Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1862, the front page of The New York Times offered some encouraging news to the Northern side in the American Civil War: Union troops had captured Norfolk, Virginia, and there were other advances being made by General McClellan’s troops.

Under “Amusements” on the inner pages of that same edition could be found an announcement of a Grand Vocal and Orchestral Concert at Irving Hall to be conducted by 27-year-old musician Theodore Thomas.

Thomas had been a major figure on the New York music scene since 1855, performing as the principal violinist in that city’s first ensemble giving a regular series of chamber concerts. That chamber group presented hot-off-the-press works by Brahms and other ultra-modern composers of the day. This big orchestral concert, which marked Thomas’ debut as a conductor, was no different.

The Times noted, “We have never before had so much musical novelty presented to us. Such plentiful instrumental music equally new to our musical world, under the capable conductorship of the young musician, must insure a crowded audience of the more critical as well as the more fashionable portion of our public.”

Tickets were $1 each — quite a lot of money in 1862 — and the program offered the American premieres of orchestral pieces by Wagner, Meyerbeer and Liszt’s flashy orchestration of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) arr. Franz Liszt (1811-1896): Wanderer Fantasy; Leslie Howard, piano; Budapest Symphony; Karl Anton Rickenbacher, conductor; Hyperion 67403

American composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane claims someone once described one of his songs as having been from the wastepaper basket of Schubert — but, Kahane hastened to add, “I think he meant that as a compliment.”

Certainly Kahane is a successful songwriter, and if not quite as prolific as the 19th century Viennese composer, is quite productive on a number of 21st-century platforms and takes his inspiration from quintessential 21st-century experiences. On today’s date in 2018, for example, the Oregon Symphony premiered his Emergency Shelter Intake Form, a song-cycle or oratorio inspired by the questionnaire homeless people have to take to secure a shelter bed.

“I live in Brooklyn, and I had volunteered at a shelter in Manhattan,” Kahane said. “I started thinking about the banality of going through that crushing bureaucracy on top of experiencing extreme poverty. That led to the intake form as a jumping-off point for the libretto. It is somewhere between found text and my own extrapolations that began with this sterile administrative form.”

The Oregon Symphony’s premiere performance of Gabriel Kahane’s Emergency Shelter Intake Form was recorded, and, in equally quintessential 21st-century fashion, is available as a download.

Gabriel Kahane (b. 1981): ‘What brings you here?’ from Emergency Shelter Intake Form; Alicia Hall Moran, mezzo-soprano; Oregon Symphony; Carlos Kalmar, conductor; Digital download

In 1987, Telarc Records asked conductor Lorin Maazel if he would make a purely orchestral distillation of the four operas that make up Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung. Telarc wanted it all to fit on just one CD.

Now, with these four Wagner operas clocking in at about 15 hours, that’s a slimming-down assignment worthy of The Biggest Loser.

Maazel crafted a 75-minute sequence, played without pause, beginning with the opening pages of the first opera and ending with the closing pages of the last, with all the music appearing in the same order as it does in Wagner’s four operas.

For the Telarc CD release, Maazel recorded his Ring without Words with the Berlin Philharmonic. But what had started as a purely studio affair proved an attractive orchestral showcase for other ensembles, so on today’s date in 1990, Maazel led the Pittsburgh Symphony in the debut of his Ring without Words as a concert hall work. Since then, he has performed it with orchestras ranging from the New York to the Vienna Philharmonic.

Maazel confessed he resisted the idea at first. “I said … it would be desecrating a unique masterpiece. But they kept after me.” In the end, Maazel capitulated, but insisted there couldn't be one note by Lorin Maazel. When one instrumentalist shuddered at a particularly abrupt transition, Maazel told him, “Sorry! That's the composer.”

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) arr. Lorin Maazel (1930-2014): Ring without Words; Berlin Philharmonic; Lorin Maazel, conductor; Telarc 80154

In 1970, British composer Peter Maxwell Davies moved to the remote and rugged Orkney Islands off the northern coast of Scotland. At first, he said, the natives thought he was just some weirdo from the south, and the more Puritanical islanders would pray the might find a more respectable means of earning a living than writing music.

