Composers Datebook

Today marks the birthday of American composer, choral conductor and educator Betty Jackson King. She was born in Chicago in 1928, where she earned her master’s degree in composition at Roosevelt University. Her master’s thesis was an opera, Saul of Tarsus, whose libretto was written by her father, the Rev. Frederick D. Jackson.

King is perhaps best known for her sacred and choral works, especially her arrangements of spirituals, and, according to her family, her musical career reflected her deep religious faith. “Over my head, I hear music in the air, so there must be a God somewhere,” was her oft-stated creed.

King also wrote secular works, including a ballet for children, chamber works, art songs and solo pieces for piano and organ. She was an active teacher and choral conductor in her native Chicago before moving to Wildwood, New Jersey, where she taught, conducted and composed for the rest of her life.

A few years before King’s death in 1994, soprano Kathleen Battle performed and recorded "Ride-Up in the Chariot,” one of Jackson’s spiritual arrangements, at a televised Carnegie Hall concert of spirituals conducted by James Levine.

Betty Jackson King (1928-1994): Spring Intermezzo, fr Four Seasonal Sketches; Helen Walker-King, vn; Gregory Walker, p. Leonard 339

On today’s date in 1929, a chamber trio by Aaron Copland, Vitebsk, premiered at Town Hall in New York City. Copland said it was based on a Jewish folk tune from a Russian village called Vitebsk that he had once heard used in a play.

Two string players from the famous Belgian Pro Arte Quartet and the great German pianist Walter Gieseking were booked for the premiere. Despite the distinguished performers, the performance came off as something of a slapstick comedy.

According to one of Copland’s friends present that night, the heavy-set cellist accidentally knocked over the violinist’s music stand when he came on stage, and while bending over to retrieve his music knocked over his own stand, strewing music all over the stage. Then, just as he began Copland’s piece, his cello string snapped with a loud, comically timed twang.

Years after the premiere, when Copland visited the Soviet Union, Russian audiences expressed amazement that any American composer would choose to name a piece after Vitebsk, which, rather than a quaint Russian village like the one evoked in the musical Fiddler on the Roof, was in fact a large industrial complex resembling Pittsburgh or Cleveland.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Vitebsk; Gregory Ellis, violin; Christopher Marwood, cello; Michael Collins, piano ASV 1081

Today’s date in 1621 marks the passing of a famous German composer of the Renaissance period, born Michael Schultze, or Schultheiss, but who Latinized his name to Praetorius, and under that name became one of the most popular composers of his time.

Praetorius died 64 years before the birth of J. S. Bach, the great German composer of the Baroque age. Praetorius was the son of a Lutheran minister, and like Bach, wrote a good deal of Lutheran church music, and his 1609 setting of the German hymn tune “Es Ist ein Ros Entsprungen” (“Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming”) is still sung by choirs today.

But Praetorius’ most enduring contribution to music was secular, not sacred. In 1612, he collected and harmonized more than 300 instrumental Renaissance dance tunes and published them in a compendium he titled Terpsichore, after the name of the Greek muse of the dance.

Praetorius included a list of instruments that could be used in performing these dances but does not specify which ones should play each dance. Not to worry, since Praetorius also published a work titled Syntagma Musicum, or The Syntax of Music, a detailed history and description of all known musical instruments from biblical times to the present — so take your pick!

Michael Praetorius (1571-1621): Dances from Terpsichore (New London Consort; Philip Picket, cond.) Decca/L’oiseau-lyre 4759101

On today’s date in 1880, a quartet for piano and strings was premiered in Paris, with its composer, 24-year-old Gabriel Fauré, at the keyboard. Now in 1880, many Parisians knew two things about Fauré: first, that he was a talented pupil of Camille Saint-Saens; and second, that he had been engaged for years to Marianne Viardot, the daughter of legendary French singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia, and that Marianne had suddenly broken off the engagement, leaving the young man heartbroken.

