Composers Datebook

It might seem odd that during his long career, Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály wrote only nine works for orchestra. When someone asked him about this, he replied, “I was busy with more important work: I had to educate a public.”

Kodály and his countryman Béla Bartók were pioneers in the collection and study of Hungarian folk music, and, on top of that, his lifelong concern was to instill this rich heritage into the Hungarian people through an extensive and innovative program of musical education.

So successful was Kodály that even outside Hungary, the so-called “Kodály method” has been adapted for music education worldwide. Given his tireless educational efforts, it’s surprising he had any time or energy left for composing at all. For example, his started writing a symphony in the 1930s at the request of Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini.

The Symphony finally received its premiere decades later at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland on today’s date in 1961, and by that time Toscanini had been dead for several years. Even so, Kodály did not forget the original request for the work, and dedicated his only Symphony to the memory of the great conductor.

In fact, Toscanini was also responsible for the creation of one of Kodály’s most popular orchestral works: it was at Toscanini’s prompting that Kodály orchestrated his Marosszék Dances, a set of folk tunes he had originally arranged for solo piano.

Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967): Symphony and Dances of Marosszék; BBC Philharmonic; Yan Pascal Tortelier, conductor; Chandos 9811

In the 1930s, American composer Ferde Grofé was on a roll. During the previous decade, as staff arranger for the Paul Whiteman orchestra, Grofé had orchestrated all the music that popular ensemble had premiered, including George Gershwin’s 1924 jazz classic Rhapsody in Blue. But by the late 1920s, Grofé was composing his own original scores, and in 1931 finished his Grand Canyon Suite.

Around that time, Grofé left the Whiteman band, and signed on as staff conductor of the NBC Radio Network, and soon became a familiar figure on the American music scene from coast to coast.

On today’s date in 1935, a new ballet score by Grofé premiered at the Hollywood Bowl. It took as its story line a familiar Hollywood theme: the exploited “double” who stands in for a starlet during the making of a film. The ballet music was later recast as Hollywood Suite, a concert work.

In the 1960s, looking back on his long career in music, Grofé said, “Many of my compositions, I believe, were born of sight, sound, and sensations common to all of us. I think I have spoken of America in this music simply because America spoke to me.”

Ferde Grofé (1892-1972): Hollywood Suite; Bournemouth Symphony; William Stromberg, conductor; Naxos 8.559017

Young composers who came of age in the 1960s found themselves faced with a question: should they adopt the intellectually fashionable post-serial, atonal style of composition developed by Arnold Schoenberg’s followers, or return to a more accessible and tonal musical language, neo-Romantic, neo-Classical, or Minimalist in nature?

For American composer William Bolcom, who turned 20 in 1958, the first option was not appealing. “I had the credentials and the chops to write like that if I wanted to,” he said, “but I said ‘to hell with it.’”

According to Bolcom’s teacher and mentor, French composer Darius Milhaud, Bolcom was “as gifted as a monkey.” Bolcom was a fabulous pianist with a passion for American ragtime and popular song, and distinctly American elements and accents crop up in his compositions. Bolcom says he prefers to live, as he puts it, “in the cracks” between opera and musical theater, tonality and atonality, highbrow and lowbrow.

Bolcom’s chamber work, Five Fold Five, for example, premiered on today’s date in 1987 at Saratoga Springs, New York, by pianist Dennis Russell Davies and the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet. The piece starts off flirting with atonal elements, but ends with something that sounds a lot like boogie-woogie.

William Bolcom (b. 1938): Five Fold Five; Detroit Chamber Winds; William Bolcom, piano; Koch 7395

The year 1960 marked the centenary of the birth of composer Gustav Mahler, and British musicologist Deryck Cooke hit upon the idea of preparing a performing edition of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10, a work left unfinished at the time of Mahler’s death in 1911. This was a daunting task for two reasons.

