Composers Datebook

Few 19th-century composers chose their parents as wisely as Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. Papa was a wealthy banker in Berlin who held Sunday afternoon chamber concerts for his musically gifted children at their home. The kids could perform their own pieces, and if young Felix had composed a little symphony for strings, Papa would just hire the necessary musicians to have it performed.

In July of 1826, when he was 17, Mendelssohn wrote to a friend, “I have grown accustomed to composing in our garden. Today or tomorrow I am going to dream there A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Mendelssohn had been reading a German translation of Shakespeare’s comedy, and on today’s date in 1826, completed a concert overture for the play. Felix and Fanny gave the first performance in a two-piano version at one of the family concerts, and a private home orchestral reading followed later.

Mendelssohn intended his piece to represent the whole of the drama in miniature. He wrote, “At the end, after everything has been satisfactorily settled and the principal players have joyously left the stage, the elves and fairies bless the house, and disappear with the dawn. So the play ends, and my overture, too.”

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Kurt Masur, conductor; Teldec 46323

In the summer of 1764, eight-year-old child prodigy Wolfgang Mozart was in England, accompanied by his 13-year-old sister, Nanerl, and their father, Leopold. The Mozarts had arrived in London wearing what back home in Salzburg would have passed as fashionable French-style clothing back home in Salzburg. But since England had just ended the Seven Years War with France, this faux pas resulted in the Mozarts receiving some rude comments and even ruder gestures from London street urchins, so Papa Leopold quickly acquired more “politically correct” attire for himself and the children.

On August 5, 1764, the family settled in at a quiet house in Chelsea, as Papa Leopold had taken ill. While his father recovered, Wolfgang was temporarily forbidden to practice piano or make any noise, so he decided to try his hand at writing his first symphony. Perhaps as compensation for having to keep so quiet, Mozart suddenly was keen on writing for as many instruments as possible. As Nanerl later recalled, “While he composed and I copied, he said to me, ‘Remind me to give the horn something worthwhile to do!’”

And so, Mozart’s first symphony is scored for two oboes, two horns and strings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Symphony No. 1; Prague Chamber Orchestra; Charles Mackerras, conductor; Telarc 80256

The “bad news” relates to Bach’s previous employer, namely the Duke of Weimar, who was not exactly pleased that Bach had accepted the new job. Court intrigue complicated the matter, and the Prince’s “poaching” of Bach might have been perceived as just another indirect slap at the Duke maneuvered by a long-standing feud between the two noblemen. 

The upshot was that Bach was put on the Prince’s payroll effective in August of 1717, but the Duke didn’t accept Bach’s resignation until five months later, and then only after throwing Bach in jail for almost a month to teach him a lesson, as the court secretary put it, “for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal.”

In an age when Dukes and Princes could do as they pleased, it seems giving two weeks notice was a tad more complicated than it is today!

J. S. Bach (1685 - 1750) — Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 (Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; David Shifrin, cond.) Delos 3185

On today’s date in 2006, at the open-air Tanglewood Festival in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, the Boston Symphony and cellist Yo-Yo Ma premiered Azul (“blue” in Spanish), a new cello concerto by Osvaldo Golijov.

Golijov was born and grew up in Argentina, but his background — like his music — is cosmopolitan: his parents were Romanian Jews who immigrated to Argentina, and when he was 23, Golijov immigrated to Israel. Three years later, he came to the U.S. to study with American composer George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania, and then settled in Massachusetts.

At first, Golijov imagined Azul as evoking his own experiences of hearing bucolic summertime Tanglewood concerts under a canopy of blue sky. But after its premiere, Golijov had second thoughts, and by the time Yo-Yo Ma finally recorded the work 10 years later, Golijov had revised his concerto. 

Golijov said he wanted to “earn” its blissful opening mood through a journey backwards through musical time and space, and the revised score backs up the cello with a neo-Baroque continuo comprised of a hyper-accordion (souped up with digital processing) and a battery of exotic percussion instruments like a wind whistle and goat hoof rattle.

Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960): Azul; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; The Knights, Eric Jacobsen, conductor; Warner Classics 9029587521

In the summer of 1941, the winds of war hadn’t yet blown to Pearl Harbor, the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn, and all was pretty much right with the world. The Dodgers were doing well — so well that they would eventually win the pennant, only to lose the World Series to the hated Yankees that October. But in August of 1941, that ignominious defeat was still a few months off, and Brooklyn fans were understandably optimistic.

One of them was the American composer Robert Russell Bennett, whose Symphony in D premiered early in August 1941. The composer let it be known that the D stood for Dodgers. Bennett’s Symphony in D for the Dodgers was performed but never published. We’re not sure if the Dodgers’ eventual defeat had anything to do with that — but let the record state the Dodgers eventually did beat the Yankees in the 1955 World Series.

Another composer and avid baseball fan was John Philip Sousa. Sousa’s march The National Game was composed in 1925 at the request of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, major league baseball’s first high commissioner. In his march, Sousa includes some interesting percussive effects involving, what else, a baseball bat!

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932): The National Game; Royal Artillery Band; Keith Brion, conductor; Naxos 8.559092

When grandma turns 90, you can bet by her age she’s gotten just about everything imaginable as a birthday gift. That was the quandary facing the Prince of Wales in 1990, when his granny, Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England (the mother of Queen Elizabeth II) — or “The Queen Mum” as just about everybody called her — was about to celebrate her 90th.

As Prince Charles wrote, “The idea for a concert came to me when I was trying to think of an original birthday present for my grandmother. It suddenly struck me that here was a wonderful reason for commissioning some new music to celebrate a very special occasion.”

Since Charles liked the music Scottish composer Patrick Doyle had written for Kenneth Branagh’s film of Shakespeare’s Henry V, Doyle was asked to write a song cycle. Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich heard about the planned birthday concert, and for his part commissioned British composer David Matthews. Swiss conductor and new music impresario Paul Sacher commissioned a third new work by British composer Patrick Gowers.

All three pieces were premiered in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace on today’s date in 1990, two days before the Queen Mum’s 90th birthday.

Patrick Doyle (b. 1953): The Thistle and the Rose; Marie McLaughlin, soprano

Patrick Gowers (1936-2014): Suite for Violin; Jose Luis Garcia, violin

David Matthews (b. 1943): Romanza; Mstislav Rostropovich, cello; English Chamber Orchestra; Raymond Leppard, conductor

All three pieces on EMI 54164

For many professional musicians, summertime is spent away from home at one or more music camps and festivals. And if the camp or festival just happens to be in a gorgeous mountain or lakeside setting, well, so much the better.

Since 1987, musicians have made the climb to scenic Vail, Colorado, at this time of year for the Bravo! Music Festival. And on today’s date in 1993, it was at the Bravo! Festival that a new Concerto for Horn and Strings by the American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich received its premiere.

The concerto was a triple commission from the Rochester Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the New York-based French horn virtuoso David Jolley, who was the soloist for the Vail premiere. Zwilich wrote: 

“While I think of the solo horn as a heroic figure, I enjoyed the interplay and dialogue between horn and strings and allowed the character and nature of the horn to influence the strings and vice-versa. For me, the combination of solo horn and string orchestra is rich and evocative, as is the unique nature of the horn: its warmth and color, its dramatic legato as well as its pungent staccato, the sheer breadth of its sound.”

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Horn Concert; David Jolley, horn; MSU Symphony Orchestra; Leon Gregorian, conductor; Koch 7487

On today’s date in 1938, at the New York Philharmonic’s summertime concert home at Lewissohn Stadium, a 24-year-old American composer named Morton Gould conducted the first performance of his American Symphonette No. 2.

The new piece was in three movements, and the second, Pavanne, proved especially popular. It fused elements of jazz in swing time with the form of the old-fashioned courtly dance made famous by Maurice Ravel’s Pavane for Dead Princess. In the published score, Gould spelled Pavanne with two n’s.

