Composers Datebook

Synopsis

The Violin Sonata No. 3 by American composer William Bolcom had its premiere on today’s date in 1993 at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. The work was commissioned to honor the 75th birthday of Dorothy Delay, a legendary violin teacher who taught at Juilliard for many years.

The violin is a strange animal for composers to master, especially if they aren’t violinists already, and Bolcom subtitled this work Sonata Stramba, “stramba” being the Italian word for “strange” or “odd.”

Bolcom confessed to being fascinated by two musical sounds more than any other: the voice and the violin. “When I was about ten, we trundled out my maternal grandfather’s imitation Stradivarius, made in Czechoslovakia, and I took a few not-very-successful lessons. When the violin was stolen out of the back seat of my father’s Buick that was the end of my studies of the instrument,” Bolcom recalled.

Bolcom did become a talented pianist, however, and befriended violinist Gene Nastri, who initiated the young composer into the mysteries of the instrument by performing Mozart and Beethoven Violin Sonatas with him, as well as the fledgling violin works written by the young composer.

Music Played in Today's Program

William Bolcom (b. 1938): Violin Sonata No. 3; Irina Muresanu, violin; Michael Lewis, piano; Centaur 2910

Synopsis

These days, when modern music is on the program, a sizeable chunk of the concert hall audience might start nervously looking for the nearest exit — but that wasn’t always the case.

On today’s date in 1882, 21-year old American composer and pianist Edward MacDowell took the stage in Zurich, Switzerland, to perform his Modern Suite for piano at the 19th annual conference of the General Society of German Musicians, a showcase for new music whose programs were arranged by none other than Franz Liszt.

Liszt had met MacDowell earlier that year, and when MacDowell sent him the music for his Modern Suite for solo piano, Liszt asked the young composer to play it himself at the Society’s conference in Zurich.

The success of his Modern Suite No. 1 lead to the creation of a second, and both were published a year later by the Leipzig firm of Breitkopf & Hærtel. These two suites were the first works of MacDowell to appear in print, and launched his career as one of the major American composers of the late 19th century.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908): Modern Suite No. 1; James Barbagallo, piano; Naxos 8.559011

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1919, British composer Edward Elgar finished a work he labeled jokingly as his Opus 1001 — a 50-second Smoking Cantata, intended, according to the manuscript score, as “an edifying, allegorical, improving, expostulatory, educational, persuasive, hortatory, instructive, dictatorial, magisterial, inadautory work.”

The score was completed at the Hertfordshire home of a wealthy banker named Edward Speyer, one of his oldest friends, to whom the manuscript was given. When he came to stay, Speyer had only one request, that the composer and his musician friends, “Kindly do not smoke in the hall or on the staircase.”

That’s also full text of Elgar’s cantata.

In the middle of his manuscript, he drew a medieval hell’s mouth, belching smoke. The little score was discovered, performed, and recorded for the first time in July of 2003.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Smoking Cantata; Andrew Shore, bar; Hallé Orchestra; Mark Elder, conductor; Hallé CD HLL-7505

Synopsis

Today we note the birth and death anniversaries of two American composers of the 20th century.

On today’s date in 1915, American composer David Diamond was born in Rochester, New York. In 1940, Dmitri Mitropoulos, then the music director of the Minneapolis Symphony commissioned one of his best-known works. He had specifically asked Diamond for an upbeat piece of music. “Write me a happy work,” he asked. “These are distressing times ... make me happy!” The 29-year-old composer responded with his popular Rounds for String Orchestra, which Mitropoulos premiered in Minneapolis in 1944.

Also on today’s date, in 1984, the American composer and teacher Randall Thompson died in Boston at 85. Randall Thompson wrote three symphonies and some fine chamber works, but his best-known piece of music is this choral setting of Allelujah which was first performed at the opening of the Berkshire Music Center at Lenox, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1940, when Thompson was 41 years old.

“[My Alleujah is] a very sad piece,” said Thompson. “Here it is comparable to the Book of Job, where it is written, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’”

Music Played in Today's Program

David Diamond (1915-2005): Rounds; Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Nonesuch 79002

Randall Thompson (1899-1984): Alleluia; Robert Shaw Chamber Singers; Robert Shaw, conductor; Telarc 80461

Synopsis

Today’s date in 1931 marks the birthday of the first notable Native American composer of concert music. His name was Louis Ballard, and he was born in Devil’s Promenade in Oklahoma. His father was Cherokee, and his mother Quapaw.

As a young boy he attended — but managed not to be irreparably damaged by — one of the notorious boarding schools where Native American students were taught to forget everything about their own language and culture. He remained rooted in Quapaw language and traditions at the same time his interest in European classical music developed, and in 1962 became first American Indian to receive a graduate degree in music composition.

Inspired by the example of Bela Bartok, who incorporated the folk music of Eastern Europe in his works, Ballard attempted to do the same with Native American source material in concert works both large and small. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 and in 1974 his orchestral piece Incident at Wounded Knee was performed at Carnegie Hall and taken on an Eastern European tour by Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, who had commissioned the work.

Music Played in Today's Program

Louis Ballard (1931-2007): Mid-Winter Fires; Amy Morris, flute; Mark Serrup, oboe; Mary Goetz, piano; Indande Records 52352