Composers Datebook

At Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 1893, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new symphony by 37-year-old American composer and New York native George Templeton Strong, Jr. This was a big deal at a time when the Philharmonic rarely played works by non-European composers.

As the Philharmonic’s program book put it, somewhat defensively: “The acceptance of a work for performance is to a certain extent a declaration that it belongs to the very best class of contemporaneous literature according to the unbiased judgment of those who are entrusted with these concerts.”

Strong’s Symphony No. 2 (Sintram), was inspired by a literary work of that name depicting the victory of good over evil. The New York Times review gave it high marks, praising the composer’s imagination and mastery of instrumentation, but ventured to suggest the new symphony was a tad long and “unremittingly serious in tone.”

Strong was not present. He was in Switzerland, a country he was soon to adopt as his permanent home. His absence on the American scene caused his music, despite its merits, to be soon forgotten on this side of the Atlantic.

George Templeton Strong (1856-1948): Symphony No. 2 (Sintram); Moscow Symphony; Adriano, conductor; Naxos 8.559018

Today’s date in 1886 marks the premiere in Paris of The Carnival of the Animals, the most popular work of French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, who steadfastly refused to allow it to be published until after his death, fearing its frivolity might damage his reputation as a “serious” composer.

Saint-Saëns had a point. The work was first heard at a pre-Lenten house concert, and a few days later at Émile Lemoine’s exclusive members-only chamber music series, where it became an annual Shrove Tuesday Carnival tradition. Once the famous pianist Harold Bauer was one of the Shrove Tuesday performers, as he recalled in his autobiography:

“Everyone who participated had to wear makeup representing the animal whose music he was supposed to be playing. The flutist had a carboard head showing him as a nightingale. The cellist was a very flabby swan; the distinguished players of the string quartet were shown as donkeys of various breeds. Saint-Saëns and I were the two pianists — he made up to look like our host Lemoine, and I, furnished with a wig and beard, disguised as Saint-Saëns. [We two] pianists were provided with immense carboard hands and feet that were clipped off at the moment of performance, which was extremely hilarious.”

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Carnival of the Animals; David Owen Norris, piano; I Musici Montreal; Yuli Turovsky, conductor; Chandos 9246

Ask a serious music lover to name major figures in 20th century music and it’s likely the names Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Bartók will crop up. But in addition to those Austrian, Russian and Hungarian composers, a lively group of Italian modernists were also active throughout the 20th century — only their names and music are not so well known.

One of them was Goffredo Petrassi, born in 1904. Petrassi became one of the leading figures in a group of Italian composers that included Luigi Dallapiccola, Alfredo Casella and Gian Francesco Malipiero. This group tried to compensate for Italy’s almost total preoccupation with opera by concentrating more on instrumental pieces.

Petrassi’s own musical influences range from the Italian Renaissance music he sang as a young choirboy in Rome to the works of abstract painters like Jackson Pollock that he viewed when visiting America.

Petrassi’s largest body of work was his eight Concertos for Orchestra composed between 1933 and 1972, but in his final years he turned to chamber works, such as this Autumn Sestina completed in 1982, scored for six instruments. When asked where the “Autumn” in the title came from, the 78-year-old Petrassi responded, “Perhaps it’s got something to do with my age.” 

Goffredo Petrassi (1904-2003): Sestina d’autunno; Compania; Andrea Molino, conductor; Stradivarius 33347

Claude Debussy probably never saw the reviews his symphonic suite La Mer (The Sea) received after its American premiere on today’s date in Boston in 1907 — and that was probably for the best.

Musicologist Nicholas Slonimsky, who collected notably bad reviews in his notably excellent Lexicon of Musical Invective, says the 1907 Boston audience was a tough crowd, composed of — as Slonimsky put it — “easily discomfited dowagers, quiet academically minded New England music lovers, and irascible music critics.”

The Boston newspaper reviews of the 1907 audience’s reaction to Debussy’s La Mer included some real zingers like: “Frenchmen are notoriously bad sailors, and we clung like a drowning man to a few fragments of the tonal wreck.”    

An even more graphic critic said: “It is possible that Debussy did not intend to call it La Mer, but Le Mal de Mer, which would at once make the tone-picture as clear as day. It is a series of symphonic pictures of seasickness. The first movement is Headache. The second is Doubt, picturing moments of dread suspense … The third movement, with its explosions and rumblings, has now a self-evident purpose: The hero is endeavoring to throw up his boot heels!”

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): La Mer; Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal; Charles Dutoit, conductor; London/Decca 430240

Maurice Ravel’s orchestral suite Le Tombeau de Couperin was premiered in Paris on this day in 1920. It had started out as a suite of solo piano pieces, intended as a tribute to great French Baroque composer François Couperin — or, as Ravel wrote, “not so much to Couperin himself, as to 18th-century French music in general.”

Although the French word “tombeau” translates literally as “tomb,” it also signifies a musical piece paying tribute to a past master, in the English sense of “in memoriam.” In that spirit, Ravel dedicated each movement of his suite to friends of his killed during World War I.

Although the “tombeau” as a musical form has been associated almost exclusively with French composers, one contemporary American composer has used the form as well, albeit with more wickedly satirical intent. Michael Daugherty’s Tombeau de Liberace jokingly references the pianist and showman, a kitschy icon of 20th century American pop culture.

Michael Daugherty said, “Starting from the vernacular idiom, I have composed Le Tombeau de Liberace as a meditation on the American sublime: a lexicon of forbidden music. It is a piano concertino in four movements, each creating a distinct Liberace atmosphere.”

