Composers Datebook

For eight summers starting in 1868, German-born American conductor Theodore Thomas led concerts at New York City’s Central Park. As usual with Thomas’ programs, there was a calculated mix of old and new music, and more than a few premieres.

On today’s date in 1871, for example, Thomas conducted the first American performance of Kaiser March, a brand-new work by German opera composer Richard Wagner completed earlier that year to honor Wilhelm of Prussia who had just become Emperor of a united German Reich. It went over very well back in Germany, and, considering that: a) everybody likes a good march, especially at summertime pops concerts and, b) a sizeable percentage of New York’s musicians in Thomas’ day were either German-born or German-trained, we can assume Wagner’s Kaiser March was well-received at its American debut.

Five years later, in 1876, Thomas would conduct the premiere of another celebratory march by Wagner, this one commissioned for the 100th anniversary of the American Revolution. Wagner was paid $5000, an enormous sum of money in those days, to compose an American Centennial March for national festivities in Philadelphia.

Both of these marches are seldom performed today, and are regarded as pretty thin stuff, musically speaking. Wagner quipped that the best thing about his American Centennial March was the fee he received for writing it.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): American Centennial and Imperial Marches; Hong Kong Philharmonic; Varujan Kojian, conductor; Naxos 8.555386

There are dozens of famous cello concertos that get performed in concert halls these days, ranging from 18th century works by Italian Baroque master Antonio Vivaldi to dramatic 20th century works of Russian modernist Dmitri Shostakovich.

In 2007, American composer Sean Hickey was commissioned by Russian cellist Dmitry Kouzov to write a new concerto, which received its premiere performance on today’s date two years later, in 2009.

“In this work, I wanted to fuse my interest in neo-classical clarity and design with the songful, heroic nature of the greatest cello concerto literature,” Hickey recalled. “My Cello Concerto had its Russian premiere at the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, a neo-Baroque edifice on the banks of the Fontanka River in Saint Petersburg … [It] was then recorded in the legendary Melodiya Studios on Vasilevsky Island in St. Petersburg, known from Soviet times as producing recordings from the likes of Shostakovich, Rostropovich, Mravinsky and many others.

“One moment of personal satisfaction came when the Russian orchestra, after rehearsing the piece for days, picked up on a buried quotation from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, his Leningrad Symphony in the final pages of my piece. It’s easy to forget in the glittering and watery metropolis, which rivals any European city for beauty and culture, that St. Petersburg is a city full of ghosts.”

Sean Hickey (b. 1970): Cello Concerto; Dmitry Kouzov, cello; St. Petersburg State Symphony; Vladimir Lande, conductor; Delos 3448

It’s a mark success when a new musical work is recorded shortly after its premiere, and even more when the recording session is the premiere. But that was the case with many works written by American composer Leroy Anderson, whose short and tuneful compositions from the 1940s, 50s and 60s proved enormously popular during his lifetime.

On June 20, 1962, Anderson was at New York’s Manhattan Center, conducting for Decca Records the premiere of his Clarinet Candy. By recording in the summer months, when many of New York’s best symphonic players were available for studio work, he was able to round up top-notch musicians for his recording sessions.

Contemporary Argentinean-born composer Osvaldo Golijov has also proved popular enough to have many of his new works recorded either at their premieres or shortly thereafter. This Klezmer-style clarinet piece, Rocketekya, was written for the 20th anniversary of New York’s Merkin Hall. Golijov explained, “I thought it would be interesting to write a different sort of celebratory piece, and I had an idea of a shofar blasting inside a rocket — an ancient sound propelled toward the future.”

Leroy Anderson (1908-1975): Clarinet Candy; Decca Studio Orchestra; Leroy Anderson, conductorMCA 9815

Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960): Rocketekya; David Krakauer, clarinet; Alicia Svigals, violin; Martha Mooke, electric viola; Pablo Aslan, contrabass; Naxos 8.559403z

On today’s date in 1869, a visitor to Boston’s Back Bay could have marveled at a huge, specially-constructed wooden structure sporting American flags and surrounded by a mini-village of peanut vendors and lemonade stands.