First, Mahler’s widow, Alma, had resisted efforts for a close examination of his manuscript for his 10th Symphony, as it was peppered with emotionally charged comments to her in Mahler’s hand, painful reminders that her husband had just discovered she was having an affair with another man.

Secondly, although Mahler had sketched out his symphony in full, most of it was not orchestrated. Now, he was a master orchestrator, and many argued that only a similarly gifted composer could flesh out his sketches. Schoenberg and Shostakovich were both asked to do so, but both declined.

Deryck Cooke, however, persisted, and completed his version of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 in time for some excerpts to be broadcast in 1960. Even Alma was impressed, and eventually relented, and so, on today’s date in 1964, the London Symphony gave the first complete concert performance of Cooke’s arrangement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) arr. Cooke: Symphony No. 10; Berlin Philharmonic; Sir Simon Rattle, conductor; EMI 56972

On today’s date in 1845, the sleepy little German town of Bonn played host to 5000 visitors. These ranged from curious natives and opportunistic pickpockets to famous composers, performers, and music lovers from many countries, including British monarch Queen Victoria and King Wilhelm the IV of Prussia.

The occasion? The unveiling of a bronze statue of great German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, who had been born in Bonn 75 years earlier. A festival of Beethoven’s music was in progress, and German composer Ludwig Spohr conducted Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at the Bonn Cathedral before the unveiling of the statue.

For almost a decade, Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt had been tirelessly fundraising for this event and was the largest contributor the Beethoven statue fund.

Alas, the local planning committee was totally unprepared for the huge crowd that descended on Bonn, and woefully incompetent in managing just about every aspect of the occasion. How incompetent? Well, consider this: as their majesties Queen Victoria and King Wilhelm the IV of Prussia looked on, with great fanfare the shroud fell from Beethoven’s statue — only to reveal the statue’s back facing the vast assembled crowd.

Oops.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Congratulations Minuet; Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor; DG 453 713

In 1906, Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff had his heart set on turning popular Belgian poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Monna Vanna into an opera.

Unfortunately, Rachmaninoff began work on Monna Vanna before he had secured the rights to do so. Rachmaninoff had already finished parts of a piano score for his opera when in 1907 he learned that Maeterlinck had granted the rights to another composer. Rachmaninoff was crushed with disappointment and stopped work on his opera, but years later when Rachmaninoff sat down at the piano to play for friends, he would sometimes include melodies from his abandoned project.

One of those who heard him play those melodies was the much younger Russian conductor Igor Buketoff, who said he was too embarrassed at the time to ask the composer to identify the unfamiliar music. Decades later, Buketoff was startled to recognize those same tunes as he looked over Rachmaninoff’s unfinished piano score for Monna Vanna, which had ended up at the Library of Congress.

Buketoff orchestrated the surviving portions of Rachmaninoff’s opera for their premiere performances, which occurred on today’s date in 1984, at a summertime music festival in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) arr. Igor Buketoff: Monna Vanna; soloists; Iceland Symphony; Igor Buketoff, conductor; Chandos 8987

August may seem an unlikely time for Advent music, liturgically speaking, but it was on today’s date in 1992 that a remarkable work entitled Veni, Veni, Emmanuel received its premiere at Royal Albert Hall in London. This was during the 1992 Proms at a concert by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra showcasing the talents of virtuoso Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

The music with the Advent title was a concerto for percussion and orchestra by the Scottish composer James MacMillan, who explained that the work was started on the first Sunday of Advent in 1991, and completed on Easter Sunday the following year, and based on the ancient Advent Latin plainsong Veni, Veni, Emmanuel or, in its more familiar English translation: O come, O Come Emmanuel.

Many of the orchestral works of James Macmillan are based on religious or liturgical themes, a reflection of the Scottish composer’s own deep Catholic faith, and his percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel was no exception.

“There’s very strong and powerful analogies between religion and music, and between music and spirituality,” MacMillan said. “It’s because of those connections that I’m determined to explore what the connections might be and for that reason I’m entirely at ease with giving space in my music for these considerations.”