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Le Tombeau de Couperin; St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Hugh Wolff, conductor; Teldec 74006

On today’s date in 1908, the Hoffman String Quartet gave a recital at Boston’s Potter Hall, opening their program with a Romantic classic, Robert Schumann’s String Quartet from 1842, followed by much more modern fare — Debussy’s String Quartet written in 1893.

And to close their program, the Hoffman Quartet premiered a brand-new contemporary work: a piano quintet by American composer Amy Beach, with the composer at the piano.

The Boston Globe’s critic noted “the audience was of goodly proportions and very demonstrative in its appreciation of Mrs. Beach’s composition,” but (critics being critics), did a little nit-picking, concluding, “The work is thoroughly good, though a little too choppy at times.”

The critic from The Boston Evening Transcript had fewer nits to pick, writing: “The quintet begins in the luminous key of F-sharp minor, and throughout Mrs. Beach modulates freely … [she] has sought a modern sonority of utterance … Her rhythms spurred the ear, and her harmonies [have] tang and fancy … In imagination, feeling, and expression, it is distinctly rhapsodic. Mrs. Beach can think musically in truly songful melodies, and such are the themes of her new quintet.”

Amy Beach (1867-1944): Piano Quintet; Garrick Ohlsson, piano; Takács Quartet; Hyperion CDA-68295

On today’s date in 1946, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra gave the premiere of a new oboe concerto by German composer Richard Strauss, then in his 80s. The soloist was Swiss oboist Marcel Saillet, to whom the work is dedicated.

The concerto owes its existence, however, to John de Lancie, a 20-something American oboist and GI who was then stationed in Germany and visited Strauss at his Bavarian home shortly after the end of World War II.

“I asked him, in view of the numerous beautiful, lyric solos for oboe in almost all his works, if he had ever considered writing a concerto for oboe. He answered ‘No,’ and there was no more conversation on the subject,” recalled de Lancie.

But de Lancie’s question did plant a seed, and after returning to civilian life in the states in 1946, de Lancie got a letter from Strauss’ publisher offering him the work’s American premiere.

As it turned out, the American premiere of the Strauss concerto was given by another oboist named Mitchell Miller — a musician who some of us of a certain age remember as an energetic choral conductor of the sing-along TV show, Sing Along with Mitch.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Oboe Concerto; John de Lancie, oboe; Chamber Orchestra; Max Wilcox, conductor; RCA/BMG 7989

Like Rodney Dangerfield, the viola is often an instrument that “gets no respect“ — so no viola jokes, today, folks. Quite the opposite, in fact.

For its 150th Anniversary celebration, the New York Philharmonic commissioned a number of new orchestral works. One of them premiered at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall on today’s date in 1993: American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Symphony No. 3.

It’s no exaggeration to suggest Zwilich knows the symphony orchestra from inside out: for seven years she was a violinist in the American Symphony Orchestra, a New York-based ensemble conducted by Leopold Stokowski when she was a player.

For her Symphony No. 3, Zwilich confessed she had an often-neglected section of the orchestra in mind:

“I had noticed over the years the rising quality of viola playing, and I thought that the Philharmonic’s section was absolutely amazing,” she said in an interview. “So when I had this commission … I really wanted to put the spotlight on the viola section and give them a great deal to do, not only in terms of virtuosity, but of importance and centrality to the piece. This symphony really grew out of my love for this section of the orchestra.”

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

It’s quite likely that if we could ask him, great 18th century composer George Frideric Handel would have described himself first and foremost as a composer of Italian operas.

For most of the 19th century, however, it was chiefly Handel’s English-language sacred oratorios that kept his fame alive. It wasn’t until the 20th century that curiosity about Handel’s Italian operas led to revivals, recordings and their eventual return to the repertory of opera companies worldwide.

On today’s date in 1711, Handel’s opera Rinaldo had its premiere performance in London at the Queen’s Theater in the Haymarket. This was the first Handel opera produced in London, and the first Italian opera written specifically for that city. It was designed to be a spectacle, full of heroic chivalry and stage magic including live birds and flying machines, a kind of 18th century Star Wars, if you will.

It was a tremendous success, and, like Star Wars, was so popular that it became fit material for parody.

Handel’s Act III march of Christian Crusaders resurfaced as a chorus of highway robbers in John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera of 1728, a spoof poking fun at both contemporary politics and the conventions and pretensions of Italian-style opera.

George Frederic Handel (1685-1759): Lascia Ch’io Pianga from Rinaldo; Barbra Streisand, soprano; Columbia Symphony; Claus Ogerman, conductor; CBS/Sony 33452

John Gay (1685-1732): The Beggar’s Opera; The Broadside Band; Jeremy Barlow, conductor; Hyperion 66591

On the popular NPR quiz show Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, there is a segment called “Bluff the Listener” where three outlandish news stories are read to a contestant, who then has to guess which one is true. So, for the voice of Bill Kurtis on your home answering machine, which of these really happened in London on today’s date in 1732:

a) George Frideric Handel got into a sword fight with his Southbank wigmaker, screaming at the poor man, “Donnervetter! In dis vig I luk like ein Pomeranian hund!”

b) Handel’s especially smooth trip across the Thames to buy said wig provided the inspiration for his famous Water Music, or

c) as part of his 47th birthday celebration, choir boys from the Chapel Royal sang and acted in a staged performance of Handel’s sacred oratorio Esther in the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand.

If you guessed “C” you would be correct. Extra points if you knew that this would be the only staged performance of any of Handel sacred oratorios before the twentieth century, and that in Handel’s day there was a ban on presenting staged biblical dramas in public theaters — but not, apparently, in pubs.

George Friedrich Handel (1835-1921): Overture from Esther (1732 version); London Handel Orchestra; Laurence Cummings, conductor; SOMM CD-2389