Composers Datebook

Today’s date in 1935 marks the birthday of American composer Peter Schickele, best known for his outrageous musical parodies supposedly penned by the fictional P.D.Q. Bach, the “last and least of the great Johann Sebastian Bach’s 20-odd children, and the oddest.”  Some radio listeners may also have fond memories of the inventive radio series he created, Schickele Mix, dedicated to the proposition “that all musics are created equal.”

Schickele was born in Ames, Iowa, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, where he began his study of composition. He later attended Swarthmore College and the Juilliard School, where one of his classmates was fellow composer Philip Glass. It was at Juilliard that Schickele’s talent for parody created the works of P.D.Q. Bach, and these humorous pieces proved so popular at Juilliard concerts that they were eventually presented at Lincoln Center and even Carnegie Hall.

The tremendous success of P.D.Q. Bach’s music has overshadowed the more serious concert works written under Schickele’s own name. That’s not to say there’s a lack of wit in Schickele’s “serious” music — far from it. But while P.D.Q. Bach’s works may elicit belly laughs, Schickele’s music can evoke more pensive emotions, not without an occasional smile, of course.

Peter Schickele (1935-2024): Pentangle (Five Songs for French Horn and Orchestra); Kenneth Albrecht, French horn; Louisville Orchestra; Jorge Mester, conductor; Albany TROY-024

For most music lovers, the towering genius of Johann Sebastian Bach far overshadows all but a handful of other Baroque composers. But in his own time, there were many other composers far more famous than Bach.

Take the case of Johann David Heinichen, who was buried in Dresden on today’s date in 1729. At the time, his royal patron, August the Strong of Saxony, made no attempt to fill the vacant post of Dresden court composer because, to his ears, no one could possibly be as good as Heinichen.

The great 18th century music historian Charles Burney, impressed by Heinichen’s skill at colorful instrumentation, called him “the Rameau of Germany.” In 1739, ten years after Heinichen’s death, another contemporary music historian coined the phrase “the three H’s” to describe the importance of Hasse, Handel, and Heinichen to 18th century German music.

During most of the 19th century, Heinichen’s music lay forgotten in a Dresden Library. Miraculously, these scores survived the Dresden fire-bombing of World War II. In 1993, a recording of some of Heinichen’s Grand Concertos performed by Musica Antiqua of Cologne won — belatedly — several awards and some renewed attention for the long-neglected Johann David Heinichen.

Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729): Concerto in C; Musica Antiqua of Cologne; Reinhard Goebel, conductor; Archiv 437 549

On today’s date in 1959, the Swiss-born American composer Ernest Bloch died in Portland, Oregon, just short of his 79th birthday.

Bloch came to America in 1916 when he was 36. His music made an immediate impression, and an all-Bloch orchestral concert in New York presented the premiere of his most famous work, Schelomo, a rhapsody for cello and orchestra titled after the Hebrew name for King Solomon. The success of that concert led to a contract with the publisher G. Schirmer, who published Bloch’s compositions with what was to become a trademark logo — the six-pointed Star of David with the initials E.B. in the center, an imprimatur that firmly established for Bloch a Jewish identity in the public mind.

In 1924, Bloch became a naturalized American citizen, and in 1928, he composed an orchestral piece, America, which was selected as the winner of a Musical America competition for the best symphonic work glorifying American ideals.

In the 1930s, Bloch returned to Switzerland for a time. However, with the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany and Italy, he returned to America and settled in Agate Beach, Oregon where he continued to compose — and took up a new Oregon coast hobby: collecting and polishing agates.

Ernest Bloch (1880-1959): America; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3135

A new guitar concerto by Aaron Jay Kernis received its premiere at a Minnesota Orchestra concert on today’s date in 1999. The idea for this concerto was prompted by a friend of Kernis, guitarist David Tanenbaum, who was looking for a new work for guitar and orchestra that he could pair with the most performed of all such works, Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.

