Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Some classical music snobs look down their nose at film scores, considering them less “serious” than “art” music written for the concert hall.

Aaron Copland, for one, deplored this attitude. He admired the work of composers like Bernard Herrmann, Alex North, David Raksin and Elmer Bernstein, whose successful Hollywood careers earned them financial rewards on the West Coast, if not the respect of the snootier East Coast music critics. Copland had spent some time in Hollywood, and knew what was involved in completing a film score on time and on budget.

On today’s date in 1940, at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, the press was invited to a special preview showing of a new film version of Our Town. To match Thornton Wilder’s nostalgic stage play about American life in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, Copland’s score employed harmonies suggestive of old New England church hymns.

For once, audiences and critics were impressed, and Copland quickly arranged an Our Town concert suite, which premiered on a CBS Radio broadcast in June 1940. He reworked this suite for its first public performance by the Boston Pops and Leonard Bernstein in May 1944.

Music Played in Today's Program

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Our Town Suite; Saint Louis Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; BMG 61699

Synopsis

Stephen Sondheim was 32 years old when his musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened on Broadway on today’s date in 1962. The best seats would have cost you $8.60, but decent tickets were available for three bucks in those days — and, much to Sondheim’s relief, New Yorkers snapped them up in short order.

The trial run of Forum in Washington, D.C. had been a near disaster, and, as this was the first major musical for which Sondheim wrote both the lyrics and the music, he had a lot riding on the show’s success.

Audiences and critics alike loved the over-the-top fusion of an ancient Roman comedy by Plautus with the kick-in-the-pants conventions of American Vaudeville, spiced up with a liberal dash of Burlesque dancers in Roman costumes. As the New York Times review put it, the cast included six courtesans who “are not obliged to do much, but have a great deal to show.”

Forum won several Tony Awards in 1962, including Best Musical. Even so, while Sondheim’s lyrics were praised, his music was barely mentioned; his skill as a composer were not yet fully appreciated. That would occur several years — and several shows — later.

Music Played in Today's Program

Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021): A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; 1996 Broadway Cast; Angel 52223

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1825, Italian composer Antonio Salieri breathed his last in Vienna.

Gossip circulated that in his final dementia, Salieri blabbed something about poisoning Mozart. Whether he meant it figuratively or literally, or even said anything of the sort, didn’t seem to matter and the gossip became a Romantic legend.

Modern food detectives suggested that if Mozart was poisoned, an undercooked pork chop might be to blame. In one of his last letters to his wife, Mozart mentions his anticipation of feasting on a fat chop his cook had secured for his dinner!

Twenty-five years after Salieri’s death, on today’s date in 1850, Austro-Hungarian conductor Anton Seidl was born in Budapest. Seidl became a famous conductor of both the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic. It was Seidl who conducted the premiere of Dvořák’s New World Symphony.

In 1898, at 47, Seidl died suddenly, apparently from ptomaine poisoning. Perhaps it was the shad roe he ate at home, or that sausage from Fleischmann’s restaurant? An autopsy revealed serious gallstone and liver ailments, so maybe Seidl’s last meal, whatever it might have been, was as innocent of blame as poor old Salieri.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Symphony No. 25; St. Martin’s Academy; Neville Marriner, conductor; Fantasy 104/105

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): Symphony No. 9 (From the New World); Vienna Philharmonic; Rafael Kubelik, conductor; Decca 466 994

Antonio Salieri (1750-1825): La Folia Variations; London Mozart Players; Matthias Bamert, conductor; Chandos 9877

Synopsis

Today’s date in 1913 marks the birthday of the American composer and musicologist George Perle, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1986.

In a 1985 interview, Perle vividly recalled his first musical experience, an encounter with Chopin’s etude in F minor, played by an aunt.

“It literally paralyzed me,” said Perle. “I was extraordinarily moved and acutely embarrassed at the same time, because there were other people in the room, and I could tell that nobody else was having the same sort of reaction I was.”

