Composers Datebook

In 1944, while World War II ground on in Europe and Asia, David Diamond’s Rounds for String Orchestra received its premiere performance by the Minneapolis Symphony and its then conductor, Dimitri Mitropoulos. 

“Write me a happy work,” Mitropoulos had asked Diamond. “These are distressing times, most of the difficult music I play is distressing. Make me happy.”

To some in 1944, Rounds sounded as if Diamond had turned to traditional American folk music, but, as the composer put it, “the tunes are original. They sound like folk tunes, but they are really the essence of a style that must have been absorbed by osmosis.”

Even the stodgy conservative music critic of the St. Paul Pioneer Press expressed her grudging admiration. “It reveals a good deal of talent and resourcefulness” was her verdict.

Reviewing a subsequent Boston Symphony performance under Koussevitzky, New York Times critic Olin Downes was much more enthusiastic. He wrote, “It is admirably fashioned, joyous and vernal. There is laughter in the music.”

Rounds has gone on to become one of Diamond’s most frequently performed works. Perhaps joy and laughter in music remains as rare and precious a commodity now as it was back in those distressed days of 1944.

David Diamond (1915-2005): Rounds; Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Nonesuch 79002

On today’s date in 1934, after 10 intense rehearsals, the Orquestra Sinfonica de Mexico, conducted by the Carlos Chávez, gave the premiere performance of the Symphony No. 2 of American composer Aaron Copland.

Copland’s Symphony No. 2 was titled The Short Symphony, but there was a lot packed into its 15-minute duration. He said, “The Short Symphony’s preoccupation is with complex rhythms, combined with clear textures. Sonority-wise, the most rhythmically complex moments have a certain lightness and clarity.”

“Shortly after its Mexican introduction, the piece was announced for an American premiere by Leopold Stokowski with the Philadelphia Orchestra but was never given,” Copland recalled. “A similarly announced performance by the Boston Symphony under Koussevitzsky was also cancelled. Both told me subsequently that they had announced performances because they had admired the work, but that the composition was so intricate from a rhythmic standpoint that they dared not attempt a performance within the allotted period.”

In 1937, Copland recast his Short Symphony as a chamber sextet, leaving the music fundamentally unchanged, but re-barring the score to make it less challenging for performers. It wasn’t until the 1980s, decades after its Mexican premiere, that his symphony was performed by American orchestras in its original form.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Symphony No. 2 (Short Symphony); San Francisco Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; BMG 68541

Today is the Feast Day of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music and musicians. Over time, her Feast Day came to be celebrated with special works composed in her honor, all extolling the power of music. Of these, the most famous were written by three great British composers: Henry Purcell, George Frederick Handel and Benjamin Britten.

In the 17th century, Henry Purcell wrote four cantatas, or odes for St. Cecilia’s Day. The most famous of these, Hail! Bright Cecilia! was written in 1692.

British poet John Dryden, a contemporary of Purcell’s, wrote two poems in praise of St. Cecilia. These attracted the attention of great British composer of the following century, George Frederick Handel. The first, Alexander’s Feast premiered in 1736 — oddly enough not on St. Cecilia’s Day — but proved so popular that Handel set Dryden’s other ode to St. Cecilia, From Harmony, Heavenly Harmony, and performed both pieces on today’s date in 1739.

Great 20th-century British composer Benjamin Britten was actually born on St. Cecilia’s Day in 1913. In the early 1940s, British poet W.H. Auden wrote Anthem for St. Cecilia’s Day for Britten, who set it to music in 1942.

Henry Purcell (1659-1695): Hail Bright Cecilia!; Gabrieli Consort; Paul McCreesh; Archiv 445 882

George Frederic Handel (1685-1759): Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day; English Concert; Trevor Pinnock, conductor; Archiv 419 220

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Hymn to St. Cecilia; London Sinfonietta Voices; Virgin 90728

On today’s date in 1986, at the New England Conservatory of Music, a new choral work by American composer John Harbison received its premiere performance. The Flight into Egypt was scored for soprano, baritone, chorus and chamber orchestra, and would win the Pulitzer Prize for Music the following year.

