Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1953, thousands crowded the route to and from London’s Westminster Abbey for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and, at the Queen’s own request, the event was televised live by the BBC.

British composer William Walton was asked to write two new pieces. The first was Coronation Te Deum, a work that he had begun almost a decade earlier for a quite different occasion, namely the opening night of the 1944 London Proms. The piece got shifted to a back-burner when Walton was asked to work on Lawrence Olivier’s wartime film of Shakespeare’s Henry V.

For the new Queen’s Coronation, Walton returned to his abandoned score, writing to friends, “I’ve got cracking on the Te Deum. Lots of counter-tenors and little boys Holy-holy-ing, not to mention all the Queen’s Trumpeters and a side drum. You will like it, I think, and I hope He will too.” “He” was capitalized, so presumably Walton was referring to either the Deity — or Winston Churchill, perhaps.

Walton was also asked to compose a Coronation March, which he called Orb and Scepter after a line, coincidentally, from Shakespeare’s Henry V. His march may have seemed a bit jazzy to the more conservative audiences of the day, but one critic, slipping into Cockney slang, gushed, “It sounds like a right royal knees-up!”

William Walton (1902-1983): Coronation Te Deum; Andrew Lumsden, organ; Finzi Singers; Paul Spicer, conductor; Chandos 9222

William Walton (1902-1983): Orb And Sceptre March; English Northern Philharmonia; Paul Daniel, conductor; Naxos 8.553981

When most people hit 65, they’re anticipating their first social security check, but on today’s date in 1750, when George Frederick Handel turned 65, he was making out his will.

To John Christopher Smith, Handel left, “my large harpsichord, my little house organ, my music books and 500 pounds sterling.” John Christopher Smith, born Johann Christoph Schmidt, was an old friend of Handel’s from his university days in Germany. Handel persuaded Herr Schmidt to give up the wool trade and come to England. As Mr. Smith, he established a famous copyists’ shop in London, became Handel’s business partner.

Seven years later, Handel modified his will, leaving his larger theater organ to John Rich, whose Covent Garden Theater had staged Handel’s most recent operas and oratorios. To Charles Jennens, who had arranged the Biblical verses for Handel’s Messiah, the composer bequeathed some paintings.

To the Foundling Hospital, a charitable institute that had performed Messiah as a successful fundraiser, Handel left “a fair copy of the score and all parts” for that famous oratorio. Shortly before his death, Handel bequeathed 1000 pounds to the Society for the Support of Decayed Musicians, a charity in aid of musicians’ widows and orphans, and directed that 600 pounds be used to erect his own monument in Westminster Abbey.

George Frederic Handel (1685-1759): Air, from Water Music; St. Martin’s Academy; Neville Marriner, conductor; EMI 66646

For fans of British comedy, the name Peter Sellars conjures up an actor famous for his iconic role as the bumbling Chief Inspector Clouseau in Pink Panther movies. But for opera fans, the name refers to a completely different fellow: an American theater director born in 1957.

The American Peter Sellars is notorious for staging classic operas as if they were set in present-day America. For example: Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a dangerous, drug-dealing neighborhood in New York City’s Spanish Harlem, or The Marriage of Figaro in a luxury penthouse in Trump Tower.

Sellars is also the frequent partner of American composer John Adams in brand-new operas and concert projects. On today’s date 2012, a new oratorio by Adams and Sellars, The Gospel According to the Other Mary received its world premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

The new work’s libretto, crafted by Sellars, tells the Biblical story of the passion and death of Jesus from the point of view of “the other Mary,” Mary Magdalene, alongside texts and scenes from contemporary American life, including a women’s shelter, labor and social justice protests, and the opioid crisis. If Jesus were alive today, Sellars and Adams seem to be saying, He would be ministering to the suffering margins of American society, not to the rich and powerful.

John Adams (b. 1949): Chorus, from The Gospel According to the Other Mary; Los Angeles Master Chorale & Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; DG 0289 479 2243 8

On today’s date in 1962, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem for soprano, tenor, baritone, chorus, and orchestra, had its premiere performance at Coventry Cathedral in England. The Cathedral had been virtually destroyed in World War II bombing, and Britten’s big choral work was commissioned to celebrate its restoration and reconsecration.

Britten was a committed pacifist, and his War Requiem text combines poems by Wilfred Owen, who had been killed in World War I, with the traditional Latin text of the Mass for the Dead. For the premiere, Britten requested soloists representing nations who had fought during World War II.