In his own lyrical and well-crafted music, Perle employed what he called “12-tone tonality,” a middle path between rigorous atonality and traditional, tonal-based music.

Whether tonal or not, for Perle, music was both a logical and an emotional language. Perle once made this telling distinction between the English language and the language of music:

“Reading a novel is altogether different from reading a newspaper, but it’s all language. If you go to a concert, you have some kind of reaction to it. If the newspaper is Chinese, you can’t understand it. But if you hear something by a Chinese composer, if it’s playful, for instance, you understand.”

Music Played in Today's Program

George Perle (1915-2009): Serenade No. 3; Richard Goode, piano; Music Today Ensemble; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Nonesuch 79108

Synopsis

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”

Well, the usual reply is, “by practicing!”

But back in 1891, Peter Tchaikovsky would have probably answered, “by ship” — since he had, in fact, sailed from Europe to conduct several of his pieces at the hall’s gala opening concerts. The first concert in Carnegie Hall, or as they called it back then, “The Music Hall,” occurred on today’s date in 1891, and included a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Coronation March, conducted by the composer.

The review in the New York Herald offered these comments: “Tchaikovsky’s march … is simple, strong and sober, but not surprisingly original. The leading theme recalls the ‘Hallelujah chorus,’ and the treatment of the first part is Handelian … of the deep passion, the complexity and poetry which mark other works of Tchaikovsky, there is no sign in this march.”

Oh well, in the days that followed, Tchaikovsky would conduct other works of “complexity and poetry,” including his Piano Concerto No. 1.

Tchaikovsky kept a travel diary and recorded these impressions of New York: “It is a huge city, not beautiful, but very original. In Chicago, I’m told, they have gone even further — one of the houses there has 21 floors!”

Music Played in Today's Program

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Coronation March; Boston Pops; John Williams, conductor; Philips 420 804

Orchestral Suite No. 3; New Philharmonia; Antal Dorati, conductor; Philips 464 747

Synopsis

At Queen’s Hall in London, on today’s date in 1920, conductor Albert Coates led the premiere of the revised version of A London Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams.

A longer version of this symphony had premiered six years earlier, and Vaughan Williams would continue to tinker with this work, on and off, for decades.

“The London Symphony is past mending,” wrote Vaughan Williams in 1951, “though with all its faults I love it still; indeed, it is my favorite.”

For most music lovers, Vaughan Williams means English folk tunes or hymns woven into lush works for strings, or musical pictures of English countryside. But it was a city view that inspired his London Symphony, described by Vaughan Williams himself as “a good view of the river and a bridge and three great electric-light chimneys and a sunset.”

In fact, you could call Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 2 a “sunset” symphony. Its final pages were inspired by an H.G. Wells novel describing a night passage on the Thames to the open sea: “To run down the Thames so is to run one’s hand over the pages in the book of England from end to end ... The river passes ... London passes … England passes …“

Music Played in Today's Program

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Symphony No. 2 (A London Symphony); London Symphony Orchestra; Richard Hickox, conductor; Chanos 9902

Synopsis

Pleyel and Company was a French piano firm founded in 1807 by composer Ignace Pleyel. The firm provided pianos for Chopin, and ran an intimate Parisian 300-seat concert hall called the Salle Pleyel — the “Pleyel room” in English, where Chopin once performed.

In the 20th century, a roomier Salle Pleyel comprising some 3,000 seats was built, and it was there on today’s date in 1929 that a new concerto for an old instrument had its premiere performance. This was the Concert Champêtre (Pastoral Concerto) for harpsichord and orchestra by French composer Francis Poulenc, with the Paris Symphony conducted by Pierre Monteux, and with Wanda Landowska as the soloist.

“A harpsichord concerto in a hall that seats thousands?” you may ask. “How could anyone hear the harpsichord?” Well, the answer is that Madame Landowska performed on a beefier, metal-framed harpsichord built in the 20th century rather than the quieter wood-framed instruments used in the 18th. Landowska’s modern harpsichord was specially-constructed for her by — who else? — Pleyel and Company.

