Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Early in April in the year 1845, 15-year old American pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk performed at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. On the program was Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Chopin happened to be in the audience and congratulated the young American on his performance.

What exactly Chopin said depends on whom you asked. Gottschalk’s first biographer claims it was, “Very good, my child, let me shake your hand,” while his sister insists it was, “I predict you will become the king of pianists!”

In 1845, Parisian society was curious about anything American after experiencing other exotic exports from the New World, including P.T. Barnum’s circus and George Catlin’s paintings of Native American life. Anything American was definitely “hip.”

Four years later, on today’s date in 1849, Gottschalk returned to the Salle Pleyel, this time performing some of his own compositions, including Bamboula, a work named after the a deep-voiced Afro-Caribbean drum. The Parisian audiences had never heard anything like it and gave him a standing ovation. He was born in New Orleans and was exposed from childhood to Cuban and Haitian music and went on to write original works which anticipate both the rhythms and colors of American jazz.

Music Played in Today's Program

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849): Piano Concerto No. 1; Krystian Zimerman, piano; Polish Festival Orchestra; DG 459 684

Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869): Bamboula; Alan Feinberg, piano; Argo 444 457

Synopsis

For the 1958-59 season of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, the orchestra’s newly-appointed music director, was eager to program as much new American music as he dared. As luck would have it, early in 1958, 35-year old American composer Ned Rorem had just returned from Europe with a new symphonic score.

“I wrote most of my Symphony No. 3 in France. It’s a big piece but not a commission — I was still writing for the love of it in those days… So I showed it to Lenny and he said ‘Okay, I’ll do it, but I wish you would re-orchestrate the slow movement entirely for strings.’ I replied ‘Sure,’ but didn’t, because Bernstein was always saying things like that and then would forget all about it,” he said.

The premiere of Rorem’s Symphony No. 3 — as written — occurred at Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 1959, but for its composer, the thrill was tempered by some harsher realities.

He recalled, “I came late to the first rehearsal because in those days I was living off unemployment insurance … and I had to go down and stand in line to pick up my check. I guess they managed without me because Lenny conducted four wonderful performances.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ned Rorem (1923-2022): Symphony No. 3; Utah Symphony; Maurice Abravanel, conductor; Vox Box 5092

Synopsis

Over the centuries, a wide range of composers have created musical settings of the Latin mass, but one of the more unusual and distinctive settings received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1973 at a concert at Finch College in New York City devoted entirely to the music of American composer Vivian Fine.

At that time, Fine was teaching at Bennington College in Vermont, and her Missa Brevis, or Short Mass, was inspired by some of her colleagues there. Cellist George Finckel had organized cello quartet at the college, and for one semester as a sabbatical replacement, mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani, a noted new music advocate, taught at Bennington. She crafted her Missa Brevis from the taped voice of DeGaetani, multi-tracked into four channels as a kind of one-woman chorus, accompanied by Finckel’s quartet of cellos, whose combined low registers sound rather organ-like.

The blend of taped and live musicians created an effect both ancient and modern. In addition to the familiar Kyrie and Sanctus movements of the traditional mass, Fine interpolated sacred texts of her own choosing, making this Missa Brevis her own, intensely personal private spiritual testament.

Music Played in Today's Program

Vivian Fine (1913-2000): Missa Brevis; JanDeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Eric Barlett, David Finckel, Michael Finckel, Maurice Neuman, cello; CRI 692

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1789, Mozart was in Dresden, performing his new piano concerto at the Royal Saxon Court. Mozart was pretty good at documenting his own compositions, and we know from a catalog of his works that he finished this concerto in late February the previous year.

Unfortunately for posterity, he was less dutiful in copying out all of the solo piano part, which he no doubt just kept in his head. The surviving manuscript score contains just a shorthand version of the solo piano part, with the music for the left-hand hardly there at all.

Modern performers have to rely on their own wit and imagination to fill in the blanks, and, who knows: maybe he played it differently each time, improvising around his own sketchy outline as the mood took him?

In any case, Mozart must have been proud of this concerto. He played it again at the festivities surrounding the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt in October of 1790. Ever since, this concerto has been known as the Coronation Concerto.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Piano Concerto No. 26 (Coronation); Jenö Jandó, piano; Concentus Hungaricus; Mátyás Antál, conductor; Naxos 8.550209

Synopsis

Over the centuries, many composers have set verses from the Bible’s Book of Psalms to music, often in response to times of turmoil and trouble.

One unusual Psalm setting had its premiere performance on today’s date in 2013 at Bethel University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Seven Psalms was scored for a jazz quartet of bass, drums, saxophone and piano accompanying a solo vocalist and 15-member choir, and was created by Minneapolis composer Jeremy Walker, who confesses the music was motivated by his own personal struggle.

Walker’s burgeoning career as a jazz saxophonist was sidetracked by an illness which stymied doctors for 12 years until finally diagnosed as Lyme Disease. Unable to continue as a saxophonist, he turned to the piano and composition, and found himself drawn to the Book of Psalms, where he heard echoes of African-American spirituals and the blues.

“The book is just dripping with human hope and suffering all intertwined so it seemed like blues material to me,” he said. “It occurred to me to blend the jazz vernacular harmonic universe with the psalms. And right away the call and response between solo voice, or between the band and the choir, were sounds I could hear,” he said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jeremey Walker (b. 1972): “Psalm 130” from Seven Psalms; Jason Harms, vocalist; 7 Psalms Chamber Choir; Jeremy Walker Quartet; CD Baby/iTunes/Amazon release