But over time, Davies and the islanders got used to each other. The composer found inspiration in the landscape and legends of the area, while the community warmed to the fact that the newcomer found them so fascinating. In 1978, he attended a neighbor’s wedding, which inspired a musical work he called An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise.

“It is a picture postcard,” Davies said. “We hear the guests arriving, out of extremely bad weather. This is followed by a processional and first glass of whiskey. The band tunes up and we get on with the dancing, which becomes ever wilder, until the lead fiddle can hardly hold the band together. We leave the hall into the cold night. As we walk home across the island, the sun rises to a glorious dawn.”

“The sun is represented by the highland bagpipes, in full traditional splendor,” he concluded.

Despite its local color, An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise was actually an American commission from the Boston Pops, who gave its premiere on today’s date in 1985, with John Williams conducting.

Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016): An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise; George MacIlwham, bagpipes; Royal Philharmonic; Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, conductor; Collins 1444

One today’s date in 2004, a new concerto for marimba and orchestra had its premiere in San Francisco, with soloist Matthew Cannon and the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.

The new concerto was written by Alexis Alrich, who studied composition out east at the New England Conservatory, and out west at Mills College, where one of her teachers was Lou Harrison, who introduced her to Asian music through Javanese gamelan. Her own music, she says, blends American minimalism, Asian music and Western classical and folk music, a mix some have described as “California impressionism.”

“[My] Marimba Concerto is highly demanding for the soloist and fully exploits the technical possibilities and sound palette of the five-octave marimba,” Alrich said. “The opening movement with its string tremolos and whispering wind motifs provides an atmospheric entrance for the solo marimba … The middle movement starts with a gently pulsating theme that recurs between contrasting sections, including one in Mexican folk style. The final movement climaxes with a multi-layered, Asian-inspired chorale … with a toccata-style cadenza for the soloist.”

In 2010 British percussion virtuoso Evelyn Glennie and City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong gave the Asian premiere of the concerto and made its first recording.

Alexis Alrich (b. 1955): Marimba Concerto; Evelyn Glennie, marimba; City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong; Jean Thorel, conductor; Naxos 8.574218

Hold on tight: we’re about to cover 150 years of musical — and presidential — history in just two minutes!

On today’s date in 1821, when James Monroe was president, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 was performed in Philadelphia at a concert of the Musical Fund Society. That occasion marks the first documented performance of a complete Beethoven symphony in America and occurred when Beethoven was 50 years old and residing in Vienna.

In 1853, when Franklin Pierce was in the White House, the Germania Musical Society took Beethoven’s Second Symphony No. 2 on its American tour, presenting it in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Chicago. That 1853 tour marked the first time an entire Beethoven Symphony was performed in the Windy City. Additional 19th century “firsts” for the symphony occurred over the next two decades in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and San Francisco, during the administrations of James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson.

Ulysses S. Grant was president in 1870, when Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 debuted in Washington, D.C., and Grant was still President in 1872, when it was the first symphony to be performed in Minneapolis.

A hundred years later, in the 1970s, when Richard Nixon was in the White House, you could hear performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 from Maine to Hawaii, all while sitting comfortably in your own Executive Mansion, courtesy of your local government-assisted public radio station.

If you wish, you may now stand and salute your radio!

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 2; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 61835

On today’s date in 1947, a new opera, The Mother of Us All debuted at Columbia University in New York City.

The libretto was by American poet Gertrude Stein, and dealt with the life and times of Susan B. Anthony, a 19th century champion of women’s rights. In Stein’s dream-like account, iconic figures from America’s past like President John Adams, orator Daniel Webster and entertainer Lillian Russell interact even though they lived at different times in history. Two of the opera’s 27 characters, playwright Constance Fletcher and Yale librarian Donald Gallup, in fact, were contemporary friends of Stein’s.

The music was by American composer Virgil Thomson, whose score evoked seemingly familiar 19th century hymns, sentimental ballads, circus band music, drum rolls, and fanfares. The tunes were, in fact, all original creations. The mix of Thomson’s music and Stein’s text results in a rambunctious opera about American life and politics, at turns both amusing and strangely touching. It became an unlikely success.

