Composers Datebook

As Leipzig’s chief provider of both sacred and secular music, Johann Sebastian Bach probably gave a huge sigh of relief on today’s date in 1733.

The death of Imperial Elector Friedrich Augustus the First of Saxony earlier that year had resulted in a four-month period of official mourning, which meant NO elaborate sacred music at Bach’s Leipzig churches, and certainly no frivolous secular concerts with the Collegium Musicum, an orchestra of professionals and amateurs that Bach assembled periodically at Zimmermann’s coffee house in that city.

Finally, Frederich’s successor said, “Enough was enough,” and this notice appeared in a Leipzig paper:

“His Royal Highness and Electorial Grace, having given kind permission for the [resumption of] music, tomorrow, on June 17, a beginning will be made by Bach’s Collegium Musicum at Zimmermann’s Garden, at 4:00 in the afternoon, with a fine concert. The concerts will be weekly, with a new harpsichord, such as had not been heard there before, and lovers of music are expected to be present.”

So it’s not hard to imagine Bach at Zimmermann’s giving the downbeat to put the new instrument through its paces in one of his own harpsichord concertos.

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Harpsichord Concerto No. 4; Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord; Leonhardt Consort; Telefunken 97452

Today we celebrate Francis Johnson, born in Martinque in the West Indies on today’s date in 1792. He emigrated to Philadelphia in 1809 at 17. As a teen, Johnson was a master of the violin and the keyed bugle, an early precursor of the trumpet. By his 20s, he was a popular bandleader around Philadelphia.

Johnson experimented with various combinations of strings, winds and brass, and composed over 200 arrangements and original works in the popular forms of the day. In 1817, he became the first Black composer in America to have his music published.

Johnson’s band toured here and abroad, and, in 1837, played before Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. The young queen was so impressed that she gave Johnson a silver bugle as a memento.

Besides entertaining white audiences abroad, Johnson performed at African American churches in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. In 1841 he organized a performance of Haydn’s Creation at the First African Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.

Francis Johnson died in 1844 in Philadelphia at 52. During his funeral march, hundreds of mourners, including his brass band, followed his casket, on which his silver bugle was placed.

Francis B. Johnson (1792-1844): The Philadelphia Gray’s Quickstep; Symphony Orchestra of America; Matthew Phillips, conductor; Albany TROY-103

“Listening to inner voices” is a phrase that can mean a lot of things.

For violists, providing those inner voices, musically speaking, is their daily bread and butter. In the modern orchestra, the viola provides the alto voice in the string choir, filling in harmonies and musical lines between the violins on top and the cellos and double basses on the bottom.

But (unfortunately) occasionally violists like to step forward, front and center, as soloists. And some composers have shown a special fondness for the viola’s distinctive dusky color.

According to American composer David Ward-Steinman, that color might well be likened to cinnabar, the ore of mercury, a crystallized reddish-brown mineral with flashes of quicksilver. Asked to write a solo for the 19th Annual Viola Congress held at Ithaca, New York, Ward-Steinman’s Cinnabar for solo viola and piano premiered on today’s date in 1991. 

David Ward-Steinman served as Composer-in-Residence at San Diego State University for many years. His own teachers included Wallingford Riegger, Darius Milhaud, Milton Babbitt, and Nadia Boulanger. Ward-Steinman’s catalog of original works ranges from solo pieces and chamber works like Cinnabar, to large-scale theatrical scores and ballets.

David Ward-Steinman (1936-2015): Cinnabar; Karen Elaine, viola; David Ward-Steinman, piano; Fleur de Son 57935

Bernstein, Blitzstein and Brecht … it sounds a little like a law firm, doesn’t it?

But today, we celebrate the anniversary of an important musical partnership involving those three gentlemen.

Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein were two American composers who shared a passion for musical theater. Bertolt Brecht was a German poet and playwright perhaps best known here for his collaboration with the composer Kurt Weill on The Three Penny Opera.

The artistic careers of Bernstein, Blitzstein and Brecht came together on today’s date in 1952, when, as part of the First Festival of the Creative Arts held at Brandeis University, Leonard Bernstein conducted the premiere of a new English-language version of Three Penny Opera.

Blitzstein had seen the original 1928 production of Three Penny Opera when he was a student in Berlin, and some 20 years later had translated one of the show’s songs just for fun. He got the chance to perform his translation for Kurt Weill, and Weill was so impressed he encouraged Blitzstein to translate the entire work.

The Blitzstein version of the Three Penny Opera proved so successful that when it opened in an off-Broadway New York production, it ran for 2,707 performances.

Kurt Weill (1900-1950): Little Threepenny Music; London Symphony members; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; CBS 44529

On this date in 1908, Thomas Greene Wiggins died in Hoboken, New Jersey at 59. Known as “Blind Tom Wiggins,” he was one of the most celebrated — and cruelly exploited — Black concert performers of the 19th century. 

Born enslaved in Georgia in 1849, Wiggins and his parents were offered for sale in an ad reading: “Price: $1,500 without Tom, $1,200 with him.” They were purchased by Georgia anti-abolitionist newspaper editor, James Bethune, who noticed the blind boy’s uncanny ability to mimic the sounds he heard played on the family’s piano.

At five, Tom was playing original music of his own and was exhibited as a child prodigy by Bethune throughout Georgia. During the Civil War, Tom played only in Southern states, earning his owner more than $100,000 a year. In the Antebellum years, he toured extensively here and abroad.

In addition to his own compositions, Wiggins played classical selections like Bach and Beethoven. Despite emancipation, Tom, who was perhaps autistic, remained a ward of and virtually indentured to the Bethune family for 38 years. By 1903, he was performing on the vaudeville circuit in New York and New Jersey before suffering fatal stroke in 1908.

