Composers Datebook

American Public Media

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MUSIC HISTORY
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Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.

15 HR AGO

Adamo at the opera

Synopsis It might seem farfetched that Winona Ryder, Emma Watson and Charles Ives might have anything in common, but there is a connection of sorts: Ryder appeared in a 1994 film based on Louisa May Alcott’s classic 19th century novel, Little Women, Emma Watson appears in the 2019 remake and, in 1913, American composer Charles Ives composed “The Alcotts,” the second movement of his Concord Sonata for piano, which evokes Louisa May, her novel and her real-life family and friends, who included the New England Transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau. Set during the American Civil War, Alcott’s Little Women chronicles the coming of age of four young women in Concord, Massachusetts. The story of has charmed readers and film-goers around the world. Ives’s music, like Alcott’s novel, is nostalgic, affectionate, and quietly powerful. Contemporary American composer, Mark Adamo, crafted an opera based on Alcott’s Little Women which premiered on today’s date in 1998 at the Opera Studio of Houston Grand Opera. After its premiere, that company’s general director, David Gockley, pronounced Adamo’s opera “destined to become an American classic,” and since its successful Houston Opera revival in 2000, Adamo’s Little Women has been staged again and again, to equal acclaim from audiences and critics. Music Played in Today's Program Charles Ives (1874-1954): The Alcotts from Concord Sonata; Anthony de Mare, piano; CRI 837 Mark Adamo (b. 1962): Little Women; Houston Grand Opera; Patrick Summers, conductor; Ondine 988

2 min
1 DAY AGO

Verdi's 'Simon Boccanegra'

Synopsis The stage directions read: “The garden of the Grimaldi Palace outside Genoa. On the left side, the palace, directly in front, the sea. Dawn is breaking.” The evocative music is by Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi, the prelude to his opera Simon Boccanegra, which premiered on today’s date in 1857 in Venice. Despite its shimmering prelude, his new opera was not well received. The critics felt it was one of those works which “does not make its effect immediately … It is written with the utmost exquisite craftsmanship but needs to be studied in all its details.” Verdi, a practical man of the theater, knew what that sort of review really meant. He wrote: “I thought I’d done something passable, but it seems I was mistaken. The score is not possible as it stands. It is too sad, too depressing. I shall need to redo it to give it more contrast and variety, more life.” The revised version of Simon Boccanegra premiered 24 years later, in 1881, with additions and alterations to the story by Arrigo Boito, the brilliant librettist for Verdi’s final operas, Otello and Falstaff. Despite the revisions, Boccanegra remained one of the least popular of Verdi’s works for many decades. In the 1930s, it was revised successfully at the Metropolitan Opera in New York with an all-star cast, and since then, audiences have had more opportunities to study Verdi’s score sufficiently to appreciate its “exquisite craftsmanship, contrast, variety and life.” Music Played in Today's Program Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): Simon Boccanegra; La Scala Chorus and Orchestra; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 449 752

2 min
2 DAYS AGO

Ruggles and Cowell anniversaries

Synopsis Today’s date marks the birth anniversaries of two major 20th century American composers: Carl Ruggles was born in East Marion, Massachusetts on today’s date in 1876, and Henry Cowell, in Menlo Park, California in 1897. Ruggles was a tough old bird, who wrote a small handful of tough, uncompromising musical works. He was the conductor of a symphony orchestra in Winona, Minnesota from 1908-1912, a teacher at the University of Miami from 1937-1943, and a talented painter to boot. His first music to be performed in public was A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, an apt description of Ruggles himself, a crusty loner who once claimed the only man he ever met who could out-swear him was his friend and colleague Charles Ives. He eventually retired to an old schoolhouse in Arlington, Vermont. Ruggles’ striking orchestral works, with titles like Sun-Treader and Men and Mountains, are occasionally revived, but he remains just a name for most 21st-century concert-goers. Henry Cowell was a much more genial, out-going sort: a composer, performer and teacher who wrote a great deal of music, ranging from the dissonant and experimental to the beguilingly lyrical. He was an early apostle of what we now call world music, and in 1956 undertook a world tour, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and the US State Department, which included lengthy stays in Iran, India and Japan, and resulted in him writing a number of musical works incorporating ideas and musical instruments from those countries. Music Played in Today's Program Carl Ruggles (1897-1971): Sun-Treader; Cleveland Orchestra; Christoph von Dohnanyi, conductor; Cleveland Orchestra 75th Anniversary CD Edition 093-75 Henry Cowell (1897-1965): Homage to Iran; Leopold Avakian, violin; Mitchell Andrews, piano; Basil Bahar, Persian drum CRI 836

2 min
3 DAYS AGO

Rachmaninoff's 'Vespers'

Synopsis On today's date in 1915, the Moscow Synodal Choir gave the premiere performance of a new choral work by Sergei Rachmaninoff. In Russian, the work was titled Vsenoshchnoe Bdeniye, which translates as All-Night Vigil Service or more commonly as Vespers. This was Rachmaninoff’s take on traditional liturgical melodies of the Easter Orthodox church. Rachmaninoff himself was not particularly religious, but by 1915, all Russians, religious or not, perhaps found solace in such music as the staggering casualties of the Russian Imperial troops during World War I became apparent. Vespers was warmly received in Moscow and repeated five times within a month of its premiere. But in 1917, the Bolshevik revolution transformed Imperial Russia into a non-religious Soviet state. It remained pretty much forgotten until 1965, when Alexander Sveshnikov made the first recording of the work with the USSR State Academic Russian Choir for the Soviet record label Melodiya. Ironically, that Melodiya LP was never available for sale within the USSR, and was only issued as an export item to the West. It quickly became a best-seller, and Western audiences were astonished by both the emotional power of the work and the low bass voices required to perform it. Even by Russian standards, the bass parts are low. When shown the manuscript score back in 1915, the work’s original conductor shook his head, and said, “Now where on earth are we to find such basses? They are as rare as asparagus at Christmas!” Music Played in Today's Program Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Vespers (All-Nght Vigil); USSR State Academic Russian Choir; Alexander Sveshnikov, conductor; Pipeline Music custom CD (from Amazon.com)

2 min
4 DAYS AGO

Tabloid Paganini?

