Composers Datebook – Details, episodes & analysis

Under the old Julian calendar in use in Czarist Russia, on today’s date in 1861, Romantic composer Anton Arensky was born in Novgorod. If you prefer, you can also celebrate Arensky’s birthday on July 12 — the same date under the modern Gregorian calendar, but Arensky was such a Romantic that the Old Style date seems, well, more appropriate somehow.

Arensky studied with Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov, and admired the music of Tchaikovsky. Arensky taught at the Moscow Conservatory and published two books: Manual of Harmony and A Handbook of Musical Forms. His own students included a number of famous Russian composers, including Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Glière.

Arensky wrote three operas, two symphonies, concertos, chamber works and suites for two pianos — but it’s his Piano Trio in D minor that gets performed and recorded more often than any of his other works.

A victim of tuberculosis, Arensky spent the last years of his life in a Finnish sanatorium. He died young — at just 44 — in 1906.

Anton Arensky (1861-1906): Piano Trio No. 1; Rembrandt Trio; Dorian 90146

The reign of the Roman emperor Nero, notorious for his horrific deeds, was chronicled by the historian Tacitus. His account of the rise of the courtesan Poppea from Nero’s mistress to his empress, provides the plot of one of the operas written by the 17th century Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi.

Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea was first performed in Venice at the Teatro Sanctae Giovanni e Paolo in the autumn of 1643.

The first performance of Monteverdi’s Poppea in modern times had to wait until 1913, when the French composer Vincent d’Indy presented his arrangement of Poppea in Paris. In America and Britain, Poppea was first staged in 1927, at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and at Oxford University in England. It wasn’t until today’s date in 1962 that a full professional staging of Poppea occurred at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, in a version prepared and conducted by Raymond Leppard.

Monteverdi did not prescribe specific vocal ranges for the characters, and since there was no standardized orchestra in the 17th century, it was customary back then to simply give a list of some suggested instruments and leave it to the performers to decide who played what and when. Therefore, any modern performance of a Monteverdi opera is always somebody’s “version” of the surviving notes, based on educated guesswork and the available performers.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): L’Incoronazione di Poppea; soloists; Vienna Concentus Music Vienna; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor; Teldec 42547

A decidedly un-politically correct opera had its premiere at London’s Covent Garden on today’s date in 1905: L’Oracolo or The Oracle by the Italian composer Franco Leoni. Here’s a witty one-sentence précis of the opera prepared by Nicolas Slonimsky for his chronology Music Since 1900:

“L’Oracolo, an opera in one long act, dealing with multiplex villainy in San Francisco’s Chinatown, wherein a wily opium-den keeper kidnaps the child of the uncle of a girl he covets, kills her young lover, and is in the end strangled by the latter’s father, with a local astrologer delivering remarkably accurate oracles; an Italianate score tinkling with tiny bells, booming with deep gongs, and bubbling with orientalistic pentatonicisms.”

Another wag described L’Oracolo as “Puccini-and-water,” suggesting that if Puccini were whisky, Leoni music was definitely a less potent brew.

But when a touring Italian opera company announced a performance of L’Oracolo in San Francisco in 1937, the city’s Asian residents protested, demanding they cut the most racially offensive scenes or, better yet, stage a different opera altogether. A compromise was reached, whereby the House manager preceded the performance with a speech assuring the capacity audience that the opera’s locale and action were pure fiction, and bore no resemblance to San Francisco’s Chinatown past or present.

Franco Leoni (1864-1937): L’Oracolo; Tito Gobbi, baritone; National Philharmonic; Richard Bonynge, conductor; London OSA-12107; LP

According to Emerson, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Well, we’re not sure if composer Arnold Schoenberg ever read Emerson, but we think the 20th-century Austrian composer must have shared this principle with the 19th-century American essayist. Just when many people had Schoenberg comfortably pigeon-holed as an atonal composer, he went and wrote a big tonal piece, resolutely set in the key of G minor.

In the 1940’s, Schoenberg’s publisher asked him to write a piece for high school or amateur wind band. The work Schoenberg finished during the summer of 1943 was entitled “Theme and Variations,” and was described by its composer — with his customary modesty — as “one of those compositions which one writes in order to enjoy one’s own virtuosity and… to give a certain group of music lovers something better to play.”

Schoenberg’s music proved a little too difficult for high school bands, however, so its first performance was given on today’s date in 1946 by the Goldman Band, America’s top wind ensemble of that day, at a Central Park concert in New York City conducted by Richard Franko Goldman, an enthusiastic supporter of new works for band.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): Theme and Variations; Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble; Harlan D. Parker, conductor; Naxos 8.570403

In the summer of 1912, the Vienna Philharmonic presented a week-long Music Festival that offered three “Ninths” — Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 conducted by Felix Weingartner, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 conducted by Artur Nikisch, and, on today’s date, the world premiere of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, conducted by Bruno Walter.

Mahler had died the previous year, and the Viennese public greeted the posthumous premiere of his last complete work with a roar of applause — and decidedly mixed reviews. The work’s elegiac opening won over most of the professional critics, but many were frankly puzzled by some of the symphony’s raucous middle movements.

Bruno Walter, the Mahler protégé who conducted the premiere, was singled out for praise, however. Walter made two famous recordings of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9: The first made live during a January 16, 1938, concert of the Vienna Philharmonic. On January 16, 1961 — exactly 23 years to the day after that 1938 recording — Walter began making a stereo recording of Mahler’s Ninth at the American Legion Hall in Hollywood, with the Columbia Symphony.