Apparently percussions, orchestras, and audiences are willing to spend some time with MacMillan’s musical considerations. Veni, Veni Emmanuel has been performed over 300 times since its 1992 premiere.

James MacMillan (b. 1959): Veni, Veni, Emmanuel; Evelyn Glennie, percussion; Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Jukka-Pekka Saraste, conductor; BMG/Catalyst 61916

Today’s we tackle a vexing P.C. issue — not “political correctness,” mind you, but “pronunciation correctness,” a passionate matter for classical radio announcers, of course. 

Now there was a French composer who lived from 1912 to 1997 whose first name was Jean and whose last name was spelled “F-R-A-N- C cedilla-A-I-X.”

Most people pronounce his name “Jean Frahn-SAY,” which has come to be the accepted pronunciation. The problem is that the composer’s family and close friends pronounced it “Frahn-SEX.”

Years ago, an announcer at a station in New York requested the definitive answer from the composer himself, and was told, yes, technically it was “Frahn-SEX,” but that he was used to being called “Frahn-SAY” and had given up correcting people, joking that perhaps “Frahn-SAY” sounded more French, or maybe people just didn’t want to say “sex” out loud.

This witty composer grew up in a musical family in Les Mans and claimed that by the age of twelve, knew all the piano music from Scarlatti to Ravel.

Both Jean Frahn-SEX and Jean Frahn-SAY were very prolific composers of works large and small, including a delightful Symphony in G Major, which premiered on today’s date in 1953 at the summer music festival in La Jolla, California.

Jean Francaix (1912-1997): Symphony in G Major; Ulster Orchestra; Thierry Fischer, conductor; Hyperion CDA-67323

On today’s date in 1976, the American composer David Del Tredici conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of Illustrated Alice, Two Scenes from Wonderland. These two scenes would eventually form bookend movements of a much longer Alice Symphony, which premiered 15 years later in August of 1991 at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts.

Back in the late 1960s, Del Tredici had become fascinated with the works of Lewis Carroll, whose Alice in Wonderland books have captivated both children and adults for generations.  Del Tredici then devoted the rest of his career to setting Carroll’s creation to music in a series of increasingly tonal works — something that must have come as a surprise to those familiar with his earlier atonal music.

“I couldn’t imagine setting a Carroll text to dissonant music,” explained Del Tredici. “Dissonant music can’t possibly project the mood that surrounds Carroll’s writings. In order to create that mood I had to rethink everything I had done up to that time. I had to think about tonality again, not because I was trying to bring back the music of an older period, but because my musical imagination had seized upon that language.”

David Del Tredici (b. 1937): Acrostic Song; Carol Wincenc, flute; David Del Tredici, piano; Nonesuch 79114

Summer music camps offer young talent a chance to rub shoulders with seasoned professional musicians and to perform both old and new musical works. On today’s date in 1977, American composer, conductor and educator Howard Hanson led the premiere of his Symphony No. 7 at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. Hanson subtitled his Seventh A Sea Symphony, and it includes a choral setting of passages from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

For 40 years, Hanson headed the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. And years later, Eastman professor Augusta Read Thomas follows in Hanson’s footsteps as composer-in-residence at various summer music camps. On today’s date in 2001, at the annual Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, her piece Murmurs in the Mist of Memory received its world premiere.

Speaking of music in general, Thomas says, “Music of all kinds constantly amazes, surprises, propels and seduces me into a wonderful and powerful journey. I am happiest when listening to music and in the process of composing music. I care deeply that music is not anonymous and generic or easily assimilated and just as easily dismissed.”

Howard Hanson (1896-1981): Symphony No. 7 (A Sea Symphony); Seattle Symphony and Chorale; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3130

Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964): Wind Dances; Louisville Orchestra; Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor; Albany/Louisville First Edition 010