Thomas Greene ‘Blind Tom’ Wiggins (1849-1908): The Battle of Manassas; John Davis, piano; Newport Classics 85660

There’s a long list of composers ranging from Vivaldi to Messiaen who have incorporated bird song into their musical works. Today we make note of one of them.

On this date in 1893, great Czech composer Antonín Dvořák was vacationing with his family in Spillville, Iowa, spending the hot summer months with a small Czech community who had settled along the banks of the Turkey River. 

Dvořák liked to walk along the river listening to the birds, who, he said, helped him come up with musical ideas — ideas he would scribble in pencil on his stiff white shirt cuffs. Dvořák’s son, Otakar, eight years old at the time, reports that on June 12, 1893, a fishing trip along the Turkey River was cut short, much to his annoyance. When Otakar asked why, his father said simply: “My cuff is already full of notes — I’ve got to get home and copy them down.”

In less than a week, Dvořák finished what would become one of his best-known and best-loved works — a string quartet in F Major nicknamed the American Quartet. The scherzo movement even includes a musical quotation from a particularly persistent American bird whose song Dvořák found a bit distracting.

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): String Quartet (American); Vlach Quartet; Naxos 8.553371

On this date in 1970, the New York Philharmonic, led by Andre Kostelanetz, introduced the world’s largest vocal soloists in the premiere performance of And God Created Great Whales, by American composer Alan Hovhaness.

The New York Times review found the music accompanying the recorded songs of whales “fairly inconsequential,” but pleasant enough.

“Faced with such an irresistible soloist, Mr. Hovhaness must have suspected he would be harpooned. But with his customary skill, he put up a battle … conjuring up the sea by unmeasured bowing and overlapping patterns and setting brass and percussion to echoing the real thing,” the review continued.

Hovhaness died June 21, 2000 at 89, having written over 500 works, including 67 symphonies. He once said, “I’m very happy if somebody else likes [my music], but I don’t mind if anybody doesn’t, and I don’t have any respect for critics.”

Hovhaness did have his champions, like conductor Leopold Stokowski, who asked for a new symphony in the early 1950s. He said Stokowski asked him to give it a title, since people liked titles, so Hovhaness called the symphony Mysterious Mountain. Stokowski was pleased — and right. Mysterious Mountain went on to become Hovhaness’s best-known work.

Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000): And God Created Great Whales; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos DE-3157

Wynton Marsalis says it all began with a dare in the 1990s from German conductor Kurt Masur, then Music Director of the New York Philharmonic.

“He came to a concert of mine when I was like 28 or 29, and said he wanted me to write for the New York Philharmonic. I started laughing like, man, I have never even written for a big band,” Marsalis said.

Well, since then, jazz trumpeter Marsalis has written more than one work for a big bands like the New York Philharmonic, and in 2010 that ensemble, along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Symphony, and the Berlin Philharmonic commissioned his Symphony No. 3 (Swing).

It was the Berlin Philharmonic who gave the first performance of the work, and on today’s date in 2010, encored their premiere on the internet.

Marsalis said, “Swing to a jazz musician means coming together, and in this case it’s about two orchestras coming together.” Marsalis included parts for himself and his jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in his new score, in contrast — and in harmony — with the forces of a traditional symphony orchestra.

Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961): Symphony No. 3 (Swing); Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra; St. Louis Symphony; David Robertson, conductor; Blue Engine Records BE-0017

The name Charles A. Lindbergh will forever be associated with two dramatic events: the first, Lindbergh’s historic nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic in the airplane The Spirit of St. Louis; the second, the kidnapping and murder of his infant son.

On today’s date in the year 2002, marking the centennial of Lindbergh’s birth and the 75th anniversary of his Atlantic crossing, the Opera Theatre of St. Louis premiered the opera Loss of Eden, a musical reflection on Lindbergh’s public triumph and personal tragedy.

Composer Cary John Franklin reworked themes from his opera into a chamber piece for oboe and guitar, Falls Flyer. The title refers to both Lindbergh, who was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, and to the line of speedboats marketed under that name from the 1930s to the 1950s, whose sleek lines were modeled after the open cockpit of Lindbergh’s first plane.

Franklin wrote, “Falls Flyer is derived from music that accompanies the major dramatic moments of the opera — the plane departing for Paris, the kidnapping, and the execution of the man convicted of the crime. The more lyrical sections suggest the serenity and solitude found floating through clouds — or drifting on the water.”

Cary John Franklin (b. 1956): Falls Flyer; Klemp-Kachian Duo; Schubert Club/Ten Thousand Lakes 115

American composer Elliott Carter lived to be 103, completing more than 40 works between ages 90 and 100, and 20 more after he turned 100 in 2008.

On today’s date in 2012, a new chamber work by Carter with an odd title was premiered at a concert in the New York Philharmonic’s CONTACT! Series. Two Controversies and a Conversation showcased the percussive aspects of the piano, highlighting that instrument alongside a solo percussionist. The premiere was an international triple-commission from the New York Philharmonic, the Aldeburgh Festival in England and Radio France. 

An earlier version of part of the work, titled simply Conversations, had been premiered in the U.K. the previous year. The composer explained the title as follows:

“How does one converse?” Carter asked. “One person says something and tries to get the other person to respond, or carry on, or contradict a statement. Those conversing are also playing a kind of game with each other. I tried to put all that into my music … after the [Aldeburgh] premiere of Conversations, [British composer] Oliver Knussen suggested I expand this piece. I decided to add two more movements, which became the two Controversies."

Elliott Carter (1908-2012): Conversation, from Two Controversies and a Conversation; Eric Huebner, piano; Colin Currie, percussion; New York Philharmonic; David Robertson, conductor; NYP 20120112