Composers Datebook

At Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 2015, the Met Chamber Ensemble gave the posthumous premiere of a new work by American composer Elliott Carter, who died in November 2012, a month or so shy of what would have been his 104th birthday.

The debut of The American Sublime marked the last world premiere performance of Carter’s 75-year-long composing career.

Hearing Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at Carnegie Hall in the 1920s inspired Carter to become a composer. A high school teacher introduced him to Charles Ives, who became a mentor. By the mid-1930s, Carter was writing music in the “populist modern” style, à la Copland, but during a year spent in the Arizona desert in 1950, Carter finished his String Quartet No. 1 — 40 minutes of music uncompromising in both its technical difficulty and structural intricacy.

"That crazy long first quartet was played in Belgium," Carter recalled. "It was played over the radio, and I got a letter from a coal miner, in French, who said, 'I liked your piece. It's just like digging for coal.' He meant that it was hard and took effort."

Elliott Carter (1908-2012): Horn Concerto (2006); Martin Owen, fh; BBC Symphony; Oliver Knussen, cond. Bridge 9314

Perhaps there is some poetic justice in the fact that maverick American composers like Charles Ives had a hard time getting performances of their music during their lifetime, only to be both lionized and frequently performed after their deaths. Conversely, many mainstream American composers who were lionized and frequently performed when they were alive seldom show up on concert programs anymore — and in some cases, that’s a darn shame.

Take Walter Piston, for example, who in his day was regarded as one of America’s premier composers. On today’s date in 1957, his Viola Concerto received its premiere performance by the Boston Symphony, in a concert conducted by Charles Munch, with soloist Joseph de Pasquale, a Curtis Institute professor and first-chair violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

It’s a lovely, lyrical work and a terrific showcase for a great violist. But have you ever heard it in concert — or on the radio, for that matter?

A British reviewer, writing in the UK’s Gramophone magazine, was bowled over by this music, writing, “Piston's concerto opens pensively, quickly builds to an aching climax … in the final pages, a sweeter lyricism that prepares the listener perfectly for the playful syncopations of the exuberant finale.”

Walter Piston (1951-1987): Viola Concerto; Randolph Kelly, viola; Latvian National Symphony; Alexandrs Vilumanis, cond. Albany TROY-558

Have you ever sent someone an email you regretted the second you hit send? Even in the 19th century, it was often prudent to sleep on a message before sending off words written in the heat of passion.

On today’s date in 1853, Giuseppe Verdi sent a barrage of short notes to friends after what he felt was the disastrous premiere of his latest opera at the Teatro la Fenice in Venice.

“I am sorry,” Verdi wrote to his publisher, “but I cannot conceal the truth from you. Let's not investigate the reason. It happened. Goodbye, goodbye.”

To another colleague Verdi wrote: “It was a fiasco. My fault. Or the singers? Time alone will tell.”

But, apparently after a little more thought, he wrote to another friend, “The audience laughed. Well, what of it! Either I’m wrong or they are. I personally don’t think that last night’s verdict will be the last word.”

After a year waiting for just the right cast, Verdi allowed his new opera to be restaged — in Venice once again, but this time at a different theater. Much to his satisfaction, this time, his new opera La Traviata was a big hit.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): ‘La Traviata’; Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Georg Solti, cond. London 448 119

What’s your favorite recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23?

It is said that Joseph Stalin’s was one with Russian pianist Maria Yudina, and that recording was spinning on his turntable when the dictator was found dead on today’s date in 1953. In 1944, Stalin had heard Yudina perform this concerto on the radio and called the Soviet broadcaster and asked for the recording. Now, no one dared say “no” to Stalin, so, even though the performance had been live and had not been recorded, the performers were hastily called back to the studio, and by morning a private recording was ready for delivery.

Stalin was so pleased, that — again, according to the stories — he sent Yudina 20,000 rubles. In defiance of state-imposed Soviet atheism, the pianist was a devout Orthodox Christian who always wore a cross while performing and considered her music an expression of faith. Stalin really must have liked her playing, since he did nothing — so the story goes — when she sent him a thank-you note letting him know that she gave all the money to her church and that she would pray for him and ask God to forgive all his great sins against his own people.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): 2nd Movement from Piano Concerto No. 23

Marina Yudina, piano; USSR Radio Symphony; Alexander Gauk, cond. Melodiya MELCO0377

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi came into the world on today’s date in 1678 a few days after an earthquake shook Venice. The newborn was baptized immediately — just in case little Antonio’s first day also turned out to be his last.

Vivaldi’s father was a violinist, and even though Antonio quickly became a virtuoso on that instrument himself, he became a Roman Catholic priest.

Vivaldi complained of chest pains whenever he celebrated Mass — a medical excuse that allowed him to forgo his priestly duties and to concentrate on writing music, including dozens of operas and hundreds of concertos.

By his mid-40s, Vivaldi was a major figure on the European musical scene, but his fortunes gradually took a turn for the worse. The church ordered him to stop composing music for the theater and, for heaven’s sake, to stop gadding around Europe in the company of female opera singers!

Vivaldi went to Vienna in 1740, hoping to find a court position with Emperor Charles VI, a big fan of his music, but after eating some bad mushrooms, the emperor died. And the following year, Vivaldi died — from an internal infection, not an earthquake — at 63 and heavily in debt.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): ‘The Four Seasons’; Enrico; Onofri, violin; Il Giardino Armonico; Giovanni Antonini, cond. Teldec 97671

Today marks the birth in 1913 of American composer Margaret Bonds. Her mother was a church musician in Chicago; her father was a physician and one of the founders of a medical association for Black physicians denied membership in the American Medical Association.