“At the time I wrote the piece, ’pavane’ was not a well-known word. Those who knew their Ravel could spell and say it right, but the people who knew only mine had difficulty in pronouncing the title. So I decided to use two n’s to give at least some idea of what the phonetic sounds were,” said Gould.

For many decades, Gould was much in demand as a conductor and arranger, but writing original music was what he loved best. “Composing is my life blood,” he claimed. “That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life — conducting, arranging, playing piano, and so on — what is fundamental is my being a composer.”

Morton Gould (1913-1996): Pavanne, from American Symphonette No. 2; St. Louis Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; RCA 60778

In the summer of 1829, German composer Felix Mendelssohn was touring Scotland in the company of a friend from Berlin who held a post in London. He saw all the sights: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth, Inverness, Loch Lomond, and the Hebrides Islands. He was not impressed by the food or friendliness of the somewhat surly natives, but he loved the Scottish scenery.

Mendelssohn made a point of paying a courtesy call on the famous novelist Sir Walter Scott, whose Romantic historical tales of love and tragedy were wildly popular throughout Europe in Mendelssohn’s day. And very likely, it was through the Romantic filter of Scott’s novels that Mendelssohn viewed the Scottish landscape.

On today’s date, they visited the ruined castle of Mary Queen of Scots, and Mendelssohn wrote back to his family back in Germany: “In darkening twilight today, we went to the Palace of Holyrood where Queen Mary lived and loved. The chapel has lost its roof and is overgrown with grass and ivy, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything there is ruined, decayed and open to the clear sky. I believe that I have found there today the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.”

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Symphony No. 3 (Scottish); London Symphony; Peter Maag, conductor; London 466 990

As a young man in his 20s, just starting out on his musical career, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák had a rough time making ends meet. He played viola in a theater orchestra, worked as a church organist, and took on music students.

But by the time he hit his 30s, things started to click. His own music, composed in his rare, free moments, was starting to attact attention. The German composer Johannes Brahms took him under his wing and helped Dvořák find a publisher.

The year 1878 was a particularly auspicious one for Dvořák. He was in his late 30s, and the publication of his first set of Slavonic Dances for piano four-hands had proven to be something of a smash hit with amateur musicians across Europe. Some of his orchestral and chamber works published that year were also doing very well.

Dvořák was approached by the leader of the Florentine String Quartet and asked to write a chamber piece in his popular Slavonic style. The result was his String Quartet No. 10.

Dvořák showed it to Brahms, who liked the new work and in turn showed it to some of HIS friends, including Josef Hellmesberger, whose String Quartet was the best in Vienna. But as it turned out, his new quartet was premiered in Berlin, on today’s date in 1879, by the Quartet headed by another of Brahms’ old friends, the virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim.

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): String Quartet No. 10; Takacs Quartet; London 466 197

In the decades since its founding in 1920, the annual Salzburg Music Festival in Austria has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the best — and priciest — summertime music venues in the world. The core repertory of the Festival has always been the music of Salzburg’s most famous native son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and other classical and romantic masters from the Austro-Germanic tradition.

Fearing that the Salzburg Festival was becoming a bit too conservative and predictable, in the 1990s the festival’s directors began shake things up by including some challenging contemporary classics into the mix. On today’s date in 1997, for example, a car-horn overture signaled the Salzburg Festival premiere of a revised version of György Ligeti’s opera La Grand Macabre.

In Ligeti’s opera, the world is fast approaching apocalypse, and the ultimate catastrophe is overseen by a rather ineffectual, and occasionally tipsy Grim Reaper. The libretto is silly and serious at the same time, and was devised by the composer and Michael Meschke, a master puppeteer. For the 1997 Salzburg production, the American director Peter Sellars set the work in a devastated Chernobyl-like landscape contaminated by a nuclear disaster.

György Ligeti (1923-2006): Mysteries of the Macabre, from Le Grand Macabre; Sibylle Ehlert, soprano; Philharmonia Orchestra; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sony 62311