Composers Datebook

Today’s date in 1906 marks the birthday of Alexander Naumovich Tsfasman, a Ukrainian composer from pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia who would become an important figure in Soviet jazz.

Jazz first came to the Soviet Union in 1922, four years after Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution, and at first was welcomed as the music of the oppressed African-American minority, and therefore considered an expression of the worldwide class struggle. Tsfasman encountered jazz while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory and formed his own jazz band in 1926, the first to be heard on Soviet radio. In the decades that followed, Tsfasman made over 140 records, composed music for films, and gave concerts during WWII for Red Army soldiers.

But after 1945, jazz fell out of favor in the USSR. During the Cold War, it came to be seen as a prime export of the decadent bourgeois West and performances were limited. “Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he’ll betray his country” was a widespread propaganda slogan in the Stalinist post-war USSR. Only in the 1960s did attitudes change, and we’re happy to report Alexander Tsfasman lived to see it before his death in 1971.

This music is from his Jazz Suite for piano and orchestra.

Alexander Tsfasman (1906-1971): Snowflakes and Polka (excerpts), from Jazz Suite;
Zlata Chochieva, piano; BBC Scottish Symphony; Karl-Heinz Steffens, conductor; Naïve V-8448

In 1935, when he was 25 years old, American composer Samuel Barber was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome. This meant that Barber could study at the American Academy in Rome for two years, with free lodgings and an annual stipend of $1,400 — a considerable sum of money in the 1930s. Barber found his Italian studio, a little yellow house approached through a garden, to be a good place to work.

While in Italy, Barber finished his Symphony No. 1. The premiere took place in Rome on today’s date in 1936, with an Italian conductor and orchestra. Years later, he recalled that the orchestra played well, but also that the Italian audience members were “not shy about expressing their feelings ... 50% applauded and 50% were hissing.” In Barber’s opinion, the Italians found the new work “too dark-toned, too Nordic.”

The Cleveland Orchestra gave the symphony’s American premiere early the next year, followed by a New York performance under the direction of Arthur Rodzinski, who was so impressed he conducted the work with the Vienna Philharmonic at the opening concert of the 1937 Salzburg Music Festival in Austria. That performance was more warmly received, and Barber was called back to the stage three times.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981): Symphony No. 1; Saint Louis Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; RCA/BMG 60732

On today’s date in 2001, the San Francisco Symphony, under conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, gave the first performance of Ice Field, a new work by American composer Henry Brant. The piece was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2002, the year Brant turned 89.

The prize was an acknowledgment of five decades of Brant’s work as one of America’s great experimental composers. In the 1950s, when he turned 40, Brant became fascinated with the possibilities inherent in spatial music — music that positioned various groups of performers in all the corners of performing space. Moreover, he felt his music should reflect a wide variety of musical styles. As Brant put it, “I had come to feel that single-style music… could no longer evoke the new stresses, layered insanities and multi-directional assaults of contemporary life on the spirit.”

Brant cites earlier American composer Charles Ives as his major model, but also credits the experience of hearing extravagant French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz’ Requiem Mass in Paris. In the 19th century, Berlioz positioned an orchestra, brass choirs, and vocalists around a vast cathedral for a unique “surround sound” experience.

Henry Brant (1913-2008): Western Springs; La Jolla Symphony and Chorus; Henry Brant, et. al. conductor; CRI 827

The Great Depression put many Americans out of work, and in 1935 the Roosevelt administration created the Works Progress Administration, offering employment on various public projects. The Federal Music Project created 34 new orchestras across the country. American composers weren’t neglected either. A program called the Composers Forum Laboratories showcased new chamber works and invited audiences to offer their feedback directly to the composers involved.

On today’s date in 1935, at the seventh Composers Forum Laboratory held in New York, Henry Cowell was the featured composer and took questions and comments following the premiere of his String Quartet No. 3. Typical of this “laboratory” situation, the chamber piece was highly experimental. Cowell conceived it as a kind of musical kaleidoscope or crazy quilt, in which five predetermined musical patterns can be played in any order. Cowell called this work his Mosaic Quartet, and, theoretically, no two performances would ever be the same.

America’s entry into World War II eventually brought all the WPA’s musical projects to a close, but not before Federal Music Project orchestras had premiered a number of new symphonic works by American composers and dozens of new chamber works, like Cowell’s Quartet, and had been workshopped at Composers Forum Laboratories.

Henry Cowell (1897-1965): String Quartet No. 3 (Mosaic Quartet); Colorado String Quartet; Mode 72/73

During his 26 seasons with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the charismatic conductor Leopold Stokowski often programmed new music by contemporary composers.

On today’s date in 1937, for example, Stokowski and the Philadelphians performed works by two American composers.  First up was some ballet music by Robert McBride, which The Philadelphia Inquirer reviewer found “of indifferent interest.”

The same critic, however, was enthusiastic about the second work, the premiere performance of the William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 2, Song of a New Race. “[It] was of absorbing interest, unmistakably racial in thematic material and rhythms, and triumphantly articulate in expression of moods, ranging from the exuberance of jazz to brooding wistfulness.”

Still contrasted his Symphony No. 2 with his Symphony No. 1, the Afro-American Symphony. “[If my Symphony No. 1] represented the Negro of days not far removed from the Civil War,” his Symphony No. 2, said Still, represented “the American colored man of today, in so many instances a totally new individual.”

One striking feature of Still’s Symphony No. 2 is the expansive, lyrical writing for strings, perhaps a nod to the Philadelphia’s famously silky string sound; another is the brass choir call and response gestures, reminiscent of African-American church music traditions.

William Grant Still (1875-1978): Symphony No. 2 (Song of a New Race); Detroit Symphony Orchestra; Neeme Jarvi, conductor; Chandos 9226

Nineteenth-century Russian composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka founded a distinctive national style of Russian classical music, and he wrote first great Russian opera, which premiered in St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1836.