Inside, an orchestra of 1000 sat surrounded by a chorus of 10,000. Over the stage hung giant portraits of Handel and Beethoven, and higher yet depictions of two angels gazing heavenwards by a banner reading “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.”

This June 19 concert marked the end of a five-day Jubilee Festival of Music and Reconciliation, as America tried to mend the wounds caused by its recent Civil War. Former Union General and current President Ulysses S. Grant was on hand, and the New York Times opined that the Festival offered proof that, “our people can think of something beyond … the almighty dollar.”

During the Festival, the massive orchestra and chorus performed selections ranging from classical works by Bach and Mozart to more recent works by Meyerbeer and Verdi.

A review by John S. Dwight, Boston’s leading music critic of that day, found the immense chorus “glorious and inspiring” and the huge orchestra “splendid.” However, he dismissed a performance of Verdi’s Anvil Chorus, accompanied by 100 real anvils, as a “childish, trivial thing for such a grand occasion.”

Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864): Coronation March, from Le Prophète; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 46709

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): Anvil Chorus, from Il Trovatore; Chicago Symphony and Chorus; Georg Solti, conductor; London 466 075

Drop the name “Pleyel” among classical music aficionados and one might say, “Oh, yeah, Pleyel. He was a French piano maker. I think Chopin liked Pleyel pianos.” Another might add, “He was a composer, too, but … I don’t think he was really French…” Another might add, “Didn’t he have something to do with Haydn?”

Well, they’re all right. Ignace Joseph Pleyel was born near Vienna on today’s date in 1757. As a teenager, he became a pupil of Haydn, and in 1791, ended up in London, where, for a time, his orchestral concerts competed with Haydn’s. The two remained friends, however, dined together and attended each other’s concerts.

In 1795, Pleyel set up shop in Paris, where he founded a publishing house and piano factory. His own compositions remained enormously popular. In 1805, he travelled to Vienna, visited the aging Haydn and heard that young upstart Beethoven improvising at the piano.

In 1822, the whaling port of Nantucket, Massachusetts, formed a Pleyel Society ‘to chasten the taste of listeners,’ in the words of a local newspaper. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music, “The most telling evidence of the appeal of Pleyel’s music lies in the thousands of manuscript copies that filled the shelves of archives, libraries, … and private homes, and in the thousands of editions of his music produced in Europe and North America.”

Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831): Symphony in G; London Mozart Players; Matthias Bamert, conductor; Chandos 9525

Back in 1714, today’s date fell on a Sunday, and, if you had happened to be attending a church service at the German Court of the Duke of Weimar, you might have heard some new music by the Duke’s court composer and organist, Johann Sebastian Bach.

It’s possible that Bach’s Cantata No. 21 received its first performance that day: its first part before the sermon, its second part right afterwards. The opening text, which Bach sets as a fugue, begins “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis” or, in English, “I had much affliction.”

Now even in Bach’s day, composers were afflicted with critics. In 1725, a famous composer — and critic — Johann Mattheson took Bach to task for the way in which he had set his text by quoting exactly what is being sung:

"I, I, I, I had much affliction, I had much affliction, in my heart, in my heart. I had much affliction, in my heart…” etc… Mattheson’s point, apparently, was that vocal music should not stutter, but flow gracefully in the “gallant” style that was becoming more fashionable and trendy back then.

Even so, Mattheson knew that Bach was the real deal, and earlier had praised Bach in print for church and keyboard music so well written that (quote), “we must certainly rate this man highly.”

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Cantata No. 21: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis; The Monteverdi Choir; The English Baroque Soloists; Sir John Eliot Gardiner, conductor; Soli Deo Gloria 165

American composer Henry Brant is famous for his avant-garde “spatial” music — works that require groups of musicians stationed at various points around a performance space. But hard-core film music buffs might also know Brant as a master orchestrator of other composers’ scores for Hollywood productions in the 1960s.

On today’s date in 1995, Brant conducted the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, Canada, in the premiere of one of his orchestrations — in this case, a symphonic version of the Concord Piano Sonata by Charles Ives, first published in 1920. In the long preface to his Sonata, Ives wrote:

“The [Sonata] is an attempt to present [an] impression of the spirit of transcendentalism … associated in the minds of many with Concord, Massachusetts … impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality … found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne.”

