Composers Datebook

If, on today’s date in 1930, you happened to be flipping through the pages of the New York Times, you would have seen several ads for radios, including one that argued that purchasing a radio was a good investment.

This was only one year after the infamous 1929 stock market crash, so New Yorkers might have been a little leery of investing in anything, and disposable income for most Americans was severely limited during the Great Depression that followed.

Still, that same October 5 edition of the Times announced that the New York Philharmonic would commence live nationwide broadcasts of its Sunday afternoon concerts that very day, with visiting German conductor Erich Kleiber leading the orchestra. The rest of the Philharmonic’s 1930-31 season, led by the orchestra’s new music director, Arturo Toscanini, would also be broadcast live on subsequent Sunday afternoons.

For music lovers, that radio purchase started to look like a pretty good investment after all.

And over the following decades, in addition to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, the New York Philharmonic’s radio audiences coast-to-coast were introduced as well to new works of American composers like Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Symphony No. 39; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 60973

Roy Harris (1898-1979): Symphony No. 3; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 60594

On today’s date in 1910, a young Austrian composer had his first major work staged at the Vienna Court Opera. It was quite a prestigious affair, all in all, with the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit and none other than Franz Josef, the Austrian Emperor, in the audience.

All that was enough to go to any young composer’s head — and the composer in question, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, was very young indeed. He was 13 when his ballet-pantomime The Snowman premiered in Vienna. Actually, he’d written the piano version of The Snowman in 1908, when he was 11. Korngold’s teacher, composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, orchestrated the piece for the Vienna Court Opera performance, but it wasn’t very long before little Erich was preparing his own orchestrations, thank you very much.

By his 20s, Korngold was celebrated throughout Europe as composer of operas and concert hall works. Korngold settled in Hollywood in the late 1930s, as his Jewish heritage made a career in Nazi Europe impossible. His film scores for classic Errol Flynn adventure movies — “SVASH-boo-klers” as Korngold called them in his thick Viennese accent — made him famous in America.

Erich Wolfgang von Korngold (1897-1957): The Snowman; Northwest German Philharmonic; Werner Andreas Albert, conductor; CPO 999 037

Erich Wolfgang von Korngold (1897-1957): Violin Concerto; Chantal Juillet, violin; Berlin Radio Symphony; John Mauceri, conductor; London 452 481

One of the last chamber works by American composer Aaron Copland received its first performance on today’s date in 1971 in Philadelphia as a benefit for that city’s Settlement Music School. Copland was present for the premiere of his Duo for flute and piano. The work was commissioned by friends and students of William Kincaid, who had been the principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra for many years.

By 1971, thorny, complex, and atonal music was the fashion in both Europe and America. Copland, for his part, had composed some challenging orchestral works along these lines as well. His Duo, however was unashamedly lyrical.

As Copland put it: “What can you do with a flute in an extended form that would not emphasize its songful nature? Lyricism seems to be built into the flute. Some expressed surprise at the tonal nature of my Duo, considering that my recent works had been in a more severe idiom.”

Copland needn’t have worried. As music critic Michael Steinberg put it, reviewing its first performance in Boston, “Copland’s Duo is a lightweight work of a masterful craftsman. It is going to give pleasure to flutists and their audiences for a long time.”

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Duo; Jennifer Stinton, flute; Malcolm Martineau, piano; Collins 1385

Today we celebrate the birthday of Leroy Bernard Shield, an American composer whose name might not ring a bell, but whose music you might instantly recognize — and with a smile.

Shield’s name rarely appeared on the credits for the classic Our Gang and Laurel & Hardy comedies from the 1930s, but his music was used in most of them.

Shield was born in Waseca, Minnesota, on today’s date in 1893. At five he was already an accomplished pianist and organist, and by 15 a professional arranger, composer and concert pianist.

In 1923, he joined the staff of the Victor Talking Machine Company, supervising their East Coast recording sessions. Then in 1930, he was appointed Victor’s Musical Director in charge of Hollywood, California, Activities, and it was in this capacity that he wrote and oversaw the recording of music for the famous comedies produced by the Hal Roach Studios.

In 1945, Shield moved back to New York and became the orchestral contractor for the NBC radio network and worked closely with the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini and his NBC Symphony. He retired in 1955, moved to Florida, and died in Fort Lauderdale in 1962.

Leroy Shield (1893-1962): Good Old Days and Hide and Go Seek; Beau Hunks Orchestra; Koch 8702

Today’s date in 1922 marks the birthday of Héctor Campos Parsi, one of Puerto Rico’s finest composers.

Campos Parsi originally planned to become a doctor, but after a meeting with the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, ended up studying music at the New England Conservatory in 1949 and 1950 with the likes of Aaron Copland, Olivier Messiaen and Serge Koussevitzky, and between 1950 and 1954 with Paul Hindemith at Yale and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

Returning to Puerto Rico, Campos Parsi pursued a dual career: as a writer, he contributed short stories, essays, poems to Puerto Rican magazines, and wrote music reviews and articles for island newspapers. As a composer, he wrote instrumental and vocal works for chamber, orchestral, and choral ensemble. Two of his best-known works are Divertimento del Sur, written for string orchestra with solo flute and clarinet, and a piano sonata dedicated to Puerto Rican pianist Jesús María Sanromá.

As a musicologist, Campos Parsi wrote entries for music encyclopedias and served as the director of the IberoAmerican Center of Musical Documentation and as composer-in-residence at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, where died in 1998 at 75.

Héctor Campos Parsi (1922-1998): Divertimento del Sur; Members of the Casals Festival Orchestra; Milton Katims, conductor; Smithsonian Folkways COOK-01061

The old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” pretty much sums up the career of the French composer Georges Bizet.

