Composers Datebook

Expatriate American composer Conlon Nancarrow came to the conclusion that the rhythmically complex, intricate contrapuntal music he wanted to write would be too difficult for mere mortals to tackle, so he composed for a mechanical instrument: the player piano.

Despite its complexity, Nancarrow’s music drew some of its inspiration from the human, all-too-human jazz stylings of Art Tatum and Earl Hines, and the complex rhythmic patterns of music from India.

Nancarrow was born in 1912 in Texarkana, Arkansas. At 18, he heard Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which sparked his life-long interest in rhythmic complexity. Soon after, Nancarrow began private studies with American composers Roger Sessions and Walter Piston. He moved to Mexico City in 1940, where he lived and worked until his death.

Nancarrow composed in almost total isolation until the late 1970s, when some of his piano roll compositions appeared on record. These created quite an impact, and the MacArthur Foundation awarded him its Genius Award. Late fame even brought a series of commissions from performers willing to take on the challenge of performing his difficult music. One of these pieces, his String Quartet No. 3, was premiered on today’s date in 1987 by the Arditti Quartet.

Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997): String Quartet No. 3; Arditti Quartet; Grammavision 79440

Imagine the cocktail party bragging rights you’d have if you had attended the first night of Girl Crazy, a musical that opened in New York on today’s date in 1930. That show marked the Broadway debut of Ethel Merman, and co-starred Ginger Rogers.

But that’s just for starters.

The pit orchestra that night included Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey and Jack Teagarden — gentlemen who would all go on to become famous band leaders in their own right.

Speaking of band leaders, for the opening night of Girl Crazy, the show’s composer, George Gershwin himself, was there conducting that all-star ensemble.

For his part, Gershwin recalled, “With the exception of some dead head friends of mine, especially the critics, I think the notices, especially of the music, were the best I have ever received.”

Gershwin was right; Girl Crazy included two songs that quickly became classics: “I Got Rhythm” and “Embraceable You.” The show ran for 272 performances — an impressive statistic in the first year of the Great Depression, and Hollywood produced not one but two cinematic versions of the show in 1932 and 1943.

George Gershwin (1898-1937): Girl Crazy; Studio Cast Recording; Sony 60704

On today’s date in 1944, 29-year-old American composer David Diamond had his Symphony No. 2 premiered by the Boston Symphony under the famous Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky.

Diamond said he had written this music for charismatic Greek maestro Dimitri Mitropoulos, then the music director of the Minneapolis Symphony.

“Mitropoulos had given a fine performance of my Symphony No. 1,” Diamond said. “When I showed him the score of the Symphony No. 2 he said, ‘you must have the parts extracted at once!’ As these were readied, I asked him whether he was planning to perform the work. He then told me he thought he would not stay on in Minneapolis, but said, ‘Why don’t you send it to Koussevitzky?’ I did so, and Koussevitzky [invited me to a] trial reading at Symphony Hall. When it was over, the orchestra applauded like crazy. Koussevitzky turned to me and said, ‘I will play!’”

Successful as Diamond was back in 1944, for many decades thereafter his neo-Romantic symphonic scores were neglected until Gerard Schwartz’s CD recordings of some of them with the Seattle Symphony sparked a revival. By then, Diamond was in his 70s, and commented, “The romantic spirit in music is important because it is timeless.”

David Diamond (1915-2005): Symphony No. 2; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3093

On today’s date in 1945, Serge Koussevitzky conducted the Boston Symphony in the premiere performance of the Symphony No. 3 by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu.

Martinu had finished the first two movements of his symphony as World War II was rushing to a close and later claimed he had Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, the Eroica, very much on his mind, convinced that there was somehow an ethical force at work in the creation of a symphony, and, just as in Beethoven’s Eroica, it was possible to express moral and ethical ideals in music.

As an exile from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and France, Martinu had come to the United States in 1941, and his mood is understandable in the anxious yet hopeful spring and summer of 1945.

After liberation of Czechoslovakia, he returned to his homeland and was offered a teaching post in Prague. Martinu, unhappy with Czechoslovakia’s new Communist rulers, declined the offer, and returned to America, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1952. After his death in 1957, his remains were eventually returned to his family mausoleum in Czechoslovakia, and in 1990, the centenary of his birth was celebrated in that country as a major cultural event.

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959): Symphony No. 3; National Orchestra of Ukraine; Arthur Fagen, conductor; Naxos 8.553350

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then composers must really have a thing about birds. For centuries, composers have imitated bird song. Vivaldi’s Goldfinch concerto for flute is one of the best-known examples from the 18th century, and there are a flock of other examples.

On today’s date in 1953, at the Donaueschingen Music Festival in Germany, one of the most famous 20th century examples of “music for the birds” had its premiere performance. Le Réveil des Oiseaux, or The Awakening of the Birds, was a piece by French composer Olivier Messiaen for piano and orchestra.

The musical themes for this work were all based on Messiaen’s precise notation of the songs of 38 different French birds. The piece’s structure progresses from midnight to midday, with the birds’ actual “awakening” occurring precisely at 4 a.m. at the first light of a spring day.

Messiaen’s interest in bird songs and nature was as deep as his religious faith. As he put it, “I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none."

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): Flute Concerto (Goldfinch); Patrick Gallois, flute; Orpheus Orchestra; DG 437 839

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): Le Reveil des Oiseaux; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano; Cleveland Orchestra; Pierre Boulez, conductor; DG 453 478

On today’s date in 1943, Cuban Independence Day was celebrated with a big concert at Carnegie Hall. The first half of the concert, which was relayed to Cuba and South American by NBC radio, was devoted solely to works by Ernesto Lecuona, the best-known and most successful Cuban composer of the day.