Landowska needed those extra decibels because Poulenc’s concerto was scored for harpsichord and a large modern orchestra, with winds, percussion, and a large brass section that even included a tuba!

Music Played in Today's Program

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Concert Champêtre (Pastoral Concerto); Aimée Van de Wiele, harpsichord; Paris Conservatory Orchestra; Georges Prêtre, condcutor; EMI Classics 69446 or 95584

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1692, London audiences were treated to lavish theatrical entertainment with The Fairy Queen.

This show was loosely based on Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play already 100 years old in 1692. To make it more in line with contemporary taste, characters were added or cut, and scenes shifted around to such an extent that Shakespeare, were he alive to see it, would be hard put to recognize much of his original concept. Musical sequences were also expanded, and the producers hired the leading British composer of the day to write them. His name was Henry Purcell, and The Fairy Queen would turn out to be the biggest success of his career.

In addition to writing the show’s songs and dances, Purcell provided music to entertain the audience as they entered and exited the theater or stretched their legs during intermission.

The good news is no expense was spared in the show’s production. The bad news was the show’s producers barely recovered their expenses. Subsequent productions, they decided, would be less flashy, but, recognizing the quality of Purcell’s music, they signed him for their next extravaganza.

Music Played in Today's Program

Henry Purcell (1659-1695): The Fairy Queen; Le Concert des Nations; Jordi Savall, conductor; Auvidis 8583

Synopsis

Today’s date marks two anniversaries in the life of American composer, teacher and organist Leo Sowerby, who lived from 1895 to 1968. Sowerby was born May 1 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and on his 32nd birthday in 1927, was hired as the permanent organist and choirmaster at St. James’ Church in Chicago, where he remained for the next 35 years.

Sowerby wrote hundreds of pieces of church music for organ and chorus, plus chamber and symphonic works, which are only recently receiving proper attention.

It’s not that Sowerby was neglected during his lifetime — he won many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1946 — but many seemed put off by both his unabashedly Romantic style and his unprepossessing physical appearance. American composer Ned Rorem, who took theory lessons from Sowerby, put it this way:

“Leo Sowerby was … of my parents’ generation, a bachelor, reddish-complexioned and milky skinned, chain smoker of Fatima cigarettes, unglamorous and non-mysterious, likable with a perpetual worried frown, overweight and wearing rimless glasses, earthy, practical, interested in others even when they were talentless; a stickler for basic training, Sowerby was the first composer I knew and the last thing a composer was supposed to resemble.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Leo Sowerby (1895-1968): Classic Concerto; David Mulbury, organ; Fairfield Orchestra; John Welsh, conductor; Naxos 8.559028

Synopsis

Today we have a tale of jealousy to tell — the tale of Claude and Mary and Maurice and Georgette — related to the premiere, on today’s date in 1902, of Pelléas et Mélisande.

This new opera by Claude Debussy was based on a play about jealousy by the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. Debussy had worked on his opera for years with no objection from Maeterlinck until late in 1901, when Debussy announced that the Scottish soprano Mary Garden would sing the role of Mélisande.

Suddenly, two weeks before the premiere, Maeterlinck began saying the opera was “alien” to him, that he had lost artistic control over his own work, that he hoped the opera would flop.

Well, that accounts for Claude and Mary and Maurice, but what about Georgette? Turns out she was the real reason behind Maeterlinck’s objections. Georgette was a soprano — and Maeterlinck’s mistress. When Debussy refused to even consider her for the lead role in his new opera, Maeterlinck’s smear campaign began.

He was not alone — eminent French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, jealous as any character in Debussy’s opera, delayed his customary vacation abroad to stay in Paris, and, as he put it, “to speak ill of Pelléas.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Pelléas et Mélisande; Cleveland Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, conductor; Cleveland 9375