For his new concerto, Kernis reworked parts of two earlier works he had composed for Tanenbaum: part of a Partita for solo guitar became the concerto’s opening movement, followed by two movements from 100 Greatest Dance Hits, a Kernis chamber work for guitar and string quartet.

The middle movement, “Slow Dance Ballad” is “the kind of music my parents would like — what they hope to find on the radio dial,” says Kernis. In its original form, this movement was titled “MOR, i.e. Middle of the Road: Easy Listening.”

The concerto’s finale, “Salsa Posada,” is a Spanish pun referring both to the craze for old-fashioned salsa dancing and the condiment of the same name, perhaps a little “off” or past its prime.

Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960): 100 Greatest Dance Hits; David Tanenbaum, guitar; The Chester Quartet; New Albion 083

In 1949, while on his deathbed, German composer Richard Strauss supposedly turned to his beloved daughter-in-law, and said, “Funny thing, Alice. Dying is just the way I composed it in Death and Transfiguration.” Strauss was referring to a tone-poem he had written some 60 years earlier depicting an artist on his deathbed, reviewing his life in art between bouts of an eventually fatal fever.

On today’s date in 1951, Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg was on his deathbed in Los Angeles — on a Friday the 13th, in fact. Now, Schoenberg had a “thing” about numbers. He developed an atonal 12-tone style of composition, and assigned a mystical, quasi-religious significance to numbers. One might imagine Schoenberg on his deathbed, turning to someone he loved and said, “Funny thing: I’m dying on Friday the 13th at the age of 76, which, numerically speaking, is 7+6, or 13, don’t you see.”

We do know that in 1946, after suffering a near-fatal heart attack, Schoenberg wrote a string trio and told his friend Thomas Mann it was a musical representation of both that coronary incident and its subsequent medical treatment, including, at one point, the penetration of a hypodermic needle!

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Death and Transfiguration; Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor; DG 447 422

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): String Trio; Members of the Juilliard String Quartet; Sony 47690

Among the enduring souvenirs of the Paris World Exposition of 1889 was an impressive steel tower designed by Gustave Eiffel. Originally blasted as a grotesque eyesore by leading French artists — including the opera composer Charles Gounod — it was a smash hit with those attending the 1889 Exposition.

Another great hit with attendees, including the impressionable French composer Claude Debussy, was the chance to hear exotic music from Java, Siam, and Egypt. Audiences at an orchestra concert at the Exposition’s Trocadero Palace on today’s date in 1889 could have heard — for them — exotic music by several composers from the United States as well. It was something of a milestone in the history of American music.

George Whitefield Chadwick’s tone poem Melpomene was one of the works performed in Paris, along with orchestral pieces by Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, Dudley Buck, and John Paine. A perceptive French critic noted at the time there seemed to be a veritable “young American school” of composers, obviously influenced by German models ranging from Mendelssohn to Wagner.

“Except for the lack of originality,” concluded the French critic, “the workmanship is serious, correct, solid, and always practical. And these young Americans appeared blessed with much energy.”

George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931): Melpomene Overture; Detroit Symphony; Neeme Jarvi, conductor; Chandos 9439

Today’s date in 1977 marks the birth of a composer whose debut release was greeted by critical raves. The New York Times noted “seemingly boundless textural imagination,” and National Public Radio hailed “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music.”  That debut disc was titled Rhízōma, a Greek word meaning “mass of roots.” In botany it refers to a subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots. 

The roots and shoots of the composer whose works appeared on that debut seem firmly planted deep in her native Icelandic soil. Her name is Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and it’s not too fanciful to hear in her music the stark beauty of Iceland’s waterfalls, geysers, volcanoes, black sand beaches, and otherworldly lava fields.

The opening track on her debut from 2011 was a work for chamber orchestra entitled Hrím, the Icelandic word for “frost.”