French pianist Marguerite Long described the quartet’s slow movement as “the sorrowful echo of the breakup of Fauré’s engagement with Marianne Viardot,” reporting she could not hold back her tears when she once performed the work with Fauré turning pages for her.

But Faure’s friend and biographer Émile Vuillermoz would dismiss the suggestion with a loud French snort, protesting that “Fauré’s reserve always prevented him from following the example of Romantic artists who allowed the whole world to witness their personal frustrations. … He would never have allowed his private feelings to become a public spectacle!”

In any case, Fauré’s first Piano Quartet is now regarded as one of his early masterpieces, so perhaps it’s both: a breakup and break-away work.

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Piano Quartet No. 1 (Domus Ensemble) Hyperion 66166

T.J. Anderson was the first Black composer to hold the title of composer-in-residence with an American symphony orchestra. That was in Atlanta, when Robert Shaw was the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. For Atlanta, Anderson orchestrated Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha, resulting in the first full staging of that 1911 work, about 60 years after it was written, a performance that was broadcast on NPR in 1972.

In addition to orchestrating Joplin’s opera, Anderson wrote a few of his own, including Soldier Boy and Walker, which was based on the life of David Walker, an anti-slavery activist.

One of Anderson’s concert works, Squares, was premiered on today’s date in 1966 by the Oklahoma Symphony and later recorded by the Baltimore Symphony for inclusion in a now-classic set of recordings issued by Columbia Records in 1970, The Black Composer Series.

Squares is abstract and modernist, perhaps reflecting Anderson’s academic background of composition studies at the esteemed Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and with French composer Darius Milhaud at the Aspen School of Music. Before his retirement in 1990, Anderson also taught composition at several universities from Massachusetts to California.

T.J. Anderson (b. 1928): Squares (Baltimore Symphony, Paul Freeman, cond.) Sony 86215

Just to show that political spin and manipulation are nothing new, consider this tune by Franz Joseph Haydn, first heard on today’s date in 1797, which happened to be the birthday of Franz II, the Hapsburg Emperor.

And so an Austrian poet was commissioned to write some verses that would inspire patriotic support for the emperor, since Austria was at war with Napoleon Bonaparte at the time. Haydn was asked to set the verses into music.

The new song premiered in the emperor’s presence at Vienna’s Burgtheater, between a comic opera and a tragic ballet. But contemporary spinmeisters saw to it that copies had been sent to all playhouses, opera houses and concerts halls in the Hapsburg Monarchy, so that it could be heard during any performances occurring on Feb. 12. After the defeat of Napoleon, Haydn’s little tune became the Austrian national anthem.

Long before that happened, Haydn recycled his hit tune into one of his string quartets — a work now called the Emperor Quartet. And long after that happened — 40 years after Haydn's death, in fact — a German nationalist poet wrote new verses for the tune, which began “Deutschland, Deutschland, ueber alles.”

But that’s another story entirely.

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Emperor Quartet; Emerson Quartet DG 427 657

On today’s date in 1840, a new opera by Gaetano Donizetti debuted at the Opéra Comique in Paris. This was La Fille du Régiment, or The Daughter of the Regiment. Other operas by the popular Italian composer were already playing in Paris, and others were scheduled. Despite being tailor-made to Parisian tastes, The Daughter of the Regiment was not well received.

Apparently, French composers, Berlioz among them, felt threatened by the Donizetti blitz.

“Monsieur Donizetti seems to treat us like a conquered country,” Berlioz wrote. “It is a veritable invasion. One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of Donizetti!”

Well, eventually, Donizetti did win over French hearts and minds. And it’s ironic to note that 100 years after its 1840 premiere, Paris was indeed an occupied country. In 1940, German tanks rolled into Paris, and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, patriotic French soprano Lily Pons used her starring role in a revival of Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment to express her solidarity with the French Resistance. She added a rousing version of La Marseillaise to the finale of Donizetti’s score, which brought sympathetic American audiences to their feet.