Walter was 84 in 1961, and despite repeated pleas from the control room, couldn’t stop himself from vigorously stamping his foot 17 seconds into the second movement, Laendler — a thump not written in Mahler’s score, but now part of Walter’s classic second recording.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 9; Columbia Symphony; Bruno Walter, conductor; Sony 64452

It was on this day in 1913 that the French Academy of Fine Arts — for the first time in its history — presented its highest award, the Prix de Rome, to a woman. The honor was awarded to Lili Boulanger, who was just 19 at the time. She was born in Paris in 1893, the younger sister of Nadia Boulanger, who would become the most famous teacher of composition in the 20th century, numbering an amazing array of famous American composers among her students, ranging from Aaron Copland to Philip Glass.

Nadia’s sister Lili, however, suffered from poor health. Her tragically short career was interrupted by World War I, when she volunteered to nurse wounded soldiers. She died before the great conflict was over, on March 15, 1918, at 24.

Nearer to our own time, another woman, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, made history when she became the first woman composer to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music. That was in 1983, and the piece was her Symphony No. 1. Born in Miami, Florida, in 1939, she studied composition with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at Juilliard, and accomplished another first by becoming the first woman to earn the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition at the famous school. Her Symphony No. 3 was commissioned in 1992 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic.

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918): Hymne au Soleil; New London Chamber Choir; James Wood, conductor; Hyperion 66726

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Symphony No. 3; Louisville Orchestra; James Sedares, conductor; Koch International 7278

On today’s date in 1989, NBC transmitted the pilot episode of a sitcom that 180 episodes later would be recognized as a TV classic.

In composing, as in comedy, timing is everything, so when comedian Jerry Seinfeld approached composer Jonathan Wolff about writing the intro music for Seinfeld, Wolff knew it was time for something a little different than a generic sitcom theme.

“When he called me, Jerry described to me the problem he was having: the opening and closing credits for this new show were to be Jerry doing stand-up material in front of an audience. He tells jokes, people laugh. And he wanted unique, signature theme music to go with it, [so I said] how about this? … We treat your human voice telling jokes as the melody of the Seinfeld theme! My job will be to accompany you in a way that’s fun and quirky but does not interfere with the audio of your standup routine,” Wolff recalled.

That meant the Seinfeld intro would change each week, with Wolff performing on slap bass themes and variations that danced before, after, and around the cadence of Jerry’s punchlines like, as Wolff put it, “a vaudeville rim shot.”

Jonathan Wolff (b. 1958): Theme, from Seinfeld; Water Tower Music digital download

On today’s date in 1876, America was celebrating its Centennial, and the place to be was in Philadelphia, where a Centennial Exhibition was in progress.  This was the first World’s Fair to be held in the United States. It drew 9 million visitors–this at a time when the entire population of the U.S. was 46 million.

The Exhibition had opened in May with a concert attended by President and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. After “Hail to the Chief,” the orchestra premiered a specially commissioned “Centennial March” by the famous German composer Richard Wagner. Wagner was paid $5000 for the commission, an astronomically high fee in those days. Wagner did not bother to attend the Philadelphia premiere, and privately told friends back: “Between you and me, the best thing about the march was the $5000 they paid me.”

The following month, the French composer Jacques Offenbach arrived to conduct his music at a specially constructed open-air pavilion. “They asked my permission to call it ‘Offenbach Gardens,’” the composer later wrote. “How could I refuse?” The concertmaster of Offenbach’s orchestra, by the way, was a 21-year old violinist from Washington, D.C. by the name of John Philip Sousa.

Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883) — American Centennial March (Philip Jones Ensemble; Elgar Howarth, cond.) London 414 149

The piano became the dominant keyboard instrument in Mozart’s lifetime in the late 18th century. Before that, the harpsichord had ruled. But for more than a hundred years after Mozart’s day, the harpsichord seemed as dead as the dodo, and even the great harpsichord works of Bach and other early 18th century masters were always played on the piano — that is, until Wanda Landowska came on the scene.

This indomitable woman was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1879, and single-handedly brought the harpsichord back to life. It was on today’s date in 1927 that she inaugurated a historic series of harpsichord concerts at her summer home near Paris — and, two years later, in 1929, Landowska premiered the Concert Champêtre, by Francis Poulenc, a brand new harpsichord concerto written specially for her.

Very much in the spirit of Landowska, the contemporary composer and performer Barbara Harbach is in the vanguard of today’s advocates for the harpsichord.

A passionate advocate for new music, she has recorded several compact discs of 20th Century Harpsichord Music for the Gasparo label, featuring works by American composers from Samuel Adler to Ellen Taafe Zwillich.

J. S. Bach (1685-1750): Little Prelude; Wanda Landowska, harpsichord; Pearl 9489

Barbara Harbach (b. 1946): Cante Flamenco, from Tres Danzas para Clavecin; Barbara Harbach, harpsichord; Gasparo 290

On this date in 1723, churchgoers in Leipzig were offered some festive music along with the gospel readings and sermon. The vocal and instrumental music was pulled together from various sources, some old, some newly-composed, and crafted into a fresh, unified work, the church cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben — which in English would be “heart and voice and thought and action.” The idea was that text and music would complement and comment on that day’s scripture readings and sermon.

Now this sort of thing was not all that uncommon back then for the hard-working composer Johann Sebastian Bach. On average Bach would prepare and present around 50 church cantatas a year, and his cantata No. 147, presented on July 2, 1723, concluded with a catchy melody that would be revived to great effect 200 years later.

In 1926, the concluding choral section of Bach’s cantata, Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude in the original German, was arranged by the British pianist Dame Myra Hess and given an English title, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. It became a popular piano recital selection, and, over time, a very popular piece to play at weddings — even though Bach’s original cantata text had nothing at all to do with tying the knot.

J.S. Bach (1627-1750): Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring; Celia Nicklin, oboe; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor; Warner 975562