Composers Datebook

The life of British composer James Bernard reads like a PBS mini-series: as a schoolboy, he meets Benjamin Britten, who encourages his interest in music; during WWII he joins the R.A.F., works with the team breaking the German Enigma code, and takes occasional breaks from this top-secret work to turn pages for Britten at London recitals during the Blitz; after postwar study at the Royal College of Music, he starts writing music for radio and stage plays.

Then by chance another composer booked to score a British science-fiction movie falls ill, and Bernard is asked to step in. The film The Quatermass Xperiment, was released on today’s date in 1955, proved a hit, and was even shown in the U.S., retitled The Creeping Unknown.

The Creeping Unknown would become James Bernard’s bread and butter, since the Hammer Film studio, who made The Quatermass Xperiment, kept Bernard on to score their horror films starring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein. Unlike most film composers, Bernard orchestrated his own work, and helped establish the “Hammer sound,” lushly romantic or frantically hair-raising as needed. After his death in 2001, a biography was titled James Bernard – Composer to Count Dracula.

James Bernard (1925-2001): Opening Credits and Dracula’s Blood, from Taste the Blood of Dracula; Studio orchestra; Philip Martell, conductor; GDI GRICD-010

Many operatic works have been described as “revolutionary,” but on today’s date in 1830, a performance of an opera helped to spark a real, take-to-the-streets kind of revolution.

The opera in question was by the French composer Daniel Auber, and entitled La Muette di Portici, or The Mute Girl of Portici. The opera’s story concerns a 17th century uprising by some patriots in Naples against their Spanish rulers ends with an erupting Italian volcano.

On today’s date in 1830 it was being staged at the Theatre La Monnaie in Brussels, a country then under the control of the Dutch. The opera’s story of evil occupiers and patriotic rebels must have touched a raw nerve in many in the Belgian audience.

Upon hearing the line in the opera, “a slave knows no danger, as death is better than living in chains,” some in the audience began a demonstration against the hated Dutch authorities. The demonstration grew more and more heated, and then, just like the volcano in Auber’s opera, erupted out of the theater and into the streets. Symbols of Dutch authority were attacked, a new provisional government was formed, and by November that same year Belgium had declared its independence.

Daniel Auber (1782-1871): La Muette de Portici; soloists; Monte Carlo Philharmonic; Thomas Fulton, conductor; EMI 49248

Looking back on a famous person’s life and career, one often notes quirky patterns of coincidences. Take American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, for example.

On today’s date in 1943, Bernstein was one day short of his 25th birthday, and, at the Public Library in Lenox, Massachusetts, accompanied the singer Jennie Tourel in the premiere of a new song cycle for which Bernstein had composed both the words and the music. The song cycle, I Hate Music!, offered — from a child’s perspective — some devastatingly direct observations on art and life.

The following day, the New York Philharmonic’s music director, Artur Rodzinski, invited Bernstein to become Assistant Conductor of the orchestra.

Now, fast forward to November 13 that same year: Jennie Tourel and Bernstein were at Town Hall, giving the New York premiere of I Hate Music!. The very next day, Bernstein was asked to step in at short notice for the indisposed Bruno Walter, making his New York Philharmonic debut conducting the orchestra during their live national Sunday afternoon radio broadcast from Carnegie Hall.

Bernstein’s surprise — and successful — conducting debut made the front page of the New York Times, and a legendary career was launched.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): I Hate Music!; Jennie Tourel, mezzo-soprano; Leonard Bernstein, piano; Sony 60697

Miklos Rosza (1907-1995): Theme, Variations and Finale; The New Zealand Symphony; James Sedares, conductor; Koch 7191

The first railway line in Russia opened in 1837 and ran from St. Petersburg to Pavlovsk. In the summers, tourists from St. Petersburg would travel to Pavlovsk to visit the site of an 18th century royal palace, to dine at the elegant Vauxhall restaurant, or take in an orchestral concert. Johann Strauss’ orchestra performed at Pavlovsk in the 1850s, and it remained a popular summertime concert venue for decades.