Thomson wrote two other operas: Four Saints in Three Acts, from 1933, was an earlier collaboration with Gertrude Stein, and Lord Byron, from 1972, sets a witty libretto by Jack Larson, an actor famous for his portrayal of Daily Planet cub reporter Jimmy Olson on the old Superman TV series. Lord Byron was intended for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, but never made it there, and performances these days are rare.

Virgil Thomson (1896-1989): The Mother of Us; All Santa Fe Opera; Raymond Leppard, conductor; New World 288

On today’s date in 1992, Joel Revzen conducted the Albany Symphony in the premiere of the Third Symphony of American composer Libby Larsen.

Larsen subtitled her new work a Lyric Symphony. Now, the early 20th century Viennese composer Alexander Zemlinsky had written a Lyric Symphony, one that involved vocal soloists. As a composer, Larsen is noted for her songs and choral works, but for her own Lyric Symphony she opted for a purely instrumental work that would be somehow quintessentially American. In program notes for her new symphony, she wrote:

“As I struggle with the definition of American music, it occurs to me that in all of our contemporary American genres, the dominating parameter of the music is rhythm. Rhythm is more important than pitch. This is a fundamental change in the composition of music in the 20th century. Here we speak American English, an inflected, complex, rhythmic language.

“What is lyric in our times?” Larsen continued. “Where is the great American melody? Found, I would say, in the music of Chuck Berry, Robert Lockwood, Buddy Guy, George Gershwin, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, James Brown, Aaron Copland, Walter Piston and those composers who create melodies that are defined more by the rhythm than their pitch. My Symphony No. 3 — the Lyric, is an exploration of American melody.”

Libby Larsen (b. 1950): Symphony No. 3 (Lyric) London Symphony; Joel Revzen, conductor; Koch 7370

French composer Claude Debussy was too sick to be called up for service when World War I broke out in 1914. His private battle with cancer on top of his nation’s battle with Germany plunged him into depression. But by the spring of 1915, Debussy decided to keep on composing. “I want to work, not so much for myself, but to give proof, however small it may be, that not even 30 million Boches can destroy French thought,” he wrote.

He knew his remaining time was precious, so decided to write small chamber works rather than big orchestral pieces. Debussy planned to write six chamber sonatas but completed only three. Working, as he put it, “like a madman,” he finished a Cello Sonata and a Trio Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp by the fall of 1915.

In December of that year, the side-effects of radium treatments and morphine injections for his cancer brought Debussy’s Sonata project to a grinding halt. Rallying somewhat by the by the summer of 1916, Debussy vowed to keep on working. He wrote, “If I am doomed to vanish soon, I desire at least to have done my duty.”

On May 5, 1917, Debussy made his last public appearance in Paris at the Salle Gaveay, accompanying violinist Gaston Poulet in the premiere of his final work — a Sonata for Violin and Piano. Debussy would die the following spring.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Violin Sonata; Midori, violin; Robert McDonald, piano; Sony 89699

On today’s date in 1895, the New York Choral Society gave the premiere of The American Flag, a choral work by Antonín Dvořák. Jeannette Thurber, who brought Dvořák to New York City to teach at her National Conservatory, had asked him to set a patriotic poem of that name. The idea was the new work would be performed to coincide with his arrival in the fall of 1892, and the big celebrations planned that year for the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in the New World.

Unfortunately, Dvořák didn’t get the text in time, and so another choral work, his recently completed Te Deum was performed during the big Columbus Quadricentennial. The American Flag was put on a back burner, as it were, and wasn’t performed until after he returned to Prague. He never heard the work performed at all, in fact.

The blustery, outright chauvinistic tone of its pro-New World, anti-Old World text would hardly endear it to European audiences of his day. In fact, this work hasn’t proven to be a big hit with American audiences, either.

The American Flag remains one of Dvořák’s least-performed pieces. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted a recording of it timed for release in 1976 during the American Bicentennial. Ironically for so American a work, that recording was made in Berlin with a German orchestra and chorus!

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): The American Flag; soloists; choirs; Berlin Radio Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; CBS/Sony 60297