One of the visitors to Bonds’ childhood home was composer Florence Price, with whom she studied composition. At 16, Bonds became one of the few Black students enrolled at Northwestern University, although she was not allowed to live on campus. At the 1933 World’s Fair, Bonds performed Price’s Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony, becoming the first African-American woman soloist to appear with a major American orchestra.

After earning her master’s degree, she moved to New York to study at the Juilliard School. She met and became a close friend of poet Langston Hughes, with whom she collaborated on many projects.

Bonds wrote about 200 works, but only 47 were published during her lifetime, and only about 75 of her scores are known today. The rest exist as privately held manuscripts scattered all over the country.

One of her best-known works is Troubled Water, a solo piano fantasia on the spiritual “Wade in the Water.”

Margaret Bonds (1913-1972): ‘Troubled Water’; Joel Fan, piano; Reference Recordings RR-119

On today’s date in 1965, the now-classic and mega-iconic musical film The Sound of Music officially debuted at the Rivoli Theater at Broadway and 49th Street in New York City.

Since we at Composers Datebook are notorious for mentioning “little known facts,” let us state, for the record, that the first test audiences to see the film did so in flyover country — first in Minneapolis and subsequently in Tulsa, Oklahoma, about a month before the film’s New York debut.

The Midwestern audiences were ecstatic, and director Robert Wise knew he'd have a hit on his hands when his film, starring Julie Andrews, opened on Broadway, not far from where the stage version, starring Mary Martin, had originally debuted back in 1959.

The 1965 New York Times film review was a little snarky — well, what else is new? It began by referring to “the perceptible weakness of its quaintly old-fashioned book,” while grudgingly admiring, “the generally melodic felicity of the Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein score,” and ended by opining, “Business-wise, Mr. Wise is no fool.”

No fool, indeed. Wise’s film won five Oscars and displaced Gone With the Wind as the highest-grossing film of all-time.

Richard Rodgers (1902-1979): ‘My Favorite Things,’ from ‘The Sound of Music’ (arr. Hough); Stephen Hough, p. MusicMasters 60135 and/or Virgin 59509 and 61498

For most of the 20th century, women’s history was almost totally ignored in American schools. To address this situation, an education task force in Sonoma County, California, initiated a women’s history celebration in March 1978. What began as an annual Women’s History Week grew over the years into a national celebration, and in 1987, Congress declared the whole of March to be Women's History Month.

Appropriately enough, 1987 also saw the premiere performance of Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman — music written for the same instrumentation as Aaron Copland’s famous Fanfare for the Common Man.

Originally, Tower chose to let the title of her Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman serve as a generic, built-in dedication to all the unsung heroes of women’s struggles past and present. But eventually, Tower added a specific dedication to conductor Marin Alsop, a champion of new music.

“I don’t think you can play a piece of music and say whether it’s written by a man or a woman,” Tower says. “I think music is genderless.”

But festivals and celebrations of women in music remain important, in Tower’s view, in helping to get the word out about their accomplishments.

Joan Tower (b. 1938): ‘Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman’; Colorado Symphony; Marin Alsop, cond. Koch International 7469

Happy Leap Year!

Once every four years, we have the opportunity to wish the great Italian opera composer Giacomo Rossini a happy birthday — he was born on Feb. 29 in 1792 — and to note some other musical events that occurred on this unusual but recurring calendar date.

The American Bicentennial Year 1976, for example, also was a leap year, and 12 months were cram-packed with specially commissioned works written on a grand scale to celebrate that major anniversary of our nation. But at Alice Tully Hall on Feb. 29, 1976, a more modest celebration was in progress: an afternoon of new chamber works for flute and harp, including the premiere performance of a piece by American composer Ned Rorem.

This piece was titled Book of Hours, referring to the prayers that the clergy read at various times of the day. In 1976, when avant-garde composer Pierre Boulez was the music director of the New York Philharmonic and dense, complicated music was considered fashionable by the critics, and the reviewer for the New York Times was struck by Rorem’s deceptive simplicity: “Many contemporary composers flaunt their abilities to make music complex,” he wrote, “but Rorem waves an altogether different flag. His Book of Hours seemed determined to be uneventful. Its calculated simplicities and unassertive manner recalled the bare-walls asceticism of Erik Satie, though Mr. Rorem’s phrases and colors are more sensuous and do not quite evoke Satie’s mood of monastic rigor.”

Ned Rorem (1923-2022): Book of Hours; Fibonacci Sequence; Naxos 8.559128

For most music lovers, the phrase “Italian composers of the 19th and 20th centuries” means, first and foremost, opera composers.

But during the 1920s and 1930s, when great Italian opera conductor Arturo Toscanini was music director of the New York Philharmonic, American audiences heard many nonoperatic, symphonic works by modern Italian composers.

On today’s date in 1929, for example, Toscanini led the New York Philharmonic in the world premiere performance of Concerto dell ‘Estate (Summer Concerto), by contemporary Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti.

In addition to premieres by Pizzetti, New York audiences heard recent Italian symphonic works by Respighi, Tommasini, Martucci, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Wolf-Ferrari and others.

Absent from Toscanini’s New York programs were new works by the rising American composers of the day. There were no Toscanini premieres — or even performances — of works by Copland, Harris or Piston. Those composers had to look to the Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitzky if they wanted a hearing.

American composer Daniel Gregory Mason complained in 1931 that the Philharmonic was run by “fashion-enslaved, prestige-hypnotized minds ... totally devoid of any American loyalty to match the Italian loyalty” that was, as Mason admitted, “rather likeable” in the charismatic Italian maestro.

Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968): Rondo Veneziano; BBC Scottish Symphony; Osmo Vänskä, cond. Hyperion 67084