-Lyre 417 126

William Schuman (1910-1992) – Chester (Variations for Piano) (Alexei Sultanov, piano) Teldec 46103

Today marks the birthday in 1879 of Ottorino Respighi, a rare Italian composer more famous for orchestral works than operas. And no wonder — Respighi was a master orchestrator, learning his craft first-hand from brilliant Russian orchestrator Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov during the time the young Italian served as principal violist in the pit band of the Russian Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg.

One of Respighi’s best-loved works is The Pines of Rome. It includes a slow section depicting a full moon shining on the pines growing on the Janiculum hill west of Rome. The music includes the song of a nightingale, played from a phonograph record of an actual nightingale. That record, made in 1910, was the first ever made of live bird song, and using it as part of Respighi’s orchestration was cutting-edge stuff in 1924.

This recording was made by Hungarian conductor Antal Dorati, who was known noted for his fiery temper, but Dorati had an equally strong sense of humor, so in the 1950s, when one of his Minneapolis Symphony musicians substituted a Spike Jones once during a rehearsal, of the Respighi piece, Dorati got the joke and laughed along with everybody else.

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936): Feste Romane; Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, conductor; London 410 145

Spike Jones (1911-1965): Rhapsody from Hunger; Spike Jones and his City Slickers; RCA 3235

It’s a book! It’s a YouTube video! It’s a concert hall work! It’s by Stookey and Snicket!

Now, “Stookey and Snicket” is not the name of a law firm in some obscure novel by Charles Dickens, but is in fact the collaborative team of American composer Nathaniel Stookey and American novelist Daniel Handler, who writes popular children’s books under the pen name of Lemony Snicket.

Stookey was the youngest composer ever commissioned for the San Francisco Symphony’s New and Unusual Music Series when he collaborated with Handler on a piece for narrator and orchestra. Their collaboration, The Composer is Dead, premiered on this date in 2006.

This “new and unusual” work with a macabre title is similar to Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra in that it intends to introduce young audiences to the instruments of the orchestra. But anyone familiar with Lemony Snicket books can expect something a little quirky, and, in fact, The Composer is Dead is a murder mystery, complete with a police inspector rounding up the usual suspects, and eventually pointing the finger…

And if you want to find out “whodunit” — well, you’ll have to buy the book!

Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey: The Composer is Dead; Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler), narrator; San Francisco Symphony; Edwin Outwater, conductor; Book Audio CD

On today’s date in 1956, one of the most successful of all American operas had its first performance at the Center Opera House in Colorado. The Ballad of Baby Doe was created by composer Douglas Moore and librettist John Latouche, and was based on a real-life tale of love and loss that had played out in that state.

Elizabeth McCourt Tabor, better known as “Baby Doe,” became the second wife of Colorado prospector, businessman and politician Horace Tabor in 1883. Tabor’s messy divorce and remarriage to the young and beautiful Baby Doe was a major scandal at the time. He was immensely wealthy, and had built an Opera House that bears his name and still stands in Leadville, Colorado, where he met Baby Doe. In 1899, he had lost his entire fortune, and after his death, Baby Doe lived on in a poor miner’s shack near Leadville, where she was found frozen to death in 1935.

And it was on a cold winter’s day — a year before the premiere of their new opera — that Moore and Latouche paid a visit to Tabor’s Opera House in Leadville and stood on its stage for inspiration. A witness of their visit recalled: “I was intensely aware of a great and eerie silence that suddenly came over the building. If ever there were ghosts of the past in the Tabor Opera House I could believe that they were there at that moment!”

Douglas Moore (1893-1969): The Ballad of Baby Doe; Jan Grissom, soprano; Central City Opera Orchestra; John Moriarty, conductor; Newport Classics 85593

It was on this day in 1913 that the French Academy of Fine Arts — for the first time in its history — presented its highest award, the Prix de Rome, to a woman. The honor was awarded to Lili Boulanger, who was just 19 at the time. She was born in Paris in 1893, the younger sister of Nadia Boulanger, who would become the most famous teacher of composition in the 20th century, numbering an amazing array of famous American composers among her students, ranging from Aaron Copland to Philip Glass.