Henry Brant had been profoundly influenced by Ives’ music long before he got to know the Concord Sonata, but when he did, Brant set to work orchestrating it.

“I sensed that here was a tremendous orchestral piece,” Brant wrote. “It seemed to me that the complete Sonata, in a symphonic orchestration, might become the ‘Great American Symphony’ that we had been seeking for years … What better way to honor Ives.”

Charles Ives (1874-1954) arr. Henry Brant (1913-2008): A Concord Symphony; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, conductor; innova 414

On today’s date in 1980, a week-long festival, New Music America, came to a close in Minneapolis with a concert at that city’s Guthrie Theater. The program included the premiere of High Life for Strings, composed by David Byrne, a musician best known for his work with a rock band called The Talking Heads.

Byrne later recalled, “When I participated in the New Music America festival in Minneapolis, minimalism and New-Age noodling were making big in-roads into a scene that had been more insular and academic. My piece, for a dozen strings was on a program with Philip Glass.” He said he was influenced by the intricate rhythms of West African pop music.

Brian Eno was another rock musician represented during the festival in Minneapolis. Some years earlier, Eno had been so irritated by the inane, chirpy muzak he heard while traveling that he composed a soothing ambient synthesizer score he called Music for Airports. Appropriately enough, during the 8 days of the Festival, his score was broadcast 24 hours a day throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Decades after its composition, composer Michael Gordon arranged Eno’s synthesizer score for acoustic instruments, and recorded this arrangement of Music for Airports with the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

David Byrne (b. 1952): High Life; Balanescu Quartet; Argo 436 565

Brian Eno (b. 1948) arr. Gordon: Music for Airports; Bang on a Can All-Stars; Point Music 314 536 847

It’s summertime, the livin’ is easy, and all across the country music festivals large and small are getting underway. In addition to the big symphonic festivals at Ravinia and Tanglewood, there are smaller ones devoted exclusively to the intimate art of chamber music. These festival often offer young, emerging composers the chance have their brand-new scores heard in workshop settings. Sometimes composers themselves are in charge of these summer festivals, partnering with established or specially-organized performing ensembles.

In 1995, for example, two American composers, Daniel S. Godfrey and Andrew Waggoner, started the Seal Bay Festival, a two-week series of performances and workshops of recently composed chamber music in the Penobscot Bay area of Maine.

On June 14, 2001, this newly-revised string quartet by Daniel Godfrey received its premiere by the Cassatt Quartet at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport.

The quartet is inscribed to the memory of Godfrey’s mother, who died in 1997. “Her passing came to represent for me the losses, and the necessity of letting go, that have accompanied my arrival at late middle age,” he said. “To oversimplify, perhaps, the first movement grieves, the second looks back wistfully, and the third looks ahead with determination and, ultimately, with hope.”

Daniel S. Godfrey (b. 1949): String Quartet No. 3; Cassatt String Quartet; Koch 7573

In 1944, French composer Darius Milhaud was in California, teaching at Mills College in California, and received a commission to write a piece suitable for school bands. With a world at war, the Jewish composer had found safe refuge in the U.S., and so eagerly accepted the commission for a number of reasons. Milhaud, confined to a wheelchair for most of his adult life, sent his wife Madaleine to the College library to obtain a collection of French folk tunes. His idea was arrange of some these into a suite.

As the composer himself explained after his Suite Française was finished:

“The five parts of [my] Suite are named after French Provinces, the very ones in which the American and Allied armies fought together with the French underground for the liberation of my country. I used some folk tunes of these Provinces, as I wanted the young American to hear the popular melodies of those parts of France where their fathers and brothers fought on behalf of the peaceful and democratic people of France."

Milhaud’s Suite Française was premiered by the Goldman Band in New York City on today’s date in 1945, and rapidly became one of the best-known and most often performed of Milhaud’s works, and one of the established classics of the wind band repertory.

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974): Suite Francaise; Eastman Wind Ensemble; Frederick Fennell, conductor; Mercury 289 434 399-2