Synopsis If TikTok influencers were around in Paris in 1831, they would probably have offered a breathless special edition report on a concert that occurred on today’s date that year. Everybody who was anybody was there: from the literary world, French novelist Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables, don’t you know, and writer Alfred de Mussett, who they say was living in sin with that scandalous baroness, who went by the name of George Sand. Oh, and German poet Heinrich Heine was there, and from the music world, three of the leading opera composers of the day: foreign-born Giacomo Meyerbeer and Luigi Cherubini, and popular native son, Jacques Halevy. And who could miss the dashing, lion-maned Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt also seated in the theater? They were all there to witness the Parisian debut of the most charismatic performer of his time, Italian violinist Nicolo Paganini. It was whispered that the fourth string on his violin was made from the intestine of his mistress, murdered at his own hand, and that he had spent 20 years in prison for the crime, with his violin his sole companion. Others hinted he had actually made a pact with Satan, trading his immortal soul for superhuman virtuosity! He looked like death warmed over, thin and gaunt, but played like a man possessed. Music Played in Today's Program Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840): Caprice No. 10; James Ehnes, violin; Telarc 80398

2 min
5 DAYS AGO

Charlotte Sohy

Synopsis Today is International Women’s Day, a global celebration of the social, economic, political, and cultural achievements of women, so here’s a French composer whose name you may not have heard before, but you should! After all, her music was good enough that Gabriel Fauré, Paul Dukas, and Maurice Ravel performed it at musical salons in Paris. She was a close friend of the famous composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger, studied organ with Louis Vierne, and composition with Vincent d’Indy. But enough name-dropping. Her name was Charlotte Sohy. Born in Paris in 1887, and in the early decades of the 20th century, achieved both professional status and public success as a composer, writing masses, art songs, piano pieces, chamber music, and this symphony, which dates from 1917. Unlike many women composers of the past, Sohy’s husband fully supported her career. After all, he was also a composer, and she even collaborated with him on a few of his pieces. Still, even in cosmopolitan Paris, she chose to publish her music under the pseudonym Charles Sohy, and while her chamber works received performances, her symphony remained unperformed during her lifetime. Music Played in Today's Program Charlotte Sohy (1887-1955): Symphony in C-sharp minor; Orchestre National de France; Débora Waldman, conductor; Palazzetto Bru Zane Label BZ-2006

2 min
6 DAYS AGO

Daniel Pinkham

Synopsis Some special music had its premiere at Harvard University (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) on today’s date in 1980. It was commissioned to honor the memory of Walter Piston, who had taught composition at Harvard for a number of years, and it was one of his students, American harpsichordist and organist Daniel Pinkham, who composed it. Pinkham had exceptional teachers. He studied harpsichord with Wanda Landowska, organ with E. Power Biggs and, in addition to Piston, Pinkham studied composition with Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and Arthur Honegger. But he credits another familiar name for his most important musical epiphany. In 1939, while still a teenager, he heard one of the first American concerts given by the Trapp Family, whose sentimentalized story is familiar from The Sound of Music. The Trapp Family’s usual ensemble, which combined Renaissance and Baroque instruments like recorders and gambas with the bright and clear voices of young children, spoke to the young Pinkham as no music had before, becoming “a part of my way of looking at things,” as he put it later. Pinkham composed everything from symphonies to electronic music. His choral and organ works are especially admired, and in 1990, he was named Composer of the Year by the American Guild of Organists. Music Played in Today's Program Daniel Pinkham (1923-2006): Serenades; Maurice Murphy, trumpet; London Symphony; James Sedares, conductor; Koch International 7179

2 min
6 MAR

Beethoven's Op. 127

Synopsis Today in 1825, one of Beethoven's late chamber works, his String Quartet No. 12, received its premiere in Vienna by the Schuppanzigh Quartet. The Quartet had only received the music two weeks earlier, which, in those days, would be plenty of time for experienced musicians to work up a normal string quartet of that day. But Beethoven’s new quartet was harmonically and structurally far from the norm for 1825. Even Beethoven knew as much, and drafted a humorous “contract” for himself and the four musicians to sign. It read: “Each one is herewith given his part and is bound by oath and pledged on his honor to do his best, to distinguish himself and to vie with the other in excellence. Signed: Schuppanzigh, Weiss, Linke, the grand master’s accursed cellist Holtz and the last, but only in signing, Beethoven.” Even so, the premiere was under-rehearsed, and the players seemed visibly unhappy with their difficult assignment. Fortunately, Beethoven was not present, but when he learned of the poor performance, he was furious. He immediately contacted another violinist, Joseph Böhm, whose quartet meticulously rehearsed the new piece under the composer’s watchful eye. Their performance was better received, and in April of 1825, Böhm took the unusual step of programming the difficult new work twice on the same program. As a contemporary review put it, this time, “the misty veil disappeared and Beethoven’s splendid work of art radiated its dazzling glory.” Music Played in Today's Program Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): String Quartet No. 12; LaSalle Quartet; DG 453 768

2 min

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John Birge

Host

Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.