Nadia’s sister Lili, however, suffered from poor health. Her tragically short career was interrupted by World War I, when she volunteered to nurse wounded soldiers. She died before the great conflict was over, on March 15, 1918, at 24.

Nearer to our own time, another woman, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, made history when she became the first woman composer to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music. That was in 1983, and the piece was her Symphony No. 1. Born in Miami, Florida, in 1939, she studied composition with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at Juilliard, and accomplished another first by becoming the first woman to earn the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition at the famous school. Her Symphony No. 3 was commissioned in 1992 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic.

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918): Hymne au Soleil; New London Chamber Choir; James Wood, conductor; Hyperion 66726

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Symphony No. 3; Louisville Orchestra; James Sedares, conductor; Koch International 7278

On today’s date in 1989, NBC transmitted the pilot episode of a sitcom that 180 episodes later would be recognized as a TV classic.

In composing, as in comedy, timing is everything, so when comedian Jerry Seinfeld approached composer Jonathan Wolff about writing the intro music for Seinfeld, Wolff knew it was time for something a little different than a generic sitcom theme.

“When he called me, Jerry described to me the problem he was having: the opening and closing credits for this new show were to be Jerry doing stand-up material in front of an audience. He tells jokes, people laugh. And he wanted unique, signature theme music to go with it, [so I said] how about this? … We treat your human voice telling jokes as the melody of the Seinfeld theme! My job will be to accompany you in a way that’s fun and quirky but does not interfere with the audio of your standup routine,” Wolff recalled.

That meant the Seinfeld intro would change each week, with Wolff performing on slap bass themes and variations that danced before, after, and around the cadence of Jerry’s punchlines like, as Wolff put it, “a vaudeville rim shot.”

Jonathan Wolff (b. 1958): Theme, from Seinfeld; Water Tower Music digital download

On today’s date in 1876, America was celebrating its Centennial, and the place to be was in Philadelphia, where a Centennial Exhibition was in progress.  This was the first World’s Fair to be held in the United States. It drew 9 million visitors–this at a time when the entire population of the U.S. was 46 million.

The Exhibition had opened in May with a concert attended by President and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. After “Hail to the Chief,” the orchestra premiered a specially commissioned “Centennial March” by the famous German composer Richard Wagner. Wagner was paid $5000 for the commission, an astronomically high fee in those days. Wagner did not bother to attend the Philadelphia premiere, and privately told friends back: “Between you and me, the best thing about the march was the $5000 they paid me.”

The following month, the French composer Jacques Offenbach arrived to conduct his music at a specially constructed open-air pavilion. “They asked my permission to call it ‘Offenbach Gardens,’” the composer later wrote. “How could I refuse?” The concertmaster of Offenbach’s orchestra, by the way, was a 21-year old violinist from Washington, D.C. by the name of John Philip Sousa.

Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883) — American Centennial March (Philip Jones Ensemble; Elgar Howarth, cond.) London 414 149

The piano became the dominant keyboard instrument in Mozart’s lifetime in the late 18th century. Before that, the harpsichord had ruled. But for more than a hundred years after Mozart’s day, the harpsichord seemed as dead as the dodo, and even the great harpsichord works of Bach and other early 18th century masters were always played on the piano — that is, until Wanda Landowska came on the scene.

This indomitable woman was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1879, and single-handedly brought the harpsichord back to life. It was on today’s date in 1927 that she inaugurated a historic series of harpsichord concerts at her summer home near Paris — and, two years later, in 1929, Landowska premiered the Concert Champêtre, by Francis Poulenc, a brand new harpsichord concerto written specially for her.

Very much in the spirit of Landowska, the contemporary composer and performer Barbara Harbach is in the vanguard of today’s advocates for the harpsichord.

A passionate advocate for new music, she has recorded several compact discs of 20th Century Harpsichord Music for the Gasparo label, featuring works by American composers from Samuel Adler to Ellen Taafe Zwillich.

J. S. Bach (1685-1750): Little Prelude; Wanda Landowska, harpsichord; Pearl 9489

Barbara Harbach (b. 1946): Cante Flamenco, from Tres Danzas para Clavecin; Barbara Harbach, harpsichord; Gasparo 290