Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1946, at the Yaddo Music Festival in Saratoga Springs, New York, the Walden Quartet gave the first professional performance of the String Quartet No. 2 by American composer Charles Ives.

Ives’ String Quartet No. 1 was his first major work — its manuscript is dated 1896, back when Ives was a 21-year old student at Yale. While Ives’ first quartet was written under the watchful eye and conservatively tonal ear of the Yale music professor Horatio Parker, his second, composed between 1907 and 1913, is more often than not a wildly atonal work that would have given poor Professor Parker a heart attack.

On the first page of its score, Ives provided a kind of program. It reads: “String Quartet for four men who converse, discuss, argue politics, fight, shake hands, shut up, and then walk up the mountainside to view the firmament.”

Judging from some musical quotations in the first movement of Ives’ quartet, it seems the American Civil War was one of the political topics fought over by the four men mentioned, and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is quoted, along with Ives’ perennial favorite, Columbia, Gem of the Ocean.

Charles Ives (1874-1954): String Quartet No. 2; Emerson Quartet; DG 435 864

Today’s date marks the birthday in 1885 of María Joaquina de la Portilla Torres, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. Under her married name of María Grever, she became the first female Mexican composer to achieve international fame. She composed her first song at age four, studied in France with Claude Debussy among others, and at 18, one of her songs sold 3 million copies.

At 22, she married Leo A. Grever, an American oil company executive, moved to New York City, and by the 1930s was composing for Paramount and 20th Century Fox films. Her best-known song is probably “What A Difference A Day Makes” (originally “Cuando Vuelva a tu Lado”), written in 1934. Her songs have been recorded by singers ranging from the Andrews Sisters and Frank Sinatra to Dinah Washington and Aretha Franklin to Plácido Domingo and Juan Diego Flórez.

“I am interested in jazz and modern rhythms,” Grever said, “but above all, in Mexican music … There is such a cultural richness in Mexican music, its Hispanic and indigenous origins ... It is my wish and yearning to present these native rhythms and tunes from a real perspective, but with the necessary flexibility to appeal to a universal audience.”

María Grever (1885-1951): Júrame; Juan Diego Flórez, tenor; Fort Worth Symphony; Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor; Decca 4757576

The Grove Dictionary of Music defines “aleatory” as follows: “music whose composition and/or performance is, to a greater or lesser extent, undetermined by the composer.”

But isn’t music supposed to be organized, planned, determined sound? Isn’t “aleatoric music” a contradiction in terms? Well, not necessarily. Musicians throughout the ages have delighted in spontaneous, improvised sound, or musical games in which the results will be different with each performance.

In the 20th century, American composers like Charles Ives and Henry Cowell often gave performers a great deal of freedom in the realization of their scores, and John Cage developed what he called “chance operations” into an art form all its own.

On September 13, 1986, at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, Leonard Bernstein conducted the Israel Philharmonic in the premiere of his new Concerto for Orchestra, subtitled Jubilee Games, which incorporates some aleatoric elements.

Bernstein explained, “Its first movement is musical athletics, with cheers and all. It is also charades, anagrams, and children’s counting games … therefore aleatoric, ranging from structured improvisation to totally free orchestral invention. It is thus inevitable that the movement will vary considerably from one performance to another, and even one rehearsal to another.”

Leonard Bernstein (1900-1990): Concerto for Orchestra (Jubilee Games); Israel Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; DG 429 231

In 1840, immensely talented German pianist Clara Wieck was eagerly awaiting the eve of her 21st birthday, when she would be free to legally marry the 30-year-old composer and music critic Robert Schumann. The couple had hoped to wed years earlier, but the match was bitterly opposed by Clara’s father.

Clara and Robert kept in touch by letters, which were sometimes intercepted by Papa Wieck.

Early in 1840, Clara wrote, “Dear Robert, I love you so much it hurts my heart. Tell me what you’re writing. I would so love to know, oh please, please. A quartet, an overture — even perhaps a symphony? Might it by any chance be — a wedding present?”

The marriage finally took place on today’s date in 1840. As she had guessed, Robert presented Clara with a musical wedding present: not a quartet, overture, or symphony, but a set of 26 songs, published as his Opus 25.

The opening song, Dedication, is a Rückert poem which contains this refrain: “You are my heart and soul, my bliss and pain, you are the world I live in and the heaven I aspire to, my good angel, my better self.”

Robert Schumann (1810-1856): (transcribed by Franz Liszt) Widmung; Michael Ponti, piano; Marco Polo 223.127

Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Widmung; Sophie Daneman, soprano; Julius Drake, piano; EMI 72828

On today’s date in 1733, French composer François Couperin, known as “François Couperin the Great,” died in Paris. The building where Couperin lived for the last decade of his life still stands in Paris, and like the building, the high esteem afforded this Baroque composer has stood the test of time.

François Couperin is known as “The Great” for two reasons: first, to distinguish him from other talented Couperins, who like the Bach Family, were also well-known musicians, and second, because, well, he was great — a strikingly original composer, admired for his harmonic invention and programmatic wit.

Couperin is most famous for his 226 pieces for solo harpsichord, many with descriptive titles indicating they were portraits or caricatures of real people or recognizable types of people. Others have poetically ambiguous or rather baffling titles like The Mysterious Barricades.

Were these titles private “insider” jokes for himself and his friends? Who knows? Maybe not knowing the secret “program” is even part of the music’s appeal.

Couperin was admired by fellow composers ranging from Bach to Brahms and Ravel, and some of his harmonically adventurous keyboard pieces have been orchestrated by Richard Strauss in the 20th century and Thomas Ades in the 21st.