In an interview Thorvaldsdottir says, “I was making up songs from an early age and studied a few different instruments before I found the cello which I became very passionate about. Then at around 19 years old I started to notate the music I had in my head and have been doing that ever since.”

Anna Thorvaldsdottir (b. 1977): Hrím; Caput Ensemble; Innova 810 (original release) and Sono Luminus Editions 70018

On today’s date in 1942, the RKO studio released the film The Magnificent Ambersons, based on Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel chronicling the declining fortunes of a wealthy Midwestern family and the massive social changes in American life caused by the arrival of the automobile.

The film was written, produced, directed and narrated by Orson Welles, who hired the great film composer Bernard Herrmann to provide the film’s score.

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. You would think Welles and Hermann would be pleased — but quite the opposite was the case. As conceived by Welles, the film ran 131 minutes, but after unfavorable reactions by a preview audience, RKO took control of the film, cut 50 minutes and rewrote and reshot a more upbeat ending. Half of Herrmann’s score was also cut, and another composer brought in for the new scenes. In disgust, Hermann asked that his name be removed from the film’s credits.

Despite RKO’s alteration of its creators’ vision, many still regard The Magnificent Ambersons, as one of the greatest films ever made, thanks to what remained of the original conception by Orson Welles and Bernard Herrmann.

Bernard Hermann (1911-1975): Pleasure Trip and End Title, from The Magnificent Ambersons original film score; Australian Philharmonic; Tony Bremer, conductor; Preamble CD 1783

On this date in 1842, Felix Mendelssohn presented himself at Buckingham Palace in London as the invited guest of Queen Victoria and the royal consort, Prince Albert. In 1842, Victoria was not the plump matron so familiar from later portraits, but a slim woman of 23. Elegant Prince Albert, a fine amateur musician and composer of some charming songs, was the same age. Mendelssohn himself was 33, although the 20-something Queen wrote in her diary that she thought he looked  “a bit older.”

Mendelssohn played some of his Songs Without Words and improvised on “Rule Britannia” and the Austrian National Anthem. Victoria and Albert were impressed, so Mendelssohn was invited back for more visits.

Victoria presented him with a ring engraved “V.R. 1842”—the initials standing for “Victoria Regina.” In return, Mendelssohn dedicated to her his newly completed Symphony No. 3, the Scottish Symphony, a work he had begun many years earlier during a walking tour of Scotland during his first visit to Britain. Curiously, although this Scottish Symphony was the fifth and final of Mendelssohn's symphonies to be completed, it was the third to be published, and so has subsequently been known as Symphony No. 3.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Symphony No. 3 (Scottish); London Symphony Orchestra; John Eliot Gardiner, conductor; LSO 765

George Percy Aldridge Grainger was born on today’s date in 1882 in Brighton, Victoria. Although he was born in Australia, Grainger died in America at 79, in White Plains, New York, in 1961.

Percy Grainger led a long and remarkable life as composer, concert pianist, and educator. He counted among his friends the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg and the British composer Frederic Delius, and Grainger shared their enthusiasm for collecting and transforming folk music themes.

From 1917 to 1919 he served in the U.S. Army, first playing oboe and saxophone, and later as a band instructor. Country Gardens, a piano setting of a Morris dance tune, was completed during Grainger’s Army years, and became his best-known composition after its publication in 1919. His subsequent work with wind bands culminated in a 1937 folksong suite, Lincolnshire Posy, a work Grainger once described as a “bunch of musical wildflowers.”

Grainger idolized Nordic languages and culture and in 1928 Grainger married a Swedish woman, Ella Ström, whom he dubbed his “Nordic Princess,” at a very public ceremony at the Hollywood Bowl concert featuring the premiere of one of his own orchestral pieces titled (what else): To a Nordic Princess.

Percy Grainger (1882-1961): Country Gardens; Martin Jones, piano; Nimbus 7703

Percy Grainger (1882-1961): To a Nordic Princess; Danish National Radio Symphony; Richard Hickox, conductor; Chandos 9721