On today’s date in 1913, Sergei Prokofiev traveled to Pavlovsk to appear as the soloist in the first performance of his Piano Concerto No. 2 — and the music of the young firebrand composer-performer proved to be far from the standard light classical fare normally offered in Pavlovsk.

One reviewer wrote, “Prokofiev’s music left listeners frozen with fright, their hair standing on end.”

Another critic wrote, “One couple stood up and ran for the exit, commenting, ‘Such music is enough to drive you crazy! Is he making fun of us? We came here to enjoy ourselves.’”

Even so, one calmer review concluded, “This means nothing. Ten years from now the public will atone for the catcalls by applauding unanimously a new composer with a European reputation.”

Sergei Prokofiev (1892-1953): Piano Concerto No. 2; Alexander Toradze, piano; Kirov Orchestra; Valery Gergiev, conductor; Philips 462 048

On today’s date in 1980, at a Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Colin Davis led the London Symphony in the premiere of a Triple Concerto for violin, viola and cello with orchestra, a new work by British composer Michael Tippett.

The central slow movement of the new Triple Concerto, marked “very slow — calmer still,” proved to be one of Tippett’s most lyrical and colorful moments, and with it, Tippett joined a long line of Western composers, including Claude Debussy, Benjamin Britten, and Lou Harrison, who have been inspired by Asian music: specifically the traditional bronze gong orchestras of the islands of Indonesia, known as “gamelan.”

Shortly before he composed his Triple Concerto, Tippet had visited Java and Bali, and had experienced first-hand performances of gamelan music in the palaces, temples and gardens of Indonesia.

In describing the role of the artist as he saw it, Tippett suggested “the creation of images of vigor for a decadent period, images of calm for one too violent, images of reconciliation for a world torn by divisions, and in an age of mediocrity and shattered dreams, images of abounding, generous, exuberant beauty.”

Michael Tippett (1905-1998): Triple Concerto; Kovacic-Caussé-Baillie Trio; BBC Philharmonic; Michael Tippett, conductor; Nimbus 5301

On today’s date in 1893, French composer Lili Boulanger was born in Paris.

In 1913, when she was 20, Boulanger became the first woman to win the prestigious Prix de Rome for her cantata Faust and Helen, an achievement which was headline news in those days. Her father, Ernst, had he lived to see it, would have been especially proud, since he too, was a composer and had won the Prix de Rome in 1835.

The Boulangers were a remarkably talented family, it seems, and it’s one of music history’s saddest “what-might-have-beens” to consider what Lili might have accomplished if she had lived as long as her gifted older sister, Nadia, who died at 92 after a long career as the world’s most famous composition teacher. Nadia could count among her pupils several generations of famous American composers, ranging from Aaron Copland to Philip Glass.

Boulanger suffered from Crohn’s disease, and died at just 24, in 1918. Despite her frail health and tragically short life, she left behind a small body of vocal and instrumental works that are still performed. Her Psalm settings in particular are admired for their solemnity and deep spirit.

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918): D’un Matin de Printemps; Olivier Charlier, violin; Emile Naoumoff, piano; Marco Polo 8.223636

On today’s date in 2020, the University of Maryland launched PriceFest — an annual festival devoted to American composer Florence Price.

The plan was to stage performances of works in the context of lectures and panels devoted to this long-neglected African-American composer. The COVID-19 outbreak forced the first PriceFest to be an online event only, but that worked so well the 2021 PriceFest arranged for more livestreamed and interactive Zoom events.

When Florence Price died at 66 in 1953, she left behind instrumental, orchestra and vocal works that languished unperformed for decades until a revival of interest in music by women composers and composers of color led to a serious second look at her compositions and a rediscovery of their quality and importance.

In 2009, a couple renovating an abandoned and dilapidated house in St. Anne, Illinois once owned by Price found a substantial collection of previously unknown Price scores.  

As Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker, commented, “not only did [Florence] Price fail to enter the canon; a large quantity of her music came perilously close to obliteration. That run-down house in St. Anne is a potent symbol of how a country can forget its cultural history.”

Florence Price (1887-1953): Mississippi Suite; Women’s Philharmonic; Apo Hsu, conductor; Koch 75182

Most of us — if we’re lucky — chug along more or less contentedly in an uneventful day-by-day routine, a little like the opening of this chamber work by American composer John Howell Morrison.

But sometimes, in some lives, something happens that suddenly disrupts the uneventful, comfortable routine, something that knocks all routine and normality straight out of the ballpark: perhaps it’s the loss of a job, bad medical news, the death of a friend or spouse, or a worldwide pandemic, perhaps, and suddenly routine physical or mental health is so shaken that the soundtrack of life shifts to something uncomfortably similar to that of a bad horror film.

But most of us — if we’re lucky — somehow survive, and perhaps even grow a bit stronger from the experience.

As the old saying goes: Hard Weather Makes Good Wood — and that’s the title Morrison gave this piece, scored for string quartet and electronic tape, recorded on today’s date in 2002 as the title track on a collection of his chamber works.

And, yes, Morrison confesses that Hard Weather Makes Good Wood, was, in fact, composed during a period of intense personal struggle in his own life.

John Howell Morrison (b. 1956): Hard Weather Makes Good Wood; Intergalactic Contemporary Ensemble; Innova 584

The 1985 Salzburg Festival boasted a quite unusual premiere: a 17th century Venetian opera by Italian Baroque composer Claudio Monteverdi entitled Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, or The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland, as arranged and orchestrated by the contemporary German composer Hans Werner Henze.

The surviving music for Monteverdi’s opera does not exist in what we now call “full score.” Monteverdi wrote down a bare 5-part accompaniment to the vocal lines of his opera, without indicating what specific instruments he meant to play those notes. This means for any modern performance someone needs to make those decisions.

For their 1985 summer season, the Salzburg Festival commissioned Henze to prepare a new orchestration of Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses 245 years after its first performance in Venice back in 1640.

The music critics, in the main, were complimentary after Henze’s version premiered in Salzburg, noting his scoring somehow managed to sound both ancient and modern at the same time.

Even though we’ll never know exactly how the opera sounded when Monteverdi heard it back in 1640, thanks to modern technology, that 1985 Salzburg performance can be sampled in both audio and video recordings.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) arr. Hans Werner Henze: Ulysses’ Homecoming; soloists; Vienna Radio Symphony; Jeffrey Tate, conductor; Orfeo 528 003

When asked to name some important musical works associated with World War II, music lovers are apt to think of the sonatas and symphonies Prokofiev and Shostakovich wrote during those years. But three symphonies by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger form another compelling war triptych.

Honegger spent the war years in occupied France, and his Symphony No. 2, which premiered in 1942, might be considered a symphony of the grim wartime resistance. It is scored for strings alone, but at the very end includes an optional trumpet solo, a dramatic gesture that seems an emotional call to action.

Honegger’s Symphony No. 3, which premiered on August 17, 1946, is titled A Liturgical Symphony, with the titles of each of its movements taken from the Latin Mass for the Dead. Considering the great loss of life on all sides of the conflict just ended, this work, too, packs an emotional wallop.

And to round out the triptych, Honegger’s Symphony No. 4, from 1947, is subtitled The Delights of Basel. This music captures the elusive and bittersweet mood of a Europe tentatively groping its way back to normal life, closing with a decidedly wistful evocation of carnival time in the Swiss city of Basel.

Arthur Honegger (1892-1955): Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 Oslo Philharmonic; Mariss Jansons, conductor; EMI 55122

Arthur Honegger (1892-1955): Symphony No. 4 (Deliciae Basiliensis) Lausanne Chamber Orchestra; Jesus Lopez-Cobos, conductor; Virgin 91486