That opera tells the story of Ivan Susanin, a folk hero of the early 17th century, who gave his life to protect the newly elected Tsar Mikhail, the first of the Romanov dynasty. Glinka’s original title for his opera was Ivan Susanin, but after the then-current Tsar Nicholas I attended a rehearsal, Glinka changed it to A Life for the Tsar, to honor — and frankly flatter the current ruler in the Romanov line. 

After the Bolshevik Revolution deposed Tsar Nicholas II in 1917 and executed his whole family, any opera praising the Romanovs, no matter how culturally significant, was unperformable in the Soviet Union. But in 1939, Glinka’s opera returned to Russian stages under its original title Ivan Susanin, thanks to a Soviet poet who removed all references to the Tsar from its libretto and adjusted its storyline to be “politically correct” for Stalinist Russia.

These days, when Glinka’s landmark opera is staged, it’s under its original title and with its original, pro-Tsarist storyline restored.

Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857): A Life for the Tsar Overture; USSR State Symphony; Yevgeny Svetlanov, conductor; Regis RRC 1142

Great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius was born on this date in 1865.

In 1990, on Sibelius’ 125th birthday, Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä led the Lahti Symphony in the belated world-premiere of a previously unknown work by the composer, a Suite for Violin and Orchestra that Sibelius finished around 1929, but never published.

Now, Sibelius was a prolific composer through his fifties, but during the last 30 years of his life, he wrote very little. He had completed his Symphony No. 7, his last, in 1924, and the world waited in vain for an eighth. Perhaps it was due to depression, perhaps it was due to drink — or maybe, creatively speaking, Sibelius had just dried up. In any case, what works he did complete as a senior citizen were either revisions of much earlier pieces, or minor incidental works.

Which makes this genial little suite rather interesting. It’s landscape music, evoking the Finnish countryside, but in a less bleak and abstract manner than usual. It may not be top-drawer Sibelius, but even so, we’re grateful that he decided to put his Suite for Violin in a bottom drawer — and not in the fireplace!

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957): Suite for Violin and Orchestra; Dong-Suk Kang, violin; Lahti Symphony; Osmo Vänskä; BIS 1125

It’s perhaps not surprising that a solitary, iconoclastic 20th century composer should identify with a solitary, iconoclastic 18th century poet. Ultra-modernist American composer Carl Ruggles took as the title for one of his most famous orchestral pieces, a phrase from a motto by early Romantic British poet William Blake which ran, “Great things are done when men and mountains meet.”

On today’s date in 1924, Ruggles’ Men and Mountains received its premiere performance at a New York concert of the International Composers’ Guild.

The music critic of the New York Times was in attendance and wrote: “Mr. Ruggles … leaps upon the listener with a yell. There is a wild shriek of the brass choir, and thereafter no rest for the wicked. It is as if the irate composer had seized a plump, disparaging critic by some soft and flabby part of his anatomy, and pinched him blue, crying the while, ‘You will hear me and you’ll not go to sleep, either!’”

By the time of his death in 1971, at 95, Ruggles was seldom performed, yet he was still revered as the craggy, last-standing survivor of the craggy ultra-modernist movement of the early 20th century.

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971): Men and Mountains; Buffalo Philharmonic; Lukas Foss, conductor; Vox 8155

Two famous pieces of chamber music had their premieres on today’s date, both at private readings prior to their first public performances.

On today’s date in 1842, German Romantic composer Robert Schumann arranged for a trial reading of his new Piano Quintet at the Leipzig home of some of his friends. Schumann’s wife, Clara, was supposed to be the pianist on that occasion, but she took ill, and Schumann’s friend and fellow composer Felix Mendelssohn stepped in at the last moment for the informal performance, reading the work at sight.

After this preliminary reading, Mendelssohn praised the work, but offered some friendly suggestions concerning part of the trio section in the new work’s Scherzo movement, which prompted Schumann to write a livelier replacement movement for the work’s first public performance.

About 100 years later, on today’s date in 1949, a cello sonata by Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev received a similar private performance in Moscow, for an invited audience at the House of the Union of Composers. Two of the leading Soviet performers of the day, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and pianist Sviatoslav Richter, gave the work its first performance. The following spring, it was again Rostropovich and Richter who gave the Sonata its public debut at the Moscow Conservatory.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Piano Quintet; Menahem Pressler, piano; Emerson String Quartet; DG 445 848

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Cello Sonata; David Finckel, cello; Wu Han, piano; Artist Led 19901

“Snuff” is a finely pulverized tobacco that can be, well, “snuffed” through the nose. In the 19th century, taking snuff was a common practice, and on today’s date in 1837, the most notorious example of snuff-taking in music history occurred — or didn’t, depending on who you believe – during the premiere in Paris of the massive Requiem Mass of the French composer Hector Berlioz.

As Berlioz tells it in his Memoirs, the conductor of the performance, Francois-Antoine Habeneck, decided to take a pinch of snuff during an especially tricky passage, at the very moment he should have been giving an important cue to the orchestra. To avert disaster, Berlioz jumped up, gave the cue, and afterwards accused Habeneck of sabotage. Some eye-witnesses are on record saying, “Yes, that’s just how it happened,” while others, equally emphatic, state, “Preposterous! Nothing of the sort occurred.”

Whom to believe? 

Well, it is known that once the basic tempo was set, Habeneck was in the habit of putting down his baton to let the orchestra play on by themselves. He would then calmly take a pinch of snuff. Sometimes, it’s said, he even offered snuff to his neighbors, so perhaps those performances were indeed sabotaged — by an especially loud sneeze!

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): Requiem; French Radio Chorus and Orchestra; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 47526