Composers Datebook

In fall 1995, American composer Andrew Waggoner received a commission from the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic of the Czech Republic for a new orchestral work, which was premiered on today’s date in 1996.

“I had a symphony in my mind for some time and decided that this was the chance I needed to see it through,” Waggoner wrote.

The resulting work, Waggoner’s Symphony No. 2, opens with a solo for the cello, an elegy, perhaps, for cellist Anna Cholakian, the founding member of the Cassatt Quartet, who had died from cancer while Waggoner was working on the piece.

“Quite unexpectedly, and for the first time in my life as a composer, the piece began to draw from everything around it,” Waggoner wrote, including some recycled elements from his own music, including a setting of one of the Holy Sonnets by 17th century British poet John Donne.

Waggoner was born in New Orleans in 1960, and studied music at the Eastman School and Cornell University. In addition to his composition work, he’s worked as an announcer and producer for public radio stations WXXI in Rochester and WNYC in New York. His Symphony No. 2 was recorded by the same Czech orchestra that premiered it.

Andrew Waggoner (b. 1960): Symphony No. 2; Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic; Petr Pololanik, conductor; CRI 884

On today’s date in 1940, Disney’s animated film Fantasia opened at New York’s Broadway Theater.

Disney’s film was a milestone in cultural crossover, in which classical music — in the person of conductor Leopold Stokowski — shook hands (literally and figuratively) with pop culture — in the person of Mickey Mouse.

It was also a milestone in cinematic sound. For its initial East and West Coast release, the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded nine special tracks, one for each section of the orchestra. These were mixed by Stokowski into a 4-track stereo soundtrack to be played in synchronization with the film on special equipment made by RCA for a multiple-loudspeaker theater installation called “Fantasound.” Three large speakers were positioned behind the projection screen, and no fewer than 65 smaller speakers were placed around the walls of the theater.

The resulting surround-sound was stunning by 1940 standards, but cost $85,000 to set up. After the second full installation at the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles, “Fantasound” was not employed anywhere else. Instead, eight reduced “Fantasia Road Show” speaker set- ups toured American movie theaters until 1941, when, following the outbreak of World War II, Disney diverted his funds, technology and even Mickey Mouse toward the war effort.

Bach, Tchaikovsky, Dukas, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Ponchielli, Mussorgsky and Schubert: excerpts from Fantasia soundtrack; Philadelphia Orchestra; Leopold Stokowski, conductor; Buena Vista 600072

For the ideal performance of Makrokosmos II: Twelve fantasy pieces after the Zodiac, by American composer George Crumb, one should perhaps be outdoors in a remote clearing under a crystalline canopy of stars.

For the record, the premiere performance of Crumb’s suite for amplified piano took place indoors at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on today’s date in 1974, at a recital of new American works given by pianist Robert Miller.

In his program notes, Miller offered these words about Crumb’s Makrokosmos II:

“Each of the 12 pieces is associated with a different sign of the Zodiac, and is written out in a very precise notation, but the music will at times sound … almost improvisatory. The piano has become an orchestra unto itself. There is an enormously wide range of sound, timbre, touch, dynamics, etc.”

One use of quotation by Crumb is beautifully subtle. In the eleventh piece, Litany of the Galactic Bells, the opening music — a shimmering bell effect which recalls the coronation scene from Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov — gradually subsides and moves almost imperceptibly into a short excerpt from Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. The effect is somewhat like the changing colors of a prism.”

George Crumb (1929-2022): Makrokosmos No. 2 (Laurie Hudicek, piano) Furious Artisans 6805

On today’s date in 1923, the League of Composers presented its first chamber concert in New York City. Their stated mission was to present music by living composers whose works represented new trends in music.

Their opening concert included a world premiere: a piano quintet by Swiss composer Ernest Bloch, who was then living in America. While not a radical work, Bloch’s quintet was strong stuff for 1923, and even included some quartertone elements.

The New York Times critic was impressed, but not won over, writing, “To the inevitable question, ‘Do you like it?’ it seems almost impossible to answer, but if pressed I should say, no, not for any fault in the work but simply because of its too apparent determination to be emotionally stirring.”

British critic Ernest Newmann, on the other hand, singled out Bloch’s First Quintet for special praise. “No other piece of chamber music produced in any country during that period can be placed in the same class with it.”

For his part, Bloch said simply, “I write without any regard to please either the so-called ‘ultra-moderns’ or the so-called ‘old-fashioned.’”

Ernest Bloch (1880-1959): Piano Quintet No. 1; Portland String Quartet; Paul Posnak, piano; Arabesque 6618

On today’s date in 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted the New York Philharmonic in a concert billed as “the first of a series arranged in chronological sequence, comprising the most famous composers from the period of Bach to the present day.”

Mahler’s program included works of Handel, Rameau, Gretry and Haydn, and opened with his own arrangement of music from Bach’s Orchestral Suites.

Now, Bach’s music had been appearing on Philharmonic programs for decades, but some were shocked to see how Mahler presented it. Rather than standing in front of the orchestra with his baton, Mahler led the orchestra seated at the keyboard of a Bach-Klavier (a Steinway piano whose action had been tinkered with to make it sound more like a harpsichord). That bit of “historically informed performance” was something brand new back then.

In a letter to a friend back in Europe, Mahler wrote, “I had great fun recently with a Bach concert, for which I worked out the basso continuo conducting and improvising quite in the style of the old masters … this produced a number of surprises for me — and also for the audience. It was as though a floodlight had been turned on to this long-buried literature.”

J.S. Bach (1685-1750) (arr. Gustav Mahler): Orchestral Suite; Berlin Radio Symphony; Peter Schwarz, conductor; Schwann 11637

If you’ve ever attended a live symphony concert, you’re familiar with the routine: before anyone starts playing, before the conductor even steps on stage, the principal oboist sounds an “A” — and the other musicians tune their instruments to that pitch.

