Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Today’s date in 1928 marks the birthdate in 1928 of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, famous for more than 400 scores he wrote for films and TV.

If you’re a fan, you already know that he wrote the music for a series of spaghetti western movies like the 1964 classic A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood as a taciturn, sun-burnt, cigar-chomping gunman.

If you’re an oboist, you’ve probably played his haunting Gabriel’s Oboe at weddings or funerals. It’s a melody originally heard in his soundtrack to the 1986 film The Mission.

But in a 2006 interview for Dazed magazine, he revealed some things even his fans might not have known: He collected bars of hotel soap as a hobby. And if he hadn’t become a composer, he would have liked to have been a professional chess player.

He also offered a bit of wise advice when asked about scores that were not successes: “A long time ago, I really loved a film that I was working on and I became too involved. That was kind of unbalanced. It made me realize that you can’t love things too much if you want them to work.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ennio Morricone (1928-2020): Gabriel’s Oboe from The Mission; Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Ennio Morricone, conductor; Sony 57872

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1967, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new piece, November Steps, by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, a work commissioned by the orchestra as part of its 125th-anniversary celebrations. In addition to the usual instruments of the Western symphony orchestra, he included in his score two traditional Japanese instruments: the shakuhachi flute and the biwa, a kind of Japanese lute.

Eight years after the Takemitsu premiere, an organization called Music from Japan was founded to help make other Japanese contemporary music feel “at home” in America. Music from Japan has presented about 400 works across the U.S. and premiered over 40 new works, many of them specially commissioned.

On today’s date in 2000, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Music from Japan presented a gala concert at Carnegie Hall, which included the premiere of a new orchestral work by talented young Japanese composer Karen Tanaka, one of the rising stars of her generation. Among her recorded works is Night Bird, a piece for two decidedly Western instruments: saxophone and piano.

Music Played in Today's Program

Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996): November Steps; Katsuya Yokoyama, shakuhachi; Kunshi Isuruta, biwa; Concertgebouw Orchestra; Bernard Haitink, conductor; Philips 426 667

Karen Tanaka (b. 1961): Night Bird; Claude Delangle, saxophone; BIS 890

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1830, 11-year-old piano virtuoso Clara Wieck took the stage of the Leipzig Gewandhaus for her first solo recital. Her father was a piano teacher, who had prepared Clara for a solo career since infancy.

This was the age of the great composer-pianists Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin, and little Clara also wrote original works for her performances. Her Four Polonaises was published the following year. Her career as a composer and performer would eventually span five decades, and, like her father, she became one of the most famous piano teachers of her time.

Nowadays, composer-performers are more common in the world of jazz than classical music, although there are exceptions. One of them is Judith Lang Zaimont, who, like Schumann, developed a triple career as composer, performer and teacher.

“Composing is the central fact of my life. My music seeks to appeal both to the heart (the ‘Ahh!’ response) and to the head (the ‘Aha!’ response). When this mix is just right, I can sense it — and reactions from audiences can be positive, too,” she said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Clara Schumman (1819-1896): Four Polonaises; Josef de Beenhouwer, piano; CPO 999 758

Judith Lang Zaimont (b. 1945): “September” from Calendar Collection; Judith Lang Zaimont, piano; Four Tay 4001

Synopsis

The Nov. 7, 1950, issue of Look magazine included a record review of a new LP of music by avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse. “Varèse is unlike anything else in music, and well worth knowing,” the review suggested.

Frank Zappa, a young Californian just short of his 10th birthday, was fascinated by the Look magazine photo of Varèse accompanying the review, which made the composer look a little like a mad scientist in vintage horror films. The young Zappa felt compelled to hunt down the record and begin composing music himself. For his 15th birthday, he chose to spend a $5 gift from his parents on a long-distance phone call to Varèse, who he correctly guessed must live in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Today, Zappa is best remembered as the head of the iconoclastic rock band of the ‘60s and ‘70s the Mothers of Invention, but in 1983, he also conducted works of Varèse at a San Francisco concert honoring the composer’s centenary, and always acknowledged Varèse as a major influence. One of his final projects, recorded in 1993, the last year of his life, was an orchestral tribute to Varèse.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edgar Varèse (1883-1965): Ionisation; New York Philharmonic; Pierre Boulez, conductor; Sony 45844

Frank Zappa (1940-1993): Dog Breath Variations; Cincinnati Conservatory Wind Symphony; Eugene Corporon, conductor; Mark 1116

Synopsis

American composer Florence Price wrote three symphonies in all. Her Symphony No. 1 was premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1933 and marked the first time a composition by an African-American woman was played by a major American orchestra. The score for her second symphony is lost. Her Symphony No. 3, commissioned by the WPA Federal Music Project, was premiered on today’s date in 1940 by the Detroit Civic Orchestra.

Price was born in 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three children in a mixed-race family. Her mother was a music teacher who guided her early musical training. At 14, she enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music, where she pretended to be Mexican to avoid the Ivy League racial prejudice of that time.

After teaching in the south, she moved to Chicago in 1927, where she became acquainted with the writer Langston Hughes and contralto Marian Anderson, both prominent figures in the African-American arts scene, who both helped promote her music.

Price died in 1953. After decades of neglect, early 21st-century performances and recordings of her works have helped revive interest in her life and career.

Music Played in Today's Program

Florence Price (1887-1953): Symphony No. 3; Women’s Philharmonic; Apo Hsu, conductor; Koch 7518-2