Lecuona was born in Havana in 1895, when Cuba was still part of the Kingdom of Spain. He died in 1963, as an expat of choice after Fidel Castro came to power. In the 1920s, after successful piano recitals in Paris, Lecuona’s popularity brought him to concert halls in not only Europe, but North and South America as well. His over 600 compositions include songs, zarzuelas for the stage, contributions to musical films, and pieces for solo piano and symphony orchestra.

His most famous concert work, Rapsodia Negra, or Black Rhapsody, for piano and orchestra, received its premiere at the 1943 Carnegie Hall concert. As the New York Times review noted, “[Lecuona] may be termed the Gershwin of Cuba, … like Gershwin [he] is an outstanding performer of his own music at the piano and has composed music of the more serious type, based on the popular idiom.”

Ernesto Lecuona (1895-1963): Rapsodia Negra; Thomas Tirino, piano; Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra; Michael Bartos, conductor; BIS CD-754

On today’s date in 1999, the Lyric Opera of Chicago premiered a new opera by American composer William Bolcom, based on A View from the Bridge, a powerful play by Arthur Miller.

Now, not all stage plays “translate” well into opera, as Bolcom was well aware.

“In theater, you have the text and then below it you have the subtext,” Bolcom said. “In opera it is pretty much the opposite, the subtext is what you are really dealing with first and foremost: big, raw emotions, which are supported by the text.”

In fact, Miller’s play, although set in Brooklyn in the 1950s, has often been likened to a Greek tragedy, a theatrical form in which the chorus plays an important role.

Bolcom saw that as a real opportunity: “If you are going to do an opera from a play, it better have a dimension that the play doesn’t. In a play, you can’t have your chorus speak because it is financially prohibitive: as soon as the chorus opens up its mouth the price goes up because of actors’ equity. So, naturally one of the great resources of opera houses is an opera chorus, a resource you can use much more easily.”

William Bolcom (b. 1938): A View from the Bridge; Lyric Opera of Chicago; Dennis Russell Davies, conductor; New World 80558

The Russian Revolution of 1917 wiped out many family fortunes, and many penniless Russian émigrés who fled the Bolsheviks had to start from scratch in exile.

Natalie Koussevitzky, however, was not one of them. Her family fortune was fairly diversified, which meant that even the loss of her large Russian holdings left her with considerable wealth elsewhere. And since she was married to the Russian émigré music publisher, conductor and new music impresario Serge Koussevitzky, that meant a number of famous 20th century composers benefitted as well. It’s not an exaggeration to say that, culturally speaking, without her fortune, the history of 20th century music would have been noticeably poorer.

When Natalie died, Serge Koussevitzky established a Music Foundation in her honor. One of the Foundation’s memorial commissions was premiered on today’s date in 1943 by the Boston Symphony, led by Serge Koussevitzky. This was a three-part symphonic Ode written by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, and dedicated to Natalie’s memory.

Curiously, the second movement of Stravinsky’s Ode was actually a bit of recycled film music originally intended for the Orson Welles version of the English novel Jane Eyre. In the final cut, Welles opted for a Bernard Herrmann score instead.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Ode; London Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; BMG 68865

From 1976 to 1984, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt kept revising and adjusting his chamber piece If Bach had Raised Bees.

On today’s date in 1983 one version of this piece — for harpsichord, electric bass guitar, tape and small chamber ensemble — received its premiere performance at a new music festival in Graz, Austria.

Pärt’s work opens like a minimalist piece, with repeated notes perhaps imitating the buzzing of the bees mentioned in the title. What he meant by If Bach had Raised Bees is open to various interpretations, but technically speaking, the piece is a slow transformation of an instrumental humming in the key of B-flat into a Bach-like cadence in the key of B-minor. Was the deeply religious-minded Estonian composer suggesting that bees somehow symbolized a harmonious community of God’s creatures? Or was the title, in English at least, a pun on the shifting key of “BEE-flat” to “BEE-minor?”

In any case, this piece was one of several Bach-inspired works, “Bach collages,” as Pärt called them, each he said “an attempt to replant a flower in alien surroundings … if they grow together into one, then the transplantation was the right move.”

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935): If Bach had Raised Bees; Philharmonia Orchestra; Neeme Järvi, conductor; Chandos 9134

On today’s date in 1991, the American Composers Orchestra gave a concert at Carnegie Hall, celebrating the 80th birthday of Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness. Hovhaness was on hand, and conducted the world premiere performance of his Symphony No. 65.

By the time of this death in 2000, Hovhaness had composed 67 symphonies, and ranks as one of the most prolific composers of symphonies in the 20th century.

“I write too much, far too much,” he once wrote to a friend. “This is my insanity.” Even so, performers and audiences seemed to respond to the emotional forthrightness of his music.

Hovhaness rejected the mid-20th century trends towards complexity and atonality, and instead turned to archaic and Eastern musical models. Many of his works were inspired by Armenian themes, real or imagined.

In reviewing the premiere of his Symphony No. 65, the New York Times critic wrote, “Mr. Hovhaness seems to have used liturgical roots to create his own imaginary Armenia, a music that may exist only in [his] imagination.”

Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000): Symphony No. 2 (Mysterious Mountain); Chicago Symphony; Fritz Reiner, conductor; RCA 61957