Bizet died at 36 in 1875, the same year his opera Carmen premiered. Now, Carmen soon became acknowledged as one of the great masterworks of French opera, but poor Monsieur Bizet wasn’t around to experience any of that.

Moreover, Carmen was preceded by Bizet’s no less than 30 attempts writing a hit opera. Most never made it to the stage, and the few that did, achieved only modest success.

Set in exotic Ceylon, Les Pêcheurs de Perles, or The Pearl Fishers, the most famous of the “pre-Carmen” Bizet operas premiered on today’s date in 1863. 

It ran for 18 performances, and, although applauded by its first audiences, was roundly panned by the press. Only one music critic saw any merit in Bizet’s opera, and that critic just happened to be the great French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz.

Even so, Pearl Fishers wasn’t revived until long after Bizet’s death, and some 30 years after its premiere. Today, after Carmen of course, it’s his second most popular opera.

Georges Bizet (1838-1875): Prelude from The Pearl Fishers; Mexico City Philharmonic; Enrique Batiz, conductor; ASV 6133

Georges Bizet (1838-1875): Au Fond du Temple Saint, from The Pearl Fishers; Placido Domingo, tenor; Sherrill Milnes, baritone; London Symphony; Anton Guadagno, conductor; BMG 62699

Yes, Juliet, a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a catchy title alone can’t help a piece of music that’s uninspired or just plain boring. An intriguing title, however can sometimes help put audiences into a more receptive frame of mind — or at least pique their curiosity.

From the very beginning of his career in the 1980s, the young American composer Michael Torke had the knack of coming up with evocative titles. His early works had titles like Ecstatic Orange and Bright Blue Music. A piece composed for the 1994 Olympic Games in Atlanta was titled Javelin, and this music, an orchestral suite that premiered in Amsterdam on today’s date in 1997, was titled Overnight Mail.

And each of the three movements of his orchestral suite had an additional title, as Torke explains:

“The titles of the suite’s three movements, Priority, Standard, and Saturday Delivery present the options for expediency when sending things, but musically, they represent different reactions to an abstract compositional problem I set up for myself … for me this was important, because I want to write music that follows all the old rules of voice leading and counterpoint, but sounds fresh.”

Michael Torke (b. 1961): Overnight Mail; Orkest de Volharding; Jurjen Hempel, conductor; Argo 455 684

Today’s date in 1913 marks the birthday of American composer Vivian Fine in Chicago.

At the tender age of five, she became a scholarship piano student at the Chicago Musical College. As she grew up she became enthralled with the great composers and performers she heard at her regular visits to the Chicago Symphony. Fine initially intended to be a concert pianist, but theory studies with American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger nudged her towards composition. 

Fine became an avid follower of the emerging Ultra-Modern school of composers, including Henry Cowell, who proved to be one of her early mentors. Her debut as a composer came in Chicago when she was 16, and at 17 she moved to New York City to she studied composition with Roger Sessions and orchestration with George Szell.

When Roger Sessions saw her sketches for her Concertante for Piano and Orchestra in 1944, he commented, “Now we are colleagues,” and George Szell praised its orchestration. Teaching became an important part of Fine’s own professional life, first at New York University and Juilliard, and ultimately at Bennington College.

Following a traffic accident in Vermont, Fine died at 86 in March of 2000.

Vivian Fine (1913-2000): ‘Concertante’; Reiko Honsho, piano; Japan Philharmonic; Akeo Watanabe, conductor; CRI 692

On today’s date in 1956, the English composer Gerald Finzi died in Oxford at 55. Finzi suffered from Hodgkin’s disease, and shortly before his death had caught chickenpox from some children he had visited, an infection that proved fatal.

Finzi was born into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family. His mother was musical, and an amateur composer. Even with talent, wealth, support from the likes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and several golden opportunities for career advancement, Finzi proved to be a rather diffident soul who seemed to prefer to work in seclusion and relative obscurity.

He collected rare books and scores by 18th century English composers but is most famous for his settings of poems by Thomas Hardy, a contemporary of his parent’s generation.

Himself an agnostic, Finzi produced a small body of sacred choral works, as well as two instrumental pieces that have endeared him to clarinetists: a set of clarinet Bagatelles from 1943 and this Clarinet Concerto from 1949.

British critic Norman Lebrecht offers this assessment of Finzi’s appeal: “a confluence of Elgar without bluffness and Vaughan Williams at his most delicate. His concerto for clarinet and strings is a light and lovely lament for lost times.”

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956): Clarinet Concerto; Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Guildhall String Ensemble; Robert Slater, conductor; BMG 60437

On today’s date in 2000, King’s Chapel in Boston presented a festival of music by the early American composer William Billings, honoring the 200th anniversary of his death in 1800.  As the Chapel’s records of 1786 stated, Billings taught singing “to such persons of both sexes as incline to sing psalm-tunes.” They must have liked him, because in 1790, when Billings was in financial trouble, the Chapel held a benefit concert for him.

When Billings was born in 1746, America was still a British colony. The last record we have of him as a composer dates from 1799, when he wrote music for a memorial concert for George Washington, the first president of the United States, who had died in December of that year.

Today, Billings is regarded as America’s first truly original composer. His contemporaries agreed. The Reverend William Bentley of Salem was moved to write in his diary: “Many who have imitated him have excelled him, but none had better original powers … he was a singular man, short of one leg, with one eye, and with an uncommon negligence of person. Still, he spake and sung and thought as a man above common abilities.”

William Billings (1746-1800): Emmaus and Shiloh; His Majestie's Clerkes; Paul Hillier, conductor; Harmonia Mundi 90.7048