The text for Harbison’s cantata is taken from the Gospel of Matthew describing the Holy Family’s escape into Egypt after the birth of Jesus and King Herod’s subsequent slaughter of all newborn male children in an attempt to kill this prophesied threat to his throne.

“The Flight began in a conversation with colleagues about Christmas texts. We talked about counseling experiences during Christmas season at Emmanuel Church, Boston, where we were all involved as musicians — a time when need, isolation, and anxiety increase. We agreed that the darker side of Christmas needs representation, especially now, as the distance widens between the privileged and the less fortunate,” Harbison recalled.

“At the beginning of The Flight into Egypt, is an oboe melody, exotic and forlorn, imitated by the other reed players,” Harbison continued. “The piece constantly hides and reveals its loyalty to the first oboe melody that guides the whole journey.”

John Harbison (b. 1938): Flight into Egypt; Cantata Singers and Ensemble; David Hoose, conductor; New World 80395

American composer, singer, dancer and choreographer Meredith Monk was born in New York City on today’s date in 1942.

Monk attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied theatre, dance and music. After graduating in 1964, she began performing pieces that combined gesture and movement with vocal and visual elements. Around that time, a number of contemporary composers had begun stretching the boundaries of instrumental music, but, as she recalls, there wasn’t much happening regarding extended vocal techniques.

Monk began testing how she could stretch the range, timbre and character of her own singing, inventing a vocabulary based on her particular voice — as she explains it, just as a dancer would develop a vocabulary of movement particular to their body.

Considering her long-standing interest in integrating music with movement and visuals, opera seemed a natural outlet for Monk’s talents, and in 1993 she premiered a full-length opera, Atlas.

Atlas was inspired by the life of Alexandra David-Neel, a scientist who was the first Western woman to travel in Tibet. It seemed a natural choice for Monk, for whom exploration and curiosity are so important. “If I knew what I was looking for, it wouldn’t be that interesting,” she said.

Meredith Monk (b. 1942): Atlas; Meredith Monk Ensemble; Wayne Hankin, conductor; ECM 1491

In the summer of 1936, the songwriting team of George and Ira Gershwin settled their affairs in New York, put their furniture in storage, and flew off to Hollywood to fulfill a contract with the RKO Studios. The Gershwins were to supply music for a series of new movies, some starring an old friend of theirs, dancer Fred Astaire.

In those days the big movie studios moved quickly, and so did the Gershwins. The first film in the contracted series, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as the romantic leads, was Shall We Dance and was completed, scored and released in less than a year.

On today’s date in 1937, RKO Studios released their second Gershwin collaboration, Damsel in Distress. This starred Astaire and Joan Fontaine, and included two songs that would become Gershwin classics: “A Foggy Day in London Town” and “Nice Work if You Can Get It.”

The release of Damsel in Distress, however, must have been a bittersweet event for the friends and family of George Gershwin: it proved to be the last major project Gershwin had completed before his untimely death on July 11 that same year following surgery to remove a brain tumor.

George Gershwin (1898-1937): Damsel in Distress Suite (An American in London); (Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; John Mauceri, conductor; Philips 434 274

Falling in love with someone else’s spouse can result in divorce, emotional turmoil, or (in the case of composers) some very Romantic music.

Take the case of Brahms, who for most of his adult life carried a torch for Mrs. Clara Schumann, the wife of his friend and mentor, Robert Schumann. Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 was conceived during an especially turbulent period in his relationship with the Schumanns. When finished, Brahms wrote to his publisher, “On the cover you must have a picture, namely a head with a pistol to it. I’ll send you my photograph, and since you like color printing, you can use blue coat, yellow breeches, and top-boots.”

That garb was favored by Young Werther, the Romantic hero in a novel by Goethe, who commits suicide after falling in love with a married woman.