On today’s date in 1975, a few people in the audience at Carnegie Hall might have been surprised to hear this familiar ritual segue directly into the opening of John Corigliano’s new Oboe Concerto, which was receiving its premiere performance by oboist Burt Lucarelli and the American Symphony orchestra.

The first movement of Corigliano’s Concerto is titled Tuning Game, followed by a Song-Scherzo, Aria and a final Dance. This form, Corigliano said, arose “from the different aspects of the oboe … the coloratura qualities of the oboe are emphasized in the Aria movement, for example, but the whole Concerto is highly theatrical, virtuoso music for both soloist and orchestra.”

Theatrical is right! The final dance movement was inspired by the sound of the rhaita, or Morrocan oboe. According to Corigliano: “I was fascinated by the rhaita’s sound, heady and forceful ... but having an infectiously exciting quality. I first heard the instrument in Marrakech in 1966, serenading a cobra.”

John Corigliano (b. 1938): Oboe Concerto; Humbert Lucarelli, oboe; American Symphony; Kazuyoshi Akiyama, conductor; RCA/BMG 60395

Okay, here’s a cocktail party question for music fans: “What do James Brown — the master of funk — and Soviet symphonic composer Dmitri Shostakovich have in common?”

The answer is Stomp, a piece by Seattle-based composer David Schiff that premiered on today’s date in 1990 at Alice Tully Hall in New York City at a concert by Marin Alsop’s Concordia orchestra.

For starters, on the score of Stomp, Schiff includes a reference to James Brown’s music, instructing the players, “Every instrument is treated like a drum.” Also, during its opening, there’s a staccato rhythm based on Brown’s iconic tune, “I Feel Good.”

And the Shostakovich connection? Well, Schiff confesses to modeling Stomp on the opening movement of that composer’s Symphony No. 9, right down to a strict imitation of Shostakovich’s repeat of the exposition, in sonata-form style.

On the origin and subsequent use of Stomp, Schiff said, “Marin Alsop conducted one of my pieces at Tanglewood in 1988 and later asked me for a new orchestral piece for her Concordia orchestra; since then, Stomp has since been played by many orchestras including the L.A. Philharmonic, who took it to high schools to demonstrate that classical music could be really loud.”

David Schiff (b. 1945): Stomp; Baltimore Sym; David Zinman, conductor; Argo 444 454-2

On today’s date in 1940, the Chicago Symphony helped celebrate their 50th anniversary with the premiere performance of a specially commissioned symphony from famous Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

Stravinsky himself was on hand to conduct his Symphony in C — a work that attracted a great deal of attention at the time. For starters, writing a symphony in the key of C Major seemed a defiantly anti-modern gesture at a time when Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve tone method of composition was gaining ground with prominent American musicians and critics.

Traditionally, C Major was deemed a “happy” or “bright” key, but Stravinsky composed his Symphony during one of the unhappiest periods of his life, when his wife, his mother and one of his daughters had all died in rapid succession.

“It is no exaggeration to say that in the following weeks I was able to continue my own life only by my work on the Symphony in C,” Stravinsky wrote. “But I did not seek to overcome my grief by portraying or giving expression to it in music, and you will listen in vain, I think, for traces of this sort of personal emotion.”

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Symphony in C; Chicago Symphony; Georg Solti, conductor; London 458 898

For later Romantic composers like Richard Wagner, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was “the apotheosis of the dance,” and certainly sitting still during the Symphony’s dizzying finale is not always easy.

But for those in the audience at its premiere in 1813, as part of a benefit concert for wounded Bavarian and Austrian soldiers, it was the somber slow movement that proved most attractive. Perhaps audiences read more into it than Beethoven intended, given the occasion, but over time, the slow movements of many symphonies not only got longer, but by the time of Bruckner and Mahler also became the emotional “heart” of the composition, and are sometimes performed as stand-alone concert pieces.

On today’s date in 1999, this Adagio by Italian composer Elisabetta Brusa received its premiere performance by the Virtuosi of Toronto. Brusa was born in 1954 in Milan and studied music at the Milan Conservatory.

“My Adagio is a freely structured composition in a single movement inspired by well-known masterpieces, such as those by Albinoni, Mahler, and Barber. Independent of a pre-established form, sonata, or suite, it originated as an autonomous composition in the expressive style which have distinguished the numerous Adagios of the past,” she wrote.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 7; Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 471 490

Elisabetta Brusa (b. 1954): Adagio; Ukraine National Symphony; Fabio Mastrangelo, conductor; Naxos 8.555267

At the dawn of the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt was president and America was in an upbeat, prosperous mood. Cultural affairs were not forgotten, either. To the already established American symphony orchestras in cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati and San Francisco, new ensembles would spring up in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Seattle.

In 1903, it was Minneapolis’ turn. On November 5 of that year, German-born musician Emil Oberhoffer led the first concert of the newly formed Minneapolis Symphony. In those days it was a 50-piece ensemble, but in the course of the next 100 years, would double in size and change its name to the Minnesota Orchestra.

As this is the Composers Datebook, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that the Minnesota Orchestra has enjoyed a special relationship with a number of leading American composers.

Aaron Copland conducted the orchestra on a memorable and televised Bicentennial Concert in 1976, and two young American composers, Stephen Paulus and Libby Larsen, served as composers-in-residence with the orchestra in the 1980s. The orchestra has also given the premiere performances of works by Charles Ives, John Adams, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Dominick Argento and Aaron Jay Kernis, among many others.

Dominick Argento (1927-2019): A Ring of Time; Minnesota Orchestra; Eiji Oue, conductor; Reference 91