With Britten’s life-time partner, tenor Peter Pears, representing England, the plan was to have a German baritone, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and a Russian soprano, Galina Vishnevskaya, for the 1962 premiere. As a young man, Fischer-Dieskau had been drafted into the German army, and had been a prisoner of war, but was eager to participate. Unfortunately, the Soviet authorities wouldn’t issue a visa for soprano Vishnevskaya to sing in the new Britten piece. “How can you, a Soviet woman, stand next to a German and an Englishman and perform such a political work,” they told her. British soprano Heather Harper substituted for her.

For many, Britten’s War Requiem is his masterpiece, and shortly after its premiere, Britten wrote to his sister, “The idea did come off, I think … I hope it will make people think a bit.”

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): War Requiem; soloists; choirs; BBC Scottish Symphony; Martyn Brabbins, conductor; Naxos 8.553558

It was on today’s date in 1913 that Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, provoking catcalls and fisticuffs from some in the audience. Most scholars suggest it was the ungainly, deliberately primitive choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky, more than Stravinsky’s score, that provoked the most negative response.

Pierre Monteux’s concert performance — without the dancing — at the Casino de Paris the following Spring marked the start of the score’s success as pure music. On that occasion, Stravinsky was carried in triumph from the hall on the shoulders of his admirers.

Shortly before his death in 1929, Sergei Diaghilev, who had commissioned Stravinsky’s score, was enthusiastically quoting a review in the London Times that suggested (perhaps ironically) that the Rite of Spring would be for the 20th century what Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 was for the 19th.

Well, that has rather turned out to be the case, in fact, and by 2013, a piece of orchestral music that in 1913 was considered almost unplayable is routinely programmed as a classic orchestral showpiece.

One New York Times critic even wrote “… now everybody knows The Rite. [It’s] an audition piece that every music student practices, so that now any conservatory orchestra can give a fleet and spiffy performance of what used to stump their elders, and professional orchestras can play it in their sleep, and often do…”

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): The Rite of Spring; Cleveland Orchestra; Pierre Boulez, conductor; DG 435 769

Unless you’re Tony Soprano, if your boss turns to you and says, “Murder can be fun,” the prudent reaction would be to: a) start looking for a new job, and b) wait for a discrete opportunity to call the police.

But in 1975, when Alfred Hitchcock made that statement to composer John Williams, Williams probably just nodded in agreement. After all, it was a great honor to be asked by Alfred Hitchcock to write music for what would turn out to be the last film completed by the famous Master of Suspense.

That film was Family Plot, and Williams completed its music for recording sessions at Universal Studios early in 1976. Williams recalled that the already-ailing Hitchcock stayed just an hour, pronounced the music “fine,” and said, “I’ll leave this to you,” before departing.

Now, film buffs will recall that Hitch, a notorious micro-manager, had abruptly fired composer Bernard Herrmann, his legendary former collaborator, during a recording session for his 1966 film Torn Curtain, when Hitchcock realized Herrmann had not followed his instructions for a trendy pop music score.

Family Plot was shown at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival but was not officially entered in the competition. Still, it’s ironic that on today’s date that year, the Festival’s top prize, the coveted Palme d’Or, was awarded to Taxi Driver, a film by Martin Scorsese, with — you guessed it — music by Bernard Herrmann.

John Williams (b. 1932): Closing Credits music, from Family Plot; Utah Symphony Varese-Sarabande VCD-47225

American composer Jennifer Higdon is used to having her new works premiered by some of this country’s major orchestras. The Philadelphia Orchestra, for example, gave the premiere performance of her Concerto for Orchestra in 2002.

The following year, another Higdon work, Rhythm Stand for wind band, premiered in Philadelphia. Now, if Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra was composed for the virtuoso members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Rhythm Stand was intended for amateur musicians — middle-school students, to be precise, and its premiere was given by the kids of the Baldi Middle School Band, led by Sandra Dylan.

Rhythm Stand was commissioned by the American Composers Forum for their BandQuest series of new scores, all written by leading composers, but intended for young performers.

Higdon explained the title of her new piece as follows: “Composing is merely the job of combining interesting sounds into interesting patterns. And interesting patterns create cool rhythms. So ... I’m making a stand for rhythm … rhythm is everywhere … ever listened to the tires of a car running across pavement, or a train on railroad tracks? Because music can be any kind of sound arranged into an interesting pattern, I added sounds that you normally wouldn’t hear coming from band instruments, sounds created out of ordinary things that might be nearby … like music stands and pencils, for example … And some performers in this piece get even more basic … they snap their fingers.”

Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962): Rhythm Stand; University of Minnesota Symphonic Band; Craig Kirchoff, conductor; Hal Leonard (full score, parts and CD) HL-04002285

In 1923, the Chicago North Shore Festival sponsored a competition for new orchestral works. Of the 47 scores submitted, five finalists were selected by a distinguished panel of judges that included two leading American composers of that day: George W. Chadwick and Henry Hadley. Two of the five works that made the final cut were by the same composer, 33-year-old Illinois native Edward Collins.

On today’s date in 1923, conductor Frederick Stock and his Chicago Symphony played through the five finalists’ scores at a public event at Northwestern University, with Collins in attendance to hear his two contrasting pieces. The first was Mardi Gras, and, as you might expect, it was an upbeat work in a party mood.

The second Collins piece was 1914 — a grim orchestral evocation of World War I that Collins later retitled Tragic Overture. It was that work that won the competition’s $1000 first prize, and so impressed conductor Stock that he performed the piece in New York and Chicago.

Although Collins was famous in his day, after his death in 1951, his music was largely forgotten. Perhaps his unabashedly Romantic style seemed dated in the avant-garde 50s and 60s. After more than half a century after his death, a series of new recordings of Collins’ orchestral works made by the Concordia Orchestra under Marin Alsop have helped to reintroduce his music to a new generation.

Edward Collins (1889-1951): Mardi Gras and Tragic Overture; Concordia Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor; Albany 267

When the United States entered World War I, American animosity against all things German resulted in a ban on German symphonic music and operas. During World War II however, musically speaking, things were different. With America at war with Germany and Italy, music by Wagner and Verdi, for example, continued to be performed in our concert halls and opera houses.

In fact, just as the Nazis tried to appropriate German classical music for their propaganda purposes, the Allies adopted the opening notes of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 as a Morse Code “V” for Victory motive, and in our wartime propaganda, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, accompanied images of Allied bombers racing through the clouds to strike German cities.

On May 25, 1944, the combined orchestras of the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony presented a Red Cross Benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, with Arturo Toscanini conducting. The first half of the program was all-Wagner, the second half, all-Verdi. During the intermission, New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia auctioned off maestro Toscanini’s baton.

As a grand finale, after the German and Italian music, Toscanini closed with a rousing all-American encore — his own arrangement of John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever.

So, as Walter Cronkite would put it: “That’s the way it was, May 25, 1944.”

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Ride of the Valkyries, from Die Walküre; New York Philharmonic and NBC Orchestra; Arturo Toscanini, conductor; Radio Years 71/72

John Philip Sousa (arr. Toscanini): Stars and Stripes Forever; New York Philharmonic and NBC Orchestra; Arturo Toscanini, conductor; Radio Years 71/72

In 1935, 26-year-old American composer Elliott Carter returned to the States after composition studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Carter found work as the music director of Ballet Caravan, an ambitious and enterprising touring ensemble whose mission was to present specially-commissioned new dance works on quintessentially American themes. Virgil Thomson, for example, wrote the ballet Filling Station, and Carter, decades before the animated Disney movie, wrote a ballet version of the story of Pocahontas and John Smith.

While on tour, these new scores were presented in two-piano versions, but on today‘s date in 1939, the orchestral version of Carter’s Pocahontas Ballet was presented by the Ballet Caravan at its home base at the Martin Beck Theater in New York.

The New York Times reviewer didn't much care for the staging or Carter’s music: “The costumes are in the manner of the old-fashioned cigar box Indian,” he wrote, “and after the first amusing glimpse their psuedo-naiveté begins to grow irksome. Mr. Carter’s music is so thick it is hard to see the stage through it.”

The Times reviewer did like another new ballet also receiving its orchestral debut that same night. This was Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid. “A perfectly delightful piece of work," enthused the same critic, concluding, “Aaron Copland has furnished an admirable score, warm and human, and with not a wasted note about it anywhere.”

Elliott Carter (1908-2012): Pocahontas Ballet; American Composers Orchestra; Paul Dunkel, conductor; CRI 610

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Billy the Kid Ballet; St. Louis Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; EMI 73653