Coincidentally, in the audience for the Viennese premiere of Brahms’ quartet on today’s date in 1875 were Richard and Cosima Wagner. Cosima had run off with Wagner while she was still married to famous conductor Hans von Bulow, but her diary entry for November 18 suggests she didn’t find anything Romantic in Brahms or his music. She wrote, “[Brahms], a red-faced, crude-looking man, his music dry and stilted.”

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Piano Quartet No. 3; Ames Piano Quartet; Dorian 90217

The intimate combination of flute and guitar has proven to be an attractive one for a number of composers — and if the composer herself plays the flute, so much the better.

Canyon Echoes, written by the American composer and flutist Katherine Hoover premiered on today’s date in 1991 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis by flutist Susan Morris De Jong and guitarist Jeffrey Van.

Katherine Hoover gave her Canyon Echoes a subtitle: An Apache Folktale.

“This piece was inspired by a book called The Flute Player, a simple and beautifully illustrated retelling of an Apache folktale by Michael Lacapa,” Hoover explained. “It is the story of two young Apaches from different areas of a large canyon. They meet at a Hoop Dance, and dance only with each other. The next day, as the girl works up on the side of the canyon in her father's fields, the boy sits below by a stream and plays his flute for her (flute-playing was a common manner of courtship). She puts a leaf in the stream which flows down to him, so he knows she hears.”

Katherine Hoover (1937-2018): Canyon Echoes (Duologue); Susan Morris De Jong, flute; Jeffrey Van, guitar; Gasparo 336

In the year 1900, German-born conductor Fritz Scheel arranged for two orchestral programs in Philadelphia billed as the Philippines Concerts. These were benefits, as contemporary ads put it: “for the relief of families of the nation’s heroes killed in the Philippines.” The previous year U.S. troops had fought a guerrilla army in the Philippines and had suffered heavy casualties.  

The concerts proved so successful that Philadelphians decided Scheel’s pick-up orchestra should become instead a permanent ensemble, similar to the orchestras of New York and Boston. And so, on today’s date in 1900, the first official concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra took place at the Academy of Music, offering a program of Goldmark, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Weber and Wagner.

During the century that followed, the fame of the Philadelphia Orchestra spread worldwide via recordings made by the orchestra’s famous maestros Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, who gave many U.S. and world premiere performances of works by European and American composers.

In 1940, Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, on the occasion of the premiere of his Symphonic Dances by the Philadelphians, paid the orchestra this compliment: “Today, when I think of composing, my thoughts turn to you, the greatest orchestra in the world.”

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Act I Prelude, from Die Meistersinger; Philadelphia Orchestra; Eugene Ormandy, conductor; CBS 38914

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Symphonic Dances; Philadelphia Orchestra; Charles Dutoit, conductor; London 433 181

Today is the birthday of a quite remarkable 18th century British composer, Sir William Herschel, who was born in Hannover, Germany on this date in 1738.

Herschel’s father was a regimental oboist, and young William himself eventually joined papa’s regimental band — also as an oboist. In his early 20s he settled in England, was active in Newcastle, Leeds, Halifax and Bath, and in time became a prominent figure on the music scene, attracting the attention of the Royal Family. He composed 24 symphonies and a number of concertos.

In addition to music, Herschel had a passion for astronomy, and, beginning in the 1770s, concentrated more and more of his attention on scientific matters. In 1781, he discovered the planet Uranus, a feat that made him famous throughout Europe. Herschel was named Astronomer Royal to the British crown and given a pension that enabled him to give up music and devote himself entirely to astronomy.

Haydn, during his stay in England, paid Herschel a visit to take a peek through his impressive 40-foot telescope. Herschel was knighted in 1817 and became the first president of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1821. He died the following year, in 1822, at 83.

William Herschel (1738-1822): Oboe Concerto; Richard Woodhams, oboe; The Mozart Orchestra; Davis Jerome, conductor; Newport Classic 85612

Gustav Holst (1874-1934): Uranus, from The Planets; Philharmonia Orchestra; Simon Rattle, conductor; EMI 9513