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848): La Fille du Regiment, excerpt; Joan Sutherland, soprano; Covent Garden Orchestra; Richard Bonynge, cond. London 414 520

Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836) (arr. Berlioz): La Marseillaise; Jessye Norman, soprano; Paris Orchestra; Semyon Bychkov, cond. Philips 422 922

What do you see when you hear music? That’s an odd question, perhaps, but sometimes composers confess that particular places, persons and scenes play a role in how music is created.

On today’s date in 1994, in San Antonio, Texas, for example, a new symphony for wind ensemble by the American composer David Maslanka received its premiere performance during a convention of the Texas Music Educators Association.

In program notes, Maslanka confessed two major inspirations: The first was “the powerful voice of the Earth that comes to me from my adopted western Montana, and the high plains and mountains of central Idaho.” The second, he said, was his fascination with President Abraham Lincoln. Maslanka explained that reading about a Civil War brass band playing the “Old Hundreth” hymn tune at sunset as Lincoln’s coffin was transferred to a waiting funeral train was an image that haunted him.

“For me,” Maslanka wrote, “Lincoln’s life and death are as critical today as they were more than a century ago. … My impulse through this music is to speak to the fundamental human issues of transformation and rebirth in this chaotic time.”

David Maslanka (1943-2017): Symphony No. 4; Dallas Wind Symphony; Jerry Junkin, cond. Reference Recordings RR-108

Composers have always been fascinated by the sea. If you’re curious, Spotify offers a playlist of 50 sea-inspired classical works from composers ranging from Mendelssohn to Debussy to Takemitsu.

On today’s date in 2012, conductor Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony premiered a new sea-inspired work by London-born composer Anna Clyne, who was then the orchestra’s composer-in-residence. Clyne’s piece, Night Ferry, was "music of voyages, from stormy darkness to enchanted worlds,” as she described. “It is music of the conjurer and setter of tides, the guide through the ungovernable and dangerous.”

The Chicago Symphony took Night Ferry on tour that year, with Pacific Coast stops in San Francisco and San Diego, and also, perhaps for thematic contrast, to Palm Desert, California, for good measure.

Clyne is bit of a traveler herself. She studied music formally at the University of Edinburgh, then at the Manhattan School of Music. In addition to being the composer-in-residence in Chicago, she has held similar positions with Orchestre National d'Île-de-France, the Baltimore Symphony, the Berkeley Symphony and, coming full circle, the Edinburgh-based Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Anna Clyne (b. 1980): Night Ferry; Chicago Symphony; Richardo Muti, cond. CSO Re-Sound 9011401 (live recording, February 2012)

For a magic golden ring, the dwarf Alberich was willing to renounce love to become master of the world. At least, that’s the story in Richard Wagner’s four operas The Ring of the Nibelungen, which premiered in 1876 at Wagner’s specially constructed theater in Bayreuth, Germany.

And for $1 million, Wagner was prepared to renounce not only Bayreuth, but Germany, and settle in America, offering in exchange the premiere and exclusive performance rights to his latest opera, Parsifal.

That was the offer Wagner outlined in a letter to his American dentist on today’s date in 1880. Wagner’s wife, Cosima, recorded in her diary that Wagner seemed obsessed with idea of settling in Minnesota, of all places.

Dr. Newell Jenkins dutifully passed the proposal on to wealthy music patrons in the states. But even the most ardent Wagnerians among them said that if his operas couldn’t sell in Germany, they wouldn’t fare any better on the banks of the Mississippi.

Well, Jenkins broke the news that a) the million dollars was not going to materialize, and b) there were such things as mosquitoes and blizzards in Minnesota. Wagner prudently decided to give Germany one more chance.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Das Rheingold, excerpt; soloists and Bavarian Radio Symphony; Bernard Haitink, cond. EMI 54633

Parsifal, excerpt; Netherlands Radio Philharmonic; Edo de Waart, cond. BMG 44786