François Couperin (1688-1733): Les Baricades Misterieuses, from 2nd Livre de Clavecin; Kenneth Gilbert, harpsichord; Harmonia Mundi 190354/56

The average music lover, if asked to name some notable Baroque composers, will probably answer Bach, Handel, Telemann or Vivaldi. But decades before most of those composers flourished, a number of bold pioneers of the early Baroque period were busily developing new musical forms and techniques.

Like most composers born before 1700, details about their lives and careers tend to be skimpy at best. Take the case of the Italian composer Marco Uccellini, who was born somewhere in Italy around 1603, and died on today’s date in 1680.

We know that for Italian noble families in Modena and Parma, Uccellini composed operas and ballets, but none of them survive. His lasting claim to fame rests on a series of instrumental works, mainly sonatas for violin, which were published during his lifetime.

British violinist Andrew Manze, who has recorded some of Uccelini’s sonatas, offered this assessment: “Uccellini’s pioneering spirit led him to seek new colors, explore strange keys, and to boldly go higher than any violinist had gone before. His [high] G was a world record that stood until the Austrian composer Heinrich von Biber squeaked a tone higher in a violin sonata published the year after Uccellini’s death in 1680.”

Marco Uccellini (1603-1680): Aria IX and Corrente XX; Romanesca; Harmonia Mundi 90.7196

In September of 1825, Englishman Sir George Smart came to Vienna, hoping to meet Beethoven. Smart had conducted the British premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, and wanted, as he put it in his journal, “to ascertain from Beethoven himself the exact tempos of the movements of his sinfonia.”

By luck, Smart arrived in time to attend the first reading of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15, which occurred on today’s date that year in a private room at the Viennese Tavern Zum Wilden Mann.

Smart recalled:  “… we took ourselves to the Wilden Mann … as there was an assembly to hear Beethoven’s new manuscript quartet. It is most chromatic and there is a slow movement entitled ‘Praise for the recovery of an invalid.’ Beethoven intended it to allude to himself, I suppose, for he was very ill during the early part of this year. Beethoven directed the performers, and took off his coat, the room being warm and crowded. A staccato passage not being expressed to the satisfaction of his eye, for alas, he could not hear, he seized the violin and played the passage himself — a quarter of a tone too flat.”

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): String Quartet No. 15, Emerson Quartet; DG 447 075

The year 2000 marked both the arrival of a new millennium and the 250th anniversary of the death of great German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

The International Bach Academy in Stuttgart decided to mark the occasion by commissioning four composers to write four new passion settings, one each after the Gospel accounts of the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. German composer Wolfgang Rihm was chosen for the St. Luke Passion; Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina for St. John’s; Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov for St. Mark’s; and Chinese composer Tan Dun for the Passion according to St. Matthew.

And on today’s date in 2000, Helmuth Rilling conducted the world premiere of Dun’s Water Passion after St. Matthew. Dun said he was struck by the references to water in St. Matthew’s gospel, so his setting includes seventeen large, illuminated bowls of water, positioned on stage in the form of a cross. These divide the chorus, with three percussionists and a group of additional soloists stationed at the four points of this cross.

In Water Passion, natural sounds of water mix with a wide range of vocal techniques, including Tuvan throat singing and the stylized virtuosity of Peking Opera.

Tan Dun (b. 1957): Water Passion; Stephen Bryant, bass; Mark O’Connor, violin; ensemble; Tan Dun, conductor; Sony 89927

In Pittsburgh on today’s date in 1996, the Latin-American Quartet of Mexico gave the premiere of the String Quartet No. 3 by American composer David Stock. Stock was probably best known for his orchestral music and served as composer-in-residence with both the Pittsburgh and Seattle Symphonies, writing large-scale works for those ensembles, but he wrote 13 string quartets as well.

The first was a student work that premiered in Paris. The second is subtitled Speaking Extravagantly after a quote by Charles Ives: “Perhaps music is the art of speaking extravagantly.” Stock’s String Quartet No. 3 is a more personal work: its scherzo movement concludes with a set of variations on “Happy Birthday” — a tribute to the his wife on the occasion of her turning 50.

In addition to composing and teaching, Stock was an advocate for other composers’ works. For 23 years, Stock served as director of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and as host of a weekly radio series on WQED in that city. And speaking of radio, in 2001 Stock conducted the Charlottesville Symphony in the premiere of his piece Drive Time, which Stock described as “an updated version of the music usually programmed on Public Radio during the morning and evening drive time slots.“

David Stock (1939-2015): String Quartet No. 3; Cuarteto Latinoamericano; Innova 563

Today we note the birthday anniversary of American composer and teacher Wayne Barlow, who was born in Elyria, Ohio on today’s date in 1912, and died in Rochester, New York, in 1996.

As a composer, Barlow is mostly remembered for a single work: a rhapsody for oboe and strings entitled The Winter’s Past, first performed at the Eastman School of Music in 1938 by the Rochester Civic Orchestra under the direction of another noted American composer, Howard Hanson, with Eastman faculty oboist Robert Sprenkle as the soloist.

Barlow received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from Eastman and taught there for over 40 years, eventually becoming chairman of the composition department, director of the school’s electronic music studio, and dean of graduate studies. He also served as organist and choirmaster at two churches in Rochester and composed a set of hymn voluntaries for organ, covering the church year.

Barlow once said, “While it’s impossible to know everything involved in the art of music, it’s just as impossible to be a totally successful teacher, or composer, or musicologist, or theorist, or performer or conductor without knowing something about how all these pieces of the art fit together.”

Wayne Barlow (1912-1996): The Winter’s Past; Humbert Lucarelli, oboe; Brooklyn Philharmonic; Michael Barrett, conductor; Koch 7187